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[Prospero]

Duterte’s Flip-Flop Into Bed With China Is a Disaster for the United States

 

With the Philippine president ditching Washington for Beijing, the contest to control the South China Sea just got a lot more complicated.

 

BY MAX BOOT

 

 

International relations theorists of a “realist” persuasion like to claim that states are rational actors pursuing their strategic interests in an anarchic world where power alone matters. Ideology and domestic politics do not much concern these thinkers; they believe that a nation’s foreign policy is much more likely to be shaped by factors such as geography, demography, and economics.

 

This was the viewpoint of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, who famously tried to realign China from being a foe of the United States to a friend — never mind that the Chinese leader they had to deal with was Mao Zedong, one of the worst mass murderers in history. “Nixinger” believed, correctly, that China’s interest in countering Soviet power would lead it to draw closer with the United States.

 

But even in the case of China the applicability of realist insights was limited. China did not begin the transformation that would make it a leading economic force and trade partner of the United States until Mao had died, replaced by the reformist Deng Xiaoping. Even today China is more foe than friend of America.

 

Today, the Philippines is Exhibit A in illustrating the limits of the realist conceit that some unvarying strategic logic governs foreign policy. The Philippines has seen a vertigo-inducing change in its foreign-policy orientation since Rodrigo Duterte became president this summer. This crude populist is now transforming the Philippines’ relationship with the United States in a fundamental and worrying manner.

 

The Philippines is America’s oldest ally in Asia, and until recently one of the closest. The United States ruled the Philippines as a colonial power from 1899 to 1942 and implanted its culture in the archipelago. In World War II, U.S. and Filipino troops fought side by side against the Japanese occupiers. In 1951, Washington and Manila signed a mutual defense treaty. For decades afterward, the Philippines hosted two of the largest U.S. military installations overseas at Clark Air Force Base and Subic Bay Naval Base.

 

Those bases were closed in 1991 amid a wave of anti-Americanism, but the U.S. military presence has been ramping up again as the Philippines felt increasingly threatened by Chinese military expansionism. In 2014, President Barack Obama signed an agreement with then-President Benigno Aquino III that would allow U.S. forces more regular access to bases in the Philippines and increase the tempo of training exercises and military cooperation between the two countries.

 

Now that achievement looks increasingly like a dead letter. Duterte journeyed to Beijing this week to announce his “separation from the United States” in military and economic terms. “America has lost,” Duterte said. He claimed that a new alliance of the Philippines, China, and Russia would emerge — “there are three of us against the world.” His trade secretary said the Philippines and China were inking $13 billion in trade deals; that’s a pretty hefty signing bonus for switching sides. Duterte said he will soon end military cooperation with the United States, despite the opposition of his armed forces.

 

What could account for this head-snapping transformation? Manila’s strategic and economic interests have not changed. While China is the Philippines’ second-largest trade partner, its largest is Japan, a close American ally and a foe of Chinese expansionism. The third-largest trade partner is the United States. The fourth-largest is Singapore, another U.S. ally that is concerned about China’s vast territorial ambitions and aggressive behavior. Taken together, the Philippines sends 42.7 percent of its exports to Japan, the United States, and Singapore, compared with only 10.5 percent to China and 11.9 percent to Hong Kong. The Philippines gets 16.1 percent of its imports from China; almost all of the rest comes from the United States and its allies, including Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea. So it’s not as if there is an especially pressing economic case for the Philippines to realign from the United States to China.

 

There is a pressing strategic case, however, not to do so. China continues to assert sovereignty in the South China Sea in violation of Philippine claims, as an international court ruled in July in a case brought by Duterte’s predecessor. China wants to grab for itself what could be billions of dollars’ worth of natural resources, from fish to oil, in the South China Sea.

 

Moreover, the Philippine people remain largely pro-American. English is the lingua franca of the Philippines. The Armed Forces of the Philippines have many decades of cooperation with the United States and have been built in the image of the U.S. military; they have no experience working with China’s People’s Liberation Army. Moreover, and despite Duterte’s nasty rhetoric andad hominems, the United States continues to express its desire to protect the Philippines.

 

This massive geopolitical shift is entirely Duterte’s doing. It cannot be explained any other way. It is a product of his peculiar psychology.

 

He has long been ideologically hostile to the United States — he has called Obama a “son of a whore” — and he feels an ideological affinity with China’s authoritarian rulers. Although elected democratically, Duterte is a strongman in the making. He has already violated the rule of law to unleash death squads that aresaid to have killed at least 1,900 people, including a 5-year-old boy, in the name of fighting drugs. He has cited Hitler as his role model: “Hitler massacred 3 million Jews. Now, there is 3 million drug addicts. I’d be happy to slaughter them.” He has also said “I don’t give a shit” about human rights. China’s rulers don’t put their worldview quite so crassly, but they, too, don’t care much for human rights. The Duterte-Xi Jinping marriage thus seems like a natural match.

 

From the American viewpoint, Duterte’s flip-flop — assuming it leads to a lasting strategic shift — is a potential disaster. Aligned with the United States and its regional allies, the Philippines can provide a vital platform to oppose Chinese aggression in the South China and East China seas.

 

If the Philippines becomes a Chinese satrapy, by contrast, Washington will find itself hard-pressed to hold the “first island chain” in the Western Pacific that encompasses “the Japanese archipelago, the Ryukyus, Taiwan, and the Philippine archipelago.” Defending that line of island barriers has been a linchpin of U.S. strategy since the Cold War. It now could be undone because of the whims of one unhinged leader.

 

China could either neutralize this vital American ally or even potentially turn the Philippines into a PLA Navy base for menacing U.S. allies such as Taiwan, Japan, and Australia. At the very least, the U.S. Navy will find it much harder to protect the most important sea lanes in the world; each year $5.3 trillion in goods passes through the South China Sea, including $1.2 trillion in U.S. trade.

 

The opposition is already making hay over Duterte’s China trip. A Supreme Court justice in Manila has warned the president that, were he to give up sovereignty over the Scarborough Shoal, it could result in his impeachment. The only good news from the American standpoint is that what Duterte is doing could be undone by a more rational successor, assuming that democracy in the Philippines survives this time of testing.

 

 

Max Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

a great man theory revival

[Anduril]

Tekst je dobar argument koliko je ta teorija medjunarodnih odnosa realista busna.

Diskutovali smo vec nekoliko puta na forumu kako su i tokom istorije sasvim neocekivani dogadjaji, neracionalno ili ideolosko ponasanje u potpunosti promenili tzv. predvidjeni tok.

Duterte je ujedno i sasvim jasan primer da je demokratija bez vladavine prava nesto sasvim drugo - ako je nekome stalo do istinske demokratije, njega je vojska/policija morala vec odvesti pred sud sa kapuljacom na glavi da objasnjava krsenje osnovnih prava zagarantovanih zakonima pod kojima je izabran. 

Edited October 22, 2016 by Anduril

[porucnik vasic]

Tekst je dobar argument koliko je ta teorija medjunarodnih odnosa realista busna.

Diskutovali smo vec nekoliko puta na forumu kako su i tokom istorije sasvim neocekivani dogadjaji, neracionalno ili ideolosko ponasanje u potpunosti promenili tzv. predvidjeni tok.

Duterte je ujedno i sasvim jasan primer da je demokratija bez vladavine prava nesto sasvim drugo - ako je nekome stalo do istinske demokratije, njega je vojska/policija morala vec odvesti pred sud sa kapuljacom na glavi da objasnjava krsenje osnovnih prava zagarantovanih zakonima pod kojima je izabran. 

Кано ономад Пиноче Аљендеа.

Добро је што и за Франка имаш разумевања.

[Anduril]

Jel ovo neka Seseljeva skola komuniciranja ili si to kod Dveri naucio?

[porucnik vasic]

Jel ovo neka Seseljeva skola komuniciranja ili si to kod Dveri naucio?

Трт.

[Gandalf]

a great man theory revival

http://www.pacificpundit.org/podcast/2016/8/8/episode-1-offshore-balancing-is-for-suckers

[MancMellow]

 

 

Pakistan–China: strategic partnership means business

Despite the challenges, China is determined to give Pakistan a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform its economy and their relationship. Here, Antoine Levesques examines their efforts to broaden an ambitious strategic partnership.

In a notable diversion from its usual policy of non-interference in the affairs of other sovereign states, China recently appealed to India and Pakistan to adopt greater restraint and diplomacy amid growing tensions over Kashmir. No doubt Beijing was eager to avoid allowing regional security concerns to overshadow Pakistan’s economic prosperity, in which it has a significant stake.

 

This is the first major diplomatic tangle between China’s two neighbours since President Xi Jinping and Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced tens of billions of dollars’ worth of Chinese investment in Pakistan’s infrastructure and energy sectors.

 

In April 2015, during his first presidential visit to Pakistan, Xi pledged that his country would, over the following 15 years, spend roughly US$11bn on infrastructure and another US$33bn on energy projects. Sharif’s government published and updated a list of 51 joint initiatives, including bilateral agreements, memorandums of understanding and development projects, estimated to be worth at least US$46bn, marking Pakistan’s largest influx of foreign capital since its creation.

 

The China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) was first formally unveiled in 2013, but only topped the political agenda in 2015. It amounts to over two-thirds of what Xi pledged, also in 2015, as outbound investment into the UK. It is also twice all the aid Pakistan has received from the US since 2001, as a frontline state in the fight against terrorism. No wonder Sharif called CPEC a ‘fate-changer’. His interior minister has also termed it a ‘sea-change’.

 

Some details of CPEC are confidential. Projects that had already been in the pipeline have been re-branded as being part of CPEC. Others, such as the construction of China’s ‘demonstrator’ export nuclear reactor in Karachi or a dam, appear to remain outside of CPEC. But the scope of the projectis clear: it will consist of roughly three interconnected, north–south corridors to boost transport, energy and industrial capacity. They are concentrated across the highly populated Punjab province and extend from the ports of Gwadar (Baluchistan) and Karachi (Sindh), and over the Hindu Kush mountains into China’s Xinjiang.

For China, this is a way of capitalising on its existing security-focused and military-led friendship with Pakistan. It is an opportunity to broaden and deepen long-term access to its neighbour’s US$270bn economy of 200 million people. For Chinese state banks, loans to Pakistan also look less risky.

 

Belt and Road Initiative

CPEC is one of six regional investment and trade corridors that span outward from China and make up its trillion-dollar-plus global Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Afghanistan and Iran are already beneficiaries of this highly ambitious project, with both enjoying new rail links to China (they are also committed to a port development project with India).

 

For both parties, CPEC represents an opportunity to convince other countries to cooperate with them in support of Pakistan’s economy. They argue that this corridor could link up to other nations’ existing or future plans to build infrastructure across South and Central Asia or the Gulf.

 

For Pakistan, this new deal promises sorely needed capital investment. Its annual GDP growth currently stands at 5.5%, but there are reasonable expectations that CPEC will bring about a sustainable increase. The UK, US and EU have lent support to Pakistani optimists and officials, who foresee CPEC’s positive effect on Pakistan’s domestic political and macro-economic stability, as well as regional connectivity.

 

So far China is thought to have invested approximately US$14–18bn in Pakistan since 2013. Some funds are being channelled through BRI-related institutions, including the Asian Infrastructure Development Bank and its Silk Road Fund. The initiative is already bearing fruit, with new roads already open to traffic and earth-breaking ceremonies marking the start of many other projects.

 

Managing inflated expectations on both sides will be of crucial importance at this stage in the partnership. Pakistani critics have warned that China has, in the past, failed to realise its investment pledges, and that its interest in CPEC far outweighs that of Pakistan. However, it is too early to determine where the truth lies. In the meantime, China has embarked on a tandem capacity-building drive across a broad range of fields, to help ensure this group of projects is well-managed and potential risks are mitigated.

 

Obstacles ahead

But this partnership with Pakistan is not without its complications for Beijing. India’s sentiment has hardened since 2014 to its two neighbours, and it views CPEC with suspicion, especially in Pakistan-administered Kashmir or Gwadar. In a future crisis between India and Pakistan, China may find it harder to argue restraint as a UN Security Council permanent member, because India would see it as a party to the situation.

Pakistan is attempting to address the concerns of Chinese officials and other prominent figuresabout its internal security. In 2014, Army Chief Raheel Sharif made it his priority to permanently stamp out militants targeting state interests and civilians. There is roughly one soldier for every 15,000 Chinese citizens estimated to work in Pakistan, and 44 Pakistani military workers have been killed since 2014. Despite this formidable challenge, both the military and government are attempting to pool and streamline their resources to ensure the smooth implementation of CPEC. Islamabad argues that the prosperity that this initiative will eventually bring will serve to undercut militancy.

 

Early benefits for Pakistan

The early promise of CPEC should serve as encouragement to both parties to redouble their efforts to make this ambitious project a success. It has the potential to become a transformative virtuous circle for Pakistan. Its development needs are so sizeable that adding marginal megawatts to the grid and miles to networks will really feel like early wins. Trade through the deep seaport of Gwadar could begin as early as December.

 

In 2018, Pakistan’s civilian leadership, including Nawaz Sharif’s party, will seek an unprecedented third consecutive term in power since the return of pluralist electoral and parliamentary politics in 2008. It hopes to cash in such successes at the ballot box.

 

 

 

http://www.iiss.org/en/iiss%20voices/blogsections/iiss-voices-2016-9143/october-d6b6/pakistan-china-6357

 

Druge dve fotke sam ja ubacio kao ilustracije.

 

Ok, videcemo sta ce biti od ovoga, nije da su sve same stabilne zemlje ukljucene. Meni zanimljivo u kombinaciji sa ovim http://www.parapsihopatologija.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=16302&p=3707452

 

 

[Budja]

Tekst je dobar argument koliko je ta teorija medjunarodnih odnosa realista busna.

Diskutovali smo vec nekoliko puta na forumu kako su i tokom istorije sasvim neocekivani dogadjaji, neracionalno ili ideolosko ponasanje u potpunosti promenili tzv. predvidjeni tok.

Duterte je ujedno i sasvim jasan primer da je demokratija bez vladavine prava nesto sasvim drugo - ako je nekome stalo do istinske demokratije, njega je vojska/policija morala vec odvesti pred sud sa kapuljacom na glavi da objasnjava krsenje osnovnih prava zagarantovanih zakonima pod kojima je izabran. 

 

Samo sto je u tvojoj teoriji problemcic taj da se ti populisti upravo pojavljuju usled ranijeg nedostatka institucija i iskljucivanja dobrog dela populacije iz odlucivanja.

 

Nije tu vojska deo resenja, vec vrlo verovatno (ne znam situaciju na Filipinima) deo problema.

[Lord Protector]

 

When Duterte Met Abe

Is Japan the America’s Pit Bull or Lap Dog… …or Dog in the Manger?

 

PETER LEE

 • NOVEMBER 3, 2016

As I discuss in my most recent piece for Asia Times, Duterte v. United States: The Empire Slaps Back, I find the US tunnel vision concerning Asian attitudes toward engagement with China puzzling.

The big story in Asia IMO is the smaller powers trying to integrate with the PRC economically while keeping it at arms’ length militarily, but that doesn’t seem to drive the coverage I see. Perhaps as a function of that “salary depends on not understanding” Mark Twain crack, US diplos/generals/journos/wonks seem determined to ignore the centripetal forces at play in Asia with China at their heart.

There’s also a gigantic blind spot in US coverage of the Philippines. If you read the papes, everybody in the Philippines is staring anxiously out at the South China Sea for “Chizilla” to emerge and wreak havoc on a jewel of Pacific democracy.

Actually, if you read my piece, you’ll find that the forces ravaging the Philippines are poverty, inequality, social division, corruption, and the occasional megatyphoon and I have an idea the reason that Fidel Ramos championed Duterte is because he saw him as the one candidate who would focus on domestic issues and not pivot-friendly bullsh*t.

The US story is that the threat of “China rising” must be contained militarily, its economic reach reduced, and Asia should look for a “high standards” trade bloc, TPP, for its growth story instead of canoodling with the Chicoms.

However, I think the CCP read its George Kennan and realized the containment strategy worked on the USSR because the Soviets thought, incorrectly, they could cut it as an autarky. Deng knew different, enabled inward and outward investment, and now we’re looking at not only Asia but much of the world anxious at how Chinese trouble will play out in their own economies.

In my opinion, the US was only able to establish “China threat” as the top element on the Asian FP agenda temporarily, with considerable effort, and only by the active support of pro-US government officials in Japan and the Philippines who were willing to assist in engineering polarizing provocations with the PRC around the Senkakus and Scarborough Shoal.

Now the economic logic of Asian integration i.e. hoovering up the cash the PRC is willing to throw at the region is reasserting itself.

Thailand, Malaysia, Myanmar, Vietnam, and now the Philippines are showing via engagement with China that their participation in any US crusade is conditional and equivocal.

These countries are not democratic and human rights garden spots, so I guess the US could summon up some “birds of a feather” grumbling about why the jefes of these regimes are willing to cozy up to dictators instead of joining the crusade to contain, isolate, and degrade the PRC regime (and heroically put their own economic well-being at risk at the same time).

And then there’s this guy:

That’s Shinzo Abe making nice with Rodrigo Duterte during Duterte’s recent visit to Japan. Actually, making the “iron fist”, the symbol of Duterte’s, shall we say, rather harsh vision of how to make Philippine democracy do the right thing “or I’ll punch the crap outta you. Or worse.”

I just love this picture. I don’t recall seeing it in US coverage of Duterte’s foray into Japan.

US tunnel vision was in full force again, focused on the fact that Duterte said he wanted foreign militaries a.k.a. the US outta the Philippines in two years.

But the big story was, to paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, “the dog that didn’t snarl.” Japan.

Abe reciprocated Duterte’s outreached fist, one might say, with his own, and competed with the PRC in offering various goodies to the Philippines.

Abe’s Japan, as I comment in my Asia Times piece, has a rather multi-jointed agenda.

Japan was in a pretty solid space, securitywise, if it was content to remain a security ward of the United States under the pacifist constitution. But ideology, opportunity, and necessity are driving Japan back into Asia as a security actor.

Abe, a revisionist nationalist (i.e. he rejects the victor’s justice narrative of World War II that Japan did wrong and deserved to be militarily neutered), is piggybacking on the pivot to enable Japan’s re-emergence as a full-fledged Asian power with an extensive network of relationships cum allies in East and South Asia.

China’s rise is an indispensable element in Japan’s rise.

The, let’s face it, hulking and goonish face of PRC regional engagement promotes a search for capable friends, and most Asian countries are pretty happy to have Japan in their corner—and not too upset about Japan’s return to the fray as a full-fledged military power.

Second, after the United States signed on to the “China threat” narrative as the driver for its Asia pivot (something that Kurt Campbell, Hillary Clinton, and Seiji Maehara cahooted on in 2010), the US abandoned the honest broker position it had claimed in previous decades and lined up behind Japan and provided material, operational, and diplomatic support for the expansion of Japan’s military footprint in Asia.

However, I believe that Japanese strategists regard US anti-China resolve as a wasting asset, not just subject to the vagaries of American politics and conflicting economic/fiscal/trade priorities that undercut the containment strategy, but also because the ineluctable logic of Asian growth is sidelining the US as hegemon of the anti-China alliance.

There is likely to come a day when the US faces its Suez moment and admits it’s not ready to fight a war in the west Pacific to protect US interests and sustain US prestige.

That day is unlikely to come under the Clinton administration—which has preemptively committed itself to a policy of sustaining US global pre-eminence through the application of military force as needed—and that, depending on your appetite for combat with the Chicoms 8000 miles from home, is either a good or bad thing.

But the day will probably come and if and when it does, Japan does not want to be standing there helplessly holding its daikon (as it did when Nixon went to China). Instead, it’s going to be militarily strong, probably with a Israel-style covert nuclear weapons capability it will discretely brandish, and with a strong regional network of friends and allies in East Asia.

I think a Japan-centric security regime facing China but complemented by regional economic integration is sustainable; I think a US-centric system based on forestalling economic integration and keeping allies submissive by maintaining a nuclear “umbrella” a.k.a. monopoly is not.

We may de facto be heading towards such a regime, even as the Clinton administration continues its hypernationalist bluster. There’s the nibbling away at the pivot by the smaller and weaker allies, there’s Abe with Duterte and, if I’m reading Paul Krugman’s tea leaves correctly, it appears that President Clinton may give up on TPP as an Obama pipe dream.

Not to say peace and reduced tensions are in the offing for East Asia; particularly, if I was Duterte I’d watch my back as the Clinton administration will probably seek to punish his lese majeste toward the United States much more than the lame-duck Obama administration. And, I imagine the U.S. Navy will demand more of its precious FONOPs in order to provoke the Chinese, hopefully to the point of a confrontation that feeds the security polarization narrative and fattens its budget.

But the general trend seems to be away from Hillary Clinton’s goal of “America’s Pacific Century” toward “The Pacific’s Pacific Century” and I think that’s a pretty good thing.

(Reprinted from China Matters by permission of author or representative)

Edited November 14, 2016 by slow

[apostata]

[Prospero]

izlapelog henrija k još sam po antarktiku nisu vašarili ko mečku

Edited December 2, 2016 by Prospero

[Eraserhead]

Tramp prvi izabrani predsednik koji se cuo sa Tajvanskim liderom jos od 1979. Kinezi bi mogli da se naljute ali realno on ne zna sta radi.

 

Edit:

 

@realDonaldTrump: The President of Taiwan CALLED ME today to wish me congratulations on winning the Presidency. Thank you!

 

 

Edit 2:

 

@Real...: Interesting how the U.S. sells Taiwan billions of dollars of military equipment but I should not accept a congratulatory call.

 

It's an injustice.

Edited December 3, 2016 by Eraserhead

[Prospero]

The Pentagon says a Chinese warship has seized a US Navy underwater drone collecting unclassified data in international waters in the South China Sea.

The incident has prompted a formal démarche from the United States and a demand for its return.

 

It is the first such seizure in recent memory and took took place on 15 December northwest of Subic Bay, just as the USNS Bowditch – an oceanographic survey ship – was about to retrieve the unmaned underwater vehicle (UUV), a US official told Reuters.

 

“The UUV was lawfully conducting a military survey in the waters of the South China Sea,” the official said.

“It’s a sovereign immune vessel, clearly marked in English not to be removed from the water – that it was US property.”

Navy Captain Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, says the US is asking for the drone’s return. 

 

The incident is likely to fray the already tense relations between US and China. Beijing was angered by President-elect Donald Trump’s decision to talk by phone with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen earlier this month, and by his later comments that he did not feel “bound by a ‘One China’ policy” regarding the status of Taiwan, which has been US policy for decades. 

 

Captain Davis says a civilian US Navy ship operated by the military’s Sealift Command was recovering two of the unmanned gliders about 50 miles northwest of Subic Bay near the Philippines when the Chinese ship approached and took one of the small vessels. He says the Chinese ship acknowledged radio messages from the US ship, but did not respond to demands the glider be returned. 

 

The Chinese have acknowledged the démarche but not responded to it.

“It is ours. It’s clearly marked as ours. We would like it back, and we would like this not to happen again,” said Captain Davis

The seized underwater drone was part of an unclassified program to collect oceanographic data, including salinity, temperature and clarity of the water, according to the official. Such data can help inform US military sonar data.

...

 

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/china-seize-us-navy-underwater-vehicle-south-china-sea-one-china-taiwan-a7480016.html

 

[MNE]

“It’s a sovereign immune vessel, clearly marked in English not to be removed from the water – that it was US property.”

 

idući put nek napišu na kineskom