"Son of a Whore"

Beijing Commits Act of War, Obama Does Nothing

By GORDON G. CHANG

Saturday, China’s Defense Ministry said it would hand back to the U.S. Navy an underwater drone one of its boats had seized Thursday in the South China Sea. 

The return, it said, would be made “in an appropriate manner.”
The release of the drone, whenever it occurs, should not be the end of the saga. 

Washington must impose costs on Beijing for what constituted an act of piracy—and an act of war.
Chinese spokesman Yang Yujun said, in the words of the official Xinhua News Agency, that one of its navy’s lifeboats “located an unidentified device” and retrieved it “to prevent the device from causing harm to the safety of navigation and personnel of passing vessels.” 

The Chinese claimed to have “examined the device in a professional and responsible manner.”
In fact, China’s ships had long tailed the USNS Bowditch, an unarmed reconnaissance vessel. 

The crew of the Bowditch, who at the time were trying to retrieve the drone, repeatedly hailed by radio the Chinese sailors, who ignored their calls and, within 500 yards of the American craft, went into the water in a small boat to seize the drone, called a Littoral Battlespace Sensing glider. 

The Chinese by radio told the Bowditch they were keeping the drone.
The intentional taking of what the Defense Department later termed a “sovereign immune vessel” of the United States was an act of war. 

The size of the object for this purpose is not relevant. 

Whether drone or aircraft carrier, the principle is the same.
The seizure is only the latest act in a course of belligerent conduct spanning this century. 

The most notorious incident involved the clipping of the wing of a U.S. Navy EP-3 over the South China Sea on April 1, 2001 by a reckless Chinese pilot. 

After the stricken American plane landed on the Chinese island of Hainan, Beijing imprisoned the crew for 11 days and stripped the plane of its sensitive electronic equipment. 

Chinese leaders, for no apparent reason, required the craft to be chopped up so that it could not be flown away.
In September 2002, China’s media claimed a Chinese fishing boat intentionally rammed the Bowditch in the Yellow Sea to disable its sonar. 

The incident—there may have been no ramming but there was dangerous harassment of the Bowditch—occurred in international water.
In March 2009, Chinese craft tried to sever the towed sonar array from the USNS Impeccable in international water in the South China Sea. 

The Victorious, Impeccable’s sister ship, was subject to extreme harassment in March and May 2009.
There have been numerous Chinese intercepts of U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force planes and vessels since then, including a near collision in December 2013 involving the USS Cowpens, a missile cruiser, in the South China Sea.
This conduct continues because the U.S. does not exact costs on China. 

Worse, American administrations have rewarded Beijing for unjustifiable actions.
The Bush White House, for instance, essentially apologized to China and, on top of that, paid what was effectively a ransom to free the aviators of the EP-3. 

The amount was characterized as a payment for room and board, but the agreement to compensate China, regardless of terminology, was one of the lowest points in America’s history.
The Obama administration, unfortunately, adopted the Bush playbook. 

One month after the Impeccable and Victorious incidents in March 2009, the White House sent the chief of naval operations and a missile destroyer, the Fitzgerald, to China to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese navy. 

One month after that gesture of friendship to Beijing, the Chinese harassed the Victorious again.
Today, Obama cannot even talk about Chinese aggression. 

He did not, for example, mention it in his opening statement at his press conference Friday and did not address it when answering Mark Landler of the New York Times, who raised the drone seizure in his question.
Many, most notably Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, have ridiculed Donald Trump for the misspelling in his Saturday morning tweet on the subject—the president-elect meant “unprecedented” but instead created the word “unpresidented”—but at least he is addressing critical issues. 

That’s important, even if at times Trump misfires, as he did in his Saturday evening tweet suggesting the Chinese could keep the drone.
Trump, even when making mistakes, understands one thing. 

It is wrong for American leaders to pursue policies that ensure Beijing will put America’s men and women in harm’s way in China’s peripheral waters.
And those incidents will get worse. 

The site of Thursday’s drone seizure, about 50 nautical miles northwest of Subic Bay, is critical.
Beijing maintains it has sovereignty over 85 percent of the South China Sea with its infamous “nine-dash line” claim, which was rejected by a July 12 arbitral ruling in The Hague, and it has continued to complain of American surveillance activity inside that now-invalidated perimeter.
Yet the drone incident took place so close to the Philippine shore that it was beyond China’s claimed area. 

In short, there was absolutely no justification for the Chinese navy to grab the drone.
This brazen act suggests two things. 

First, China has become completely lawless. 

That means Washington’s efforts of more than four decades to “enmesh” that country into the international system’s network of treaties, laws, rules, and conventions has completely failed.
Second, Beijing now thinks it can, with impunity, do whatever it wants wherever it wants. 

If it had the power, China would undoubtedly interfere with American shipping as it now does with American military vessels and aircraft.
The goal of Washington policy, therefore, should be to prevent China from ever obtaining that power. And the first step to doing that is start imposing severe diplomatic and economic costs on Beijing for, among other things, interfering with America’s right to sail and fly through the global commons.
Aggressors always urge calm after taking provocative actions, as China is now trying to do. 

This time, Washington should keep the temperature up.

Duterte's flirting with Beijing is disaster for the US

Rodrigo Duterte claimed that a new alliance of the Philippines, China, and Russia would emerge: "There are three of us against the world." 

By Max Boot

Xi Jinping, right, with Duterte during a welcome ceremony outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

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, the worst mass murderer 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 year. 

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, 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 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 and ad 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 are said 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.
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 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.