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News Analysis: Wanton rhetoric heating up East Asia rivalry
On Jan
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n Jan. 12, 1950, then US secretary of state Dean Acheson at the National Press Club in Washington DC defined the US 'defensive perimeter' in Asia Pacific as a line from the Aleutians in the Northern Pacific to Japan's Ryukyu Islands, and then down to the Philippines.
Whether he meant it or not, Acheson's remarks were interpreted by many as an exclusion of South Korea from the US military shield.
Six months later, North Korea's army crossed the 38th parallel, igniting a three-year conflict that claimed some 5 million lives.
Historians have since proven that North Korea's plans for the invasion predated Acheson's remarks. Yet the statement was publicly perceived at the time as a demarcation of how far the US would intervene militarily.
Last week US President Barack Obama delivered a major foreign policy speech to the graduating class at West Point military academy, invoking American exceptionalism and characterizing the US as an indispensable global leader. Aside from the chest-thumping, the speech frequently seemed like a checklist of global problems that lacked a novel overarching theme.
For us in Asia, specifically Southeast and East Asia, his address was a confusing bromide that was worrying for its potentially divisive language.
In the three instances that China was directly mentioned, it was done so with menace. Obama seemed to throw down the gauntlet, suggesting the US would have to rise to the China challenge.
First, he framed China's growing power as a regional threat, in the same vein as Russia. Obama claimed that 'China's economic rise and military reach worries its neighbors'.
Second, Obama described events in the South China Sea involving China as 'regional aggression' that, if unchecked, 'will ultimately impact our allies, and could draw in our military'.
In the third mention of China, Obama remarked on throwing American might behind Southeast Asian nations in their diplomatic negotiations with China on the South China Sea.
In itself, such rhetoric is nothing new, but Obama then seemed to draw an Acheson-like perimeter around when American military force would be employed: 'unilaterally if necessary ['¦] when our people are threatened; when our livelihood is at stake; or when the security of our allies is in danger'.
The question relating to the South China Sea is thus whether Washington would act unilaterally, without involving Japan, the Philippines or any other major ally.
Does Vietnam ' which is not a traditional ally of the US and has a long history of antagonism with China, having fought a bitter border war in 1979 ' feel any more assured after Obama's speech?
The West Point speech should be taken in the context of reinforcing rhetoric and events in this region that have continued to boil in the past month.
During his visit to Tokyo in late April, Obama said that the US 'commitment to Japan's security is absolute and article five [of the security treaty] covers all territories under Japan's administration, including the Senkaku Islands'.
Just this weekend, at a security dialogue in Singapore, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel cautioned China on its 'destabilizing actions' in the South China Sea, and warned that 'the United States will not look the other way'.
What students of political science are learning from the transpiring events is that the realpolitik of 21st century diplomacy is fundamentally no different to the last century. The main difference is how coordinated the US is in its Asia policy, and whether it will truly back up its rhetoric with action.
In the 5,000-word West Point speech, there was not a single mention of Obama's 'pivot' to Asia.
It seems peculiar that every American official and diplomat coming to this region would tout the word 'pivot', yet the American president would not even mention it in a major policy speech.
We can only surmise that internally, there was no real comprehensive pivot in the minds of most policy makers in the US. There was structural repositioning, but the priority remains unchanged, particularly in the post-Hillary Clinton State Department.
It also reinforces the belief that the 'pivot' was nothing more than a calculated strategy to rally allies in containing China.
Early on in his speech, Obama stressed that America's position had rarely been stronger, relative to the rest of the world. 'Our military has no peer. The odds of a direct threat against us by any nation are low.'
Yet it simply underlines that, post-Cold War and in a new century, the hopes of a less tenuous world are even more improbable.
And the gloomiest part is that Southeast Asian countries are once again the frontline casualties of the saber rattling.
Obama's support for the negotiations by ASEAN members with China on the South China Sea should be welcomed as long as it is part of a strategy of preventive diplomacy rather than a containment strategy.
Emboldening weaker countries to stand up against China only further imperils stability, especially when fueled by the bitter history of rivalry in the region.
Perhaps too much is being interpreted from Obama's speech. But we should remember how Acheson's remarks were also interpreted in multiple ways. And look what happened six months later.
