The Pacific Rim is smoldering

No doubt the Obama administration has its hands full with a full-blown crisis in the Middle East, but we rightly expect presidents to have enough hands to deal with more than one crisis at a time. So far, there is little evidence that the administration is engaging with the trouble in the Pacific over a handful of disputed islands in ways that attend to U.S. national interests. Our interests are clear: aggression is not acceptable, and certainly neither is a war between China and Japan over disputed islands, no matter whose claim is ultimately justified. The United States should make this clear not only in public pronouncements but with serious behind the scenes diplomacy. Our goal should be to encourage all in the region that keeping a close relationship with the United States is paramount, and those who want our influence in the region should be favored. Showing weakness or inattentiveness over this dispute is just as dangerous as showing it in the Middle East with regard to the safety of our embassy personnel and with what should be our non-negotiable stance on free speech despite protesting mobs.

At this point, China is escalating its aggressive posture in both word and deed toward Japan (and the much weaker Philippines regarding another disputed set of islands). It also bullies other countries such as Norway for its role in giving the Nobel prize to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, and is distancing itself from the United States with its recent ill-treatment of Secretary Clinton and its refusal to engage in talks. All this escalation continues as Secretary Panetta visits the region and is being vocal about the dangers. In short, China has been for months strategically engaging in coercive diplomacy with any country that disputes its claims or offends its sensibilities regarding its human rights record. Unusually, not even the impending installation of a new premier has put this policy on pause.

But the role that China is playing is not the whole story. Japanese politics might be turning more decisively nationalist even as it reacts to Chinese pressure, and that could spell serious trouble for us as Joshua Keating points out at FP‘s Passport blog. It could also be devastating for the global economy if a trade and investment war breaks out. And we should not forget that in a region where we’d like to see democracy strengthened rather than derailed or weakened, this does not bode well, as Christian Caryl points out at FP‘s Democracy Lab blog.

Already Japan is matching Chinese diplomatic and economic actions with its own. It is now tit for tat. Each side is becoming locked in a downward spiral of slowing or stopping investment and trade, large demonstrations are manifesting in each country, and there are very loud and public calls for divestment and boycotts. Looming on the horizon is the increasing strength of more nationalist politicians in Japan who have chosen in this crisis with China to flex Japanese muscles. Cooler heads who in the past have defused tensions and maintained the huge mutually beneficial and complex economic engine of the Pacific Rim appear not to have the tiller in hand, nor can they afford to appear weak in an increasingly nationalist country. Understandably, more and more Japanese each year chafe at playing the role of dependent on U.S. might and diplomacy, or at least being perceived to do that. But whether anyone in the highest circles in Japan — and China for that matter — have been thinking about the grave risks they are running, even if they stop short of war, is anyone’s guess. If emotion is overtaking reason, if leaders are more focused on righting the wrongs of history than in securing a stable and prosperous future, if they desire more to cut a figure before their publics (whether they get to vote for them or not) and on the world stage than to be statesmen, then we are all in serious trouble. Right now, it looks like that is what is happening.

It is the job of the United States to do all it can to prevent any kind of war, whether it be a trade war or an actual military conflict. This is our problem because the consequences of this conflict will impact us greatly, but also because we are party to the myriad territorial settlements and vague understandings of the disposition of the islands in the region after WWII. Given what has happened in the Middle East in the last two weeks regarding the Obama administration’s record of being prepared, thinking ahead, and acting and speaking firmly in behalf of our interests, I am not encouraged.