Today’s
paper has an article about Abe down in Singapore at an international security
meeting, suggesting that Japan will take a larger role in regional security. He
would like to lift the ban on export of military hardware and be able to
provide ships to, for example the Philippines and Vietnam. Obviously this is an anathema to
Beijing and Seoul, but it has been comparatively better received among ASEAN
nations. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/31/world/asia/japan-china-abe.html?hp
China’s pushing is intended find out the limits of American
willingness to shore up alliances and arbitrate the peace. Will America become tired of this? Xi Jinping may be pushing to see what precisely
our limits are. One area where
this will certainly pressure the fault lines of the alliance are with South
Korea. Japan has little choice but
to step up to China’s assertiveness, unilaterally declaring rights over
disputed airspace. And now flying
patrol planes dangerously close to those of Japan. Why does China think this strategy will be successful?
This article by Hugh White, offers an interest analysis as
to why China would risk war and risk alienating all of its neighbors. China is pushing its own version of
great state relations, trying to foster a new dynamic for regional relations
wherein China would have considerably more regional power and this is a zero
sum accumulation, away from U.S. power.
Weaken our alliances, by showing that the U.S. is not really committed
to defending anyone. Beijing’s
assumption is that there is a weakness of resolve on the part of the U.S. that
is not matched by China’s will to change regional power relations. His worry is that both sides misunderstand
the other, because each one assumes the other would back down rather than risk
a fight and neither assumption may be true.
In the comments that follow that article there is lots of
interesting debate. Talk
about kids playing with scissors, talk about miscalculations and what happens
when certain lines are crossed.
Talk about limited engagements from U.S. attack submarines on
Guangzhou. Sitting in Washington
people may think this way. All I
know is, that’s the end of the world I know. What an extraordinarily dark, new divided world it would if
we were able to squeeze through with only “limited” skirmishes. It needn’t necessarily be 烽烟四起[1], but
even a limited exchange between the two countries, will take another generation
at least to rectify.
Russia and China will form a block. South Korea will have an excruciating
choice between their hatred for Japan and their distrust of China and their
international integration. The
U.S. will have a war footing economy and struggle to adjust to a trade war with
the world’s second largest economy.
The region will have a wild arms race and the U.S. will presumably begin
a much more overt effort to foment discord domestically in hopes of toppling
the CCP. And the latter will
resort to whatever is necessary to return the favor. Wretched, xenophobic compromise.
DJ Vadim, born in St. Petersburg, living now, in NYC and
Berlin is an alternative hip hop producer who a friend just hipped me to. The album is boldly titled “USSR: Life
from the Other Side.” The song,
even more ominous “Kill, Kill, Kill” from 1999. Strange cuts, old school rhyming, and disarming messages
woven in. And I’m laughing and I’m
tapping the table. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DJ_Vadim
And that is what the world had been like for the first
twenty years or so of my consciousness.
Perhaps it will divide up again.
New ideology will have to be shaped to explain it. Perhaps it will be authoritarian vs.
representative democracies, but that won’t be enough. Something more forced and tortured will have to be fashioned
to cut the world apart again between people who used to get along fine.
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