Trade and South China Sea dominated the agenda at the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue held in Beijing last week.
However, with much focus on the Asia pivot and U.S. military buildup in the Western Pacific, Washington may be missing an opportunity to reduce bilateral tensions and cooperate with China in the Mideast.
As the ISIS contagion is spreading to Paris, Brussels, and Jakarta, this shared threat presents a unique opportunity for Sino-U.S. cooperation in counterterrorism and forge confidence building measures that could subsequently be applied in East Asia.
Rising tensions in East Asia
Currently, overall Sino-U.S. relation appears to be captured by the South China Sea issue. The U.S. seeks to maintain its traditional military dominance in the Western Pacific, while a rising China wants to maintain naval primacy in its coastal waters similar to other great powers.
However, without accommodations on both sides, mounting bilateral tensions risk escalating into a military conflict.
Recently Defense Secretary Ash Carter dispatched a U.S. aircraft carrier to the region in a show of force, while underscoring “The U.S. is not seeking any kind of Cold War” and that “our approach is an inclusive one—including China.”
Nonetheless, in a recent Wall Street Journal interview, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Long questioned U.S. intentions for its “Asia Pivot” and criticized the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) for excluding China, the biggest trading partner of various countries in the Asia-Pacific.
“To develop a trans-Pacific relationship, you have to deepen the trans-Pacific trade and investment ties, which have done so much to benefit the people of both sides…If in fact, you are rebalancing towards Asia with aircraft carriers and airplanes, what is it in aid of?” Lee said.
Lee stated Asian countries want good relations with great powers including China, India, and the U.S., and “we do not want to have opponents or hostilities when it is not necessary.” He also advised if the U.S. supports international law and a rules-based order, it needs to lead by example and ratify the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
As Peter Lee of Asia Times observed, Singapore and other Asian partners are worried about U.S. actions that may increase tensions and destabilize the region. They are looking for more than “U.S. military leadership of the anti-China side of a polarized East Asian security regime.”
Without a shift from the zero-sum paradigm that plagues the Western Pacific, a de-escalation of tensions seems unlikely. However, this is not the case in the Mideast, where the shared threat of ISIS and al Qaeda could become an important avenue for Sino-U.S. confidence building measures.
De-escalation and cooperation in the Mideast
As a large economic powerhouse heavily dependent on Mideast energy sources, China now may have more skin in the game than an energy-independent U.S. and become an important partner for counter-terrorism.
Firstly, an increasingly multi-polar world also means a multi-partner world, and Washington should leverage Beijing’s willingness to be a partial security provider in the Mideast. At the September UN General Assembly meeting, China offered 8,000 peacekeeping troops and $1 billion that can compensate for lack of ground troops to counter ISIS and al Qaeda.
Secondly, obtaining a UN mandate is apropos for the continuation of the war on terrorism in Syria, since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (NATO Training Mission in Iraq, NTM-I) also operated under a UN banner. The current U.S.-led “Global Coalition to Counter ISIL” is not truly global if it excludes other major powers, such as China, Russia, and India.
Moreover, U.S. military intervention in Syria is in violation of international law without a UN mandate or the invitation of the UN-recognized government of President Bashar Assad. As Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee admonished, if America wants to be seen as a legitimate leader of a rules-based international order and uphold international law, it needs to lead by example and obey the law, whether by ratifying UNCLOS or obtaining a UN mandate for its military interventions in Syria.
Thirdly, U.S. and China should formalize a Mideast dialogue for crisis management and clarify each other’s legitimate security interests, especially regarding U.S. support for the Syrian “opposition” that includes anti-Chinese militants.
Finally, there should be a paradigm shift from viewing how China will supplant U.S. in the Mideast, to how it can supplement western efforts to address the global pandemic of ISIS and Islamic extremism.
Otherwise, now that various al Qaeda groups from China, Russia, Central and Southeast Asia have merged with ISIS in Syrian jihad, should U.S. and China stumble into a military conflict, the winner may actually be ISIS.
As People’s Liberation Army Senior Colonel Liu Mingfu astutely observed, in the 20th century, Britain fought and won a war against Germany but was so weakened and brought to its knees that it ceded its hegemonic position to the U.S. Two dogs fought over a bone, and a third ran away with it—America.
And if the U.S. and China end up fighting over a bone in the South China Sea rather than coalesce to counter the global threat of terrorism, the third dog that runs away with the bone may be the Islamic State—with a clear path to then realize its global Caliphate.
