I’m not quite sure how to read Mark Landler and Jane Perlez’s article in the New York Times on President Obama’s trip to Asia. It essentially scolds the president for not having an early and coherent and tough enough policy towards China to check their military and territorial ambitions and reassure our Asian allies. It frames the debate over passage of the Trans Pacific Partnership as a litmus test over whether America will “lose the chance to shape the economic future of the region, allowing China to forge ahead with its “Sino-centric economic order.”” And it suggests that, should Congress fail to pass the TPP, our relationships with countries like Japan and the Philippines will be so damaged that we’ll have no choice but to compensate militarily.
“Obama is seen as reluctant to push back,” said Alan Dupont, a former defense intelligence analyst for the Australian government. “He has allowed China to militarize the islands in the South China Sea. The United States hasn’t put it at the top of its list.”
To reassure its allies, Mr. Dupont said, the United States would have to reinforce its military presence in the Pacific even further than it has under Mr. Obama’s pivot, or rebalance, as it has also been called.
“There has to be a rebalance plus,” he said.
Obviously, any discussion of Chinese-American relations should be a very complicated endeavor. Despite a less-than-hospitable welcome to the American delegation, Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping were able to make an announcement further committing both countries to the targets and principles of the Paris climate agreement. So, our two countries can still cooperate on important matters despite a frosty relationship.
The Chinese actions in the South China Sea aren’t just provocative, they’re now getting crosswise of international law and are all highly unusual.
…China has dismissed a recent ruling by an international tribunal in The Hague that rebuked its aggressive reclamation of land on disputed shoals in the South China Sea and invalidated its historical claims to a large swath of those waters…
…China has extended its military reach there by building artificial islands with airfields, facilities that American commanders have said they regard as military bases. Although China appears to be taking stock of the situation since the unfavorable ruling in The Hague, Chinese military officials warn that they will continue with their building program in the waterway.
“China will never stop our construction,” the head of China’s navy, Adm. Wu Shengli, said in July.
Last month, China took delivery of a dredger, one of the biggest in its inventory, from a Dutch shipyard. The vessel would be suitable for dredging at Scarborough Shoal, a disputed reef 150 miles from the Philippines.
China, some academics say, plans to create an extremely large artificial island that would complete a strategic triangle of bases in the sea.
I talk to a lot of people and read a lot of comments on political blogs, and this article seems like it might as well be written in Chinese for all the connection it has to how folks here at home are thinking about China, and the Trans Pacific Partnership, and America’s proper role as a Pacific power.
Between the damage done by the Bush administration’s excellent adventure in Iraq and the fallout of the Great Recession, people in this country, particularly but not only on the left, no longer seem to give legitimacy or priority to things like bolstering our economic and military alliances in the Far East. I’ve read thousands of negative blog articles and comments about the TPP, and I can’t remember one that had anything to do with Japan’s reaction if it fails to pass or how it might cause other countries to lose trust in our leadership and seek accommodation with and protection from China. The country doesn’t seem to recognize, outside of some elite circles, that the TPP is primarily a geopolitical tool in intent and design much more than a way to expand copyright laws or enrich drug companies. Virtually no one cares why the Obama administration has pursued this agreement, nor understands it, nor would they really support it if they did understand it.
As far as I can tell, the overriding posture of the American public is that China can have whatever it wants in its sphere of influence, and their sphere of influence includes the territory of most of the inhabited Pacific. So, it’s ‘no’ to the TPP and ‘no’ to a “rebalance-plus” military buildup, and it’s a big middle finger to the economic and military imperialists who would make even a whimper of an argument in the other direction.
I blame the Iraq War for destroying faith and trust in the American Establishment that they can be believed, that they can deal with the world in a realistic way, that they can “win” (in Trump’s phrasing), and that we ought to be willing to make huge sacrifices in the service of their vision and leadership. Perhaps after the experience of Vietnam (and, to a degree, Korea), another failed Asian war was just one too many.
But we can’t ignore the importance of other failures. The trade deals of the last twenty-five years have accompanied a steady rise in income inequality, as U.S. tax and spending policies and globalization have hollowed out our middle class and devastated communities all over the country. Meanwhile, the Great Recession (its causes, impact, and the legislative/regulatory/legal reaction) did great damage to public trust in our Establishment policymakers.
Yet, despite the great loss of life and treasure in the global war on terror, the military successes of ISIS, and the increased risk and frequency of high casualty terrorist attacks in the West, people still feel basically unthreatened at home and utterly unconcerned about Chinese ambitions. People are certainly in no mood to risk American lives and treasure fighting over shoals, reefs, and islands (artificial or otherwise) in the Western/Far Eastern Pacific ocean.
One school of thought is that the failures and dishonesty of the American elite are so well-established, and have been reiterated so many times now, that this is the proper conclusion. Better to do nothing than to do big things wrong. Perhaps China is a better, more reliable partner for our Far Eastern allies, and who really cares if they are not? It’s probably our fault for having the imperialist impulses to challenge China in the first place.
And, I’ll admit, this is a very tempting way of looking at things. It’s an exhausting prospect trying to muster the energy to challenge it.
What I find frustrating, however, is that this isn’t a live debate. If I want to talk about it, I first have to introduce it as a set of concerns, because regular people aren’t concerned about these issues at all. That America might have a legitimate positive and partly military role to play in the Far East is not so much disbelieved as not even considered. It seems that no one even listens to what our Australian or Filipino or Japanese allies have to say on these matters. And they’d have to listen to them to even really disagree with them, but we don’t even get that far.
So, instead, the debate over the TPP is cast as an effort by economic elites to screw over the American worker, and that seems to complete the four corners of the debate. Yet, no one in the Far East is looking at this debate that way. They’re looking at it as a test of whether partnerships should (or even can) be made with the West, or whether they should seek partnerships and military protection from China.
Their conclusion is coming soon, and it most likely will be that we’ve collapsed as a Pacific power. Indeed, this appears to be the case. It would be too generous to say that this is what the American people want, because they haven’t ever thought about it that way, but they seem to somehow want it nonetheless.
And, perhaps they’re wise in their own way. After all, how much trust has been squandered?
But when I think about how much sacrifice was made during World War Two and afterwards to build up American leadership in the Pacific and elsewhere, it makes me sad to realize that the generations that came after failed this miserably.
If our elites want the public’s trust again, they’re clearly going to have to get our house in order first, and that means rebuilding our middle class and our hollowed out communities any way that they can.
In this sense, the appeal of Trump and the failure of the TPP are of a piece.
The American people have rescinded their faith in our leaders, and if that is going to have nasty geopolitical consequences and possibly lead to more war, repression, and disorder, then our elites should blame themselves first. And then they should realize that they no longer have any choice but to put the American worker and the middle class first in their set of priorities.
