Where Wang Yi and Barack Obama echoed each other
- By Sumantra Maitra
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E-mail China.org.cn, March 13, 2016
With regard to European and Arab allies, Obama was angry and derided them as free riders using U.S. arms as a mercenary army. This was particularly evident with French and British adventurism in Libya, which essentially destroyed an entire region, and made it ungovernable and is now the main center from where refugees and migrants travel to Europe. He chided his so-called allies for dragging America in wars which are of no strategic or tactical national interest.
Significantly, he said the U.S. has more threat from a broken and weak China, than a strong and rising country with which it can peacefully coexist.
Which brings us to key question: Why is Obama not following his own realist principles when it comes to China in Asia? The recent U.S. actions in trying to form a forward positioned alliance include reinvigorating the quadrilateral security dialogue with Japan, Australia and India. It also involved basing long range bombers in Australia, and missile defense batteries in South Korea.
It involves FONOP operations in the South China Sea, and encouraging Philippines and Vietnam as well as Japan and South Korea to come closer together. Does the U.S. not then consider the need for dialogue with China when it comes to its perceived national interests? Does it not consider that geographically and spatially China will be far more concerned about its littoral regions, just like Russia is with its coastlines, far more than the United States?
Or does it not understand the risks of U.S. allies in Asia being emboldened and dragging America into a war, which, for all practical purposes, will have a far more devastating impact than anything we have witnessed in the past or present.
It defies logic, how a self-described realist president is not following his own correct observations about state interests.
There are widespread arguments that U.S. and China are not destined to become involved in a conflict, and it will be actually prudent if the security burden is shared in Asia in a G2 framework. The Chinese side calls it win-win cooperation, but it means essentially the same G2 framework in the West.
This is a point of convergence, between Wang and Obama, and if Obama is really interested in solidifying his foreign policy legacy, he should also go against the Washington foreign affairs instinct about an adversarial China. That's what Britain did after the First World War in regard to the U.S., and that's what any prudent realist power will do.
Sumantra Maitra is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:
http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/SumantraMaitra.htm
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