America Went to Sea with No One at the Helm

Twenty-two countries have just begun to participate in the active phase of the 2012 Rim of the Pacific Exercise, which is just beginning its active phase off the coast of Hawaii. The maneuvers, administered by the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Command, were first coordinated over 40 years ago with the aim of Soviet deterrence, and this year will mark the first inclusion in its history of a naval detachment from the Russian Federation. Moreover, despite an unprecedented number of participants, the United States tellingly did not invite the world’s second most powerful naval force, China, to participate. Experts explain that the move is symbolic of a shift in the participants of the Cold War paradigm, with Beijing supplanting Moscow as the main opponent in the conflict with Washington.

This year’s Rim of the Pacific Exercise will continue until Aug. 4. The exercise is traditionally held once every two years, and this year’s maneuvers have been the most internationally representative: The 2012 Rim of the Pacific Exercise will include the participation of 45 ships, six submarines, more than 200 airplanes and over 20,000 servicemen from 22 countries.

The first Rim of the Pacific Exercise took place in 1971, during the height of the Cold War, when Western allies aimed to coordinate their efforts in deterring the Soviet’s Pacific fleet. In this year’s exercise, Russia — formerly the primary opponent of the United States — will participate in the active phase for the first time in the Rim of the Pacific Exercise’s history. On Friday, three boats from Russia’s Pacific fleet, the large anti-submarine ship “Admiral Pantelev,” the tanker “Boris Butoma” and the lifeguard boat “Fotiy Krylov” pulled into the Pearl Harbor Naval Base.

Russia’s unexpected participation in the 2012 Rim of the Pacific Exercise was not the sole intrigue of this year’s maneuvers. China is notably absent among the participants, which marks the first time in the storied history of the exercises that the second-most powerful navy in the world was not invited. In a press conference at Pearl Harbor, Cecil Haney, the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, dodged the question about China’s nonattendance.

According to experts, the reluctance of the organizers of the 2012 Rim of the Pacific Exercise to invite China is connected to the escalation of tensions between China and other countries in southeast Asia (at length discussed in Kommersant on Apr. 17). “It is difficult to imagine a situation in which Chinese sailors would practice alongside their Filipino colleagues, with whom they almost entered armed conflict in the spring,” Dmitriy Mosyakov, the head of the East Asia, Australia and Oceania Institute of Oriental Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences, explained to Kommersant.

Though the government in Beijing has officially remained silent on the matter, the Chinese media has been filled with harsh commentary condemning the United States for their attempts to quarantine China and turn the Pacific Ocean into its “backyard.” According to Chinese Communist Party-controlled newspaper, The Global Times, the Rim of the Pacific Exercise gives the United States recourse to put on an anti-China “naval show” in Hawaii.

Apart from Russia’s participation in the 2012 Rim of the Pacific Exercise, more unpleasant news for Beijing came in the form of India’s invitation to participate. India is one of the countries in the much-talked-about Moscow-Beijing-Delhi triangle, and the South Asian superpower has been China’s strategic partner in BRICS, the association of emerging economies composed of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. “India was invited to participate in the Rim of the Pacific Exercise under the United States’ direction, but not a word about this to anyone, since China would not like it,”* an editorial comment in the Indian newspaper The Calcutta Times riffed.

According to experts, the make-up of participants in the 2012 Rim of the Pacific Exercise confirms that one of the players in the bipolar Cold War fight has been replaced, and now the face-off is between the United States and China rather than the United States and the Soviet Union. “You can make a number of conclusions from the 2012 Rim of the Pacific Exercise. First, Russia’s participation in the exercises shows that despite a number of recurring problems, the partnership between Russia and America in international security will continue. Second, China will become an increasingly important factor in relations between the United States and other world powers,” political scientist Igor Zevelev said to Kommersant. “Moscow will have to take into account the dynamic of the Chinese-American conflict when developing policy towards both Washington and Beijing.”

Director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Moscow Center Dmitry Trenin explained that it is of great importance to Russia to smooth relations with the United States and China. “In the 1990s, Moscow refused to become a junior partner of the United States, and for 15 years, Russia maintained a strategic partnership with China and successfully built strong relations with Beijing. Too close an encounter with China could turn Russia into the junior partner of our booming Eastern neighbor,” he explained to Kommersant. “Today, the center of international politics and economics has moved to the Asia-Pacific region, and the development of the Far East and Siberia has become an important geopolitical issue for the Russian government. In these conditions, the test of the strategic independence and modern power of Russia will be its ability to keep its balance between Beijing and Washington.”

*Editor’s note: The original quotation, though accurately translated, could not be verified.