US Must Respond Carefully to Abe's Missteps

With the intensifying territorial dispute over the Diaoyu Islands, the number of diplomatic ventures by China and Japan is also on the rise. This newest round of diplomatic competition between the two countries will inevitably further transform the geostrategic situation in East Asia. Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping visited Russia and other BRICS [Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa] countries in late March, conveying China’s continued insistence on a path of peaceful development, as well as its resolve to protect the nation’s core interests at any cost. Chinese Ambassador to the U.S. Cui Tiankai also reminded the U.S. once more not to “smash its own foot with the rock that is Japan,” signaling that, if necessary, China will not hesitate to “go all in” with the U.S.

While the Xi administration has inherited the guarded strategic posture and patient opportunism of the Hu Jintao era in its own foreign policy, it has not ruled out a change to an “anything goes” policy. Xi has previously indicated that China is willing, within its capabilities, to shoulder a greater amount of responsibility as a world power and has proposed that China and the U.S. build a new great power relationship together. However, he has also made repeated calls for the U.S. to respect China’s core interests. Faced with changes in the security environment on all sides, Beijing insists on maintaining the principles of both peaceful development and protection of core interests, leaving no room for negotiation on any issue relating to national sovereignty or territorial integrity.

So far this year, Abe and members of his cabinet have traveled to the U.S., Europe, Russia, India, Association of Southeast Asian Nations member countries and the Middle East. Abe’s cabinet has strengthened U.S.-Japan relations, restored Japan’s relations with Russia, increased economic incentives for foreign investment and pursued a diplomatic strategy based on “values.” By all appearances, this is done in an effort to enhance Japan’s strategic position and extend its influence throughout the region and the globe, but the true purpose behind this maneuvering is none other than to increase the number of cards Japan has to play against Beijing.

Heightened tensions between China and Japan, along with the North Korean crisis, already have had a marked impact on strategy in East Asia. Much depends on where the power of the U.S. and Russia will tend; Abe is most concerned with seeing to whom they will lend their support. The situation on the Korean Peninsula has prompted the U.S., China and Russia to pass a U.N. Security Council resolution leveling sanctions against North Korea and has also created an opportunity for the U.S. and China to build a limited strategic partnership. The joint declaration made by Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin on the former’s visit to Russia emphasized China and Russia’s firm support for each other’s core interests in national sovereignty, territorial integrity and security, making Abe more wary of a possible alliance between China and Russia. Japanese officials have frequently visited Washington in recent months, hoping to procure a U.S. guarantee for Japan’s security.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey both stated recently that the U.S. opposes any unilateral action that changes the status quo on the Diaoyu Islands and reiterated that the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the U.S. and Japan applies to the defense of the Diaoyu Islands, seemingly bolstering Abe’s confidence in opposing China. In late April, members of the Japanese cabinet brushed aside international opinion in a brazen visit to the Yasukuni Shrine. The result of Washington’s silence on the issue accompanies Abe’s previous public declaration — during his visit to Saudi Arabia — that Japan has no need for China and South Korea’s understanding to revise its constitution, which might be necessary if the U.S. and Japan were not simply working in concert.

Abe’s attempts to outflank Beijing diplomatically in order to force concessions from it are evidently a product of his own wishful thinking. During Abe’s first term as prime minister in 2006, he also supported “values diplomacy” and the “arc of freedom and prosperity,” the objective being to weaken China’s influence in East Asia. The result was that Abe overestimated his own strength, while underestimating that of Beijing. At present, Abe still believes that Japan can take advantage of Russia reopening negotiations on sovereignty over the Kuril Islands to strengthen bilateral trade cooperation and establish mechanisms for political dialogue in national defense and diplomacy, all toward achieving the goals of its China containment strategy. However, he has very likely badly misjudged the situation once again.

The strategic partnership between China and Russia has never been a casual alliance but one born of necessity in the face of U.S. strategic pressure. To contend against China, Japan has taken proactive steps to accommodate the mechanisms for multilateral strategic dialogue that Washington promotes between the U.S., Japan, South Korea, Australia and India. The end result, however, has been that its policy of using island chains for containment not only cannot keep China in check, but has actually intensified rivalries throughout East Asia. China is not like the Gulliver of children’s stories, who accidentally happened upon a world of tiny people. The China of the real world is more akin to the one foreseen in a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace report on the impact of China’s rise on Asia and the Pacific: Its military strength will grow and eventually break free of the chains that the U.S. has set in Asia, ending its hegemony.

Neither side wishes to see the territorial dispute between China and Japan escalate to the point where the U.S. and China are forced into a military confrontation. The key factor remains the degree to which Washington keeps the Japanese right in check. The U.S. may be constrained by the defense treaty and thus unable to sacrifice Japanese strategic interests for the sake of its relations with China. However, if Washington continues to ignore provocations from Japan’s right wing or goes so far as to quietly encourage Abe to revise the constitution, the risk of military conflict breaking out between China and Japan would only increase; any leeway for strategic maneuvering between the U.S. and China would vanish; and the new great power relationship being established between the two sides of the Pacific would be dead in the water.