MCLC: US looks to Asia

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: US looks to Asia
***********************************************************

Source: NYT (11/15/11):
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/16/world/asia/united-states-sees-china-every
where-as-it-shifts-attention-to-asia.html

As U.S. Looks to Asia, It Sees China Everywhere
By IAN JOHNSON and JACKIE CALMES

The last time the remote Australian city of Darwin played a significant
role in American military planning was during the early days of World War
II, when Gen. Douglas MacArthur used the port as the base for his campaign
to reclaim the Pacific from the Japanese.

So it was with considerable symbolism that President Obama arrived on
Wednesday in Canberra, Australia¹s capital, for a trip that will include
an announcement that the United States plans to use Darwin as a new center
of operations in Asia as it seeks to reassert itself in the region and
grapple with China¹s rise.

The United States is taking some first steps ‹ bold in rhetoric, still
mostly modest in practice ‹ to prove to its Asian allies that it intends
to remain a crucial military and economic power in the region as the wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan draw to a close. The new Australian base, coming
after decades in which the Pentagon has been slowly but steadily reducing
its troop presence in Asia, puts American planes and ships closer to
trading corridors in the South China Sea, where some traditional American
allies worry that China is trying to flex its military muscle.

Over the past year and a half, China has moved to assert territorial
claims in the resource-rich but hotly contested waters near the
Philippines and Vietnam. Many of the region¹s smaller countries have asked
Washington to re-engage in the region as a counterweight.

³The U.S. needs to show the Chinese that they still have the power to
overwhelm them, that they still can prevail if something really wrong
happens,² said Huang Jing, a foreign affairs analyst and visiting
professor at the National University of Singapore. ³It¹s a hedging policy.²

For the United States, the more muscular approach toward China has
far-reaching implications, not just geopolitically but also economically.
With Republicans at home calling for punitive measures against China for
its currency and trade practices, Mr. Obama wants to appear strong in
pressing Beijing. He made headway on an ambitious American plan to create
a Pacific free trade zone, known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, that,
for now, would not include China.

For the Pentagon, which faces sweeping budget cuts in Congress, shifting
its focus toward Asia provides a strong argument against cutting back its
naval presence in the Pacific ‹ something that Defense Secretary Leon E.
Panetta explicitly ruled out in a recent visit to the region. He and
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton have been prime proponents of
the emphasis on Asia, with Mrs. Clinton shoring up old alliances, like
those with Japan and South Korea, and cultivating new partners, like India
and Indonesia.

Inside the White House, that emphasis has been reinforced by the
president¹s national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, who has argued
that the United States needs to ³rebalance² its strategic emphasis, from
the combat theaters in Iraq and Afghanistan toward Asia, where he contends
that Washington has put too few resources in recent years, because of its
preoccupation with the two wars.

China has become the largest trading partner with most of the countries in
the region, undercutting American economic influence. It also is
projecting military power more broadly than at any other time in modern
history. Its true military budget is not made public, but experts say it
has at least tripled over the past decade, allowing China to strengthen a
relatively weak maritime presence by building more modern ships that can
operate with greater range and arming its first aircraft carrier. It has
shown off what appears to be new stealth aircraft and has bought advanced
weapons from Russia.

United States military spending remains many times larger than analysts¹
projections of China¹s real military budget, but much of that has been
sucked into the Afghan and Iraq conflicts. Further, the Obama
administration has committed to cutting $400 billion over 10 years, and
budget battles may result in further cuts.

The American situation widens the opening for a more assertive China.

Earlier last year, Chinese officials warned administration officials
visiting Beijing that China would not tolerate any interference in the
region. This year, Chinese ships or planes began taking more forceful
action. Officials in the Philippines say Chinese forces entered Philippine
waters or airspace six times, including once when a Chinese frigate fired
in the direction of a Philippine fishing boat. Vietnam has reported that
Chinese ships cut the cables of two exploration ships carrying out seismic
surveys.

On Tuesday, Philippine officials said China had recently protested their
plans to explore waters less than 50 miles offshore from the Philippines,
saying the waters fall under its territorial jurisdiction.

The United States began pushing back last year. A quadrennial Pentagon
review identified several countries in the region as strategic partners.
The United States also began to restore bilateral ties with Myanmar
(formerly Burma) and to promote ties with Indonesia.

Most dramatically, at a regional meeting in Hanoi in the summer of 2010,
Mrs. Clinton emphatically argued that the United States had a vital
interest in maintaining open and peaceful sea lanes in the South China
Sea. She called for all disputes to be settled in international forums.
China¹s foreign minister stormed out.

Administration officials have hewed to Mrs. Clinton¹s line. ³The South
China Sea is a very important maritime common for the entire region² but
also for the United States, Adm. Robert F. Willard, commander of the
United States Pacific Command, told reporters traveling with Mr. Obama.
The navigation lanes account for $5.3 trillion in bilateral annual trade,
of which $1.2 trillion is American, he said.

Obama administration officials say its stronger role is not just because
of American interests. Benjamin Rhodes, deputy national security adviser
for strategic communications, said Mr. Obama was focusing on ³responding
to both the extraordinary interest we have in the region, but also a
demand, an interest from the nations of the region for the United States
to play a role.²

As a sign of this, Mr. Obama will join the leaders of 16 other nations for
the sixth East Asia Summit meeting in Bali this week, the first time an
American president has participated in the forum.

The move is part of a broader strategy to re-embrace multilateralism. In
recent years, Washington had come to view Asian regional groups as
limiting its ability to act, while China embraced regional partnerships
before its rise to regional superpower. Now, those roles appear to have
switched. The United States has ³ turned the multilateral tables on
China,² said Carlyle A. Thayer, a professor of international relations at
the Australian Defense Force Academy.

But multilateralism has taken on an aggressive tinge, some analysts
contend. ³Beneath the surface they¹re becoming an arena for subtle but,
for the region, quite unnerving power plays and influence games between
the U.S. and China,² said one analyst in Washington, Michael Green of the
Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The more robust American position is proving difficult for many in China
to accept.

Global Times, a subsidiary of the Communist Party¹s flagship newspaper,
People¹s Daily, wrote Tuesday that the United States was trying to ³form a
gang² against China¹s territorial claims on the South China Sea.

Many Chinese have grown angry over the American moves in the region, which
are frequently reported and heavily criticized in the state-controlled
press.

³The United States is trying to use the small nations as marionettes,²
said Ge Fen, a Hangzhou-based television producer. ³It¹s trying to hide
behind them to encircle China.²

But many more sober voices are also present.

³If the Chinese government is clever, it would do well to think about the
reason why the U.S. is suddenly so popular in the region,² said Shi
Yinhong, director of the Center on American Studies at the Renmin
University in Beijing. ³Is it because China has not been good enough when
it comes to diplomacy with its neighboring countries?²

There are some signs that China may be adjusting its policies to answer
such criticism. Over the past few months, it has shown a renewed
willingness to strike more cooperative deals with its neighbors. Last
week, it announced that it would join its southeastern neighbors in
combating pirates on the lower Mekong River. In July, it signed a
³declaration of conduct² with Southeast Asian nations over the resolution
of disputes in the South China Sea.

³We¹re back in a cautiously optimistic position,² Professor Thayer said.

Mark Landler contributed reporting from Washington, and Michael Wines from
Beijing. Li Bibo contributed research from Beijing.