Anyone who knows me, or follows me on Twitter, knows that I am somewhat of a hawk when it comes to China. I acknowledge its rise – its rightful rise – and understand that the world order will change as a result of it. However, I also understand that other powers in Asia and the Pacific, including the United States, need to safeguard against this rise not being as smooth as Beijing suggests it will be. After all, nearly every major change in global power has resulted in war (with the exception of the handing of global leadership from the UK to the US, which was something of a special situation).
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I have argued that Asia needs its own regional security grouping – an Asian NATO for want of a better term – that would serve as a bulwark for the rest of Asia. In fact, we need a multilateral security structure in Asia far more than we do in Europe. The locus of the world’s economic activity has shifted from Europe, and the USSR no longer threatens anyone. Admittedly, a NATO do-or-die alliance may be too premature for Asia, and we are not looking to provoke China. But the current situation does not inspire much confidence, either in our Asian allies or in China.
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Lets look at the facts. In the past year, China has threatened Japan over disputed islands. It has issued stark warnings to the U.S. and Korea over sea exercises in the Yellow Sea (which it calls its “coastal waters”). It has told SouthEast Asia that it owns the entire South China Sea, and has threatened both Vietnam and the Philippines. It has even had an altercation with an Indian naval ship which was making a friendly call on Vietnam (and i am not even discussing China’s recent claim on an entire Himalayan border state). And of course, China continues to threaten Taiwan with war at the very mention of separation. All this is happening while China builds up its own military, particularly its maritime and cyber capabilities. Its not just its new aircraft carrier or stealth planes that worry me, but its anti-ship missiles that are clearly designed to deny the U.S. Navy access to Asia. Furthermore, it is eying bases across the Indian Ocean – not traditional military bases but stations nonetheless. Even distant Australia is now rearming. In the cyber realm, we have no idea the damage done to our national secrets by Chinese “students”.
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China’s recent assertiveness has not gone unnoticed by an increasingly nervous Asia. Most countries in the region quietly are advocating for a stronger U.S. presence in Asia. We also belatedly recognize that this (as opposed to events in Afghanistan) is vital to our own interests, lest we be shut out of the center of the world’s manufacturing, trade and energy hub. Added to the concern about Chinese military intentions is the lack of trust engendered by its non-democratic system of government. I would argue that we are not an ideological struggle with China as we were with the USSR. We would have these same issues with China even if it were a democracy. However, a democratic country would be less opaque about its intentions. A democratic country would also not be as beholden to its nationalistic military, which the Chinese Communist party increasingly is, if only to keep its legitimacy.
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The best way to keep the peace in Asia, and to ensure China’s peaceful rise, is a strong defense. It is something that would give the countries in Asia confidence that they will not be subjected to Chinese hegemony. It is something that would give us here in the United States confidence that we are not going to be shut out of Asia (China’s real aim). Most importantly, it would signal to the Chinese military that adventurism will not pay. Forming a regional security structure will cause shrieks of protest from Chinese nationalists. But I argue that it is in their own interests to keep the peace, and that this is the best way of doing so.
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Advocating for a regional security bulwark to hedge against an assertive China, even one that does not carry the same guarantees ensured by NATO, is not Cold War thinking. Rather, it is a pragmatic approach to ensuring peace in a part of the world that is most vital to our interests.
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