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From: wolda002@umn.edu
Date: Thu Nov 04 2010 - 20:44:43 EST
Thursday, November 04, 2010 A scramble for Asia? Securing long-term peace
requires respect for borders ** By Brahma Chellaney
Commentary by
Asia’s festering Cold War-era territorial and maritime disputes highlight
the fact that securing long-term region-wide peace depends on respect for
existing borders. Attempts to disturb Asia’s territorial status quo are an
invitation to endemic conflict – a concern that led Asian states to welcome
the US and Russia to their annual East Asian Summit.
The recent Sino-Japanese diplomatic spat over disputed islands in the East
China Sea – followed, almost instantly, by a Sino-Vietnamese row over
similar atolls – has put the spotlight on China and its regional policy.
Governments across Asia are concerned that China’s rapidly accumulating
power is emboldening it to assert territorial and maritime claims against
neighbors stretching from Japan to India. Even against tiny Bhutan, China
has stepped up its lands claims through military incursions.
China’s new stridency underscores Asia’s central diplomatic challenge:
coming to terms with existing boundaries by shedding the baggage of history
that burdens all of the region’s important inter-state relationships. Even
as Asia is becoming more interdependent economically, it is becoming more
politically divided.
A number of inter-state wars were fought in Asia since 1950, the year that
both the Korean War and the annexation of Tibet started. But, whereas the
Europe’s bloody wars in the first half of the twentieth century have made
war there unthinkable today, the wars in Asia in the second half of the
twentieth century, far from settling or ending disputes, only accentuated
bitter rivalries.
China, significantly, has been involved in the largest number of military
conflicts in Asia. A recent Pentagon report is unsparing: “The history of
modern Chinese warfare provides numerous case studies in which China’s
leaders have claimed military preemption as a strategically defensive act.
For example, China refers to its intervention in the Korean War (1950-1953)
as the “War to Resist the United States and Aid Korea.” Similarly,
authoritative texts refer to border conflicts against India (1962), the
Soviet Union (1969), and Vietnam (1979) as ‘Self-Defense Counter Attacks.’”
The seizure of the Paracel Islands from Vietnam in 1974 by Chinese forces
was another example of offense as defense.
All these cases of preemption occurred when China was weak, poor, and
internally torn. So the growing power of today’s China naturally raises
legitimate concerns.
Having earlier preached the gospel of its “peaceful rise,” China no longer
is shy about showcasing its military capabilities and asserting itself on
multiple fronts. With the Chinese Communist Party increasingly dependent on
the military to maintain its monopoly on power and ensure domestic order,
senior military officers are overtly influencing foreign policy. The result
is a growing territorial assertiveness, which has become a source of new
friction along China’s land and sea frontiers. That, in turn, has put China
at the center of Asia’s political divides.
Several developments this year underscore China’s more muscular foreign
policy, from its inclusion of the South China Sea in its “core” national
interests – a move that makes its claims to the disputed Spratly Islands
non-negotiable – to its reference to the Yellow Sea as a sort of exclusive
Chinese military-operations zone. The US and South Korea should, according
to Chinese officials, discontinue holding joint naval drills there,
apparently out of respect for China’s new power.
China also has become more insistent in pressing its territorial claims both
to India’s northeastern Arunachal Pradesh state and to the
Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands, with Chinese warships making more
frequent forays into Japanese waters. Indian defense officials have reported
a sharp increase in Chinese military incursions across the disputed
4,057-kilometer Himalayan frontier and in aggressive patrolling. China also
has started questioning Indian sovereignty over the state of Jammu and
Kashmir, one-fifth of which it occupied after the Tibet annexation.
Beijing’s 2004 spat with South Korea over the ancient kingdom of Koguryo –
triggered by a revised historical claim posted on China’s Foreign Ministry
website that the empire, founded in the Tongge river basin of northern
Korea, was Chinese – was seen as a bid to hedge China’s options vis-ŕ-vis a
potentially unified Korea. By signaling that the present China-North Korea
border may not be final, Beijing has raised the specter of potential
tensions over frontiers in the future.
Against that background, China’s increasingly assertive territorial and
maritime claims threaten Asian peace and stability. In fact, the largest
real estate China covets is not in the South or East China Seas: India’s
Arunachal Pradesh is almost three times larger than Taiwan.
Respect for boundaries is a prerequisite to peace and stability on any
continent. Europe has built its peace on that principle, with a number of
European states learning to live with boundaries they don’t like. But the
Chinese Communist Party still harps on old grievances to reinforce its claim
to legitimacy: full restoration of China’s “dignity” after a century of
humiliation at the hands of foreign powers.
Through its overt refusal to accept Asia’s territorial status quo, China
only highlights the futility of political negotiations. After all, frontiers
are never significantly redrawn at the negotiating table, but only on the
battlefield, as China has shown in the past.
Today, whether it is Arunachal Pradesh or Taiwan or the Senkaku Islands or
even the Spratlys, China is dangling the threat of force to assert its
claims. By picking territorial fights with its neighbors, China is not only
reinforcing old rivalries, but is also threatening Asia’s continued economic
renaissance – showing that it is not a credible candidate to lead Asia.
It is important for other Asian states and the US – a “resident power” in
Asia, in the words of US Defense Secretary Robert Gates – to convey a clear
message to China: a peaceful rise and unilateral redrawing of frontiers
don’t mix.
*Brahma Chellaney* is professor of Strategic Studies at the Center for
Policy Research in New Delhi and the author of Asian Juggernaut: The Rise of
China, India and Japan. *THE DAILY STAR* publishes this commentary in
collaboration with Project Syndicate © (www.project-syndicate.org).