Imperialism Kritik Index

Link: South China Sea

( ) So-called “freedom of navigation” exercises are meant to contain China as a rising competitor.

[Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Religion. “Fishing in Troubled Waters: the U.S. “Pushback” Against China’s Claims in the South China Sea.” November 4, 2015. http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/11/04/fishing-in-troubled-waters-the-u-s-pushback-against-chinas-claims-in-the-south-china-sea/]

This “Great Wall of Sand” is of course supposed to call to mind the Great Wall of China constructed over centuries in a vain attempt to keep the barbarian peoples of the northern steppes at bay. It’s supposed to convey an image of exclusion: a chain of artificial islands dubiously claimed by an aggressive (or paranoid) China, militarized to keep out unwanted shipping from its claimed waters.¶ The “freedom of navigation operations” are all about sending unwanted warships into waters China claims as its own. Although they might also pass through waters claimed by the Philippines or Vietnam (to convey an impression of impartiality) make no mistake: these operations are designed to “contain” China.

Link: South China Sea

( ) Engagement over the South China Sea to ensure freedom of navigation is about exerting imperial power to contain China’s territorial claims.

Leupp, 2015 [Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Religion. “Fishing in Troubled Waters: the U.S. “Pushback” Against China’s Claims in the South China Sea.” November 4, 2015. http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/11/04/fishing-in-troubled-waters-the-u-s-pushback-against-chinas-claims-in-the-south-china-sea/]

Echoing the Pentagon, Hillary Clinton’s State Department harped on “peace and stability, respect for international law, freedom of navigation, [and] unimpeded lawful commerce in the South China Sea.” (As though China has actually been impeding commercial navigation or provoking confrontation.) It warned that Beijing “threatened commercial shipping” in the region.¶ In 2012 the “Center for a New American Security (CNAS)”—one of those innumerable “think tanks” easy to set up and sell to the media as the source of “expert” commentary—called for the U.S. warship number to expand from 285 to 346.¶ The story got attention, not because anyone knew what CNAS was, but because it combined its hawkish recommendation with the statement, “Diplomacy and economic engagement with China will work better when backed by a credible military posture.” So the U.S. is to strengthen its “military posture” in the South China Sea—to augment “peace and stability” there?¶ There, where the U.S. has no territorial claims. There in that sea, where the PRC, ROC, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei all occupy and claim islands.¶ There—where the PRC and Vietnam have both converted reefs to islands through reclamation, in order to build structures including military runways—the U.S. wants to “strengthen its military posture.” Why?¶ There has not, in fact, actually been a huge naval buildup (such as suggested by CNAS) since 2012. But from that year the U.S. has maintained a military base in Australia’s Northern Territory, facing the South China Sea. 2500 troops are currently stationed here. Lim Lobe calls this deal with Australia “the first long term expansion of the US military presence in the Asia/Pacific region since the Vietnam War.”¶ In April 2014 Daniel Russel, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia, threatened the PRC with sanctions (like those the U.S. had applied to Russia) “to put more pressure on China to demonstrate that it remains committed to the peaceful resolution of the problems in the South China Sea.’¶ In May 2015 Obama accused China of using its “sheer size and muscle” to pursue its South China Sea claims versus Vietnam and the Philippines. In the same month a CNN team was given “exclusive access to join” a surveillance flight over “contested waters” in the South China Sea “which the Pentagon allowed for the first time in order to raise awareness about the challenge posed by the islands and the U.S. response.”¶ Think of that. The Pentagon was letting the free press tell you about how important these islands are to the U.S., where the Chinese are so intent on challenging us. The breathless embedded reporter—honored no doubt by the Pentagon’s trust—added: “They have learned that the Chinese are themselves displeased by this U.S. pushback.”¶ So: here CNN glorifies U.S. aeria

l surveillance over Chinese-claimed territory, embraces (unthinkingly) the notion that China “challenges” the U.S. in the South China Sea, and depicts these flights as a U.S. “pushback”—some sort of rational response to a provocation.¶ How many hundreds of years ago did this provocation (by China, of the United States) begin? With that Buddhist monastery during the Han period, when the ancestors of what became North American Anglo-Saxons were worshipping Wodin in the German forests? When did the Chinese start getting uppity with the U.S. over the South China Sea?¶ The need for pushback’s occurred only recently, as it turns out. As China presses its claims—so far mainly through PR exercises—Washington has adopted the policy of what Beijing used to call “fishing in troubled waters.”)¶ The Making of an Alliance?¶ Washington’s closest allies are doing likewise. Japan, which occupies the Senkaku (Diaoyutai) Islands in the East China Sea claimed by China, is seeking support from Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei in its clash with the PRC. In June 2014 Japan’s Prime Minister Abe Shinzo told ASEAN countries that Japan would (in turn) back them in their own territorial disputes with Beijing.¶ (Presumably this meant that regardless of the historical documentation China might adduce, Tokyo would take the other’s side simply as a matter of policy.)¶ A year earlier Abe had written an op-ed in which he warned about the South China Sea becoming “Lake Beijing” and advocated a “diamond” alliance between Japan, Australia, India and U.S. to prevent China from building upon its claims.¶ In July Philippines president Beningo Aquino requested the U.S. to conduct surveillance flights in the South China Sea on Manila’s behalf. The U.S. State Department announced at the time it supported “the Philippines in enhancing its maritime domainal awareness.” (Read: The U.S. encouraged Manila to proclaim as national “domain” more Spratly islands claimed by the PRC… thus becoming more “aware” of how it can help the U.S. test China’s limits.)¶ The “pivot to Asia” is indeed a “pushback” against China, a rising economy and a—so far restrained and conservative—re-ascendant military power. It’s a preposterous pushback, an effort to represent the PRC’s reclamation and island-building activities in the region as illegal and as some sort of threat to the freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.¶ Repeat: the U.S. itself is not a signatory of the UN’s Law of the Sea. Its freedom of navigation in the South China Sea has never been impeded by Chinese claims or construction activity. This is about the exertion of naval military power pitting a rising regional power with an actual interest in developing territorial islands and an external imperialist with regional allies pressing competing territorial claims fishing once again, dangerously, in troubled waters.

Link: South China Sea

( ) Engagement over the South China Sea is meant to secure concessions from China and guarantee naval dominance.

Cogan, 2016

[James Cogan, Socialist Equality Party assistant national secretary and a Senate candidate for South Australia. “War danger grows following new US provocation in South China Sea.” 11 May 2016. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/05/11/chin-m11.html]

On Tuesday, in an open military provocation, the Obama administration authorised the US Navy to send a guided-missile destroyer into the 12-nautical-mile territorial zone surrounding Chinese-held Fiery Cross Reef, located in the Spratly Island chain in the South China Sea. The operation was carried out on the fraudulent pretext of “freedom of navigation”—that is, the assertion by US imperialism that it has the right to send its military forces anywhere it chooses, at any time, in Chinese-claimed waters.¶ Yesterday’s action achieved its real aim of ratcheting up military tensions in the Asia-Pacific. The Chinese military responded by scrambling at least two J-11 fighter jets. Chinese pilots reportedly issued warnings to the American destroyer, the USS William P. Lawrence, to leave Chinese territory or face engagement. The Chinese Navy dispatched three warships, but there have been no reports that the rival vessels came into contact.¶ These developments represent a sharp escalation. The US Navy carried out a “freedom of navigation” mission last October in Chinese-claimed waters around Subi Reef in the South China Sea and a second operation in January, near Triton Island in the Paracel Island chain. On those occasions, China did not react militarily but issued strongly-worded diplomatic protests. The response to the intrusion near Fiery Cross Reef indicates that, from this point on, US provocations will be engaged by Chinese forces, posing the danger of a military clash.¶ Fiery Cross Reef is one of the most sensitive of all the disputed territories. It has been held by China since 1988, but is still claimed by Vietnam, the Philippines and Taiwan. Tensions have grown since 2011 as a result of the US “pivot to Asia” and Washington’s development of closer military ties with Vietnam and the Philippines.¶ In 2014, China deployed several hundred troops to the reef and initiated a major project to reclaim land from the sea and turn it into a small artificial island. It has built a port and a 3,300-metre airfield—the most southern airfield controlled by Beijing. In January 2016, civilian airliners successfully landed on the reef and it is now regularly used by Chinese military aircraft.¶ The message from Washington sent by yesterday’s operation is clear. US imperialism will continue to stoke up long-standing, competing claims over territory in the South China Sea to militarily encircle and destabilise the Chinese regime. The objective of the US ruling elite is not only to assert military dominance in Asia, but to intimidate Beijing into pulling back from its ambitions to exert greater global influence and compel it to make sweeping concessions to American demands on trade and access to Chinese markets. If Beijing nevertheless continues to assert the regional and global interests of the Chinese business oligarchs it represents, it will face war.

Link: South China Sea

( ) Strengthening alliances in the South China Sea is an attempt to bandwagon the region against China, thereby containing its rise to power.

Smith, 2013

[Ashley, member of the International Socialist Review editorial board. “US imperialism's pivot to Asia.” International Socialist Review. March, 2013. http://isreview.org/issue/88/us-imperialisms-pivot-asia]

.¶ South Korea had until recently adopted a more balanced posture, drawn to China economically but dependent on the US militarily in its conflict with North Korea. After several North Korean nuclear and ballistic missile tests, however, South Korea has shifted decisively back to the United States. This new posture was solidified when right-wing nationalist Park Geun-hye, daughter of South Korea’s last dictator, narrowly won the recent 2012 presidential election. She promises to be a loyal ally of the United States in its confrontation with China.¶ Beyond these states the United States possesses other traditional supporters. Thailand remains a steadfast ally as well as the Philippines. The United States has expanded its relations with Indonesia under the cover of the war on terror. It has also managed to pull India into its orbit. For much of the Cold War, India was nonaligned and if anything leaned toward the Soviet Union. With India’s rising economic power, the United States has tilted away from its historic relationship with Pakistan, which it shares with China, to embrace India as its key political ally in South Asia.¶ Most surprising of all the new alliances Obama has forged is the one with Vietnam. The country had successfully liberated itself from the United States, went on to defeat China in 1979, and was an ally of Russia during the Cold War. It only normalized relations with the United States in 1996, and has warmly received Obama’s overtures because it needs a great power ally in its ongoing confrontation with China over the Spratly and Paracel islands.¶ The United States also wants to weaken China’s hold on its own camp. For example, the United States dramatically ended its policy of isolating Myanmar (Burma) for decades. It established diplomatic relations and has encouraged the country to shift its economic and political allegiance to the United States and away from China. In response, Myanmar has already suspended its contract with Beijing to build a $3.6 billion hydroelectric project on the Irrawaddy River that would have supplied power to China.26¶ Similarly, Washington is attempting to woo Cambodia into the US camp. China has bought Cambodia’s loyalty with $2.1 billion in aid over the last three decades. To disrupt this bond, the United States has begun to funnel money into Cambodia. In 2012, it distributed $70 million in aid to improve health, education, governance, and economic growth.27 In a sign of the importance of winning over the regimes in Burma and Cambodia, Obama visited them along with Thailand immediately after his victory in the 2012 presidential elections.¶ The United States also hopes to manipulate political schisms between various Asian states to further disrupt China’s attempt to dominate Asia. In the conflicts between China and various Asian states over disputed islands, the United States wants to interpose itself as a mediator in the situation, establish itself as an ally of the lesser powers, and subject China to multilateral negotiations.¶ It is not doing this for any benevolent reason. As Robert Kaplan writes, “Nationalism in the South China Sea countries such as Vietnam and Indonesia—as well as countries further afield like India, Japan and Korea—may be the best basis for stitching together common interests in a loose, almost invisible network of like-minded and increasingly capable maritime states that are willing to deflect Chinese hegemony.”28

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