China on the Rocks


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