By Ricardo Saludo

Hegemony has many faces. In the early 1990s Washington set itself three objectives: to maintain the global balance resulting from the end of the Cold War (with once-communist Moscow), to ensure its technological lead and military supremacy, and to create an economic environment favorable to its own interests.
— University of Paris researcher Noëlle Burgi andlecturer Philip Golub (Le Monde, 2000)

THOSE insightful words from two University of Paris thinkers provide a helpful backdrop to the current regional rivalry between America and China. This superpower joust, one should never forget, is ultimately not about defending nations threatened by a bully power. Rather, it is primarily about protecting the interests and advancing the goals of not one, but both contending powers.

China’s objectives are widely expounded upon, thanks to the international reach of Western media. Beijing aims to establish itself as the preeminent power in its region as the necessary first step to world superpowerdom, just as the United States banished European forces from the Americas with the 1823 Monroe Doctrine on the way to global dominance in the succeeding century.

Reining in Hong Kong protesters, establishing control in Tibet and Xinjiang, opposing Taiwan independence, asserting territorial claims in the South and East China Seas (SCS and ECS), and strengthening “Belt and Road” economic and transport links across Asia — all these serve to establish China’s regional stature and clout.

What’s in it for America
America’s motives are often portrayed as defending democracy and countering China’s bullying of its neighbors for the escalating US military deployment in Asia in recent years, two decades since largely pulling back following the closure of its Subic and Clark bases in the early 1990s.

However, the above-quoted Le Monde article rightly spells out the overarching goals of preserving US geopolitical, economic, and military advantages. Even its constant call to establish international norms and hold China to account may be seen as advancing its own agenda, as one respected US statesman and geopolitical thinker says.

In his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser in the Carter administration, explains:

“For the United States, Eurasian geostrategy involves the purposeful management of geostrategically dynamic states and the careful handling of geopolitically catalytic states, in keeping with the twin interests of America in the short-term preservation of its unique global power and in the long-run transformation of it (US dominance) into increasingly institutionalized global cooperation.”

Based on Brzezinski’s analysis, especially his last phrase about transforming US power into “institutionalized global cooperation,” Washington’s repeated call to create “a regional architecture” for Asian security seems intended to establish norms in international law and geopolitics which would maintain its clout in the region as a counterweight to Beijing’s increasing dominance.

A case in point is the Philippines’ suit in the Hague’s Permanent Court of Arbitration, or PCA, against China’s “nine-dash line” territorial claim over nearly all the SCS. The 2016 arbitral ruling declared that Chinese actions, like barring Filipino fishermen from Scarborough Shoal and building island bases in disputed waters, violated Philippine sovereign rights under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, or Unclos, which Beijing had signed and ratified.

With the PCA decision and despite Washington’s continued refusal to ratify the quarter-century-old Unclos, which the US Navy deliberately violates year after year, the Seventh Fleet mounted “freedom-of-navigation operations,” or fonops, challenging Beijing’s claim of territorial waters around its reclaimed islets.

The Americans also wanted joint sea patrols with the Philippine Navy. Thus, US military action would have been projected as enforcing international law as decided in favor of the Philippines.

But President Rodrigo Duterte, who took power days before the Hague ruling, reversed his predecessor’s policy of allying with Washington against Beijing. He downplayed the arbitral award and nixed joint patrols with US Navy.

That improved relations with China, which then complied with certain provisions of the PCA ruling. Filipinos could again fish around Scarborough Shoal, though not in it. Chinese reclamation eventually ceased, even as base construction continued.

US-China tensions reignite
Now, after working with Beijing on the 2017 to 2018 crisis over Pyongyang’s atomic missile development, Washington has resumed its campaign to set international norms and arrangements which, it asserts, the Chinese must respect.

Among them are the full exercise of democratic rights in Hong Kong under the 1997 Sino-British Joint Declaration turning over the territory to China, which is seen as compromised by a new national security law covering the city; and greater international space for Taiwan, as demonstrated in recent visits by senior American officials and new US arms sales to the island.

Add to those initiatives the increased military deployment in Asia by the US-led Quadrilateral Alliance, which includes Japan, Australia and India; as well as America’s British and French allies. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the beefed-up force deployment in June, partly to help Southeast Asian nations assert their maritime claims against Chinese actions.

The Duterte government’s recent upholding of the PCA ruling, highlighted in the President’s speech to the UN General Assembly last week, ostensibly gives public support for the US push to mobilize its allies and Asian nations against China’s actions, especially in the SCS. Months before the September 22 online address, moreover, Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. affirmed the Hague decision around the time of Secretary Pompeo’s June statement.

Now, the Aquino-era foreign secretary, Albert del Rosario, architect of the past adversarial stance toward China, urges President Duterte to get more countries behind the PCA ruling filed during his stint at the Department of Foreign Affairs. If del Rosario gets his way, as he did when Duterte raised the Hague case in the UN, it would precisely advance Washington’s campaign to mobilize nations against Beijing’s moves in Asia.

Should the Philippines do what del Rosario and America want? Let’s talk about that next week.

source 01 October, 2020

Ric Saludo is president of the Center for Strategy, Enterprise and Intelligence, devising risk management and “new-normal initiatives. Email: ric.saludo@censei.asia.