A not so prominently played up news item was a near clash between Chinese and American warships in the South China Sea last Monday. First reported by the New Times and confirmed by the Chinese foreign ministry was an incident in the Paracels group of islands involving two US warships which were confronted by China’s navy.
The guided missile cruiser USS Antietam and destroyer USS Higgins were conducting freedom of navigation operations in contested waters when challenged by Chinese warships 24 nautical miles near the Paracels which is also being claimed by Vietnam.
The Chinese warships warned the Americans to stay away. The possibility of miscalculation could have triggered a bigger conflagration. Pride and the issue of sailing in international waters escalated the tense moments. The Americans sailed away, opted for prudence in place of valor. It must have been something to crow about for the Chinese—they made the world’s greatest navy retreat.
These incidents are becoming more frequent in the disputed South China Sea that Beijing has claimed in its entirety despite conflicting claims to parts of the SCS by Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Taiwan. When will the United Nations step in to avert the incendiary situation from exploding into a third world war between the US and China?
The UN has been accused of just being a talk shop and one big bureaucracy that employs thousands but does not really have the muscle of enforcement. Major issues of peace and international security are handled by the UN Security Council. Given that the US and China are two of the council’s permanent members with veto powers, a stalemate and standoff usually is the outcome of issues brought before the body. The other permanent members of the Security Council are Russia, United Kingdom and France.
Thus invasions, territorial transgressions such as the US-led coalition force that invaded Iraq and ousted Saddam Hussein; the Russian takeover of Crimea and the expansion of its borders with Ukraine were committed without the UN having done anything about it.
Strident but smart
Somewhere within President Rodrigo Duterte’s rant-and-rave public posture, is a man who is strident but smart. Some say he’s crazy like a fox. I hope he and his spokesman do not misunderstand the expression “crazy like a fox.” I suggest they look it up in the thesaurus instead of me explaining it to them.
Duterte’s “love affair” with China is, after all, a smart foreign policy maneuver. Cast aside the national security peril of China’s encroachment in the West Philippine Sea and focus on the economic benefits the country derives from our giant neighbor in the north. Our neighbors in the Association of Southeast Nations, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand are all trading heavily with China —more than they are trading with the United States.
The reason behind the Asia-Pacific region’s brisk trade with China is the destabilizing policy of US President Donald Trump. Since he came to power, Trump has been on a contentious protectionist trade policy with most of the countries in the world. Higher tariffs, even with traditional trade and political allies, have sent the US global influence into a downward spin.
Why is Duterte closer to China than to long-time ally America? He must know something his critics do not. Or, he read Kent Harrington’s World View article which explains the rational, facts and figures on why a rising China is displacing the US as the top economic power.
Here are Harrington’s facts and figures : China is the economic core of Southeast Asia, accounting for 21 percent of the region’s exports in 2015. China is also the biggest importer with the bulk from neighboring countries comprising electronics and machineries. This has made China a processing hub. About 25 percent of South Korea’s exports go to China. Some 28 percent of Australia’s exports go to China, compared to just 7 percent going to the US.
The political implication is that a rising China has replaced the US as the global leader. Thanks to Trump’s misguided economic policy, most of Asia and the Pacific are turning to China for its survival in a competitive commercial world. These are just some of the hard facts cited by Harrington, which appeared May 19 in the Inquirer.