Written by Major General Jerry Singirok (Rtd), MBE, DMS, Mil Science and Mgnt for the PiPP Pacific Debate 2012 in Port Vila, Vanuatu on Geopolitics.
Introduction
We are gathered here today to address key issues affecting Pacific states in relation to superpower rivalry in the Pacific and to determine whether Pacific states should remain neutral or take sides. I am arguing that Pacific states should remain neutral.
To define the subject on hand, let’s briefly re-visit the concept of hegemony within international relations.
This concept means the primacy of leadership would be exercised by hegemony, which is a state possessing sufficient capability to fulfill this role. Other states within the system would now be required to define or redefine their relationship with the hegemon.
The hegemonic actor depends upon capability within the context of power. It is therefore measured and optimised and operationalised by strictly military and economic terms.
We saw the emergence of Japan and the European Community and Union as tri-polar rivals in terms of international political economy, which argues that international politics and economy are interrelated or in a better term congenital recognition of their inter-dependency in international relations and the ability to polarise, manipulate and exert political and economic power, influence and dominance in order to remain not only powerful, but influential and dominant.
Geopolitics is the analysis of international relations that seeks to understand, explain and predict international political behaviour primarily in terms of geographical variables, such as location, size, climate, topography, demography, natural resources and technological development and potential military posture and political identity and action are thus seen to be more or less determined by geography.
Therefore geopolitics concerns the global and regional distribution of land, sea , climatic variations, and the distribution of raw material, natural resources and the diminution of the people and institutions. Mahan in 1890 and Mackinder in 1910 argued the importance and the development of US navy follows the control of sea lanes, ocean intercontinental based geopolitics means dominance and control of sea lanes and access to resources and markets.
The Pacific Basin
The western shore of the Pacific has been the fastest growing region in the world for the past half a century. It contains two of the world’s largest economies: Japan and China. Along with other East Asian economies they are heavily dependent on maritime trade, shipping goods to the United Sates and Europe and importing raw material from Persian Gulf and the rest of Pacific Basin. Any interruption would be damaging and any extended interruption would be catastrophical.
Let’s consider Japan, the world’s second largest economy and the only major industrial power to possess no major natural resources of any sort. Japan must import all of its major minerals from oil to aluminum. Without these imports, particularly oil, Japan stops being an industrial power in a matter of months. This was proven in 1941: the attack on Pearl Harbor was because United States had interfered with its access to raw materials. And more recently the loss of the Hukusima Nuclear plant damaged Japan’s main industrial and economic heartbeat.
China has emerged as a major industrial power in the last generation, with growth surpassing that of any other major economy in the world, although its economy is still smaller than Japan or United States. Nevertheless, China is now a key player in the Pacific Basin. Previously it was much more self sufficient than Japan in terms of primary commodities But China has grown and has outstripped its own resources and become a net importer of raw material.
China’s rise is due to its own model of development which the West does not endorse but China is likely to continue to move along its own chosen path and become the world’s largest economy with all its impact on the world at large.
This does not necessarily mean that China and Western countries including United Staes of America are on a collision course. On the contrary, the nature of China as a civilization state determines that given its cultural traditions, China is not likely to be a country bent on confrontation. Rather, it is more likely to seek peaceful co-existence, mutual learning, and win-win outcomes with other countries and other political systems, and this is indeed good for the rest of the world particularly the Pacific countries and states. However this positive picture may change if some countries are determined to pick a fight with China.
In brief, China has established an unprecedented modern state which includes a unified government, market economy, education, law, defence, finance and taxation making it amongst the world’s most competent countries in the world.
The Pacific has two major powers that are heavily dependent on imports to fuel their economy and on exports to grow their economy. The major players in the Pacific for its raw material are; Japan, China and along with them are, South Korea and Taiwan. They all depend on access to the Pacific in order to transport their goods and commodities. They rely heavily on sea transport but the gamble is predetermined by the United States. The Unites States controls both the sea and airspace in the Pacific Basin and these major players rely on the United States for their economic well being.
There is the other side of the coin also. The United States consumes massive amounts of Asian industrial products, which benefits the United States as a whole by providing consumers with cheap goods. For domestic reasons and internal politics and protection of the United States’ national interest it could shut down access to the Pacific Ocean whenever it wishes. Economically, the United States is dependent on trade with Asia, but not as dependent as Asia is on the trade with the United States. Therefore in the long run the United States has the major advantage of East Asia both militarily and economically.
This brings me to the issue of strategic contest by major players: China, Japan and the United States in the Pacific Basin. If the United States shifts American policies away from East Asia it would wreck havoc in that region – a proposition unimaginable. The threat of American sanctions on China for example through which the United States might seek to limit China’s important oil, strikes at the very heart of Chinese national interest.
Therefore China must use economic strength to develop military options against the United States. China must simply act in accordance with the fundamental principle of strategic planning, protection of its national interest for survival.
In the past fifty years the Pacific Rim countries have seem a dramatic increase in economic power but remain unable to project and develop military power and economic management and this imbalance alone has left East Asia and Pacific states vulnerable. China and Japan will have no choice but to try to increase military presence in the coming century either by military power projection or in partnership with selected Pacific states to address their economy and national security initiatives.
The obvious conclusion to draw is that United Staes will see such military presence in cohesiveness with Pacific nations or alone as a potential threat in controlling the Western Pacific and the Pacific Rim and will exert its military power as an act of deterrence or control fuel and sea lanes to contain China and Japan.
The forgone conclusion is:
“ He who controls the fuel and energy, the sea lanes and access to continental markets controls the Pacific and a significant control of global market and economy.”
United States of America (USA)
The key focus of the Obama administration’s new national defence strategy in the Pacific was promulgated as follows:
The military’s top officer in the Pacific, Adm. Samuel Locklear, describes the new focus as “back to the Pacific,” alluding to long-standing U.S. military presence and partnerships with Pacific Rim nations dating back before World War II.
In practice, it means more Navy ships in the region, along with more marines and soldiers, Locklear told an audience of service members April 12 at Yokota Air Base, Japan. “What you should expect from the future is an enduring presence in this part of the world that is properly shaped for the coming century,” said Locklear, a former Pacific Fleet commander who in March took the helm of Hawaii-based U.S. Pacific Command.
Among his top missions is “making this theater a priority for the long run,” he said. “We have a joint force that, for the Pacific, has been misshapen. So we have to reshape it for the contingencies that we have here.”
That won’t mean new U.S. bases in the region, but rather bilateral agreements for joint access or shared use, Locklear said. “We’ve got to be optimally deployed in places where we can get to … We just can’t be in one place to do what we’ve got to do.”
The Navy’s plan is to have a 60/40 split between fleet concentrations in the Pacific and Atlantic to position more firepower and presence in the Asia-Pacific region. “Our fleet is right now 55 percent in the Pacific, 45 in the Atlantic. That’s going to change some,” Navy Secretary Ray Mabus told Navy Times in a recent interview.
The Navy already has put more ships and submarines in Hawaii and Guam and the first littoral combat ships in San Diego, ahead of plans to permanently deploy more of the new ships to Singapore. Mabus recently returned from a trip to the region, the latest in a series of visits designed to find new ways to insert U.S. ships and troops into places such as Australia and the Philippines.
Aside from North Korea, the increased U.S. presence is designed to counter China’s growing military and its more assertive posture toward its neighbours. Nowhere is that more evident than in the South China Sea, where there have been several flare-ups with Beijing over disputed territory, most recently with the Philippines, but also with Vietnam and other nations. Recent double-digit hikes in China’s defence spending and its development of an aircraft carrier also have fuelled speculation about its intent.
Michael Mazza, a defence analyst with the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, said China’s expansion in developing anti-access, area-denial weapons is worrisome. “The Navy has operated unimpeded in the Pacific and Indian oceans for years. China is now developing a host of naval capabilities … to make our maritime and our forces’ ability to operate very, very difficult,” he said.
The U.S. and its allies depend heavily on safe, unimpeded passage through the commercial sea lanes that crisscross the region. Forward-deployed forces, which include 7th Fleet and the aircraft carrier George Washington, are “a stabilizing force for the moment,” said Sheila A. Smith, senior fellow for Japan studies with the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. “Those [sea lanes] are vital for the economic health of every Asian economy, including the Chinese.”
One sticking point in the new U.S. presence is the contentious issue of bases in Japan, including the replacement of Marine Corps Air Station Futenma on Okinawa. Despite more than 16 years of discussions and negotiations, the two countries haven’t resolved the issue, and the Pentagon faces opposition to its plans from Congress as well.
The Secretary for State; Mrs. Hilary Clinton when addressing the Marine Corps in Okinawa said
“Today’s China is not the Soviet Union. We are not on the brink of a new Cold War in Asia,” she told midshipmen.
“Just look at the ever-expanding trade between our economies, the connections between our peoples, the ongoing consultations between our governments. In less than 35 years, we’ve gone from being two nations with hardly any ties to speak of to being thoroughly, inescapably interdependent. That requires adjustments in thinking and approaches on both sides.”
The Consequence of Fragmentation
The Pacific in the next half century has become a poachers paradise as countries around the periphery of the Pacific basin and region see extraordinary opportunities to poach never imagined in both one person’s living time or a nation as a whole. The weak Pacific states coupled with unscrupulous leadership and regimes will be subjected to external influences thus compromising national interest and security.
The series of weak nations with limited resources and economy and military capability obviously are vulnerable and posses real threat for exploitation. The Pacific basin and its states are fragmented both by geography, tyranny of dispersal and ideologically that only few forums collectively address such issue of hegemony of major super power dominance in the region.
For example; in the next fifty year Papua New Guinea will see production in natural oil and fuel and surge in the actual dominance of energy source by American multibillion fuel corporations to consolidate their long term presence in the Pacific with little return in relative terms for investment in national or regional security, thus placing Papua New Guinea and the rest of the Pacific into a further security quagmire.
The rest of the Pacific states will have to use forums such as Asia Caribbean and Pacific, or the Pacific Forum to have significant control of marine products and commodities or even to have a voice.
The consequence of the lack of cohesiveness in protecting Pacific states’ interest will force major intervention by the United States and Australia both by use of military force and economic control if such dominance is asserted by East Asian countries in the Pacific.
As seen in the Pacific War between 1935- 1945 the re-emergence of superpower rivalry and the and the Japanese quest to control resources in the Pacific which led to a bitter military conflict is undoubtedly is going to be repeated in the next twenty-five to fifty years in the Pacific as the Pacific Basin is the last frontier once again for military and economic control by global superpowers. The cycle inevitably is repeated again.
My prognosis is that Pacific states will be mere spectators of superpower rivalry as they neither have a cohesive and united approach to be a force to be reckoned with and will rely heavily on its respective bilateral relations with individual superpowers to address their needs and concerns.
References:
The Next 100 years a forecast for the 21st Century by George Friedman
The Penguin Dictionary of International Relations
The Extreme Future – Patricia Aburdene
The China Wave – Zhang Weiwei
