Conclusion: the sword or the spirit?

This book has considered the US decision to ‘pivot’ to Asia aiming to preserve its global primacy by containing China. Seeking to boost US influence among China’s neighbours, while painting China as a dangerous revisionist power and regional aggressor, its policy has parallels with the Cold War. But when the US embarked on its confrontation with the USSR it was at the height of its economic power. Today in courting Asian allies it has had little to offer but the power of its military machine. So while the US has made some progress in re-building its influence in the affairs of the region, it has been far from enough to stall China’s rise or to convince other Asian countries to break with China. Moreover on-going distractions in the Middle East, domestic opposition to the TPP, and other troubles mean it has not even been able to concentrate its resources on China, undermining confidence in the seriousness of its turn to Asia. As a result the US has failed to drive a decisive wedge between China and any neighbours apart from Japan and not been able to inflect its increased presence in the region into a more substantive advantage.

Tibet and the Sino-Indian borders

China and India’s long-standing border disputes have defied settlement and frequently disrupted their relations. This chapter considers the background to the disputes, and how India and China have gradually de-escalated the conflict since the Sino-Indian 1962 border war. In this context it also looks at how the sensitive issue of Tibet has been exploited by the US in creating problems for China since 1949. The chapter concludes that overall the issues that have been flagged for conflict between India and China – the borders, the Indian Ocean, India’s trade deficit with China – are better addressed through collaboration than conflict, leading India to stand aloof from the US’s new Cold War strategies towards China.

Asia’s Mediterranean

This chapter (and the next) look at the US’s recent intervention in the South China Sea and China’s responses. It considers the varying domestic and strategic concerns of these primarily island countries. It analyses the drivers of their responses to the sovereignty disputes in the Sea and to the key US initiative of the TPP. This chapter and the next are linked to the one that follows on Vietnam, which also plays a critical role in the shifting relation of forces in the South China Sea disputes. This is the region where the US has invested most hopes in a dramatic shift in regional alignments against China. These chapters assess the US’s progress, and conclude that – despite its lack of a local ally with anything like the weight of Japan or South Korea and the immense geographic extension of American power involved in maintaining its presence in the region – in some respects the US ’rebalance’ strategies have made more progress here to China’s south than to its east.

Korea: divided nation, divided allegiances

This chapter looks at South Korea’s response to the US ‘pivot’. It takes stock of the post-war division of the peninsula and its consequences for the international alignment of both North and South. It considers how the ‘economic miracle’ in South Korea led to growing competition with Japan and greater synergies with China. It looks at the degree to which North Korea threatens stability in the region, and to what extent its demonisation justifies a major US presence in close proximity to China. The chapter discusses whether resurgent China is seen as a threat to South Korean interests or chiefly viewed through the prism of mutual economic benefit; and contrasts alleged concerns about China with those provoked by Japan. It concludes that while South Korea has continued to step up its military collaboration with the US, it has not become a cheerleader for pushing back against China and has not signed up to a US strategy to contain China.

The USS Taiwan?

This chapter considers the developing relations between Taiwan and Mainland China. After a post-war history that pitted them as rival governments of China, despite both sides having to abandon the project of early reunification by military force, the primary relations between them remained hostile. These hostilities began to diminish as first Taiwan then mainland China took off economically, and the primary drivers of their bilateral relations increasingly became economic rather than political or military and the knotty problem of Taiwan’s status has been shelved. The US ‘pivot’ has tended to bring the issue of Taiwan’s status back to the fore; but while Taiwan continues to prioritise relations with the US, on which it is militarily dependent, it has shown caution about allowing tensions to rise with China.

Russia: facing west or east

This chapter reviews US-China-Russia relations in the post-war period, and considers how recent developments affect prospects for the US ‘pivot’. It explains why those driving US foreign policy towards China see the confrontation with Russia in Ukraine as a dangerous and diversionary adventure, leading to Sino-Russian convergence, distracting US attention from East Asia and undermining confidence among the US’s Asian allies of its commitment to the region. It is argued that if the US is to maintain primacy in the 21st century, it must subordinate other foreign policy goals to the paramount objective of containing China’s rise. The US’s failure to do this, instead pitting itself against both Putin in the West and China in the East, means it has driven Russia and China together, quite possibly sacrificing its vital need to contain China for a lesser goal of uncertain outcome in Ukraine.

America’s exceptional empire

The Obama administration announced in 2010 that the US would make a strategic foreign policy turn towards Asia i.e. China. This chapter shows that the discussion on this policy in the US is framed by a shared perception that the rise of China presents an existential challenge to the US-led world order that has prevailed since 1945. Some see conflict as an inevitable consequence of Great Power politics; others allege conflict will be unavoidable because China has regional expansionist aspirations or because China is a revisionist power that does not accept the rules of the ‘pax Americana’. The Pentagon is developing military strategies in the case of conflict with China. This chapter demonstrates that wherever the argument, starts, whether from a neocon or liberal perspective, whether concerned about the US’s economic, military or strategic position, all arrive at the same conclusion: China must be brought into line.

Can China rise peacefully?

The case that China must be contained rests on the premise that it is – or is about to – engage in a coercive expansion of its influence in ‘Central Asia, the South China Sea, the internet and outer space’ and it is only a matter of time before China tries ‘to push the United States out of the Asia-Pacific region, much the way the United States pushed the European great powers out of the Western hemisphere in the 19th century’. China’s rise is cast as dangerous for the security of its neighbours and world peace, with the only guarantee of regional and global stability the maintenance of the leading role of the US, particularly in Asia itself. This chapter examines the truth of these claims in the light of the China’s own explanation of the direction of its foreign policy. It argues that while China’s foreign policy has become more emphatic in pursuing its international interests, especially relating to trade and energy security, that there is a great deal of difference between greater confidence in pursuing China’s national interests and a new aggressive stance.

Losing Central Asia

This chapter considers the strategic interrelation of the US, China and Russia in Central Asia. It views the region both from the perspective of China’s concerns for the stability of its sensitive western province of Xinjiang, and the prospects for the US to advance its military and strategic position in the region. It looks at the problems of China’s Xinjiang province and the challenge from separatism and Islamic fundamentalism. It demonstrates the growing collaboration of Russia and China in Central Asia, for both security and trade. It concludes that after an advance into the region in the aftermath of the fall of the USSR, accelerated by US and NATO intervention in Afghanistan from 2001, the US is now in retreat from Central Asia, while Russian and Chinese influence has grown.

Winning over India

India has the potential to prevent China becoming the unchallenged leader in Asia. Given that India has its own concerns about a resurgent China – including over unresolved border disputes, relations with Pakistan especially on Kashmir, and China’s increasing presence in the Indian Ocean – the US has logged it for recruitment to a US-led curtailment of China. This chapter looks at US-India and India-China relations in their historical context and that of the US ‘pivot’. It finds that while recent Indian governments have continued the warming of relations with the US that began in the 1990s, this has not led India into a new axis with the US. Rather India can be said to be pursuing a contemporary variant of its Cold War ‘non-alignment’.