History's judgment of the United States at this moment will not be kind. The necessary but cacophonous obsession with Russia coupled with extremely poor policy choices are ceding to China some lavish and undeserved gifts. These include enabling China to shape Asia-Pacific trade rules for years to come, capitalize more fully on the trillion-dollar, jobs-producing global clean-energy market, and deepen lucrative commercial relationships with Europe.
China is a real superpower in the making. On the other hand, Putin's Russia can seem little
more than an oil-based criminal enterprise in long-term decline. Neither of
them is to be trusted, of course, but only China has the ability to eat our
lunch in economic and diplomatic terms. And the U.S. has been doing a very good
job lately of serving it to them on a silver platter - one undoubtedly Made in
China.
It
is through this lens that I consider Ely Ratner's "Course Correction"
piece on the South China Sea in the new issue of Foreign Affairs Magazine
(July-August, p.64). Oh that's right, in honor of my Vietnamese friends, I
should call it the East Sea (Biển
Đông).
Ratner
reminds us of the volatility that finds China, Vietnam and five other nations
with "overlapping claims to hundreds of rocks and reefs that scatter" the East Sea. These claims bring with them a high-stakes competition for shipping,
fishing, oil and mineral rights let alone the transit of military ships,
submarines and aircraft.
Slowly
but surely, China is unlawfully claiming these reefs and atolls and building on
them runways, ports, antimissile systems and other infrastructure of
long-haul commercial and military hegemony.
Ratner
rightly suggests that "time is running out to stop China's advance."
Still, the U.S. seems to be doing little to push back. It's not clear what U.S.
China policy is now or that we even have one. There was a time, however, when
the U.S. did occasionally push back on China's maritime ambitions. The U.S. did
so even as we simultaneously sought to integrate Beijing into the world order while not falling into a Thucydides trap in which an existing power (Sparta) inevitably
ends up in war with an emerging power (Athens).
Ratner
offers strategies for countering China's East Sea expansion, some of which seem
plausible. Ironically, exiting the Trans-Pacific Partnership has
seriously eroded U.S. ability to implement these strategies with the
six nations contesting China's unlawful claims. These nations understandably fear
alienating Beijing, however, now believing in Ratner's words that "it is inevitable that
China will dominate the economic order in the region."
So
while many of us are deeply concerned about the United States' mysterious acquiescence if not
subservience to Moscow these days, let's not miss a larger point. Inaction coupled with foolish policy choices are greatly strengthening the only nation in
the world that can actually emerge as a true superpower. For China, we are the
gift that keeps giving.
Map Credit to Katie Park / NPR