China is ripe for a challenge, despite US weakness

China is ripe for a challenge

Consider these three statements from the past few days: “With its actions in the South China Sea, China is out of step with international norms that underscore the Asia-Pacific’s security architecture ... There should be no mistake. The US will fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows, as we do all around the world.” — Ashton Carter, US Defence Secretary.

“On the issues concerning China’s territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests, some of its offshore neighbours take provocative actions and reinforce their military presence on China’s reefs and islands that they have illegally occupied. Some external countries are also busy meddling in South China Sea affairs. A tiny few maintain constant close-in air and sea surveillance and reconnaissance against China. It is a longstanding task for China to safeguard its maritime rights and interests.” — People’s Liberation Army white paper.

“Over the last year alone China has reclaimed nearly four times the area (in disputed territories in the South China Sea) of the other five claimant states combined. The speed and scale of China’s land reclamation on disputed reefs and other features does raise the question of intent and purpose. It is legitimate to ask the purpose of the land reclamation — tourism appears unlikely. China now has more law enforcement and coastguard vessels in the South China Sea than the other regional countries put together. And given the size and modernisation of China’s military, the use by China of land reclamation for military purposes would be of particular concern.” — Dennis Richardson, secretary of the Australian Defence Department.

This may be the height of heresy, but I think the dynamics evident in all these statements are of greater long-term security significance for Australia than the hugely significant struggles involving Islamic State and global jihadism.

Beijing this week issued a defence white paper. In some ways this answers a longstanding Western demand for greater transparency as to purpose in China’s military build-up. It always astonishes me that some commentators can barely mention Japan without cautioning against its potential nationalist tendencies yet resolutely refuse to take any notice of one of the most rapid military build-ups, outside of actual war, in modern history, in China.

Beijing’s white paper makes clear that China wants a big, blue-water, strategic navy able to project power far from its shores. It talks of China having interests all over the world that it needs to be able to protect. It also plans a strategic air force, capable of fully offensive operations. And it includes ballistic missile build-up and cyber warfare investment.

The white paper is important in two ways. First, it represents a historic break with the emphasis on land forces — which is why the whole defence force is labelled the People’s Liberation Army.

The legend of the army swimming among the people, fighting first the Japanese in World War II and then the nationalists in the civil war, is deep within the Chinese Communist Party DNA.

That has comprehensively been supplanted by the new maritime, air, cyber and missile capabilities, not to mention continued expansion of the nuclear arsenal.

Second, the white paper represents a fundamental shift in Chinese declaratory policy. It will no longer place so much stress on its “peaceful rise”. Its actions have long not been reassuring. Now its words won’t be either.

The Chinese have strong leadership under Xi Jinping and are emboldened by Barack Obama’s weakness in Asia.

The US has a very weak Asia team. For the first time the three key positions are occupied by career diplomats: Daniel Russel, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific; David Shear, Assistant Secretary of Defence for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs; and soon to take up his position, Dan Kritenbrink, senior director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council.

I have had the good fortune of having conversations with Russel and Shear and they are very capable men. Reports of Kritenbrink suggest a similar high quality. But as one Washington insider puts it: “In national security, diplomats should be on tap, not on top.”

At the NSC, Kritenbrink re­places Evan Medeiros — who, so insider gossip has it, was pushed out by National Security Adviser Susan Rice, partly because after years of withering experience he had become a hardhead on China.

Never before have all three positions been held simultaneously by career diplomats. This is important for two reasons. It shows that no powerful political insider within the Obama administration wanted these critical positions. And, second, career diplomats tend to be incrementalists, not big-picture strategic actors; they tend to be extremely risk-averse, and by nature they are smooth and modest rather than big personalities. While they can gather information brilliantly and evaluate it well, they cannot move things through the political maul of Washington. And their international interlocutors all know this.

The assistant secretary of state for East Asia position in the past has been held by giants: Dean Rusk, Richard Holbrooke, Gaston Sigur, Paul Wolfowitz, Winston Lord and Kurt Campbell. None of the present team is anywhere remotely near this ballpark. And none of Obama’s closest foreign policy advisers, such as Rice, has any record in Asia.

However, the new Defence Secretary, Carter, although not an Asianist, has partly filled the vacuum. His statement quoted above is the surest indication yet that the US will conduct substantial freedom-of-navigation exercises to show it does not abide by Chinese claims to sovereignty arising from the artificial islands it has built.

The legal position is complex but clear. Territorial features not visible above high tide do not create land rights such as territorial waters. The US Air Force and Navy have kept beyond the 12-nautical-mile zone of genuine islands in the South China Sea, not because they recognise anyone’s claims to sovereignty but because they accept that someone must have sovereignty, which, at least for now, they won’t transgress.

Now, however, it is clear they will sail and fly within 12NM of the artificial islands, runways and reclaimed land features Beijing has been building at such a manic pace during the past 12 months. These artificial constructs cannot create territorial rights so the US will be abiding by the law. It is of the first importance that the US do this to maintain freedom of navigation and aviation in the South China Sea. How much of a fuss China will make over this is uncertain.

The Abbott government has handled this difficult matter well, with a sound mixture of resolution and tact. It has repeated that Australia does not have a position on the competing territorial claims as such. And in statements from Tony Abbott, Defence Minister Kevin Andrews, and now expansively from Richardson, it also has made clear that it opposes China’s land reclamation activities and its creeping militarisation of the area. It has also gone about 99 per cent of the way to saying it will support, diplomatically, any US freedom-of-navigation exercise.

It is also, incidentally, restoring both the basic size of the defence budget as well as trying to get better value for money. The revelation that the build phase alone for our three Air Warfare Destroyers will cost $9 billion, when the similar Spanish ships on which they are based cost $1bn each, was devastating. Given the massive arms expansion in Asia, we are going to need much greater military capability to keep up a credible deterrent posture.

Nor is the Abbott government dishonest to speak overwhelmingly positively about China. This is the essence of engage and hedge. You want to encourage China in every positive way, you don’t want to hector it into aggressive behaviour, but when it behaves as a bully, it needs to be resisted.

The stakes here could not be higher, nor the outcome less clear.