The South China Sea presents a reality check for America

[Deleted]

Source: https://www.ft.com/content/17a6efd6-...4-13e067d5072c

When the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled in July against expansive Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea, Beijing’s strategy to dominate its backyard appeared to be in disarray. Politicians in Washington sought vainly to hide their triumphalism.

But, in hindsight, that was the high point — or low point, depending on your perspective — in the struggle for dominance over the crucial waterway, through which about $5tn worth of seaborne trade flows each year.

Since then, the US has suffered setback after setback in its efforts to rally other countries with competing claims in the region while China has accelerated its militarisation and construction of artificial islands that give it effective control of the territory. Even some US officials privately acknowledge that China has won the battle for the South China Sea without firing a shot. In the annals of American decline, this episode will surely loom large.

Mao Zedong, the peasant guerrilla fighter who ruled China for 27 years, once described the US as a “paper tiger”: fierce in appearance but ultimately harmless. The waterway debacle has lent credence to those in Beijing who adhere to this view today.

Much of the fault lies with Barack Obama, the former US president, and Hillary Clinton, his secretary of state. President Donald Trump and his administration are in danger of accelerating the slide in American credibility.

From around 2011, the Obama administration recognised China’s rise as the defining challenge to US predominance in the world and explicitly sought to “pivot” from grinding wars in the Middle East towards the projection of power in Asia-Pacific. This made even more sense as the shale oil revolution at home reduced US reliance on Arab oil.

But, by the time the “pivot” was quietly rebranded as a “rebalance” after several years of inaction, it became clear that the policy had been an unmitigated disaster. Not only did it deeply antagonise Beijing and give the ruling Communist party an excuse to expand its aggressive territorial claims, it left allies in the region seriously doubting America’s capabilities and resolve.

China and those allies took careful note of Russia’s seizure of Crimea and incursions into eastern Ukraine as well as Mr Obama’s quickly abandoned “red line” over the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

In the wake of these and many other perceived capitulations, Beijing accelerated its island-building and militarisation in the South China Sea. In the past three years, it has added more than 3,200 acres of land — nearly 10 times the size of London’s Hyde Park — on seven reefs and outcrops and installed runways, ports, hangars, radar and weapons systems.

This has been combined over the past year with a robust and highly successful diplomatic effort to convince neighbouring countries to tilt away from Washington and embrace Beijing. The most spectacular example has been the former US colony of the Philippines, where President Rodrigo Duterte has “said goodbye” to America and all but sworn allegiance to China.

Apart from Taiwan, the self-governing island that China maintains is its territory, all the other claimants to parts of the South China Sea — Malaysia, Vietnam and Brunei — have moved closer to Beijing since July’s arbitration ruling.

Mr Trump is too distracted by controversy and Twitter battles at home to pay attention to or understand the complex evolving situation in the South China Sea. His appointees, such as Rex Tillerson as secretary of state, have only exacerbated the recent legacy of US indecision by talking tough about curbing Chinese expansionism and then backtracking.

The continued US insistence that it wants only to ensure freedom of navigation in the South China Sea is somewhat disingenuous because what it really means is freedom for its spy ships and aircraft to conduct surveillance operations along the mainland Chinese coast.

That is something the US would never accept and it should now be up for negotiation. Vainly hoping that China will dismantle its artificial islands and return to the status quo ante is untenable.

Washington needs to acknowledge the reality of Chinese military supremacy in the waterway and work out an accommodation, involving all interested parties in the region, that avoids an accidental slide towards war.

This would certainly be a geostrategic win for China but it might also allow the US and other countries to convince Beijing that its 19th-century views on territorial expansion and great power relations are outdated and illegitimate.

In making the argument against China’s creeping neo-imperialism, the US could remind the country’s leaders of the words of Mao, who said: “Imperialism will not last long because it always does evil things”, and imperialists always end up as “dead tigers”.

[Skroe]

Uh-huh..... /10char

[Allybeboba]

Win some lose some I suppose.


If only every European country has a vast Navy as mighty as the US we could unite.

[Puupi]

I think China is the paper tiger here until proven otherwise.

[CostinR]

I couldn't help but snort at the idea of Chinese military supremacy in the waterway. @Skroe linked to a far better analysis from RAND then this joke.

Financial Times is a widely respected newspaper, but it is an ECONOMIC newspaper not a military one.

I think China is the paper tiger here until proven otherwise.

People get amazed by all the glitter of China's military that they do not realize that the actual military experience China has is pretty weak. Their troops haven't fought an actual war in decades and their training is considerably weaker then the US military.

You can have the best equipment in the world and it won't matter if you don't have a well trained and well organized military.

[NED funded]

The ft has always been pro-china, especially now that Trump is president. Not surprised they published this article.

[Alydael]

After things like Obama's "red line" in Syria (when Asad crossed the "red line" and Obama extremely weakened our foreign position by doing absolutely nothing) and other things Obama has done have extremely weakened our global position.

China actually called him the "paper tiger."

That is why Russia and China have been emboldened and we have the current situation we have. The left will try to blame trump even though he has only been in office for a few months, because the facts and common sense don't matter- just their narrative does.

What you see is the new pecking order being established. It used to be: US, Russia, China.

China has been coming up and is trying to upset the order. Russia and China have seen 8 years of the "paper tiger" and feel we are vunerable to be pushed off the hill.

Will we be? Nobody knows, it all depends how the next four years play out.

We actually need to be unified now, but with the dems trying to do everything they possibly can and spending millions upon millions of dollars to purposefully make this president fail (regardless of the harm that will do to our country), I don't see that unity happening.

[Deleted]

China is not in a great position to try to bully its neighbours because China has no friends. Not even Best Korea is really a friend of China anymore. The United States has dozens of allies. If it came to a conflict it might well end up being ruinous, but China would eventually be beaten. Even Russia wouldn't stand by their side because Russia isn't stupid. They'd want to be on the winning side. The Sino-Soviet split wasn't that long ago in geopolitical terms and both sides have long memories. Russia knows it can't defend the Russian Far East if China decides to invade it, and by siding with the U.S. Russia might be able to get its annexation of Crimea accepted.

[Skroe]

I couldn't help but snort at the idea of Chinese military supremacy in the waterway. @Skroe linked to a far better analysis from RAND then this joke.

Financial Times is a widely respected newspaper, but it is an ECONOMIC newspaper not a military one.



People get amazed by all the glitter of China's military that they do not realize that the actual military experience China has is pretty weak. Their troops haven't fought an actual war in decades and their training is considerably weaker then the US military.

You can have the best equipment in the world and it won't matter if you don't have a well trained and well organized military.

Its the actual same shit we've heard since the mid-00s. It's legitimately the exact same thing: economic minded accomodation that is seeking to ever further kick the day of reckoning further into the future in the name of making a little bit more money.

It's been clear the US and China were on an inexorable collision course for a decade now, and it's certainly accelerated the past few years. While the timeline is still aways in the future - neither country is remotely ready for a confrontation - the chances of a conflict only continue to worsen because of the increasing fragility of the Chinese economy and the inability of the US Armed Forces to engage its Chinese counterparts in regular relationship building dialog (which was crucial to keeping the peace during the Cold War).

The Chinese military isn't remotely ready. Forget headline grabbing platforms that won't do anything like the J-20 or the DF-21D. The kill chains on these make them extremely vulnerable to US air and sea power. The US military with old fashioned Tomahawk cruise missiles, attack submarines and stealth bombers would beat the Chinese Navy and Air Force to death and would have to tread very carefully to make sure it doesn't put the Chinese Communist Party in a position where it feels it's grip on state power is threatened so it resorts to nuclear weaponry.

The biggest threat to this CONTINUING to be true however is that US advantages ARE narrowing due to underinvestment and wrong investments. We need to grow the Navy. We need more attack subs. We need new stealth bombers. We need a new air superiority fighter to replace the F-15C. We need new long range weapons. The list of needs over the next 15 years is enormous and the more we govern via Continuing Resolution and the more we pretend things like ISIS and Al Qaeada are existential threats and drop billions of dollars on them, the less likely they are to happen. The Air Force said it is considering planning to retire its (hugely recently upgraded) F-15C fleet starting in 2020 because it doesn't want to spent $60 million PER AIRCRAFT (for 220 aircraft) to rebuild the center fuselage that is suffering from structural weaknesses fleet wide.


The best way to put it is right now, the US Military could take China behind the shed and beat it to death. But that continuing to be true 10, 15, 20, 25 years from now depends hugely on how we spend our money now. To put it another way, and this goes to the Trumpkins and Neocons - if you want a major conflict with ISIS or Iran, the opportunity cost of that will be about half our remaining lead on China and Russia. The Iraq War cut our lead in half, from a generation down to about 13 years. The next big ill-timed conflict will do it again. Power like anything else has to be carefully nurtured or it'll be be depleted. And once so it is hugely difficult to rebuild.

- - - Updated - - -

After things like Obama's "red line" in Syria (when Asad crossed the "red line" and Obama extremely weakened our foreign position by doing absolutely nothing) and other things Obama has done have extremely weakened our global position.

China actually called him the "paper tiger."

That is why Russia and China have been emboldened and we have the current situation we have. The left will try to blame trump even though he has only been in office for a few months, because the facts and common sense don't matter- just their narrative does.

What you see is the new pecking order being established. It used to be: US, Russia, China.

China has been coming up and is trying to upset the order. Russia and China have seen 8 years of the "paper tiger" and feel we are vunerable to be pushed off the hill.

Will we be? Nobody knows, it all depends how the next four years play out.

We actually need to be unified now, but with the dems trying to do everything they possibly can and spending millions upon millions of dollars to purposefully make this president fail (regardless of the harm that will do to our country), I don't see that unity happening.

The red line was a disaster that will take years and years to recover from.

But keep in mind: Trump's NATO statements, "America First", hostility towards Merkel, coddling of Russia/Putin, demolition of the State Department... all of these cumulatively are adding up to something even more ruinous.

The Chief concern out of the Red Line incident was "Will the US keep it's word under Obama?" Trump's disastrous foreign policy thus-far has raised the exact same question "Will the US keep its security guarantees to us under Trump?"

If Trump were to resign tomorrow it will take years to reverse the damage he's already done to NATO. Furthermore Trump's pointless war on the US intelligence community, which lets be clear, mostly benefits Russia, is already deeply straining five eyes to the point some analysts expect it to collapse in the next few years.

Why? Consider Trump's insane lies about GCHQ just to cover his own ass. That's why. Foreign Governments do not trust Trump.

[Alydael]

Its the actual same shit we've heard since the mid-00s. It's legitimately the exact same thing: economic minded accomodation that is seeking to ever further kick the day of reckoning further into the future in the name of making a little bit more money.

It's been clear the US and China were on an inexorable collision course for a decade now, and it's certainly accelerated the past few years. While the timeline is still aways in the future - neither country is remotely ready for a confrontation - the chances of a conflict only continue to worsen because of the increasing fragility of the Chinese economy and the inability of the US Armed Forces to engage its Chinese counterparts in regular relationship building dialog (which was crucial to keeping the peace during the Cold War).

The Chinese military isn't remotely ready. Forget headline grabbing platforms that won't do anything like the J-20 or the DF-21D. The kill chains on these make them extremely vulnerable to US air and sea power. The US military with old fashioned Tomahawk cruise missiles, attack submarines and stealth bombers would beat the Chinese Navy and Air Force to death and would have to tread very carefully to make sure it doesn't put the Chinese Communist Party in a position where it feels it's grip on state power is threatened so it resorts to nuclear weaponry.

The biggest threat to this CONTINUING to be true however is that US advantages ARE narrowing due to underinvestment and wrong investments. We need to grow the Navy. We need more attack subs. We need new stealth bombers. We need a new air superiority fighter to replace the F-15C. We need new long range weapons. The list of needs over the next 15 years is enormous and the more we govern via Continuing Resolution and the more we pretend things like ISIS and Al Qaeada are existential threats and drop billions of dollars on them, the less likely they are to happen. The Air Force said it is considering planning to retire its (hugely recently upgraded) F-15C fleet starting in 2020 because it doesn't want to spent $60 million PER AIRCRAFT (for 220 aircraft) to rebuild the center fuselage that is suffering from structural weaknesses fleet wide.


The best way to put it is right now, the US Military could take China behind the shed and beat it to death. But that continuing to be true 10, 15, 20, 25 years from now depends hugely on how we spend our money now. To put it another way, and this goes to the Trumpkins and Neocons - if you want a major conflict with ISIS or Iran, the opportunity cost of that will be about half our remaining lead on China and Russia. The Iraq War cut our lead in half, from a generation down to about 13 years. The next big ill-timed conflict will do it again. Power like anything else has to be carefully nurtured or it'll be be depleted. And once so it is hugely difficult to rebuild.

- - - Updated - - -



The red line was a disaster that will take years and years to recover from.

But keep in mind: Trump's NATO statements, "America First", hostility towards Merkel, coddling of Russia/Putin, demolition of the State Department... all of these cumulatively are adding up to something even more ruinous.

The Chief concern out of the Red Line incident was "Will the US keep it's word under Obama?" Trump's disastrous foreign policy thus-far has raised the exact same question "Will the US keep its security guarantees to us under Trump?"

If Trump were to resign tomorrow it will take years to reverse the damage he's already done to NATO. Furthermore Trump's pointless war on the US intelligence community, which lets be clear, mostly benefits Russia, is already deeply straining five eyes to the point some analysts expect it to collapse in the next few years.

Why? Consider Trump's insane lies about GCHQ just to cover his own ass. That's why. Foreign Governments do not trust Trump.

Well, this is what the years of extreme division has cost this country, our credibility.

Who divided us? The political parties that push division. Repub vs Dem, left v right, poor v rich, race v race. Go ahead divide us into "voter blocks." Whatever it takes to eek out that victory at the ballot box, regardless of the cost to our nation.

Which is why I am 100% independent and completely believe that we will never get our credibility (or our prosperity) back until we manage to some dislodge the leeches (the Demn an Pub party) from their tyrannical (and I would even argue unconstitutional) grip on our nation.

That's why they have to keep us divided, we come together and they know the first thing we do will be to give them the boot.

[Drutt]

Who divided us? The political parties that push division. Repub vs Dem, left v right, poor v rich, race v race. Go ahead divide us into "voter blocks." Whatever it takes to eek out that victory at the ballot box, regardless of the cost to our nation.

It's not the political parties who have caused this. It's the internet and hyper-partisan mass media.

Ultimately, US representatives are chosen via election and then, before that, through winning primaries. All of those winners are ultimately selected by voters. You only have to look at the Tea Party primary-ing establishment Republican candidates to realise the parties have long since lost control of the candidates they put up and see elected.

Politicians reflect the national mood, not the other way around. The reason so many incompetent blowhards have been elected recently is because misinformation and hyper-partisanship is ubiquitous. Journalistic integrity died a long time ago. Until a bipartisan, neutral body is empowered to hold blatant lies from media companies to account, it's only going to get worse. Ignorant voters are the problem, and that ignorance stems from years of media propaganda and misinformation.

I do agree that party politics is a mug's game, though. As soon as a political party becomes "your team", any chance of you engaging in critical thinking with regard to what they're proposing becomes nil and the opposition party immediately becomes worse than Hitler.

[Shadowferal]

South China Sea has always been pretty much under China's defense. Especially the part that's the Taiwan Strait. That sea lane should probably be boiling for all the political heat that flows between Taiwan and China.

[Skroe]

Well, this is what the years of extreme division has cost this country, our credibility.

No. Bad decisions have. The Iraq War's launching hammered it. Obama (foolishly) laying the red line publically then (even more foolishly) not following through on his threat. And now Trump's insane positions on our allies.

Political division at home has a negligible effect on our national security. They do not effect security planning. Our allies have divisions of their own and both ways, they've long since been "factored in".

In terms of financing US military modernization, this is political only in the sense that there is no consensus in this country as to it's spending priorities - young vs old, domestic vs international, social vs security. And this isn't even Republican vs Democrat. Centrists on both sides have a firmer consensus between each other than the centrists and the far right or far left on other side.

Who divided us? The political parties that push division. Repub vs Dem, left v right, poor v rich, race v race. Go ahead divide us into "voter blocks." Whatever it takes to eek out that victory at the ballot box, regardless of the cost to our nation.

The divsion is nothing new and not having nearly the effect you think it does.

Which is why I am 100% independent and completely believe that we will never get our credibility (or our prosperity) back until we manage to some dislodge the leeches (the Demn an Pub party) from their tyrannical (and I would even argue unconstitutional) grip on our nation.

That's why they have to keep us divided, we come together and they know the first thing we do will be to give them the boot.

Well I'm not sure how you figure this. The US is pretty much the only stable engine of global prosperity at the moment. China is teetering. The Euro-project is deeply imperiled. Russia is in decline. And in a broader overview, 80 years of Democrats and Republicans have put the US in an unparalleled historic position of power and prosperity.

The US has made it's share of unbelievably stupid policy decisions over the past 80 years, many of which can be traced to partisan ideologies. But it's also made incredibly partisan but forward thinking decisions too. Want an example? Reagan-era Ballistic Missile Defense (Star Wars), which was brutally criticized at the time, majorly downgraded by Bill Clinton, modestly upgraded George W Bush, before being refined and in his second term, embraced by Obama, who realized that BMD, although it has a LONG way to go still, is going to be the technology that saves us from the coming era of the cheap ICBM.

Politics proceeding and fighting its way to a consensus is a perfectly legitimate and effective way to run a country. Consider it a form of political darwinism. The process of "the political fight" selects against weak policy and drives for sustainable consensuses over time. This is why the Iran Deal and the Paris Climate Change agreement are unlikely to survive in full in their present forms. While there is a lot to like about both and both are necessary to a degree, Obama pushed both despite deep flaws without forming a national political consensus. A better and more sustainable set of agreements for us will come out of the process of reforming our participation in both through hard won Democrat/Republican deal making. Had we just arrived at an easily achieved consensus years ago, the final result will likely not have been as conductive nor as sustainable.

This exactly reason by the way, is also why Obama's budgets went nowhere, and Trump's first budget will look a lot like the two year budget deal struck under Obama by Democrats and Republicans that is expiring. That budget represents a hard won consensus of Congress about what is achievable. It satisfies nobody, but in many ways is a good budget. The biggest holes in the budget is that it underfunds Defense by about $80 billion and kicks entitlement reform down the road even more. But it is neither a liberal fantasy document nor a far right Freedom Caucus slash-and-burn.

[Wolfman31]

It's called the South China Sea. Why are Americans even there in the first place? George Washington laid out the perfect foreign policy plan for America in his farewell address. It's a shame every president since then has done the exact opposite.

[Shadowferal]

It's about money and trade, and politicians have to complain because that's what their corporate masters demand.

[Independent voter]

Is Vietnam and other countries going to have to go around these "fake" Chinese territorial waters?

This is why the US violates China's territorial claims on a daily basis, so as to keep the shipping lanes free.

[Skroe]

It's called the South China Sea. Why are Americans even there in the first place? George Washington laid out the perfect foreign policy plan for America in his farewell address. It's a shame every president since then has done the exact opposite.

South China Sea is it's English language name dating from the 16th century that saw widespread adoption only in the 20th century and was descriptive to differentiate it from the East China Sea. It has many names in in the different languages among regional countries, most of them a variation on the name "South/Southern Sea" or "East Sea". "China" is usually not mentioned.

If you want a similar example of this, consider how "Arabian Gulf" has been progressively supplanting "Persian Gulf", despite "Persian Gulf" being a modern form of roughly 2500 year old name that dates to the Greeks (basically a "Gulf" named after the people of modern day Iran / historic Persia). For about a decade, the Pentagon has shifted from "Persian Gulf" to "Arabian Gulf" because that is the favored name of our Arab allies, who are all hostile with Iran. Back in the early 1990s, the long-form name of the "Gulf War" was the "Persian Gulf War", but that fell out of usage in favor of "Operation: Desert Storm", "Desert Storm", "The Gulf War", despite Desert Storm being a subset of the larger war.

Basically, names are political things. Don't be surprised if the South China Sea gets a new name in coming years, with Southeast Asia Sea being a good one.

George Washington's foreign policy was ideal for late 18th century America - poor, unstable, comparatively small, and at risk for foreign conquest and espionage. It's been totally unsuited for the World of the modern Era, and especially the US since the late 19th century. The world's largest economy and foremost political, military and technological power necessarily will have a massive footprint.

Territorial defense _does_not_work_ for great powers. Forward defense does. Every time a great power has replaced forward defense with merely patrolling their borders, it's met with disaster.

[Jimmy Thick]

China would be the biggest pushover, worse than Iraq, if they tangled with the might USA. How many aircraft carriers do they have?


Jimmy Thick-Reinstate the military draft, train the new soldiers for a year, then start bombing. No more debt to a third world nation!

[Deleted]

It's called the South China Sea.

And New England is called New England, but that doesn't mean it belongs to England yet.

[Skroe]

Is Vietnam and other countries going to have to go around these "fake" Chinese territorial waters?

This is why the US violates China's territorial claims on a daily basis, so as to keep the shipping lanes free.

If Trump wanted to engage in a foreign policy action I could get behind, he should order the US Navy to rapidly destroy as many of the remaining reefs and shoals that don't have a Chinese presence on them as possible, to prevent them from being used as foundations for artificial islands in years ahead.

The rollback must begin at capping Chinese expansionism, and the best way to do that is to remove the thing they're expanding on from the map completely

These are the kind of things China is building on. That's a dredging ship in the background for scale:



They really aren't large and can easily be drowned.

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China would be the biggest pushover, worse than Iraq, if they tangled with the might USA. How many aircraft carriers do they have?


Jimmy Thick-Reinstate the military draft, train the new soldiers for a year, then start bombing. No more debt to a third world nation!

One second hand one, that doesn't fly aircraft all that often, and when it does, because it's a old Soviet ski-jump carrier without a catapult, they carry less fuel and weapons than their land-based or US Navy counterparts because of weight restrictions.