Isn’t China ‘our’ friend? ‘Our’ economic miracle? ‘Our’ photo opportunity to band together as comrades to show US and the West the proverbial Chink middle finger?
Then why did MM Lee, in a move guaranteed to help every Chinese flame forum achieve nuclear critical mass, make the following statement during the US-Asean Business Council’s 25th anniversary dinner in Washington on Oct 27:
‘The size of China makes it impossible for the rest of Asia, including Japan and India, to match it in weight and capacity in about 20 to 30 years. So we need America to strike a balance.‘
Reading this, Singaporeans must be suffering from some serious cognitive dissonance: on the one hand, we’re constantly told that we have to hitch the economic future of our children to the Chinese bandwagon or face imminent starvation, and then on the other, to hear implicit claims from our leaders that China is not a trustworthy partner for the long term, requiring ‘geopolitical balancing’ from the US, since the Nips and Indians don’t have what it takes to keep China in line.
Local detractors – as always – will say that MM Lee skipped a daily prescription of dopamine. But I would argue that the MM is reading from a wider canvas: this smart old codger is one of the few who understand why US behaves the way it does, and I think he got it spot on with this one.
To understand why MM Lee is (sigh) right, here’s some required reading from STRATFOR:
Strategy, as we have argued, is less a matter of choice than a matter of reality imposing itself on presidents. Former U.S. President George W. Bush, for example, rarely had a chance to make strategy. He was caught in a whirlwind after only nine months in office and spent the rest of his presidency responding to events, making choices from a menu of very bad options. Similarly, Obama came into office with a preset menu of limited choices. He seems to be fighting to create new choices, not liking what is on the menu. He may succeed. But it is important to understand the overwhelming forces that shape his choices and to understand the degree to which whatever he chooses is embedded in U.S. grand strategy, a strategy imposed by geopolitical reality.
The article goes on to argue that America’s grand strategy is essentially modeled after the British Empire, writ large at a global scale. The English strategy was simple: encourage potential rivals to engage in land-based conflict with one another (thereby keeping the rivals attention focused on immediate concerns, while at the same time reducing resources to build a navy), allowing it to control regional sea lanes. As such, UK in the 19th century was spared from the destruction of war, whilst giving it the opportunity to politically interference/influence (or provide direct aid where necessary) to maintain rivals in a delicate balance of power. If that failed to work, the final option was military – mostly through blockades of sea lanes.
STRATFOR argues that “[Lasting] empires are not created by someone deciding one day to build one.” Instead:
They emerge over time through a series of decisions having nothing to do with empire building, and frequently at the hands of people far more concerned with domestic issues than foreign policy. Paradoxically, leaders who consciously set out to build empires usually fail. Hitler is a prime example. His failure was that rather than ally with forces in the Soviet Union, he wished to govern directly, something that flowed from his ambitions for direct rule. Particularly at the beginning, the Roman and British empires were far less ambitious and far less conscious of where they were headed. They were primarily taking care of domestic affairs. They became involved in foreign policy as needed, following a strategy of controlling the seas while maintaining substantial ground forces able to prevail anywhere — but not everywhere at once — and a powerful alliance system based on supporting the ambitions of local powers against other local powers.
The limited choices available to the Obama administration (or whatever administration, whether it’s GOP or Dem) are dictated by the very existence of America as the “Elephant In The Room”, whether they like it or not. And these limited choices will guide the way America behaves towards rising powers like China, just like they did with Russia.
There are Obama supporters and opponents who also dream of the perfect balance: security for the United States achieved by not interfering in the affairs of others. They see foreign entanglements not as providing homeland security, but as generating threats to it. They do not understand that what they want, American prosperity without international risks, is by definition impossible. The U.S. economy is roughly 25 percent of the world’s economy. The American military controls the seas, not all at the same time, but anywhere it wishes at any given time. The United States also controls outer space. It is impossible for the United States not to intrude on the affairs of most countries in the world simply by virtue of its daily operations. The United States is an elephant that affects the world simply by being in the same room with it. The only way to not be an elephant is to shrink in size, and whether the United States would ever want this aside, decreasing power is harder to do than it might appear — and much more painful.
Obama’s challenge is managing U.S. power without decreasing its size and without imposing undue costs on it. This sounds like an attractive idea, but it ultimately won’t work: The United States cannot be what it is without attracting hostile attention. Actually, it is America’s presence — its very size — that intrudes on the world and generates hostility. Like that of Britain or Rome, U.S. grand strategy is driven by the sheer size of the national enterprise, a size achieved less through planning than by geography and history.
So what are the options available to the US? From the article:
First, the United States must maintain the balance of power in various regions in the world. It does this by supporting a range of powers, usually the weaker against the stronger. (Comment: i.e. the little island just to the bottom right of China where our boys are sent to lose their virginity) Ideally, this balance of power maintains itself without [too much] American effort and yields relative stability. But stability is secondary to keeping local powers focused on each other rather than on the United States: Stability is a rhetorical device, not a goal. The real U.S. interest lies in weakening and undermining emergent powers so they don’t ultimately rise to challenge American power. This is a strategy of nipping things in the bud.
Second, where emergent powers cannot be maintained through the regional balance of power, the United States has an interest in sharing the burden of containing it with other major powers. The United States will seek to use such coalitions either to intimidate the emerging power via economic power or, in extremis, via military power. (Comment: It’ll be a cold day in hell, or a clear day in Yangquan, when the US decides to close its bases in Japan, or for that matter, Sembawang)
Third, where it is impossible to build a coalition to coerce emerging powers, the United States must decide either to live with the emerging power, forge an alliance with it, or attack it unilaterally.
The interesting point from where we sit is not only how deeply embedded Obama is in U.S. grand strategy, but how deeply drawn he is into the unintended imperial enterprise that has dominated American foreign policy since the 1930s — an enterprise neither welcomed nor acknowledged by most Americans. Empires aren’t planned, at least not successful empires, as Hitler and Napoleon learned to their regret. Empires happen as the result of the sheer reality of power. The elephant in the room cannot stop being an elephant, nor can the smaller animals ignore him. No matter how courteous the elephant, it is his power — his capabilities — not his intentions that matter.
[Obama] came into the presidency promising to be more amiable than Bush, something not difficult given the circumstances. He is now trying to convert amiability into a coalition, a much harder thing to do. In the end, he will have to make hard decisions. In American foreign policy, however, the ideal strategy is always to buy time so as to let the bribes, bluffs and threats do their work. Obama himself probably doesn’t know what he will do; that will depend on circumstances. Letting events flow until they can no longer be tolerated is the essence of American grand strategy, a path Obama is following faithfully.
When we understand the choices available to the American Empire (make no mistake, that’s what the US is, whether it calls itself one or not), we understand where MM Lee is coming from. In his own inimitable way, he’s simply pointing out what should now be very obvious to us mere mortals: China is on its way to becoming an elephant, and the incumbent elephant in the room will do all it can – peaceful or otherwise – to trade time for risk.
It’s worthwhile pointing out STRATFOR’s own cheerful prediction of how such a strategy typically ends.
It should always be remembered that this long-standing American policy has frequently culminated in war, as with Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, Johnson and Bush. It was Clinton’s watchful waiting to see how things played out, after all, that allowed al Qaeda the time to build and strike. But this is not a criticism of Clinton — U.S. strategy is to trade time for risk. Over time, the risk might lead to war anyway, but then again, it might not. If war does come, American power is still decisive, if not in creating peace, then certainly in wreaking havoc upon rising powers. And that is the foundation of empire.
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