US ‘pivot’ toward China

A new word has come into vogue over the past year as the United States draws down its forces in Afghanistan and gets out of Iraq.

The word is “pivot.” We’re told the U.S. is “pivoting” toward Asia, focusing on this part of the world after having concentrated on the Middle East for too long. “Pivot” is a basketball term ― a player “pivots” with a great squeaking of rubber soles on the hard court and then passes or shoots. President Obama drew the term from his own experience. He loved to play basketball when he had a little more time in his pre-presidential days as an Illinois politician.

The notion of a U.S. “pivot” sounds nice in briefings and columns but actually is misleading if not ridiculous. The U.S. in recent years has scaled down its presence in Korea while talking about leaving the historic headquarters base at Yongsan and pulling back the only U.S. combat troops between Seoul and the Demilitarized Zone, moving them from Camp Casey to Pyongtaek.

In Japan, the U.S. has problems convincing people that construction of a new marine air base on Okinawa far from over-populated areas is a good idea. A lot of people, it seems, can’t get used to the idea of a new marine aircraft, the Osprey, which takes off vertically like a helicopter, then flips those great blades forward and flies like a conventional plane. The Osprey may represent the way of the future, a replacement for the Chinook, dating from Vietnam War days, but a couple of crashes elsewhere raise fears.

The Chinese, as much as Obama, are responsible for spreading the word about a U.S. “pivot” ― only as might be expected to give it a pejorative meaning. You can’t actually blame the Chinese for reading an anti-China message into the term. Every time you hear about China out here, the news seems to be that of conflict from the Yellow Sea to the South China Sea. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in her visit this week to Beijing, tried to give the impression there was room enough for everyone in these troubled waters, but she’s also been talking with the leaders of tiny South Pacific countries in an attempt at “rebalancing” the balance of power.

A retired Chinese general, Pan Zhenqiang, gave voice to Chinese fears at a panel this week in which he said that Obama had “his own doctrine, Obama doctrine,” as befitting “his obsession with the Asia-Pacific.” The “new U.S. strategy,” he said, was for the U.S. “to strengthen its long-term role in the Asia-Pacific almost in all dimensions, security, political, diplomatic and economic.” Pan, talking at J-Global Forum 2012, sponsored by the JoongAng Ilbo, got better as he went along. “The Pentagon has produced the so-called Air-Sea combat concept as a new operational doctrine in its preparation to fight a war with a regional power specifically like China.”

Actually, Pentagon planners come up with stuff like that all the time. They have to. It’s their job. Otherwise there would be no justification for all the time they waste going over all their charts, graphs and intelligence reports. My question, after hearing Pan at the forum, is since when has there not been an “air-sea combat concept?” Maybe not in World War I, when planes were too new to be anything but the stuff of romantic memories of the Red Baron, but wasn’t that how World War II was fought?

In fact, the U.S. doesn’t have all that much force out here in the aftermath of Afghanistan and Iraq. Ok, maybe ships and planes don’t have to keep deploying to the Middle East so much. Still, the U.S. wasn’t building anything like the two huge bases it had in the Philippines, Clark Air Base and Subic Naval Base, before the Philippine Senate voted away the U.S. lease on them more than two decades ago.

The U.S. closed down its air bases in Thailand after the final victory of the “North” Vietnamese in the Vietnam War in 1975, and there’s been nothing comparable to the U.S. buildup in “South” Vietnam that peaked at more than half a million troops around the time of the Tet 1968 offensive when the Communists attacked nearly every city and town in the country.

General Pan came up with a great reason for why the U.S. now is taking a new interest in Asia ― a latter-day version of the gunboat diplomacy practiced by the U.S. and other powers in the era of dynastic China’s decline in the 19th century. I loved the analogy that he drew to the legendary American bank robber, Willy Sutton. Just as Sutton robbed banks “because that’s where the money is,” said the general, so “the same perhaps could also be said of Obama’s intention.” More seriously, he explained, only the Asia-Pacific region “offers hope for the world eventually to recovery with its economic and financial help.”

Pan’s view was the U.S. “demonizes China,” but really his logic demonizes the U.S. as a power itching to go to war with the Chinese over rights to islands, sea lanes, fisheries and, oh yes, a treasure trove of natural resources beneath the seabed. The U.S. has neither the strength nor the desire to wage war in this region. There has to be better way in which to “pivot” ― toward open seas, trade, cooperation and diplomacy. <The Korea Times/Donald Kirk>

*Columnist Donald Kirk, www.donaldkirk.com, has written several books and thousands of articles on military and economic issues in the Asia-Pacific. He can be reached at kirkdon@yahoo.com.

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