Containing China

The latest U.S.-Japan security accord focusses on China and stresses joint preparedness in the military domain.

P.S. SURYANARAYANA in Singapore

STEALTH diplomacy is of two kinds. Complete secrecy may shroud the coordinated moves of two or more powers to checkmate another or meet its real or perceived challenge to their interests and influence. This "art form" is increasingly difficult to practise in the present age of rapid globalisation.

Another form of stealth diplomacy is more sophisticated and in tune with the times. The cooperating powers may come out with public documents, diplomatic transparency revealing the targeted country in coded language. The objective in this case is to play old-style power games in the emerging "post-modern context" of "constructive engagement" among the big countries.

The latest security accord between the United States and Japan is an exercise in stealth diplomacy of the sophisticated kind. And, there is nothing intrinsically immoral or deceitful, with the objectives of this "art form" being qualitatively no different from the purposes of a stealth fighter-aircraft or a frigate with a similar label.

For months during the lead-up to the Joint Statement that the U.S. and Japan issued in Washington on May 1, they hardly concealed their "concerns" about China. In fact, it bears repetition that Tokyo and Washington have, for quite some time now, veered to the strategy of regarding China virtually as an "offstage superpower" in the global arena, a la historian Paul Kennedy's description of the U.S. and the Soviet Union during the period between the two World Wars.

New in the latest context is the emphasis that the U.S. and Japan have begun to lay on their joint preparedness in the diplomatic and military domains. China, as the target country, remains in a coded language, much like in the U.S.-Japan documentation that followed the recommendations by their Security Consultative Committee (SCC) last October.

The centrepiece of the updated accords is "The U.S.-Japan Roadmap for Realignment Implementation". The Roadmap, originally suggested as an outline in October 2005, is now a done deal that incorporates the results of some hard bargaining by the two on the basis of the earlier draft. Two aspects of this new Roadmap are noteworthy in the larger milieu of big power politics. First, Tokyo and Washington are agreed that the Roadmap marks a "new phase" in their "alliance cooperation", which actually began soon after the Second World War as a strange alchemy of equation between a victor, the U.S., and a vanquished, the now-defunct "Imperial Japan".

Secondly, Japan and the U.S. have finally recognised that their "partnership must be reinforced by continued firm public support in both countries". Such an acknowledgment of the relevance of popular will is more important than it might appear on paper. The people of Japan have never been amused by the security-related "shenanigans" of their successive leaders and their U.S. "partners". The new Roadmap, a product of extended U.S.-Japan negotiations, is based on a formula of cost-sharing, among other criteria. And, the leaders in Tokyo have yet to win the firm support of the Japanese people, including those in the Okinawa region, for this military deal with the U.S.

Now, by playing its cards well, Beijing can yet seek to fuel the pressure that the Japanese people continue to exert on Tokyo in this sensitive military domain. The Japanese leaders, however, seem convinced that China is in no position to play a "democratic game" like this to embarrass either Tokyo or Washington. A factor reckoned to favour Tokyo in this situation is that the Japanese people are not opposed to the idea of keeping a rapidly rising China in check in their own neighbourhood. It is the "high-handedness" and "insensitivities" of the U.S. that the Japanese people are mostly opposed to. At the bottom-line, they do not want to acquiesce in any policy move by Tokyo that could only lead to the interminable military presence of the U.S. on their home turf.

Knowing that the anti-U.S. popular sentiments in Japan are not really a pro-China factor as such, the Japanese government is still keen to douse the groundswell of opposition to an open-ended American presence in Okinawa and its vicinity. The U.S. and Japan now feel a greater sense of urgency than in October 2005 to keep China in focus in their stealth diplomacy of the coded kind. What then is the coded language used to identify China now?

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso and Minister of State for Defence Fukushiro Nukaga issued the Joint Statement, which "called for greater transparency on the modernisation of military capabilities in the region". With China not fighting shy of acknowledging its ongoing programme of modernising its military capabilities, the U.S.-Japan call for the transparency of a plurality of such programmes in East Asia is no brain-teaser. Washington and Tokyo want Beijing to publicise its military modernisation activities. Not that the U.S. and Japan, both technologically advanced powers, cannot monitor China's military modernisation drive without an explicit check-list of the programme-specifics. But then, the call for transparency is the stuff of stealth diplomacy with finesse.

In the present "security environment" in East Asia, the U.S. and Japan "affirmed their commitment to close cooperation in realising the Common Strategic Objectives the SCC identified in February 2005". These "objectives" included a significant reference to the Taiwan issue. Beijing had then promptly denounced what it saw as the unsolicited concern of the U.S. and Japan over the political future of Taiwan, a non-sovereign territory that belongs to China under a principle accepted by the international community.

More important today than these new niceties of references to China is the explicit U.S.-Japan military resolve. Tokyo and Washington have now "stressed the imperative of strengthening and improving the effectiveness of bilateral security and defence cooperation in such areas as ballistic missile defence, bilateral contingency planning... as well as the importance of improving inter-operability of Japan's Self-Defence Forces and U.S. forces". The emphatic military tie-up is in line with the SCC's recommendations of October 2005. "Inter-operability", meaning combat-ready military planning, is the key to the new U.S.-Japan preparedness.

While "inter-operability" was identified and recommended by the SCC last October as the desired goal, Japan and the U.S. have now adopted the idea as a practical policy. The reason is not far to seek. The latest uranium deal between Australia, as the prospective supplier, and China, as the buyer, has brought an evolving subterranean reality into bold relief as a new geopolitical factor). The U.S. cannot be amused at Australia's new and firm attitude towards China.

Despite being a long-time military ally of Washington, Canberra has now explicitly enunciated its policy of "non-containment" towards China. Washington, too, is engaged in dialogue with Beijing, President Hu Jintao's latest diplomatic exercise in this domain being illustrative of the ground realities. However, the U.S. is no less convinced that its supremacy as today's sole superpower on the global stage cannot be sustained if China is not suitably checkmated. The idea, obviously, is to deny China the luxury of graduating from the virtual status of "an offstage superpower" to the real position of an onstage superpower.

Significantly, Australia is not alone among U.S. allies in seeking to pursue an autonomous policy towards China. South Korea is still formally in the U.S. camp. But Seoul is increasingly aware that its enlightened self-interest, as an ethnic kin of North Korea and as a neighbour of China, does not neatly fit into the U.S.' calculus which is based on notions of destiny as an everlasting hyper-power on the global scene.

Unlike in the case of Australia, South Korea's historical perspective on "Imperial Japan" considerably corresponds to that of China. Both Beijing and Seoul are not as much worried about Japan's behaviour before and during the Second World War as about their perception of the present "signs" that Tokyo might be actually moving towards renewed militarism. In this perspective, Washington can see Australia as a better bet than South Korea to stay in line with the U.S. Australia reaffirms its strong links with the U.S. even while disfavouring "containment" of China.

Seoul's continuing relevance in U.S. policy towards China is an issue that gets caught in the overall "international" efforts to de-nuclearise North Korea and in China's efforts to get the better of Japan in East Asia. China and Japan are openly competing for influence across East Asia and beyond.

The ongoing energy-related dispute over the estimated reserves of oil and gas in the region of East China Sea is as illustrative of the growing competition between Tokyo and Beijing as indeed their perceptions of recent history and other issues. As seen from Washington, Kent E. Calder of the Johns Hopkins University has summed this up in a recent article: "The stage is now set for a struggle between a mature power and a rising one." Japan, the first Asian country to be industrialised in the Western mode and still the only player from Asia in the club of rich nations, is the "mature power", while China is the ascending nation.

Now, even as the U.S. seeks to look beyond Japan in this context and to keep Seoul from falling into China's sphere of influence, the people of South Korea are increasingly vocal in articulating their dim view of the U.S.' real aims in the region. Like the Japanese people, but with a major difference, the South Koreans do not want an open-ended U.S. military presence in their home domain. For them, their ethnic links with the North Koreans cannot be devalued during the "international" search for a solution to Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programme. It is in this complex social-political situation that Beijing, the prime mover as regards the relevant six-party talks, seeks to solve the North Korean issue in a manner that would not alienate South Korea from China.

Aware of these cross-currents, the U.S. is looking at Indonesia, and more importantly India, as potential friends or even allies in the efforts to monitor and manage China's rise. Unsurprisingly, Taro Aso, speaking after Tokyo's latest security-related accord with Washington, drew attention to India no less than the U.S. He spoke of "strengthening" Tokyo's alliance with Washington and also "enhancing Japan's strategic relations with India - the largest democracy of the world, and Australia, and New Zealand". The effort by the U.S. camp to see India as a potential "card" in the great game of managing China's rise cannot be missed.