Over the weekend, Beijing’s foreign ministry summoned Robert Wang, our deputy ambassador there, to hose him over Washington’s statements on recent goings-on in the South China Sea.
If Beijing is a bit nervous about America’s maneuvering in its neighborhood, then good. America would do well to make China, which is turning into a neighborhood bully, even more nervous.
It all started when Beijing announced plans to build a new military base and companion city, Sansha, in the Paracel Islands — ignoring the fact that the islands are also claimed by others in the region, including our allies Taiwan and Singapore.
State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell protested last week, noting that China’s moves “run counter to collaborative diplomatic efforts to resolve differences, and risk further escalating tensions in the region.”
The next day, Beijing summoned Wang for that dress-down. The Chinese press chimed in with headlines demanding America “shut up” already, and accusing Washington of “fanning the flames” in the region.
Disputes over small, mostly uninhabitable islands in the South China Sea and beyond have been going on for ages, but as China grows ever more resource-hungry, local skirmishes threaten to blow up into full shooting confrontations: Some of the contested isles are prized for rich fishing, while others show promise of vast oil or gas yields.
The Obama administration has adopted a policy of studied neutrality in those regional disputes, mostly staying above the fray even as Beijing dispatched military vessels (at times disguised as fishing boats) to scare off competing claimants.
China’s neighbors — the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam — have long relied on America for protection, so naturally they’re puzzled: Does our neutral stance mean we’ll stay out if a skirmish turns to all-out war?
But that’s only half of the story.
Over the winter, President Obama announced at the Pentagon his new “rebalancing” policy, shifting significant military assets from Europe and the Middle East to the Asia-Pacific region, where “there’s no multinational organization like NATO to maintain the peace,” as one of the thinkers behind the new doctrine, Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, told the Asia Society in Manhattan last week.
A China Daily reporter in that crowd confronted Carter with the view from Beijing, which feels threatened by America’s military buildup: Isn’t all this “rebalancing” talk actually a move to deter rising China?
“This isn’t about China,” Carter retorted. “We don’t take sides” in regional disputes, he said. We’re there “to assure freedom of navigation for everybody.”
But, as the weekend’s diplomatic protest and media attacks show, Beijing is unconvinced. And on the other side, long-term allies wonder: If America won’t “take sides” now, what happens if they need to invoke the mutual-protection treaties we’ve signed with many of them?
For now, the American and Chinese economies depend on each other too much to allow an actual military confrontation. Our best policy would be to assure that cool heads prevail as a new generation moves into leadership positions in China’s ruling Communist Party.
But that doesn’t mean we should coddle Beijing with phony “neutrality.”
Protesting China’s attempts to create new facts in the South China Sea by seizing disputed territories is a good start. State now must clearly put everyone on notice that aggression will be answered aggressively, and reassure allies that we’d rush to their aid if attacked.
By the way, the “rebalancing” thing is a ruse. Although President Obama tells voters that the “tides of war are receding” in the Mideast and elsewhere, we’ll need to maintain a sizable military presence there for a long time yet.
But Obama is right to focus on the Pacific as central to our interests. Flexing our muscles there is the right move. Now he must make clear to everyone that if needed, we’d use our power — and not only to assure free navigation.
That’s the surest way to de-escalate building tensions and assure that all the guns stay holstered.
Twitter: @bennyavni