Go West

The United States is raising its visibility in the western Pacific arena.

For a long time, the United States wasn’t sure whether it wanted to fight China or embrace it. Now Obama has decided to increase U.S. troop strength in the Pacific area and has created a historical turning point: America has surprisingly decided to come down on the side of those nations that feel most threatened by the Chinese quest for power.

Ironically, a town named Darwin — a relatively godforsaken spot in northern Australia — has become the symbol of a turning point of historical dimensions in global politics. Next year, Darwin will become home to 250 U.S. Marine infantry soldiers, the most recent node in the global network of U.S. military installations. Australia again plays host to American soldiers. But Darwin is more than just a colored pin on the map. Darwin is a commitment to a new world order proclaimed by Barack Obama.

Speaking to the Australian Parliament, Obama said that from this point onward the United States was a Pacific nation. “As we end today’s wars, I have directed my national security team to make our presence and mission in the Asia Pacific a top priority,” he announced. Darwin will soon be what Ramstein and Grafenwöhr were in Germany — and that’s just the beginning.

The strategic change of course actually has a target: China. Even if Obama won’t say so out loud, his new policy is formed around China as a potential enemy. The scales have tilted back and forth for a long time in Washington – contain China or embrace it? Confrontation or a balanced policy? Now the answer has been given. Surprisingly unambiguous and without diplomatic preparation in Beijing, the United States has positioned itself on the side of those nations that feel most threatened by China’s hegemony in eastern Asia.

Obama sought his foreign policy course for a long time, waywardly moving through the Middle East as well as Europe. Now he has decided that America will go westward. The full force of the nation’s security apparatus, political awareness and therefore its social and economic interests lie beyond the coast of California, all the way to China, and in the grand political game playing out there — with or without American participation.

Obama’s address to the Australian Parliament is a historical document. At this location far from Europe, the U.S. president has ended America’s trans-Atlantic exclusivity. Of course, the U.S. will continue its commitment to Europe. But the economic crisis, the proliferation of small states, the reluctance vis-à-vis the Muslim world and the political ineffectiveness in East Asia — especially in China — render Europe uninteresting.

In the shadow of European and Arab world crises, tension has been growing in Southeast Asia, especially between residents in the South China Sea, to the point that it could rapidly develop into veritable conflicts. The seabed beneath these waters, themselves so important to global trade, is rich in mineral reserves such as oil and gas. China claims a large portion of these waters as its own territory, but Beijing’s claims are ill-founded. Historical claims to ownership of the Paracel and Spratly islands, scattered like pebbles in the South China Sea, are contested. Vietnam and the Philippines make no less credible claims to them as well.

Cold War Repeat?

But Vietnam and the Philippines are weak, so they have historically been subjected to massive Chinese pressure. The Chinese newspaper “Global Times” bluntly says, “If these countries don’t want to change their ways with China, they will need to prepare for the sounds of cannons.” In view of China’s rapidly expanding military, its neighbors take such threats very seriously.

The United States thus engages with dangerous directness in this growing conflict and easily finds allies. Vietnam seeks closer ties to Washington and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently gave a thundering speech aboard a U.S. warship anchored in the Bay of Manila. Her appearance was clumsy; she was assured applause for her remarks, but smart foreign policy doesn’t look like that.

And China? Of course, China’s aggressive policy toward its neighbors reflects an ever-growing nationalism and a lack of foreign policy sensibility among its leaders. Now the United States reacts and defines the parameters for a new Pacific policy: It’s all about balance of power and deterrence.

So is history repeating itself? Will the Pacific century be a copy of the trans-Atlantic century with its cold wars and insane arms races? It’s still early in the days of the Pacific epoch. In Southeast Asia, the main concerns are energy and borders, as well as trade routes, a currency war and, finally, an ideology. An authoritarian system defends its gains and feels threatened by a democratic nation all too willing to impose its values as a new world order.

The experiences of the last century should be a lesson for Obama that conflicts cannot be settled by Darwinian laws. The price of that would be immense and Obama would probably end up paying it.