Soros calls Trump’s China stance his greatest foreign policy achievement, warns on Huawei

By Edmund DeMarche

George Soros, the left-wing billionaire, offered partial praise for Trump in an op-ed published Monday night over his tough stance on China but went on to urge Congress not to allow Trump to use Huawei—the second-largest smartphone maker in the world—as a bargaining chip in his fight for reelection.
Soros, who famously shorted the British pound in 1992 and made a $1 billion profit, penned the op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. 

He said perhaps Trump's only foreign policy win during his presidency was "the development of a coherent and genuinely bipartisan policy toward Xi Jinping’s China," and his administration's move to declare Beijing a "strategic rival."
Soros also praised the administration's move to place Huawei on the Commerce Department’s so-called "entity list," which prevents U.S. companies from dealing the telecom giant.
Soros wrote about the tense competition in the 5G market and said the U.S. has a commanding lead over China. 

But he warned that Trump "may soon undermine his own China policy and cede the advantage to Beijing."
He said he believes Trump wants to free himself from any constraints by Congress and be able to remove Huawei from the list at his own discretion. 

China has insisted that Huawei be removed from the list as a prerequisite for any trade agreement.
"In my view, he wants to arrange a meeting with Xi Jinping as the 2020 election approaches and make a trade deal with him, and he wants Huawei's status on the table as one of his bargaining chips," Soros wrote.
Soros called on Congress to act and pointed to Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., and Sen. Mitt Romney, R- Utah, for introducing amendments that would require Congress’ blessing for removal.
"As founder of the Open Society Foundations, my interest in defeating Xi Jinping’s China goes beyond U.S. national interests," he wrote. 

"As I explained in a speech in Davos earlier this year, I believe that the social-credit system Beijing is building, if allowed to expand, could sound the death knell of open societies not only in China but also around the globe."

Yesterday’s Cold War Shows How to Beat China Today

The Trump administration has been ignoring the playbook that produced the downfall of the Soviet Union.
BY STEPHEN M. WALT
U.S. President Ronald Reagan, commemorating the 750th anniversary of Berlin, reviews honor guard of Royal Regiment of Scotland (wearing kilts) on June 12, 1987 after his landing at Berlin Tempelhof Airport. 

Commentators of many stripes increasingly refer to the deteriorating relationship between the United States and China as a new “cold war.” 

As some readers may recall, I think analogies to the earlier rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union should be viewed with some skepticism, as there are important differences between the two situations. 

But analytic caution doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to draw useful lessons from the past and use them to inform policy decisions today. 

Why did the United States ultimately triumph over its Soviet rival? 

What advantages made victory more likely, and how did U.S. leaders exploit them? 

How might that earlier experience help Americans retain the upper hand over China in the decades ahead?
Here are five important lessons from the Cold War, lessons that should be guiding contemporary U.S. foreign policy. 

Spoiler alert: Donald Trump has been ignoring or violating every one of them.

Lesson #1: Make sure you have the right allies.
The United States won the Cold War in part because its market-based economy was larger, more diverse, and more efficient than Soviet-style central planning. 

But it helped that America’s principal allies were also a lot wealthier and more powerful than most Soviet client states were. 

As the U.S. diplomat George Kennan’s original formulation of containment emphasized, the key to victory over the long term was to keep the “key centers of industrial power” (i.e., Western Europe and Japan) aligned with the West and out of Soviet hands. 

That’s what containment was really all about.
This objective led directly to the formation of NATO and the construction of the hub-and-spoke alliance system in Asia, and the result was an overwhelming preponderance of power in favor of the West. 

Although the Soviet Union was the world’s second-largest economy and a formidable military power, its allies were much weaker than America’s. 

Taken together, the United States and its allies had roughly 25 percent more people than the Soviet alliance network, nearly three times the combined GNP, and a slight edge in total military manpower—and they outspent the Soviet bloc by roughly 25 percent every year.
As I explained way back in 1987, this imbalance of power in America’s favor resulted from four key advantages. 

First, the United States had a powerful economy in its own right. 

Second, the United States was far from the other key centers of world power, while the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact were right next door. 

The proximate threat of Soviet power made most of Europe and many states in Asia eager to ally with the United States. 

Third, Soviet military doctrine emphasized offensive conquest, further increasing others’ perceptions of threat, and Moscow never abandoned its formal commitment to spreading world revolution, which made noncommunist states even more nervous. 

And the more the USSR tried to compensate for its weaker position by building up military power, the more other states wanted to align with the United States.
Relatedly, the United States also benefited by adopting a policy of “divide and rule” toward its communist rivals. 

The early Cold War fixation with the so-called communist monolith eventually gave way to a more realistic policy, most notably in U.S. President Richard Nixon’s opening to China in 1972. 

This move left Moscow increasingly isolated and added to its strategic burdens.
What about now? 

Thus far, Trump’s presidency has been a textbook case in how not to manage America’s various international partnerships. 

He abandoned the Trans-Pacific Partnership on his fourth day as president, undercutting the U.S. strategic position in Asia and handing China an easy victory. 

He compounded that error by launching trade wars with nearly everyone, including America’s Asian allies, and by engaging in an impulsive, poorly executed outreach to North Korea.
Trump’s desire to get Europe to take greater responsibility for its own defense has considerable merit, but insulting European leaders, threatening trade wars, attacking the European Union, and jacking up U.S. defense spending is the wrong way to do it. 

Europeans regard Trump’s decision to abandon the nuclear deal with Iran as an ill-considered blunder, doing further damage to America’s reputation for acumen and reliability. 

Similarly, Trump’s decision to give carte blanche to Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt has empowered these governments’ worst tendencies, yet produced no tangible strategic benefits for the United States.
The result: Washington is still subsidizing Europe’s defense, tied to increasingly problematic clients in the Middle East, and in a weaker position vis-à-vis China. 

Moreover, whatever Trump’s initial instincts might have been, he has continued his predecessors’ ineffectual approach to Russia, thereby cementing a growing strategic partnership between Moscow and Beijing. 

Instead of playing divide-and-rule, he has been pushing the two Asian giants closer together, while Moscow plays divide-and-rule against NATO and the EU. 

The United States seems to have forgotten this critical Cold War lesson, but its rivals haven’t.

Lesson #2: Investing in science, technology, and education pays off.

Having the world’s most sophisticated and technologically advanced economy was an enormous asset for the United States. 

Not only did it fuel impressive economic growth, but it also gave the U.S. military important advantages over its Soviet rival. 

When the Sputnik 1 launch in 1957 raised fears that the United States might be losing its scientific and technological edge, initiatives like the National Defense Education Act of 1958 produced a new renaissance of scientific and engineering development and ensured that the USSR would trail the United States in most areas of scientific endeavor.
Side note: In addition to encouraging the study of science and mathematics, this same initiative also sought to encourage study of foreign languages and cultures. 

By providing experts who could help devise appropriate policies for dealing with different regions, support for area studies was also important in helping win the Cold War.
By contrast, the Trump administration seems to have little respect for scientific expertise and has twice attempted to gut federal support for scientific research. 

Fortunately, Congress has twice stepped in to restore, and in some cases, increase, research funding. Nor does Trump seem to think area expertise is needed to conduct an intelligent foreign policy. 

If he did, he wouldn’t have given his son-in-law critical responsibilities in the Middle East and might have listened to the many experts who warned that his approaches to North Korea and Iran were doomed to fail.
And how is the United States faring regarding China? 

China’s scientific achievements have risen steadily, even if it still trails the United States in many areas. 

Equally important, China has been training a large cadre of regional experts to conduct its diplomacy, while the United States has been gutting the State Department and relying on untrained amateurs (aka campaign donors) for decades. 

As William Burns makes clear in his recent book The Back Channel, America’s disregard of diplomacy (and regional expertise) is a massive self-inflicted wound. 

But not according to Donald Trump, who said he’s “the only one that matters” and thought he could charm or bluster his way into a nuclear deal with North Korea.

Lesson #3: Greater openness, transparency, and accountability gave the United States an important advantage.
No political system is perfect, and even dedicated public servants sometimes make big mistakes. 

But democracies with a tradition of free speech and a vigorous, vigilant media are more likely to recognize errors and (eventually) correct them. (As the economist Amartya Sen argued in a famous study, that’s a big reason why no well-established democracy has ever suffered a massive famine.) The United States clearly blundered when it plunged deeply into the Vietnam War, for example, but it began to cut its losses with Vietnamization and eventually got out completely, if not as soon as it should have.
By contrast, the sclerotic Soviet system—where free speech was fully suppressed—was both economically inefficient and prone to more catastrophic failures, whether in its own Afghan campaign, the brutal Soviet gulag, the disaster at Chernobyl, or the environmental harms inflicted over communism’s long reign. 

Maoist China suffered from similar disasters, most notably in the millions who died from famine during Mao Zedong’s ill-conceived Great Leap Forward.
To be fair, openness, transparency, and accountability have been under siege in the United States for some time, and the Trump administration isn’t the first to play fast and loose with facts or to attempt to shield itself from outside scrutiny. 

That said, the 45th president has taken this aversion to accountability to a new level: attacking the media as the “enemy of the people,” lying without restraint, and going to enormous lengths to prevent legitimate scrutiny of his own conduct as a candidate and as president. 

Like would-be authoritarians everywhere, his goal is to become the sole arbiter of truth in the public mind, so that it ignores his mistakes and continues to embrace his agenda.

Lesson #4: Playing rope-a-dope (i.e., letting the Soviet Union squander resources in strategically marginal areas) was a smart strategy.
Back in 1974, Muhammad Ali defeated a younger, bigger, and stronger George Foreman in heavyweight boxing match in Zaire. 

The bout was fought on a hot and humid night, and Ali’s strategy—which he called the “rope-a-dope”—consisted of leaning back on the ropes and covering up while Foreman punched himself into exhaustion with ineffective body blows. 

The fight ended when Ali came off the ropes in the eighth round and knocked Foreman out.
There’s a valuable strategic lesson here. 

As discussed above, by the mid-1950s the United States was allied with most of the world’s major industrial powers. 

The coalition it put together vastly outstripped the Soviet Union and its various clients in productive capacity, military power, wealth, public legitimacy, and overall well-being. 

Moscow did bring together a number of quasi-Marxist or socialist regimes in the developing world, but these relatively weak states did not make its global alliance significantly stronger, especially when compared with the U.S.-led counterpart.
Although the United States did try to undermine these arrangements (and sometimes succeeded), it generally did less to undermine them than Moscow did to prop them up. 

The final straw was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, which sped up its collapse. 

Like Ali, the United States let the Soviet Union punch backing burdensome client states and fighting costly wars.
Make no mistake: The United States also wasted considerable money and lives fighting peripheral wars like Vietnam, but its economy was significantly stronger, and most of its allies were assets, not burdens. 

Playing rope-a-dope was a smart strategy from a U.S. perspective, contributing to its Cold War victory. 

The lesson: Letting opponents squander significant resources for small gains is a smart strategy. 

A corollary: Make sure your opponents don’t lure you into the same error, and don’t confuse a big military budget with success.

 Spending more is not better if less is more than enough, and especially if doing so undermines your economic well-being over the long haul.
Sadly, Trump seems to understand none of this. 

He believes throwing more money at the bloated and inefficient Pentagon (and ordering aerial flybys and parades) will “Make America Great Again,” but it is more likely to sap its economic strength. Trump also promised to get “out of the nation-building business”; instead, he imitated former President Barack Obama and sent more troops to Afghanistan. 

He’s ramped up global anti-terrorism efforts, backed the futile Saudi war in Yemen, and nearly went to war against Iran a few weeks ago. 

To be sure, he inherited most of these policies.
If the United States is facing a new cold war with China, the proper course is to stop wasting time, money, and lives on peripheral matters and to focus laserlike on managing that critical bilateral relationship. 

Obama tried to do this with the so-called pivot to Asia, but he didn’t quite pull it off. 

Thus far, Trump has failed to grasp that doing more to confront China requires doing less elsewhere—and getting other states to aid U.S. efforts instead of picking fights with them, too.
Lesson #5: Nice countries finish first.
The United States is not as virtuous as Americans like to pretend, but during the Cold War, it benefited from standing for freedom, human rights, and other popular political values. 

U.S. leaders also recognized that making progress on civil rights would be important in the context of the Cold War, as greater racial equality would make the country look better in the eyes of nonwhite societies around the world.
To be sure, the United States backed authoritarians when it thought it had to and sometimes acted with callous disregard for foreign populations. 

But on balance—and especially when compared to its Soviet rival—the United States was seen as standing for something more than just the naked exercise of power.
Equally important, U.S. leaders consistently treated their foreign counterparts with respect, even when they were privately angered by others’ actions or when they had to play hardball with them within the broader alliance context. 

French President Charles de Gaulle irritated several U.S. presidents on more than one occasion, but you rarely heard U.S. officials denouncing him in public. 

U.S. officials understood that denigrating or humiliating one’s partners would generate resentment and undermine Western unity, so they kept the mailed fist inside a velvet glove. 

Because the United States was so much stronger than others, it usually got its way. 

But its leaders were wise enough not to boast about it, lest this trigger resentment and impair cooperation.
By contrast, the communist world was a seething cauldron of resentment and fratricidal animosity. Yugoslavia’s Tito and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin fell out quickly after World War II, and so did Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and Mao Zedong in the 1950s. 

Soviet and Chinese troops clashed along the Ussuri River in 1969, and Moscow even contemplated a preventive nuclear strike against Beijing’s nascent nuclear arsenal. 

Relations inside the Warsaw Pact were also less than harmonious, and the USSR had to intervene in East Germany (1953), Hungary (1956), and Czechoslovakia (1968) to keep these satellites in the fold. Communist Vietnam went to war against the Marxist Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, which eventually led to a short but intense border war between Vietnam and China. 

Despite sometimes serious policy disagreements, America’s Cold War alliance system was a model of harmony when compared to its communist counterpart.
Needless to say, Trump flunks here as well.

Even as he heaps praise on autocrats like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman, and thuggish blusterers like Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines or Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Trump calls Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “weak,” says President Emmanuel Macron of France is exhibiting “foolishness,” and tweets out demeaning jibes at German Chancellor Angela Merkel and London Mayor Sadiq Khan. 

He’s acted boorishly at international conferences and alarmed experienced foreign diplomats with his insecurity, ignorance, and incompetence.
Not surprisingly, America’s image in most countries has plummeted since Trump took office. 

This decline in part reflects concerns about Trump’s erratic decision-making, but some of it clearly reflects global disdain for his personal conduct. 

Khrushchev undermined Soviet foreign policy when he banged his shoe in the U.N. General Assembly; Trump does something similar nearly every time he tweets.
Being powerful matters a lot in world politics, but being popular or at least respected isn’t irrelevant. The United States won the Cold War in part because it was stronger and more resilient than the Soviet Union, but also because Washington’s values and actions—for all of its shortcomings and hypocrisy—proved more popular with most of the world than Moscow’s did. 

This is an advantage the United States probably still retains as its competition with China heats up, unless Trump and his minions manage to squander it too.

White House Criticizes China Over El Salvador Recognition

By Austin Ramzy

El Salvador’s acting foreign minister, Carlos Castaneda, left, and his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, at a ceremony in Beijing Tuesday to mark the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

HONG KONG — The White House on Thursday accused China of “apparent interference” in El Salvador’s domestic politics after the Central American nation established diplomatic ties with Beijing this week.
The statement also sharply criticized El Salvador, saying the United States would re-evaluate its relationship with the country.
The Trump administration’s comments are its strongest pushback to date on China’s efforts to curb the international recognition of Taiwan, the self-ruled democracy Beijing claims as part of its territory. 

They also reflect a growing unease about China’s growing influence in a region where the United States has long been the dominant force.
El Salvador severed ties with Taiwan on Tuesday, leaving Taiwan with just 17 formal diplomatic partners. 

China has stepped up its campaign to woo Taiwan’s diplomatic partners since Tsai Ing-wen was elected Taiwan’s president in 2016, replacing a more pro-Beijing leader.
The White House comments were far sterner than those made by the State Department after other countries in the region, including Panama and the Dominican Republic, switched ties from Taiwan to China.
It accused El Salvador’s government of making the decision, which “affects not just El Salvador, but also the economic health and security of the entire Americas region,” without transparency months before an election.
“The El Salvadoran government’s receptiveness to China’s apparent interference in the domestic politics of a Western Hemisphere country is of grave concern to the United States, and will result in a re-evaluation of our relationship with El Salvador,” it said.
The White House’s toughened its tone toward countries that have shifted recognition from Taiwan to China this summer after Burkina Faso made the switch in May.
“Previously it was unusual for the U.S. government to make such remarks, if for no other reason that the U.S. itself made this switch in 1979,” said Ross Darrell Feingold, a Taipei-based consultant who advises on political risk in Asia.
Taiwan’s embassy in San Salvador. El Salvador’s decision to cut ties leaves the Taipei government with just 17 formal diplomatic partners.

When the United States established formal ties with the People’s Republic of China in 1979, it ceased formal relations with Taiwan. 

But the United States maintains a robust informal relationship with Taiwan, and recently unveiled a $250 million complex in its capital, Taipei, that serves as a de facto embassy.
The stronger U.S. tone likely reflects the influence of John R. Bolton, a staunch Taiwan defender who became President Trump’s national security adviser in April, Mr. Feingold said.
“Bolton has a long record of support for Taiwan, including changes to the traditional approaches to the trilateral U.S.-China-Taiwan relations, so it is no surprise that we are seeing something different by way of a U.S. response to China’s actions that reduce Taiwan’s international space,” he said.
The government of El Salvador, which is led by a party of former leftist guerrillas, has also been a frequent target of Republican critics.
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida said this week that he had spoken with President Trump about ending American aid to El Salvador after it established formal ties with Beijing, and he would join with a fellow Republican, Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado, to carry that out.
Mr. Gardner told Reuters on Thursday that he would introduce legislation that would enable the State Department to use aid and other levers to encourage countries to maintain Taiwan ties.
Mr. Rubio wrote on Twitter that there “would be real consequences in our relationship with #ElSalvador if they broke with #Taiwan in favor of #China. They think we are going to react the same way we did to #Panama & #DominicanRepublic. They are very wrong.”
In January the Trump administration canceled a program that allowed 200,000 Salvadorans to temporarily live in the United States. 

That move prompted criticism that it would destabilize a country struggling with high levels of street crime.
President Trump has shown before that he is willing to shake up the traditional framework of ties between the United States, China and Taiwan. 

In December 2016, before he had assumed office, he took a congratulatory call from President Tsai, breaking with decades of precedent. 

He later said in a phone call with Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, that he would abide by the “One China policy,” under which the United States does not formally recognize the government of Taiwan.
Taiwan’s foreign minister, Joseph Wu, said Friday he was not worried that Taiwan could be used as a pawn of the United States in the current trade dispute with China.
“We understand Washington D.C.’s support of Taiwan continues to be very strong,” Mr. Wu told Bloomberg. 

“Taiwan is a positive element in the U.S. economy and I just don’t worry that Taiwan is going to become a chip to be negotiated with by the U.S.”

As China Rises, Australia Asks Itself: Can It Rely on America?

The United States, under Donald Trump, cannot be relied on as a stable partner.
By JANE PERLEZ and DAMIEN CAVE

United States Marines marching in Darwin, Australia, this year on Anzac Day, a day of remembrance for veterans. The United States has long been Australia’s security guarantor. 

BEIJING — When the Australian government set out to write a new foreign policy paper, it faced hotly contested questions shaping the country’s future: Will China replace the United States as the dominant power in Asia? If so, how quickly?
The government’s answers came in a so-called white paper released last month by the administration of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. 

For sure, China is challenging the United States in Asia, though in the end, it argues, America will prevail and Australia can count on its security guarantor of the past 70 years.
But a prominent defense strategist, Hugh White, has disputed that view, arguing in a new essay that China has arrived, the United States is fading and Australia must find a way to survive on its own.
The contrasting assessments have set off a debate in Australia about the durability of the American alliance and China’s intentions toward Australia.
The government tried to reassure the public that there was no need to make a choice between China, Australia’s biggest trade partner, and the United States, its security patron. 

Despite the America First policies of Donald Trump, who is unpopular in Australia, the United States of old would endure. 

Australia would deal with the changing environment, it said, by working “harder to maximize our international influence.”
The arguments come against a backdrop of concerns over China’s growing influence in Australia. These include Chinese meddling in Australian universities and ethnically Chinese businessmen with connections to the government in Beijing giving generously to election campaigns.
Australia’s heavy reliance on iron ore and energy exports to China has long raised questions about the need to diversify its economy. 

However, dependence on China has only grown, as an influx of Chinese students and travelers now also helps to sustain the higher education and tourism industries.
Australia has tried to balance its growing economic dependence on China with its longstanding post-World War II security relationship with the United States.
But China’s assertive behavior in the South China Sea, and Trump’s decision to abandon the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the trade pact America once sought to lead, have rattled the underpinnings of Australia’s policies.

Australia’s leaders have gone beyond the white paper’s careful reassurances, openly declaring that Australia must confront the shifting power dynamics of the region.
Mr. Turnbull has called this the first time in Australia’s history that its dominant trading partner was not also its dominant security partner. 

He argued that the country should see this as an opportunity and not a risk, but his comments were also laced with uncertainty and concern.
“Now power is shifting, and the rules and institutions are under challenge,” he said. 

“The major players are testing their relationships with each other, while undergoing rapid change themselves.”
Foreign policy experts say the white paper’s assessment of American staying power does not reflect a growing consensus among many Australian policymakers that the United States, at least under its current leadership, cannot be relied on as a stable partner.
Michael Fullilove, executive director at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney, described what many Australians see as a fraying of the liberal international order because, he said, “Donald Trump is neither liberal in his inclinations nor orderly in his behavior.”
Many say it’s time for Australia to stop pretending about American intentions, and begin considering other options. 

This view has found one of its clearest and most strident voices in White, whose 27,000-word essay bluntly argues that Australia needs to wake up: The game is over and China has already won.
“We all underestimated China’s power and resolve and overestimated America’s,” wrote White, who worked on sensitive intelligence and military matters with the United States as a senior official at the Australian Defense Department. 

“Not only is America failing to remain the dominant power, it is failing to retain any substantial strategic role at all.”

Trump with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in New York this year. The Australian government says it can still count on American support. 

In reply to the government’s paper, Mr. White said Australia’s stance was unrealistic because it clung too much to the vestiges of a fading power that would not be able to stay ahead of China’s economic strength.
“The paper has an elegiac feel, the sense of a sunset,” he said in an interview.
The biggest splash came from Mr. White ’s recommendations for what Australia should do about an American retreat. 

Faced with Chinese efforts to impose its influence and different political values, he said Australia will have to do more to defend itself, including acquiring nuclear weapons.
China’s rise is likely to spark an arms race in the Asia-Pacific, with both Japan and South Korea likely to become nuclear powers within a couple of decades.
“And the logic that drives them has implications for others,” Mr. White said. 

Australia could remain a middle power by keeping only a small nuclear arsenal. 

“It might look something like Britain’s submarine-based nuclear force,” he wrote.
American officials have tried to counter such conclusions. 

During his visit to Sydney in April, Vice President Mike Pence told Australian business and government leaders that the United States remains Australia’s most vital economic partner, with American investment growing by 50 percent in the past three years.
Another sign that Washington may seek to reassure its Australian allies has been talk of the possible appointment of Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr., the United States commander in the Pacific, as the next ambassador to Australia. 

Some American officials have said they would welcome the move because it would send a message to China that the United States will not retreat.
Australian media have chimed in, calling Admiral Harris “China’s least favorite American.” 

Still, it’s far from clear whether that would be enough to offset the deep concerns here about Donald Trump.
Australia has also tried to hedge its bets by reaching out to other democracies in the region, particularly Japan and India. 

Citing concerns about China’s advance into the South China Sea, the government’s white paper backed the idea of joining India, Japan and the United States to promote a free and democratic Indo-Pacific region that could offset China.
In China, the Foreign Ministry took offense at the comments about the South China Sea, saying Australia had no business meddling. 

The state-run Global Times suggested China might retaliate with boycotts in tourism and higher education.
“Fortunately, the country is not that important and China can move its ties with Australia to a back seat and disregard its sensitivities,” the newspaper said.
In his essay, Mr. White warned that Beijing could use its growing naval power to ramp up pressure by contesting Australia’s claims to remote pieces of Australian territory, such as islands that it controls in the Antarctic, or by deploying forces to South Pacific neighbors, where China enjoys good relations.
Analysts sympathetic to the Turnbull government have pushed back, saying Mr. White’s essay paints an overly alarmist picture.
“While many of the trends in the region are concerning, White underestimates America’s stake in the region,” said Andrew Shearer, who was an adviser to former Prime Minister Tony Abbott. 

Mr. White is “is premature in reaching the conclusion that Trump will acquiesce to Chinese supremacy, and that the United States is already withdrawing.”
Still, the essay performed a useful service, Mr. Shearer said, by drawing attention to the rapidly shifting balance of power in Asia and the need for a more coherent response by Washington.
Chinese analysts said by 2030 China will have won the geopolitical race.

“Everyone will then live under the shadow of Chinese power,” they said.

America does not get entirely short shrift from Mr. White. 

“It won’t be the dominant power in Asia,” he wrote, “but it will have both the means and the motive to exert some influence over China’s conduct — including in East Asia — through the global system in which it will play a key role.”

Chinese Peril

Australia Wants the U.S. to Stay in Asia as a Check to Chinese Power
By Keshia Hannam

Australia called for a stronger alliance with the U.S. to push back against the spread of Chinese power in Asia and the Pacific.
In the country’s first big update of foreign policy objectives in a decade, the government of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull struck a much darker note about Australia’s future relations with China, the country whose demand for raw materials has fueled a 25-year Australian boom. 

And it stressed the importance of the U.S. in guaranteeing stability in the region.
“We believe that the United States’ engagement to support a rules-based order is in its own interests and in the interests of wider international stability and prosperity,” the ‘white paper’ said. 

“Without sustained U.S. support, the effectiveness and liberal character of the rules-based order will decline.”
Although the paper didn’t mention him by name, it was visibly influenced by fears that Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ doctrine would lead to a withdrawal from global responsibility by the U.S., and that Chinese power would expand to fill the vacuum.
Such fears are stoked largely by the seemingly unstoppable rise of China’s economy. 

The white paper predicts a Chinese economy valued at US$42 trillion by 2030 – almost double that of the U.S. and EU. 

The paper suggests that, like all great powers, China will eventually seek to influence the region to suit its own needs. 

That ambition has arguably been helped by Trump’s withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which has prompted many Asian governments to doubt the U.S.’s commitment to the region.
The white paper noted pointedly that “bringing the U.S. and China together in a region-wide free trade agreement would reduce economic tension and help maximise regional economic growth prospects.”
“Power is likely to shift more quickly in the region, and it will be difficult for Australia to achieve the levels of security and stability we seek,” it said. 

“A number of factors suggest we will face an increasingly complex and contested Indo–Pacific.”
Bloomberg reported Turnbull as telling reporters on Thursday in Canberra that: “This is the first time in our history that our dominant trading partner is not also a dominant security partner.”

With 'F**k China Month,' Trump Transformed America’s Foreign Policy in Just Four Days

The new American president ended decades of Washington’s sucking up to China and in the process saved America’s 63-year-old alliance with South Korea and boxed in North Korea.

By GORDON G. CHANG

HONG KONG —“I am,” said Moon Jae-in on Thursday, “in complete sympathy with President Trump’s diplomacy of strong power.”
Strong power indeed. 

So strong that Moon, the newly elected South Korean president who disagrees with Trump on most everything, unexpectedly fell into line with the American leader.
The Thursday and Friday meetings between Trump and Moon cap one of the most consequential—and successful—weeks for U.S. foreign policy in recent memory. 

All it took was four days for Trump to discard two—and maybe four—decades of Washington’s settled China policy. 

By doing so, it looks like he saved his country’s six-decade-old alliance with South Korea, which was in danger of coming under China’s—and North Korea’s—sway.
And by preserving unity with Seoul, Trump, at least for the moment, narrowed the options of North Korean supremo Kim Jong Un, limiting the possibility of his nuclear adventurism.
The momentous week began with the visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the White House, marked by three bear hugs between the pair and the warmest of welcomes. 

Washington observers had been concerned that current trade and immigration irritants would derail the approach set by the Bush and Obama administrations to fortify links between the world’s most populous democracy and its most powerful one, but Trump kept ties on track. 

“The relationship between India and the United States has never been stronger, has never been better,” the American leader said, accurately characterizing matters.
The word “China” did not pass the lips of either the American president or the Indian prime minister in their post-meeting remarks Monday, but it was clear both saw in the other the means to contain an increasingly aggressive Chinese state.
Doubts about the significance of Monday’s meeting were dispelled the following three days. 

Tuesday, the State Department dropped China to the worst ranking—Tier 3—in its annual Trafficking in Persons report after not giving the country another waiver. 

Among other things, State cited China’s use of forced labor from North Korea.
And then came two blasts Thursday. 

First, the Treasury Department designated Bank of Dandong, a Chinese bank, a “primary money laundering concern” pursuant to the Patriot Act. 

The U.S. charged that the bank has been handling, in violation of American law, money for North Korea’s ballistic missile and weapons of mass destruction programs.
This was not the first time Treasury severed a Chinese financial institution from the global financial system—it cut off Bank of Kunlun in July 2012 for evading Iran-related rules—but it was, as sanctions expert Joshua Stanton told The Daily Beast, “an important first step, one that will send a clear message to the Chinese banks that have long laundered North Korea’s money and aided its proliferation.”
Moreover, Treasury on Thursday sanctioned a Chinese company, Dalian Global Unity Shipping Co., and two Chinese individuals, freezing their assets and prohibiting U.S. persons from dealing with them.
Second, the Trump administration on Thursday notified Congress of a proposed $1.42 billion sale of arms to Taiwan, the self-governing island Beijing’s claims as its 34th province. 

The White House, not wanting to upset Chinese officials, had sat on the package, which the Obama administration had prepared in its final months.
Beijing was “outraged” over the arms sale and angered over the Patriot Act designation, but the administration, according to various reports, did not care. 

As one observer told the Washington insider Nelson Report at the end of last week, “word on the street” is that the White House “has called this ‘F--- China Month.’ ”
The new attitude toward China is bound to last more than a month as the president has, in the course of four days, clearly thrown out two decades of American policy that had placed a higher priority on integrating China into the international system than disarming North Korea. 

Moreover, it looks like he has also started a dynamic that will lead to the reversal of four decades of attempts to place the promotion of friendly relations with Beijing over the stout defense of immediate American interests.
Yet whether Trump abandoned four or just two decades of China policy last week, he most certainly rescued the 63-year-old mutual defense treaty with the Republic of Korea. 

There was great concern that President Moon, a leftist, was going to walk away from the U.S. during his meetings with Trump.
The South Korean had spent the first days of his presidency trying to reorient Seoul away from Washington and toward the other Korea. 

Moreover, Moon and his aides have been saying things inconsistent with the maintenance of the alliance, and many in the Seoul and Washington policy circles were concerned he was heading to the American capital to have it out with Trump.
After all, his policy toward the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was inconsistent with that of the American administration. 

While Trump is seeking to deny the Kim regime of the resources to build nukes and missiles, Moon wants to win Pyongyang’s trust by providing essentially unconditional aid and assistance and resuming investment.
Moon did not have a road-to-Damascus conversion while in Washington last week—his “progressive” views on North Korea have been baked-in for decades—but he appears to have been impressed by Trump’s determination, hence his surprising comment on the American “diplomacy of strong power” and his unexpected criticism of prior U.S. presidents for not acting resolutely.
No recent U.S. president has appeared willing to oppose the Chinese, so leaders in Asia have generally decided to “bandwagon” with Beijing. 

Trump showed last week he was not particularly fearful of crossing China.
So it looks like Trump’s moves against China last week, immediately preceding Moon’s two days of meetings with the American leader, convinced the South Korean that it was not in his interest to stand in opposition to the current occupant of the White House. 

In short, Trump, by acting decisively against Beijing, boxed in Moon.
The preservation of U.S.-South Korean unity should have two good effects. 

First, it should take some of the heat off Seoul, which has been the subject of unrelenting pressure from Beijing. 

Chinese leaders for months have been upset that Moon’s predecessor, Park Geun-hye, agreed to the deployment of Lockheed Martin’s Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system on South Korean soil.
Chinese leaders, as a result, imposed unofficial sanctions on the South’s economy to get rid of THAAD, as the missile-defense system is called, and Beijing in recent weeks evidently thought that a rift between Moon and Trump presented a new opportunity to bully the South Korean political establishment.
Second, Kim Jong Un this week surely sees less of an opening to exploit differences between the two historic allies. 

And this means, as a practical matter, that he will be far more cautious with moves to destabilize his neighbor to the south and the broader region. 

The Kim family has always tried to drive wedges between Seoul and Washington, and Pyongyang has been restrained when it has viewed the alliance as strong.
For now, the alliance does look strong, and that is no small achievement for President Donald John Trump.
The impulsive Trump is fully capable of undoing his great week in Korean diplomacy, but if he stays the course he will reorient American foreign policy in ways history will remember—and perhaps he will create lasting peace on the long-troubled peninsula.

Chinese Aggressions

Rex Tillerson warns of potential conflict with China
by Joel Gehrke

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told lawmakers Wednesday that he has warned Chinese counterparts that their current foreign policy will "bring us into conflict" in the Pacific.
"We have told them, ‘you are creating instability throughout the Pacific region that will bring us into conflict; please don't do that,'" Tillerson said Wednesday during a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing.
China has been building artificial islands in the South China Sea, replete with military equipment, as part of an aggressive move to assert control over some of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. 

Tillerson cited that behavior as one of the most pressing issues in the U.S.-China relationship, which he acknowledged is reaching "an inflection point" that could lead to war if managed incorrectly.
"We are at an inflection point in the U.S.-China relationship," he told lawmakers. 

"They see it; we see it. Our conversations are around how are we going to maintain stability and a relationship of no conflict between China and the United States for the next 50 years."
Tillerson offered that assessment in response to a question about how the United States could avoid falling into a foreign policy dynamic known as the Thucydides Trap. 

The term refers to the possibility of conflict between an incumbent power and a rising power; it derives from he name of the historian who chronicled the war between ancient Athens and Sparta.
"We cannot constrain their economic growth," Tillerson said. 

"We have to accommodate their economic growth. But as their economic growth then translates into spheres of influence that then begin to threaten our national security, this begins to disrupt these conditions that have allowed us to live without conflict for the last 50 years."
Some Democrat and Republican lawmakers worry that China is gaining influence over traditional allies, including in the Pacific. 

That trend was exacerbated by Trump's decision to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement involving 11 Pacific Rim countries.
"[Pacific allies] were counting on TPP and they saw that as a strong message from America," Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Fla., who chairs a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on the Asia-Pacific, told the Washington Examiner. 

"But it wasn't going to pass. The Democrats weren't going to support it, the majority of them. I wasn't going to support it, being a Republican. And they use that to say, well, we've got to go to China."
In the Phillippines, Rodrigo Duterte has talked openly about a "separation" from the United States and a realignment with China. 

And South Korea's newly-elected president suspended the deployment of a U.S. missile defense system intended to protect against North Korea's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program. 

China opposes the deployment of that missile defense system, fearing the radar could make diminish the effectiveness of their own nuclear weapons; the communist regime used a series of retaliatory economic measures to punish South Korea for allowing part of the system to be deployed.
"Our policy is, as important as trade is, and as important as China's huge economy is, we cannot allow China to use that as a weapon," Tillerson said. 

"We cannot allow them to weaponize trade. And they are doing that today, and our message to them is, 'you will not buy your way out of these other difficult issues, like North Korea, the South China Sea, with your trade."

Something is rotten in the state of Australia

Sam Dastyari trashed Labor policy on South China Sea for $400k donation

• Sam Dastyari told Chinese media Australia should not meddle in China's activities in South China Sea
• Julie Bishop attacked Bill Shorten for promoting Dastyari to deputy Opposition whip
• Coalition also faces questions about Chinese donations

By Louise Yaxley

Sam Dastyari resigned from the frontbench because a Chinese donor paid a travel bill for him.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has accused Labor senator Sam Dastyari of trashing the ALP's foreign policy for a $400,000 donation.
Four Corners has reported that Chinese donor Huang Xiangmo withdrew a promise to donate $400,000 last year because Labor's then-defence spokesman, Stephen Conroy, supported freedom of movement in the South China Sea.
The program pointed out that the day after the offer was withdrawn, Dastyari contradicted Labor policy by telling Chinese media that Australia should not meddle with China's activities in the South China Sea.
Dastyari later said he supported Labor Party policy on freedom of movement in the South China Sea.
He resigned from his frontbench position last year because a Chinese donor paid a travel bill for him.

Ms Bishop has lashed out at Dastyari and attacked Labor leader Bill Shorten for giving the senator a promotion to deputy Opposition whip.
"We now know that Dastyari's about-face on the South China Sea had a price tag attached to it — indeed a reported $400,000 was all it took for Dastyari to trash Labor's official foreign policy position," Ms Bishop said.
"What did the Leader of the Opposition do?
"In the face of the most extraordinary public admission of foreign interference and influence, he slapped him on the wrist, sent him to the backbench for a couple of months and Sam Dastyari is now back in a leadership position in the Labor Party.
"This Leader of the Opposition sold out our national interest."
The Coalition also faces questions about Chinese donations.

Greens leader Richard di Natale raised a Four Corners report that Huang Xiangmo also donated $100,000 to then-trade minister Andrew Robb's personal campaign fund on the day the free trade deal was signed with China.

Chinese fifth column's Gang of Four -- An ASIO investigation sparks fears the Chinese Communist Party is influencing the Australian political system as questions are raised over foreign political donations. 

Attorney-General George Brandis refused to say whether a conflict of interest was raised in Cabinet, saying he could not reveal Cabinet discussions.
Senator Brandis said he was aware of the reports and allegations but did not know if they are accurate.
Andrew Robb now works for the Chinese-owned company the Landbridge Group, which has a 99-year lease over the Port of Darwin.
He began working for Landbridge the day before the election last July, but Senator Brandis said Robb had left Parliament when the election was called in May.
Senator di Natale said it was critical for the Greens to shine a spotlight on the issue because both major parties had connections to Chinese donors.

"You have got Labor and Liberal members of this Parliament implicated for their links to high-profile Chinese businessmen connected to the Communist regime in China," he said.

How China Accidentally Turned THAAD into a Political Weapon

THAAD is not about missile defense anymore; it’s about a Chinese veto over South Korean foreign policy.
By Robert E Kelly

The South Korean decision to install the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system has prompted a major Chinese reaction. 

The Chinese government has used a wide range of economic pressure against South Korea to reverse its decision. 

It has severely restricted tourist travel to the country, cancelled cultural events, pursued fatuous regulatory action against the company (Lotte), which sold the land to the South Korean government on which THAAD will be stationed, and, in a move worthy of the “freedom fries” of yore, staged a public bulldozing of bottles of the Korean national alcohol soju.
This effort is simultaneously ridiculous and clever, campy and serious. 

On the one hand, it is preposterously obvious that these “protests” are staged. 

Once again, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has demonstrated how woefully out of touch it is with modern democratic opinion. 

The same apparatchiks who mistake “praise” of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un in the Onion as the real thing are those who think that a video of a bulldozer driving over soju bottles might somehow appear authentic. 

If China’s increasing bullying of South Korea over THAAD were not so serious, these hijinks would be comedy material. 

Indeed, my students here in South Korea laugh over this in discussion even as they worry about it.
On the other hand, this a wise way to pressure South Korea if the CCP is absolutely dead set against a THAAD emplacement in South Korea, which it appears to be. 

South Korea is a midsize economy with a few very large exporters selling to a few very large markets. 

This makes it highly sensitive to the politics of its biggest export markets, of which China is one. Japan, too, has been targeted in this way by China, but it is more economically diversified than South Korea and has more flexibility to ride out Chinese displeasure. 

China has also used these tactics in Southeast Asia.
The CCP also retains plausible deniability by routing this pressure obliquely through nongovernmental actors. 

There has been little overt, “Track 1” pressure, likely because Beijing is hoping South Korea will back down without an open breach. 

But the mercantilist-dictatorial state can “encourage” patriotic action in an economy where about 80 percent of firms have some amount of state ownership.
Countries with an open media can surely see through this charade of independent action. 

But in China itself, this can be marketed as the outrage of the Chinese people, rising up against encirclement by the Americans and their lackeys. 

And in global public opinion, there is surely enough hostility to the United States in places like Russia or the Middle East that this will sound somewhat plausible, or at least be marketed that way by anti-American elites.

Now South Korea Cannot Give In
In South Korea, the recent impeachment of conservative President Park Geun-hye has opened the door for the left to take power in the upcoming special election on May 9. 

The left has broadly opposed THAAD. 

In the wake of Park’s final approval of it last year, several opposition parliamentarians jetted off to China to express their discontent (or appease) as the conservative press howled. 

The likely winner on May 9, Moon Jae-in, has previously expressed skepticism over THAAD. 

The other left-wing candidates—there are no serious right-wing candidates given how badly the Park scandal has discredited the right—have been even more hostile.
I am very doubtful that Moon or any of the candidates, barring the least likely winner on the far left, will remove THAAD. 

Indeed, there is still a debate over THAAD’s technical merits. 

While I believe the case for THAAD is solid, and South Korean opinion generally supports it now given the sheer velocity of North Korean missile testing, there remain coherent arguments in opposition. 

For example, one argument is that THAAD is merely symbolic given that North Korea could use other weapons to devastate South Korea, or that the missile defense system might simply encourage North Korea to build even more missiles to overwhelm it.
But such technical issues are increasingly irrelevant. 

The time to debate that issue was a year or two ago. 

Back then, the United States and South Korea had made extensive Track 1, Track 1.5 and Track 2 outreaches to China on THAAD, to explain its capabilities and consider China’s concerns. 

All were rebuffed. 

Instead, China has dug in its heels rather deeply. 

It has been signaling to South Korea for more than a year not to deploy THAAD, threatening all sorts of retaliation. 

This has increasingly turned THAAD from a technical-functional issue of missile defense to an expression of South Korean national security sovereignty: does South Korea have the right to make national-security decisions without China’s approval? 

The South Korean media, even on the center and left, are increasingly framing the tussle this way.
Hence, this is the curious—but deserved—outcome for Beijing. 

Just as a South Korean government, which agrees with China on THAAD, is likely coming to power, Chinese bullying has painted the country into such a tight corner that a leftist president would likely retain missile defense system. 

At this point, THAAD is not about THAAD anymore; it is about whether China has a veto over South Korean foreign policy. 

No South Korean president can assent to that.

Sina Delenda Est: Standing Up to China Is Smart Foreign Policy

China's fifth column is making the argument to do nothing to antagonize China, even if it means forfeiting American interests and ideals. That would be a historic mistake.
By James Holmes and Toshi Yoshihara

The Japan Times must be having a hard time finding copy to fill its op-ed pages. 

Exhibit A: a screed from an “adjunct senior scholar” at the Chinese Communist Party–affiliated National Institute for South China Sea Studies in Haikou, China, concerning U.S. strategy toward China in the age of Trump. 

In "Mark Valencia"’s telling, Donald Trump’s ascent to the presidency has liberated “U.S. China-bashers” to have a “field day” at China’s expense. 

“Extremism” rules the day in Washington and academic precincts.
Zounds!
Wicked times are afoot, you’d think. 

But bear in mind that a lot of things look like extremism to someone who’s fronting for an extremist regime. 

To build his case "Valencia" refers obliquely to “two academics from the Naval War College.” 

The nameless academics, he says, suggest that “America should revive its past ‘daring-do’ [we think you mean derring-do, "Mark"] and ‘recognize that close quarters encounters, cat and mouse games between submarines and opposing fleets, and even deliberate collisions’ could become routine elements of the U.S.-China rivalry.”
We confess to being the scurrilous duo. 

The passages "Valencia" quotes come from an article we wrote for Orbis, a journal published by the University of Pennsylvania’s Foreign Policy Research Institute. (Look for the article here since "he" doesn’t bother furnishing a link.)
We compiled the article long before the election, and aimed it at whichever candidate might prevail. Our bottom line: China is already competing with America in the China seas and Western Pacific. Close-quarters encounters between Chinese and American ships and planes are already routine elements of the U.S.-China rivalry—just as they were between Soviet and American ships and planes during the Cold War. 

And Chinese seamen and airmen initiate these encounters.
Washington can either wrest the initiative away from Beijing, or it can remain passive and continue losing ground in the strategic competition. 

Better to seize the initiative. 

To do so the new U.S. administration must relearn the art of deterrence, and to deter Chinese aggression the administration must accept that hazards come with the territory. 

That’s Strategy 101—basic stuff for anyone fluent in statecraft.
"Valencia" is a lumper. 

He lumps our analysis with other commentators’ views, many quite different from our own, before attempting the equivalent of an op-ed drive-by shooting. 

All of our views are equivalent for him; all are expressions of “extremism.” 

The others—Gordon Chang and James Kraska, to name two—can doubtless speak up for themselves should they choose. 

We’ll stick to speaking up for ourselves.
And anyone who takes the trouble to read our item—download early, download often—will realize "Valencia" excerpts a couple of quotations out of context and retrofits them to a predetermined storyline. 

First write conclusion, then fit facts to it!
Let’s go through this point by point. 

First, Valencia implies that Trump’s victory initiated our analysis. 

“This deluge,” he opines, “was stimulated by statements by Trump and his nominees for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson and secretary of defense, James Mattis.” 

He goes on to assert that such “statements by incoming government leaders and influence peddlers provided an opportunity for America’s China hawks to promote their views.”
Wrong.
"Valencia" has it precisely backward. 

And a simple internet search would have revealed the blunder before he committed it. 

Explains Orbis editor-in-chief Mackubin Owens helpfully: “This special issue of Orbis features articles by FPRI associates offering ‘advice to the next president.’ 

Written before the election [our italics], these essays offer recommendations for national security affairs in general, as well as for regional issues.”
And so it was. 

We drafted the article in August—months ahead of the election, and when Hillary Clinton remained the odds-on favorite to win the White House. 

We assumed a Clinton administration would be the primary audience, but wrote it to advise whoever might prevail in November. 

In short, this was a nonpartisan venture, compiled in the spirit of our running counsel to the Obama administration.
And it should have bipartisan appeal.

As secretary of state, it’s worth recalling, Clinton was also the architect of America’s “pivot,” a.k.a. “rebalance,” to Asia—an undertaking aimed at counterbalancing China. 

Considering China’s record of bellicosity in maritime Asia, and considering Clinton’s diplomatic past, we had good reason to believe that she and her lieutenants would prove as receptive to our message as Trump.
More so, maybe. 

In any event: it’s misleading and false for "Valencia" to accuse us of devising “U.S. tactics in the Trump era.” 

We are devising strategy to deter a domineering China—no matter who occupies the Oval Office. 

That our article appeared after Trump prevailed represents mere happenstance.
Second, "Valencia" insinuates that we hold extremist views. 

Well, we guess so... insofar as anyone who wants to deter an aggressor from further aggression entertains extremist views. 

Deterrence involves putting an antagonist on notice that it will suffer unacceptable consequences should it take some action we wish to proscribe. 

It involves fielding military power sufficient to make good on the threat, whether the requisite capabilities be nuclear or conventional. 

And it involves convincing the antagonist we’re resolute about making good on our threats.
We’re glad to keep company with such hardnosed practitioners of deterrence as Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and John Kennedy—extremists all, no doubt. 

Statesmen of yore made Moscow a believer in American power and resolve—and largely held the line against communism.
Except in that trivial sense, though, there’s nothing extreme about our argument. 

We maintain that China and the United States are pursuing irreconcilable goals in maritime Asia. 

The United States wants to preserve freedom of the sea, China wants anything but. 

Both contenders prize their goals, and both are presumably prepared to mount open-ended efforts of significant proportions to obtain those goals. 

If Beijing and Washington want nonnegotiable things a lot, then the Trump administration must gird itself for a long standoff.
Simple as that.
We also point out that China embarked on a massive buildup of maritime power over a decade ago. Excluding the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet, Beijing already boasts the largest naval and coast-guard fleets in Asia, not to mention a seagoing militia to augment its navy and coast guard. 

And these forces continue growing. 

China’s navy may number over 500 vessels by 2030. 

By contrast, the U.S. Navy espouses an eventual fleet of 355 vessels, up from 274 today. 

President Trump is on record favoring a 350-ship force. 

Defense budgets may—or may not—support a U.S. Navy that large.
These are objective facts about which the Chinese media regularly brag. 

Based on these material trends, we postulate that maritime Asia is becoming increasingly competitive, that China is a formidable competitor, and that the trendlines are running in its favor. How’s that for extreme?
We thus urge U.S. policymakers to acknowledge that the forward U.S. presence in Asia will come under mounting danger in the coming years. 

Washington may have to gamble from time to time to shore it up. 

It may have to hold things that Beijing treasures—things like the Chinese navy’s surface fleet—at risk. 

We encourage decision-makers to embrace risk as an implement of statecraft rather than shy away from it. 

Manipulating and imposing risk is a universal strategy that practitioners in Beijing routinely employ. Washington should reply in kind.
And as "Valencia" well knows—or should know—risk-taking constitutes part of the art of strategy. 

The approach we recommend is well-grounded in theory, as articulated by the late Nobel laureate Thomas Schelling and many others.
There is nothing novel about risk, then. U.S. leaders must rediscover this elemental fact. 

For too long Washington recoiled from taking risk, treating it as a liability while conflating it with recklessness. 

But a risk-averse nation has a hard time deterring: who believes a diffident statesman’s deterrent threats? 

We simply implore civilian and military leaders to realign their attitude toward risk to match the changing strategic landscape in Asia. 

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Our argument, then, is a far cry from the extremism "Valencia" deplores in his hit piece. 

A casual reader of his commentary can be pardoned for concluding that we advocate reckless action on the U.S. Navy’s part. 

But it’s "Valencia" who failed his audience.
Third, "Valencia" claims that because of recent statements from U.S. policy-makers—and by implication because of our writing, which he falsely depicts as a product of those statements—“the damage to the U.S.-China relationship and the stability of the region has already been done.” 

But what damage is he referring to? 

As of this writing, the Trump administration has been in office less than a week. 

The White House has issued no official policy touching the South China Sea. 

As far as we know, our fleets in the Western Pacific have done nothing unusual.
"Valencia", it appears, is objecting to a few China-related tweets from Trump following the November elections. 

"Valencia" is indulging in hype.
China, by contrast, has inflicted colossal damage on regional concord. 

Beijing has repeatedly intimidated the Philippines, Vietnam, and Japan in offshore areas. 

It has built islands occupying thousands of acres of land in the heart of the South China Sea. 

It has fortified these manufactured islets, breaking Xi Jinping’s pledge not to militarize them. 

It has rattled its saber through successive military drills, and issued stark warnings about war through various media mouthpieces.
And lastly, "Valencia" suggests that the United States should relinquish vital interests—including those of its Asian allies—to mollify Chinese sensibilities. 

He cites, for example, a Chinese scholar voicing concern that “The theme of clash of civilizations [is] becoming increasingly popular in Chinese circles.” 

"Valencia" also frets about “a possible Thucydian trap [we think you mean Thucydides trap, "Mark"],” a “supposedly ‘inevitable’ conflict between a status-quo power and a rising power.”
His implication, presumably, is that Washington, the guardian of the status quo, should acquiesce in Beijing’s bullying to escape the Thucydides trap. 

That would square with China’s party line. 

And indeed, aggressors do love to win peacefully.
"Valencia" further objects that the timing of a U.S. policy turnabout is inconvenient for the Chinese. 

He observes that the 19th Party Congress will convene this fall to determine China’s leadership transition. 

Xi Jinping might take a hard line in advance of the congress to placate nationalist audiences. 

A U.S. policy shift might box him in.
That may be true, but Chinese Communist Party politics cannot form the basis of U.S. foreign policy. 

Nor, it bears mentioning, do the Chinese consult or respect American political timelines as they pursue foreign-policy aims. 

Just the opposite: they regard the last months of a departing administration and early months of an incoming administration as opportune times to make mischief.
"Valencia"’s message to America is plain: do nothing to antagonize China, even if it means forfeiting American interests and ideals. 

He falls squarely into the don’t provoke China school we take to task at Orbis. 

It is precisely this camp’s thinking that begat paralysis in U.S. maritime strategy in Asia. 

Inaction is no longer tolerable as the strategic circumstances change around us.
As for the Japan Times and its readership: Japanese leaders and rank-and-file citizens should pray the Trump administration rejects "Mark Valencia"’s words. 

If the administration heeded them, it would loosen or abandon the alliance that underwrites Japan’s security and prosperity. 

That would constitute Beijing’s price for U.S.-China amity. 

And if America paid that price, surrendering the Senkaku Islands to China would represent the least of Japan’s worries. 

Dark days would lie ahead.
Let’s make China worry instead.

'America First' Versus 'One China'

Trump is laying the groundwork for a stronger U.S.-Taiwan relationship.
By Russell Hsiao and David An

Donald J. Trump is now the forty-fifth president of the United States. 

As president of the world’s strongest democracy, Trump is bound by the Take Care Clause of the U.S. Constitution to execute the laws of the land—laws such as the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979. 

Under the principle of separation of powers enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, the executive branch—now headed by President Trump—is responsible for implementing the laws of the land by formulating policies.
As president-elect, Trump indicated that his administration’s approach to foreign policy would not be bound by the outdated conventions and self-imposed restrictions toed needlessly by previous administrations. 

He suggested that those policies would be recalibrated to better suit American interests in the twenty-first century. 

Indeed, the president-elect took a congratulatory phone call from the democratically elected leader of Taiwan—a key security partner of the United States—and questioned the efficacy of the former administration’s China policy.
Despite the public outcry, nothing Trump said or did as president-elect changed U.S. policy or the law. 

Also, Trump was completely within his legal rights to take a phone call and “question” the former administration’s policies. (Obama said as much when he stated, “I think all of our foreign policy should be subject to fresh eyes.”) 

Additionally, even if President Trump does change U.S. policy, there is nothing to legally stop him from doing so.
While much fuss has been made about the policies in question, there has been limited discussion about the dangerous logic that feeds the fear over the president’s questioning of policy. 

Lost in the polemic discourse following the president’s comments is a recognition of the legal underpinnings of U.S. policies toward Taiwan, which remain ever constant, and the elasticity of the U.S. “One China” policy itself.
The reaction, even among experts, was telling and laid bare a critical blind spot in the United States’ approach to cross-Strait relations. 

To be sure, U.S. policy towards Taiwan has operated over the past forty-five years on the premise that America’s primary interest is in the process—as opposed to the outcome—of resolving differences between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait.
It was inherently a passive policy by design, but the emphasis on process intentionally ceded the initiative of shaping the outcome to the two other parties: Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China. It was an approach that some senior policymakers at the time expected would create a fait accompli, yet it provided Washington, DC with the flexibility to adapt and respond to broader geopolitical challenges while maintaining stability in the Taiwan Straits.
Despite expectations to the contrary, Taiwan thrived in the ensuing four decades. 

The government liberalized from the top down while an active civil society fervently pushed for political reforms from the bottom up. 

Taiwan evolved from an authoritarian government to a vibrant democracy. 

Support for Taiwan and its democracy grew within the United States as well.
As the power disparity between the two sides widens, however, the policy focused on the process is increasingly under strain and has left Taiwan more susceptible to coercion and Beijing more emboldened to use military force. 

Indeed, the PRC is gradually and unceasingly pushing toward its own desired outcome for Taiwan. All the while, America’s focus on process is drawing it towards China’s objectives at the expense of its values and strategic interests.
American scholars and former policymakers have sounded the alarm about the need to accommodate China by reaching a new modus vivendi with Beijing, which will effectively abandon Taiwan. 

A debate over a Hobson’s choice, however, obscures a much-needed discussion about a Taiwan strategy that not only focuses on ensuring a peaceful process but also a vision for a desired outcome.
As the two sides of the Taiwan Strait struggle to engage in dialogue, the scope of this process-based approach to policymaking has barred U.S. policymakers from actively shaping conditions in the Taiwan Strait that would be more conducive to long-term peace and stability. 

This outdated and partly flawed premise of the approach is based on a Washington tendency to construct events in the Taiwan Strait in binary terms: independence or unification. 

That is a false dilemma, which Beijing has framed as a Hobson’s choice.
On ensuring a peaceful process, the Taiwan Relations Act—which legally governs relations between the United States and Taiwan—sets out the primary goal of U.S. policy towards cross-Strait relations as ensuring that the resolution is “not coercive, unilateral, or detrimental to U.S. interests.” 

Towards that end, the new president has a lot of tools and legal authority at his disposal to recalibrate Taiwan policy.
Five provisions within the Taiwan Relations Act are useful to highlight:

1. • The future of Taiwan will be determined by peaceful means.
2. • Consider any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means, including by boycotts or embargoes, a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave concern to the United States.
3. • Provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character.
4. • Maintain the capacity of the United States to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security—or the social or economic system—of the people on Taiwan.
5. • The preservation and enhancement of the human rights of all the people on Taiwan are hereby reaffirmed as objectives of the United States.

On the second prong, former Pentagon official and Air Force Lt. Col. Mark Stokes mapped out possible future policy options in the Taiwan Strait. 

The report, known as The United States and Future Policy Options in the Taiwan Strait, outlines four alternative schools of thought on the future of Taiwan policy: 

1. The Accommodation School; 
2. The Status Quo School; 
3. The Normalization School; 
4. and The U.S. “One China, Two Governments” School. 

As Stokes astutely observed in a recent follow-up article, “U.S. policy has yet to catch up with the changes that have taken place on Taiwan since 1996, especially since the first peaceful transfer of power in 2000.”
Despite all the uproar, the new U.S. president—with his iconoclastic persona—has not changed U.S. policy. 

Rather, his administration has raised an important and fundamental question about the long-term viability of this current approach to policy. 

To be sure, the previous ambiguous approach has outlived its utility, and the effects have been an emboldened Beijing and a Taiwan that is now being gradually pushed into a corner (see, e.g., Beijing’s diplomatic offensive).
Alternatives to a gradual change in policy present equally destabilizing propositions, and there is a great deal of uncertainty that comes with any change. 

However, a fear of change could lead to a state of paralysis that is equally disruptive in the Taiwan Strait. 

A one-sided focus on the process has left U.S. interests increasingly susceptible to the vagaries of cross-Strait relations and Beijing’s increasing leverages. 

Indeed, policy towards Taiwan has operated over the past forty-five years on the premise that America’s primary interest is in the process—as opposed to the outcome. 

It is time for U.S. policymakers to refocus on a desired outcome.