Public jousting between US Defence Secretary Robert Gates and
Chinese general Ma Xiaotian, deputy chief of the general staff,
during the Asia Security Summit in Singapore on May 30-June 1,
points to rising tensions and rivalries in the Asia-Pacific
region.
The annual forum of the region’s defence ministers and top
security officials has become something of a barometer of US-China
relations in recent years. Gates’s predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld,
used the meetings as a platform to berate China for its secretive
military build-up. By contrast, Gates last year struck a more
conciliatory note during his first appearance, speaking of building
“trust over time” between the two countries.
This year, however, in a carefully crafted speech that avoided
direct references to China, Gates nevertheless delivered a pointed
warning to Beijing. He declared that the US remained engaged in
Asia and dispelled any notion that Washington was lessening its
role because of its military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“The United States remains a nation with strong and enduring
interests in this region,” he said, “interests that will endure no
matter which political party occupies the White House next.”
Gates declared: “Our continued presence in this part of the
world has been an essential element enabling its rise—opening
doors, protecting and preserving common spaces on the high seas...
I want to stress that we stand for openness, and against
exclusivity.” Returning to the theme later, he said: “In my Asian
travels, I hear my hosts worry about the security implications of
rising demands for resources, and about coercive diplomacy and
other pressures that can lead disruptive competition.”
While the language may have been diplomatic, the point was clear
to everyone present. Gates was firing a shot across China’s bow in
support of allies such as Japan. The two countries have rival
territorial claims over islets and their surrounding seabed
resources in the East China Sea. Gates referred in particular to
the South China Sea where China, Vietnam and the Philippines are
contesting various areas and energy resources. “All of us in Asia
must ensure that our actions are not seen as pressure tactics, even
when they coexist beside outward displays of cooperation,” he
said.
Gates also challenged China’s efforts to use its growing
economic muscle to establish closer relations with the Association
of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in the formation of a regional
East Asian bloc to the exclusion of the US. He acknowledged that
there were stirrings of “a new regionalism” and “new security
architecture” in Asia, but warned against a “zero-sum game”
approach that kept out others. “It can only succeed if we treat the
region as a single entity [that is, including the US],” he said,
“There is little room for a separate ‘East Asian order’.”
For all of Gates’s talks of “openness”, American strategists
have based their plans on the control of key naval chokepoints,
such as the Malacca Strait, that would enable the US to quickly cut
off access to Middle East oil for any potential Asian rival. The
concern about the competing territorial claims in the South China
Sea is that China might seek in the future to block key sea routes
to the US navy. Thus Gates emphasised the “time-tested principles
of strategic access, freedom of commerce and navigation and freedom
from domination by any hegemonic force or coalition”.
China needs huge and growing supplies of oil from the Middle
East and Africa. To counter US strategic planning, China has
increasingly turned to building “blue water” navy and port
facilities in countries such as Burma, Pakistan and Sri Lanka as a
means of defending its energy lifelines. Beijing has also been
developing alternative land routes for shipping oil from the Indian
Ocean via Burma to south-western China, in order to avoid the
Malacca Strait.
Beijing’s claims in the South China Sea are motivated by the
same strategic considerations. In April, a British intelligence
briefing for Jane’s Defence Weekly revealed that China has
built a major naval base at Sanya on Hainan Island that can hold a
large surface fleet and 20 submarines. Analysts pointed out that
the base demonstrated China’s ambition was not just to counter the
small Vietnamese or Filipino naval forces in the South China Sea,
but ultimately to match the US navy.
Gates took two more jabs at China without mentioning it by name.
He repeated Washington’s standard demand for “transparency” in
military spending, warning that otherwise there would be “outright
suspicion” of its “strategic intentions”. He reiterated that the US
had been “open” in informing countries about its decision to shoot
down a defunct satellite in February—the unstated contrast being to
Beijing’s unannounced anti-satellite experiment in 2007.
China responds
China’s representative at the meeting, Lieutenant General Ma,
responded in kind. Without naming the US, Ma warned there were
powers seeking the “expansion of military alliances” and “the
development and expansion of missile defence systems,” which have
been “undercutting the equilibrium of regional powers”.
For the past eight years, the Bush administration has been
seeking to establish a strategic encirclement of China through
alliances and bases stretching from Japan and South Korea to most
South East Asian countries and Australia as well as India. This is
not to mention the US military presence in Afghanistan and Central
Asia. Moreover, the US has begun to deploy anti-ballistic missile
systems in Eastern Europe and Japan to reinforce its nuclear
predominance, particularly over Russia and China.
A sharp exchange took place after Ma acknowledged that China had
been developing its international ballistic missiles (ICBMs), but
only for “defensive” purposes. Gates snapped back that the “[US]
missile defence is exactly what it says. It’s a defence... And it
is hard to see a limited capability such as we have and will have
in the future undermining the offensive capabilities of either
Russia or China.” He then added: “It’s hard to see an
intercontinental ballistic missile as a defensive weapon.”
While neither side spelled out their rationale, China and Russia
are concerned that the Bush administration has been shifting away
from its Cold War strategy of “Mutually Assured Destruction” or MAD
toward achieving “nuclear primacy”. MAD was based on ability of
both sides to retain enough of their nuclear arsenal from a first
strike to unleash a devastating assault on the attacker. Nuclear
primacy assumes the ability to completely destroy an opponent’s
arsenal. Within that context, anti-ballistic missiles would play a
significant role in countering any remaining missiles that survived
a first strike.
China and Russia have bitterly opposed the US deployment of
anti-ballistic missiles on countries near their borders. US claims
that these systems are purely defensive and directed at so-called
rogue states such as Iran and North Korea do not hold water. Quite
apart from the fact that neither country has a functioning
inter-continental ballistic missile or a nuclear warhead, Tehran
and Pyongyang are both well aware that the US is capable of
levelling their countries in retaliation.
Russia and China are both responding to the new US
anti-ballistic systems by developing more sophisticated missiles
and strengthening their nuclear arsenal. Moscow pointedly resumed
its strategic bomber flights last year to demonstrate its capacity
to respond to a US first strike. Last month, Russia and China
issued a joint statement denouncing the US missile shield plans
during a visit by newly-elected Russian President Dmitry Medvedev
to Beijing.
At the Singapore forum, Gates appealed for dialogue with China,
so that both sides would “avoid unnecessary military expenditures”
and an arms race. His comments, however, are little more than an
appeal for maintenance of the status quo—that is, an overwhelming
US military superiority. Washington is clearly concerned that
China’s rapid economic growth will be translated into the military
sphere.
Ma argued that China’s defence budget was “low” compared to
developed countries, but that is only true in per capita terms.
China’s official defence expenditure reached $60 billion this year,
up 17.6 percent from 2007. The military budget is now the world’s
fourth largest—ahead of Germany, Japan and Russia. According to the
Pentagon, the actual figure was as high as $139 billion last
year.
The US is also concerned that China’s economic clout is turning
East Asia into a de facto regional economic bloc dominated by
Beijing. As the world’s largest low-cost manufacturing hub, China
imports substantial quantities of components, parts, capital goods
and raw materials from a range of countries including Japan, South
Korea, South East Asia and Australia. China has displaced the US as
the biggest trade partner for most of these countries.
Beijing’s Free Trade Agreement with ASEAN will take effect from
2010. China is also creating an “economic corridor” in the Greater
Mekong Subregion (GSM). The project involves water transport along
the Lancang/Mekong River into Laos, Burma, Thailand and Vietnam as
well as rail links and roads connecting China to Singapore via
Thailand. China has footed much of the bill through concessions and
development projects.
In his speech, Gates lashed out at the Burmese junta’s refusal
to let US, French and British military personnel and aid officials
into the country to assist cyclone victims. The Bush
administration’s hostility to the Burmese regime is primarily
directed at its close economic and military ties with China, which
has established port facilities in Burma. The country is a
significant gap in US efforts to encircle China’s borders.
Gates’s emphasis on the US as “a resident power” in Asia is as
much to reassure allies as to warn China. He was asked directly by
a Singapore diplomat whether the US could maintain its huge
military presence in Asia amid US economic troubles, growing budget
pressure and the costly war in Iraq. “We ought to be able to walk
and chew gum at the same time,” Gates replied. But the glib
response convinced nobody as the cautious reactions indicated.
Indian Defence Minister Pallam Raju insisted that while New
Delhi was committed to new close ties with the US, it would not act
as a US proxy against China. Australian Defence Minister Joel
Fitzgibbon stressed that the new Rudd government “has not turned
its mind to any decision about a quadrilateral relationship [with
US, Japan and India]”. While not stated, the US-proposed
relationship is clearly aimed at China, on which Australia’s mining
boom is heavily dependent.
Japanese Defence Minister Shigeru Ishiba echoed Gates’s
criticism of China, but said “Japan does not subscribe to purposely
overstating China as a threat.” Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo
Fukuda had been trying to patch up his country’s relationship with
China, which is vital to Japanese business.
French Defence Minister Hervé Morin also put in a bid, telling
the conference that “France and Europe are not intending to remain
secondary partners in Asia” in issues of security. As Asia became
economically more central to the world over the next 25 years,
France would seek a greater role, especially in South East Asia—as
“a major strategic stake”.
Despite the diplomatic language, the Singapore conference
provided a glimpse into the growing tensions as all the major and
regional powers jostle for position amid a scramble for resources,
cheap labour and strategic position in the increasingly important
Asia-Pacific region.
