“It’s not just the air defense zone, which is needlessly provocative in itself”: It’s a host of greater and lesser provocations, from bumbling its response to the Typhoon Haiyan disaster in the Philippines to building outposts on disputed islets.
“This ancient civilization, which has thousands of years of diplomatic experience and gave us Sun Tzu and all his subtlety, has given us some ham-handed diplomacy for the last few years,” one geostrategist told me. “It also allows the vice-president to make the broader point that there is an emerging pattern of behavior” - not just one incident - “that is unsettling to China’s own neighbors.”] “We have real concerns with this move by the Chinese because it raises serious questions about their intentions, it causes friction and uncertainty, it causes a unilateral change to the status quo in a region is already fraught,” he said. The official declined to say specifically whether Biden would ask the Chinese to undo the zone instead of just explaining it, but he made clear the vice-president is going to convey American displeasure. But Biden will encourage dialogue among all three countries to reduce tensions - and he will press China “to clarify its intentions.” (Given the complex closed-door horsetrading that produces Chinese policy, however, it’s not certain the Chinese policymakers themselves have much clarity on what their strategic logic is here, if they even have one). “The Vice-President is not going to Beijing to deliver a démarche,” a senior administration official told reporters Wednesday morning, nor will he be “mediating” the disputes between Korea’s Park and Tokyo’s Abe. [UPDATED 10:00 am Wednesday: Beijing even managed to pick almost the worst possible timing: Vice-President Joe Biden is departing DC the Monday after Thanksgiving to visit China, Japan, and South Korea, giving the US a high-profile opportunity to rebuke Beijing and encourage its allies. This is just the latest instance where China’s aggressive policy in the West Pacific has helped the United States’ position in the region instead of weakening it, inspired resistance instead of concessions, and undermined Chinese “soft power” diplomacy instead of reinforcing it. “They’d been so effectively bad-mouthing the Japanese and winning support from the Koreans,” said Phillip Saunders, director of the Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs at the National Defense University. “But it unnecessarily antagonizes people other than Japan.” They should have been easy for Chinese radar to spot and for Chinese fighters to intercept - but whether the Chinese saw them coming or not, Beijing did nothing. That means the US sent two of America’s oldest, biggest, least stealthy, and least agile aircraft from a long way away. The Wall Street Journal‘s Julian Barnes identified them as Air Force B-52 bombers flying out of Guam. [UPDATED 12:45 pm Tuesday: Reuters just reported America’s first challenge to China in this crisis, a flight through the newly declared air defense zone by two US military aircraft that elicited no Chinese response. That raises the ugly prospect of repeating the 2001 collision off Hainan that killed a Chinese fighter pilot, downed a US Navy spyplane, and left 24 Americans in Chinese captivity for 11 days. After years of shadowboxing at sea around the Senkaku Islands, China’s Ministry of Defense announced a new “Air Defense Identification Zone” with authority to oversee and, implicitly, even intercept aircraft flying over the disputed waters, includes Japanese and American military planes. UPDATED: US Flies B-52 Bombers Through Chinese Zone Japanese & South Koreans Follow VP Biden To Ask Beijing For “Clarity” On Their IntentionsĬhina escalated tensions with Japan literally sky-high last weekend. Bombers like this one breached China’s air defense zone Tuesday. A US Air Force B-52 flies from Guam out over the Pacific.
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