By Donald Kirk
BEIJING – The struggle for power and peace in Northeast Asia is an extraordinary balancing act in which those participating in the dance constantly risk tripping and falling over. One day we’re hearing that China is almost willing to fight over claims from the South China Sea to the Yellow Sea, and the next we learn that top U.S. and Chinese officials are grinning amiably while chatting about ``communications and cooperation.”
The love fest seems rather deceiving, however, considering that U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has been talking up plans to build up U.S. naval and airpower, promising half a dozen aircraft carriers will be cruising everywhere in defense of just about everyone. If all these countries were on such good terms, why all the military might?
The question seems all more puzzling in the wake of ``Rim of the Pacific” war games held off Hawaii in which upwards of 20 nations, from Russia to Tonga, were invited to participate. The Chinese, it seems, were left out of the party ― surely a hurtful omission. You wouldn’t know it, though, from the reception accorded Admiral Samuel Locklear, commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, during a visit here with Defense Minister Liang Guanglie and Ma Xiaotian, chief of the general staff of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.
Rather than ask blatantly rude questions about why the U.S. needed all that firepower in the western Pacific, General Ma urged more exchanges and cooperation with the U.S. ``in the best interests of both peoples as well as the region and the whole world.” True, he and Liang seemed a little concerned about an increase in U.S. forces, but the emphasis for now is on sorting out differences.
It’s difficult to balance forces, though, without considering Japan, a commercial colossus that everyone knows could turn into a military power any time from within a few years to a few decades from now. Since the end of World War II, the U.S. has managed to hold revanchist Japanese military aims in check while the Japanese pursued economic success. The rise of China, however, poses a threat that Japanese militarists believe requires a response. Would a military build-up be what’s needed to jumpstart the stagnating Japanese economy?
South Korea and Japan might share a common cause considering China’s support for North Korea and the North’s hostile attitude toward the South. The United States supports both South Korea and Japan in military alliances that would seem to guarantee trilateral cooperation. So, why not support a super-alliance binding all three against North Korea and China?
The question seems so deceptively logical that I’ve heard experts who should know better about broaching the idea in gatherings of people who can’t seem to see why it wouldn’t work. For one thing, right off, no one can deny that such an alliance would strike others in the region as a deliberate effort to incite trouble.
How would China respond to a sense that these three powers, laden with the latest weaponry and getting stronger all the time, were ganging up on them? Could there be any better reason for the Chinese to respond by a massive buildup of its own? And what would China do to discourage North Korea from its own unpredictable military adventures if the Chinese had reason to fear such a clear and deepening confrontation of forces in the region?
Then there’s the historic question of the era of Japanese colonialism and militarism. Those days may be long gone, but the memory lingers on. Fears of a Japanese renaissance as an aggressive imperial power won’t go away. Under the circumstances, it’s easy to understand widespread worries in South Korea about the negative implications of a pact under which Japan and South Korea would exchange military intelligence information.
A cartoonist might portray South Korea’s decision not to go through with the signing in Tokyo of the carefully wrought agreement as that of someone backing out of a marriage ceremony, leaving the other partner waiting at the altar. There’s no telling, however, where such cooperation would lead.
Moreover, the Japanese won’t accept the need to go through with basic confidence-building that might take the edge off Korean opposition to military cooperation. The most obvious is their claim on Dokdo. Korea holds the Dokdo islets and is not going to let them go. Why won’t the Japanese say, Ok, you can have them ― and drop the issue? Then there are those other issues, the refusal to compensate the comfort women, to revise textbook accounts of the horrors of World War II, all of which the Japanese could consider seriously if they want to gain Korean trust.
Such questions complicate cooperation even as the U.S. increases its strength around China. Chinese leaders have been claiming rights to Taiwan ever since Mao’s Red army drove the ``Nationalist” Chiang Kai-shek to the renegade island province in 1949. I was in Taipei, watching Taiwan military exercises, when U.S. President Clinton in 1996 ordered extra ships into the Taiwan straits in a show of strength against China.
Now citizens of the Republic of China on Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China fly back and forth for business and tourism. Not all military standoffs have to end in economic hardship and bloodshed.
Columnist Donald Kirk, www.donaldkirk.com, has been covering war and peace around the region since 1965. He’s reachable at kirkdon@yahoo.com.