U.S. Takes A Pass For Now On China Sea Disputes
The territorial disputes in the South China Seas are over, China has won, and the U.S. couldnt care less. But thats not necessarily bad.
While arguments over who owns which reefs, rocks and lagoons in the South China Sea will likely drag on awhile, the U.S. is saving its powder for a more important fight: keeping vital shipping lanes free from potential interference.
A months-long standoff over a remote reef system claimed by both China and the Philippines all but ended this weekend when the Obama administration signaled it would not intervene. That means Chinese patrol boats, which in April chased a Philippines warship from the Scarborough Shoal, will remain there as long they want. So, too, will Chinese fishing and commercial exploration ships.
Thats bad news for the neighbors. China has claimed virtually all of the South China Sea as its own, along with potentially huge deposits of oil, gas and other natural resources. The region includes the Spratly Islands, Scarborough Shoal and other scattered islets and shallows variously claimed by Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan, Indonesia and Brunei. If the U.S. wont wade in on behalf of the Philippines, with which it shares a 60-year-old mutual defense treaty, then it sure wont do so for anybody else. Without U.S. or other outside help, those countries will have little choice but to accept the Chinese claims, and cut whatever joint-development deals they can.
Yes, that could embolden China to make additional new demands (more on that later), but the bigger worry is whether China will use its growing air and sea power to threaten movement through the region. More than half the worlds commercial shipping passes through the South China Sea, including nearly all Mideast oil bound for Japan, South Korea, China and Southeast Asia. Just the threat of interrupting that flow could give China serious leverage in any dispute.
The U.S. is not going to send the 7th Fleet to resolve problems with fish or coral in the South China Sea, because that is not the vital interest of the United States, says Donald Weatherbee, fellow at the University of South Carolinas Walker Institute of International Studies. The vital American national interest is in freedom of navigation. (So far), China has done nothing to suggest that they are going to try to close off those waters to transit by vessels of the United States, Japan, Korea, or you name it. The minute the Chinese confronts us in that way, then its no longer a question of the Philippines or Indonesian national interest, it becomes a question of American national interests.
But while Obama wont referee competing territorial claims (urging a peaceful, diplomatic resolution for what thats worth), the Scarborough Shoal drama shows that such disputes wont be cost-free for China. After meeting with Philippines President Benigno Aquino III in Washington on Friday, Obama said the U.S. will continue to build up its forces in the region, and will help allies like the Philippines do the same.
So far, the U.S. and Philippines have agreed to open the former Clark Air Base and Subic Bay naval facilities for U.S. troop rotations, port visits and training exercises; to donate two more retired U.S. Coast Guard cutters to the Philippines navy; and send radar and ocean-surveillance equipment to keep an eye on you-know-who. Although Clark and Subic were closed in the early 90s, the U.S. has kept about 600 Special Forces soldiers at a Philippines army base in the southern part of the country for nearly a decade.
All this is part of the re-balancing of U.S. forces in the region. Marines are moving to Australia. The U.S. and Japan are planning joint training bases in the Marianas. Spanking-new littoral combat ships will operate out of Singapore. The U.S. insists this is unrelated to China, but of course its completely related.
China is going to view this as another example of containment, no matter what the U.S. calls it, says Jeffrey Hornung, an associate professor at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu.
Meanwhile, China hasnt made any friends with its handling of the Scarborough dispute. In addition to charging in with armed patrol boats and surveillance planes, it called off the visits of thousands of Chinese tourists to the Philippines, blocked imports of tens of millions of dollars of Philippines bananas, and even cancelled the highly-anticipated visit of Chinas national basketball team (in poor but basketball-mad Philippines, its hard to know which was the harsher response).
The dispute is sure to strengthen the hand of hawks in nearby Japan, which has a China problem in its own waters. China has made strident claims to ownership of the Senkaku Islands, which it calls the Daioyu islands, ever since a Chinese fishing was seized near the islands after colliding with a Japanese coast guard cutter in 2010. Japan released the ship and crew after China responded by embargoing shipments of rare earth materials, cancelling tourist trips to Japan and arresting a handful of Japanese businessmen on spying charges. (Japan later agreed to give 10 patrol ships to the Philippines, but says thats unrelated.)
For its part, China has played down the dispute with Japan in recent months, and has promised that it wont interfere with anyones navigation rights in the South China Sea. And it would seem foolish even to try. For all its double-digit defense spending, China is still many years away from being able to challenge U.S. military power, and no doubt knows that. Nor would it seem to have much to gain; Chinas economy is thoroughly dependent on sea-going trade and cutting off any shipping would mean cutting off its own, as well.
So the U.S. is telling China it can take all the fish and oil it can grab but dont try to stop any ships along the way.
U.S. Takes A Pass For Now On China Sea Disputes | Battleland | TIME.com
It looks like China has taught USA a lesson about peaceful behavior 
Avoiding a U.S.-China War
Relations between the United States and China are on a course that may one day lead to war.
This month, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced that by 2020, 60 percent of the U.S. Navy will be deployed in the Pacific. Last November, in Australia, President Obama announced the establishment of a U.S. military base in that country, and threw down an ideological gauntlet to China with his statement that the United States will continue to speak candidly to Beijing about the importance of upholding international norms and respecting the universal human rights of the Chinese people.
The dangers inherent in present developments in American, Chinese and regional policies are set out in The China Choice: Why America Should Share Power, an important forthcoming book by the Australian international affairs expert Hugh White. As he writes, Washington and Beijing are already sliding toward rivalry by default. To escape this, White makes a strong argument for a concert of powers in Asia, as the best and perhaps only way that this looming confrontation can be avoided. The economic basis of such a U.S.-China agreement is indeed already in place.
The danger of conflict does not stem from a Chinese desire for global leadership. Outside East Asia, Beijing is sticking to a very cautious policy, centered on commercial advantage without military components, in part because Chinese leaders realize that it would take decades and colossal naval expenditure to allow them to mount a global challenge to the United States, and that even then they would almost certainly fail.
In East Asia, things are very different.
For most of its history, China has dominated the region. When it becomes the largest economy on earth, it will certainly seek to do so. While China cannot build up naval forces to challenge the United States in distant oceans, it would be very surprising if in future it will not be able to generate missile and air forces sufficient to deny the U.S. Navy access to the seas around China. Moreover, China is engaged in territorial disputes with other states in the region over island groups disputes in which Chinese popular nationalist sentiments have become heavily engaged.
With communism dead, the Chinese administration has relied very heavily and successfully on nationalism as an ideological support for its rule. The problem is that if clashes erupt over these islands, Beijing may find itself in a position where it cannot compromise without severe damage to its domestic legitimacy very much the position of the European great powers in 1914.
In these disputes, Chinese nationalism collides with other nationalisms particularly that of Vietnam, which embodies strong historical resentments. The hostility to China of Vietnam and most of the other regional states is at once Americas greatest asset and greatest danger. It means that most of Chinas neighbors want the United States to remain militarily present in the region. As White argues, even if the United States were to withdraw, it is highly unlikely that these countries would submit meekly to Chinese hegemony.
But if the United States were to commit itself to a military alliance with these countries against China, Washington would risk embroiling America in their territorial disputes. In the event of a military clash between Vietnam and China, Washington would be faced with the choice of either holding aloof and seeing its credibility as an ally destroyed, or fighting China.
Neither the United States nor China would win the resulting war outright, but they would certainly inflict catastrophic damage on each other and on the world economy. If the conflict escalated into a nuclear exchange, modern civilization would be wrecked. Even a prolonged period of military and strategic rivalry with an economically mighty China will gravely weaken Americas global position. Indeed, U.S. overstretch is already apparent for example in Washingtons neglect of the crumbling states of Central America.
To avoid this,
Whites suggested East Asian order would establish red lines that the United States and China would both agree not to cross most notably a guarantee not to use force without the others permission, or in clear self-defense. Most sensitively of all, while China would have to renounce the use of force against Taiwan, Washington would most probably have to publicly commit itself to the reunification of Taiwan with China.
Equally important, China would have to acknowledge the legitimacy of the U.S. presence in East Asia, since this is desired by other East Asian states, and the United States would have to acknowledge the legitimacy of Chinas existing political order, since it has brought economic breakthrough and greatly enhanced real freedoms to the people of China. Under such a concert, U.S. statements like those of President Obama in support of Chinas democratization would have to be jettisoned.
As White argues, such a concert of power between the United States, China and regional states would be so difficult to arrange that it would hardly be worth considering if the alternatives were not so bad. But as his book brings out with chilling force, the alternatives may well be catastrophic.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/13/opinion/avoiding-a-us-china-war.html
Good, now we have "peace in our time." 
