President Obama is pushing all the right buttons on his Pacific trip — letting friend and foe alike know that “the United States is a Pacific power, and we are here to stay.”
Much follow-through will be needed to fully calm nerves in a region where fears of China are soaring, but this was certainly a good week for America and for everyone in the Asian Pacific realm.
By announcing that he’ll deploy 2,500 Marines in friendly Australia, the president showed that America intends to “project power and deter threats to peace” in the region.
Sure, budget-conscious types will kick and scream. But deploying troops in troubled regions is more cost-effective than sending them in after problems arise.
Nor is this Vietnam-style “mission creep.” The number of troops is fairly small; administration spokesmen say that a large part of their mission would be to serve as a crack response force for disaster areas. These are peace-loving warriors.
Yet the president still talked tough about maintaining the “security architecture” in the Pacific and about forming trade alliances with like-minded nations that fear Beijing’s economic imperialism.
No one can mistake Obama for a warmonger or for adopting a sledge-hammer mentality in world affairs. Speaking of the planned trade pacts with our allies, he assured everyone that “the notion that we exclude China is mistaken” (although aides insist that, to be included, Beijing must raise the value of its currency and adopt other fair-trade practices — which it won’t).
China was also careful to avoid inflammatory rhetoric; its foreign ministry cautiously responded that Obama’s promises to deploy American troops in the region “may” not be “appropriate.”
If words could kill, this week’s politely hostile exchanges sure don’t: No new Cold War here.
Yet China and America are shadow-boxing — dancing around the ring while avoiding any trade of serious punches.
And as long as Obama is going to stay in the ring, as he promised his regional listeners he would, this was a good round. Above all else, he identified the Pacific (and, implicitly, the competition with China) as a national-security imperative.
But tougher rounds are coming.
China has been sending vessels to intrude on off-shore-oil and gas explorations conducted by the Philippines and Vietnam. Japan has suffered several attacks by Chinese Navy ships off its fishery-rich islands. Beijing is more or less confiscating more and more resource-yielding corners of the South China Sea. In response, Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam and India are trying to form alliances to handle the role they once depended exclusively on America to handle.
The region’s doubts about Washington’s resolve had grown as Obama seemed to shy away from his role as commander-in-chief of the naval superpower. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton started to rebuild confidence after consulting with allies in the Philippines this week: She boarded USS Fitzgerald to announce, “We are making sure that our collective defense capabilities and communications infrastructure are operationally and materially capable of deterring provocations.”
So the administration is hard at work putting to bed some of the region’s fears. All week, Obama spoke softly but conveyed the impression that America still remembers how to carry a big stick.
That can make a huge difference in a region crucial to our and the world’s economic well-being. Chinese military and commercial vessels won’t be as aggressive as they’ve been if they know the US Navy might be lurking behind that small fishing boat off that remote Pacific island that they covet.
But China’s growing aggression won’t be deterred by words and commercial pacts alone — nor even by an added US presence. Down the line, we may face a tough decision: a direct confrontation or allowing an aggression to stand.
In that future test, Obama may need to risk much angrier responses from Beijing than the ones he got this week.