China keeps pushing. Will President Obama ever push back?
Defense Secretary Robert Gates did what he could in Hanoi at this week’s gathering of the Association of the Southeast Asian Nations. But he can’t do much about the impression his boss has left on the world stage.
Beijing has been pushing its neighbors around, while forming some worrisome military relations with America’s far-flung adversaries, including Iran.
In response to North Korea’s unprovoked and deadly attack on the South Korean ship, the Cheonan, we recently conducted a naval exercise with South Korea. Beijing answered by conducting a regional naval drill with Australia — without inviting us.
Meanwhile, Chinese “fishermen” (in fact members of the military) have clashed with Japan’s fishermen and Coast Guard officers in an attempt to conquer some remote Japanese islands famous for their rich fishing harvests. On Sept. 7, Tokyo arrested a Chinese captain over one incident — but later felt obliged to release him, a marked humiliation.
Nor was that an isolated case: China increasingly harasses the Vietnamese and other neighbors in the East China, South China and Yellow seas — saying, in effect, we’re boss here and we’ll take whatever we believe is ours.
All this lit enough red lights at the Pentagon that Gates headed to Vietnam, where he announced that we’ll support (read that “defend”) everybody’s right to “transit through, and operate in, international waters.”
But rather than explicitly standing by Japan and China’s other victims, he said America doesn’t take sides in regional territorial disputes.
Indeed, Gates also attempted to smooth some feathers during a Monday meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Liang Guanglie: Beijing is hopping mad about a $6.4 billion arms deal President Obama signed with Taiwan in January and throwing around unspecified allegations of American spying.
But China’s new assertiveness goes beyond brazen displays of power in its immediate neighborhood. Beijing is also spreading its wings in Africa, South Asia and the Middle East.
The most worrisome example was an air exercise last month in Turkey. For years, the annual drill known as “Anatolian Eagle” involved America, Israel and other Western allies of Turkey. But last year, when Ankara barred Israeli pilots from participating, the US and Italy cancelled their participation in solidarity. So this year, Turkey invited China to replace its old NATO allies in the annual exercise.
More, the Turkish daily Hurriyet reported on Monday that China’s Russian-made SU-27 warplanes made a refueling stop in Iran on route to the Turkish air exercise. It was the first time since the 1979 revolution that the Islamic Republic granted foreign planes access to its territory.
According to reports in Turkey and Israel, Washington is watching warily. Before the exercise, the administration demanded that Turkey use no F-16 fighter planes or other American or NATO technology. (The Turks said they’d use older planes instead.)
We have plenty of reasons to worry about this and other growing Chinese alliances. To be sure, China’s military has a way to go before it can equal ours. But with a fast-growing Chinese economy and a thirst for oil and other resources — and with a new generation of ever-more aggressive People’s Liberation Army generals who see America as the enemy — we’d better pay attention.
Beijing, like other US adversaries and competitors, has surely noticed our president’s shyness about asserting our military might. People around the world still hope to rely on us for the defense of values they know we cherish and China doesn’t. But, right or wrong, the world simply doesn’t think Obama intends to secure US global leadership by military means.
If world players believe we’re about to forfeit our military superiority, they’ll turn elsewhere — and China right now looks like the most promising alternative.
beavni@gmail.com