As US and China limber up for strategic contest, which Asia battles will they pick to fight?
There no longer seems any doubt that the United States and China have embarked on a period of aggressive confrontation. A brisk war of words has quickly escalated to tit-for-tat consulate closures, and now Chinese sources say a US warplane has flown close to Shanghai: these are initial skirmishes in a much more serious conflict that is likely to worsen at least until the US elections in November, and probably beyond. The question is, how will this confrontation play out in the rest of Asia?
Three decades have passed since the end of the nuclear-tipped Cold War between the US and Soviet Union. We tend to look back with relief that nuclear conflict was avoided. That did not mean the two powers avoided war. Starting in Korea in 1950, then in Indochina soon afterwards, more than 6 million people perished in wars in which the US and its allies battled forces backed by communist China and the Soviet Union.
Set against these direct confrontations, there were myriad proxy wars - fought within and between smaller countries, that each represented the interests of larger powers. When Soviet Russia invaded Afghanistan in the 1970s, the US armed an Islamic insurgency that forced the Soviets to withdraw a decade later - after which these mujahideen insurgents turned against their American backers.
Great power rivalry, especially in the nuclear age, has tended to manifest itself in proxy warfare, which selfishly commits others to fight for you and avoids mutually assured nuclear annihilation. In the 21st century, proxy warfare has been further elaborated as the tool of mid-sized powers with regional ambitions, as seen in the Middle East: namely Turkey and the Gulf States in Libya; Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in Yemen, and almost everyone who wants to be anyone in Syria.
A Sea Hawk helicopter takes off from the US Navy aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan in the South China Sea earlier this month. The disputed waterway is seen as a likely flashpoint. Photo: Handout via Reuters
A sharp increase in US-China rivalry has shifted the focus of geopolitical competition eastward to Asia, which begs the question: what are the chances of a war between the US and China? And if not between them directly, then which low-level conflicts in the region will these two great powers devise as proxy battlefields to avoid a costly head-on confrontation that would threaten their economies and have far higher political costs?
The most likely locus of direct confrontation is in the South China Sea, where the US is urging Southeast Asian claimant states, and surrounding allies, to more aggressively resist China's questionable maritime claims and increasingly aggressive actions to defend them. This year the US Navy has already conducted six freedom of navigation patrols through the region to assert the right of passage. These have escalated in size and posture: past naval patrols consisted of guided missile destroyers, whereas last month the US steamed two nuclear-powered aircraft carriers through the region.
The administration of US President Donald Trump has also formally rejected as excessive China's maritime claims because they are not in accordance with international law, a move that defence analysts consider a prelude to more assertive military manoeuvres in the area.
Intentional conflict is unlikely, but what worries many specialists and practitioners on both sides of the divide is the risk of an unintended incident or mishap, possibly involving an accidental collision. There are two related risks: first, the pressure from both powers on countries in the region to form tighter alliances makes for less transparency and predictable behaviour as each side hides its intentions from the other; and second, with the deterioration of bilateral ties between Washington and Beijing, normal levels of institutional engagement and dialogue have shrunk to almost nothing.
A worker removes the wall insignia of the US Consulate in Chengdu, southwestern China's Sichuan province, which was shut down this week. Photo: AFP
In the US-Soviet Union Cold War, the two sides used dedicated "hotlines" of communication - usually in the form of teletype - to avoid dangerous miscalculations. Systematic methods of communications between the American and Chinese military establishments, on the other hand, are poorly developed and rarely used. Experts fear that if a mishap occurs involving naval vessels or aircraft, the situation would swiftly escalate and could easily result in an unstoppable conflict, given the political dynamics in both Beijing and Washington.
Even if the two powers manage to avoid direct confrontation in the South China Sea, there are clear signs that they are encouraging and enabling proxy conflicts. This is starting to happen both in established conflict space and previously uncontested areas, as well as in political and economic spheres.
One of the most worrying emerging proxy battles is over control of the Mekong River. The 4,880km river, the seventh longest in Asia, rises in the Tibetan plateau and runs through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. Its waters provide nourishing sediment for the region's main rice growing region, which supports more than 100 million people.
China established the Lancang Mekong Cooperation Forum in 2015. Using a blend of aid, investment and diplomacy, China has pushed Mekong riparian states towards joint development and even joint patrols along the river. The US, for its part, supports the Lower Mekong Initiative involving Cambodia, Laos Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam, established in 2009, using US AID to fund modest technical training and infrastructure development schemes. Over the past year, the US has ramped up support for the LMI, roped in South Korea and Japan to provide financial support, and used ministerial gatherings to launch attacks on China's dam-building programmes - which are widely blamed, together with barriers across the river in Cambodia and Laos, for historically low levels of the Mekong River.
A farmer burns his dried-up rice in a paddy field stricken by drought in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam, in this 2016 file photo. Photo: Reuters
As the rhetoric heats up, US and Chinese embassies in regional capitals have become outposts for launching skirmishes. US embassies in Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia have attacked Chinese cooperation and investment as a threat to sovereignty. The US embassy in Yangon declared that Chinese infrastructure projects and special economic zones in Myanmar "pile on debt and cede regulatory control, and benefit China far more than they do the people of Myanmar. This is how modern sovereignty is often lost - not through dramatic, overt action, but through a cascade of smaller ones that lead to its slow erosion over time". China's embassy in Yangon responded by saying the US was using "disgusting things" to contain China.
China, meanwhile, is suspected of supplying arms and financial support to an array of ethnic armed insurgencies battling the governments of India and Myanmar. China's long border with Myanmar and its strategic importance as a conduit to the sea made Beijing nervous about the country's democratic transition and opening to the West after 2011. China denies supplying arms to powerful ethnic armies that have built bases along its border. But at the end of June a shipment of mostly Chinese-made weapons was discovered at the Thai border with Myanmar, destined for the latter's western border with Bangladesh where the Arakan Army is battling the Myanmar army in fierce fighting.
New Delhi's concern is that as it secures its northern and eastern borders, China will seek some means of keeping India in check. Indian media reports alleged that some Northeastern insurgent groups, such as the Nagas, are actively reaching out to China. The recent border clash between Chinese and Indian forces in the Himalayas has pushed the government of India towards the so-called Quad of democratic powers in the wider Asian region that also includes Australia, Japan and the US.
Proxy conflict between the US and China is also playing out in the economic realm. Countries are coming under greater pressure from the US to reject Chinese investment and technology. It was quite something to hear senior US officials congratulate India for banning almost 60 Chinese social media applications in July. But expect China to dangle infrastructure and other development projects in front of governments that will be looking for lifelines in the post-pandemic era.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has called China's Communist Party a threat to the free world. Photo: AFP
Given the likely fragility of some governments in the region after the coronavirus pandemic, it would not be surprising to see the US and China seek to influence political outcomes. This could be destabilising and bad for democracy. The US and China are no longer just arguing about trade, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has called the Communist Party of China a threat to the free world. During last century's Cold War, the US undermined governments that were sympathetic to communism and tended to support authoritarian military dictators. China, for its part, backed anti-government communist insurgencies in Southeast Asia until the late 1980s.
Ultimately, parallels with that war only go so far because, unlike the Soviet Union, China is not only integrated with the global economy but is a principal trading partner and market for most of Asia. The US is no longer the unrivalled superpower it once was either and cannot afford the broad decoupling from China its political leadership is urging. It is hard to see how war or proxy conflict will benefit either of the two powers - and conflict would certainly threaten the stability of Asia.
There is a way to prevent a clash between the US and China in Asia and prevent the spread of proxy conflict, and that is for the countries of the region to resist pressures to align with one side or the other and forge an effective balancing mechanism. Former Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa has called on the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations to act as an honest broker. This might work if other mid-sized powers such as Canada, Australia and Japan were to get behind an effort to wrestle the US and China into a multilateral forum to halt the slide towards confrontation. So far, this does not seem likely. Get ready for a rough ride.
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
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