作者：Posted by T. Greer  来源：中美印象

    中国在南海的利益是明显的，众所周知的，然而，相隔十万八千里，美国为什么要介入南海争端？美国在南海有哪些利益？随着，南海局势的紧张，美国海军军事学院副教授、中国安全政策问题专家哥德斯泰恩博士(Dr. Lyle Goldstein)亚太安全研究中心国际安全问题、越南问题专家亚历山大·伍文(Alexander Vuving)就美国在南海利益的本质进行了辩论。哥德斯泰恩博士认为，南海不是美国的重要利益所在，美国不应该过分介入南海争端中，这挑战了以伍文博士为代表的美国对中国的传统观点——中美之间关于南太平洋的霸权竞争是真实存在的，南海问题只是这种竞争的一个表现点而已。

    Should America Give a Whit About the South China Sea?

    Posted by T. Greer

    A worthwhile debate between Lyle Goldstein and Alexander Vuving has been playing out on the pages of the National Interest this month. It started with a short essay by Goldstein titled "The South China Showdown: 5 Dangerous Myths." This was met in rejoinder by Vuving’s slightly longer piece, "Think Again: Myths and Myopia about the South China Sea." [1] As general rule, I try to ignore anything published on the internet in listicle format, but I am glad I made an exception for Goldstein’s article. The merit of his essay lies less in the strength of its thesis than the mere fact his thesis was published at all. Goldstein, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, is an enemy to all established wisdom on the U.S.-Chinese relations. His essay is an attempt to subvert the assumptions that guide American thinking on the South China Sea. Vuving, for his part, defends the establishment view as essentially true, albeit lacking in nuance. Reading through both of their arguments is worth your time.

    I’ll focus here on their most important point of dispute: the nature of America’s interests in the South China Sea. I am consistently amazed at how little this is discussed in American circles. The republic’s interests in the territorial squabbles of the region are assumed, not argued over. How Chinese machinations in the sea should be stopped is often debated–why America should bother with the stopping never is. This is unconscionable. China’s pressing interests in the South China Sea are natural and obvious. Those of the United States, a country an ocean away, are remarkably less so. The failure of American statesmen to articulate a convincing explanation for U.S. involvement in these disputes lies at the root of both Chinese mistrust of American intentions and the fears of American allies that Washington is not truly committed to their security. Above all else, American citizens and servicemen deserve an explanation for why they should care about a few god-forsaken atolls thousands of miles from their home.

    I am thus quite grateful that Goldstein forces this conversation upon us. He does so by arguing that Americans really shouldn’t care about the islands after all:

    The notion persists that U.S. national interests amount simply to the aggregate of interests of all allies and partners. Thus, as Beijing has often complained, Washington’s eagerness to please and to allay all concerns has created perverse incentives for allies and partners to press for maximalist positions within various disputes with the hope that Uncle Sam will have their backs if push comes to shove. In a risk/reward matrix, some Philippine nationalists could come to the seemingly far-fetched conclusion that it is really worth it for Manila to risk World War III in order to secure drilling rights on Reed Bank. The Philippines would likely suffer enormously in such a conflict, of course, and very few Americans would try to make a similar case. Indeed, the example shows how Philippine and American interests could logically go in quite separate directions. One might even say that Manila enters a zone of serious moral hazard in hoping that Washington would take such risks for the sake of just another oil patch. It turns out the major diplomatic error has been to give The Philippines the wrong-headed idea that the U.S. would actually entertain such grave risks. Alternatively, the alliance could be much strengthened if it remained grounded within the scope of common sense.  That is to say that the U.S. defense commitment to the Philippines should be defensive in orientation and cover the main islands, including Palawan, Luzon, etc, but no ill-defined and unexplored “grey zone” claims. Why the U.S. should entertain any conflict, let alone major hostilities, with China over  maritime disputes with U.S. “partner” Vietnam is completely mystifying. 

    He continues:

    One of the most common, but silliest ideas floating about on the South China Sea is that the area’s economic dynamism implies that the U.S. must maintain unchallenged military supremacy in these waters. Taken to a bizarre extreme, this logic even claims that the entire global trading system (the “rule-based order”) is under grave threat from Chinese actions in the South China Sea.  In short, stand up to China or watch the global economy come crashing down. Good luck finding a credentialed economist or even a Wall Street analyst, who would agree with this assessment. What makes this line of argumentation so specious, of course, is that China has been the major driver for this region’s extraordinary economic dynamism. The argument that maritime trade (and with it the global economy) will crash if China gains additional strategic influence in the South China Sea is, at best, a 19th century anachronism in our collective discourse. At worst, it is simply foolish drivel that makes for fine-sounding political rhetoric. Washington would be better served taking a page from Beijing’s playbook and attempting to turn its own backyard into a dynamic force in the global economy. The U.S.-Cuba rapprochement is a hopeful start towards such a project. 

    The bolded emphasis is my own. I’ve also taken the liberty to bold the best sections of Alexander Vuving’s response:

    The risk of a direct conflict between Washington and Beijing exists even without U.S. support for its allies and partners in the region. The territorial dispute in the South China Sea represents just the tip of the iceberg; buried under the surface is a more strategic competition for supremacy in the Western Pacific. China and the United States are the two major contestants in this competition, though other nations including Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam and India also have significant roles to play.

    Having no permanent presence in the South China Sea and with a home base far away, the United States has to rely on Vietnam, the Philippines and to a lesser extent Malaysia to keep the regional balance of power from tilting too far in favor of China. In this regard, American and Southeast Asian interests are complementary rather than conflicting. Helping allies and partners is also an economic way to serve U.S. interests in the region. The real question here is not whether, but how America should support its allies and partners in the South China Sea. There are multiple options to consider in addressing this question, and a direct Sino-American conflict is a risk to prevent, not a logical consequence of U.S. support for allies and partners in conflict with China.

    But why must the United States compete for supremacy in the Western Pacific? The near-standard answer is that America has a national interest in freedom of navigation and U.S. military supremacy in these waters is the best guarantee for that. I think this answer has flaws, but not for the reasons offered by Goldstein. First, although the United States has an important interest in the South China Sea, freedom of navigation is not the best term for this interest. Second, there is another reason for the United States to compete for supremacy in the Western Pacific. Let me explain.

    The term “freedom of navigation” is a bad choice of words. Its meaning varies according to the legal position or the national perspective you take. What is at stake here is not so much freedom of navigation as an actual situation, but the right of free access to the waters and skies in this crowded area. There is a crucial difference between Chinese and U.S. commitments to “freedom of navigation” in the South China Sea. This difference stems from the fundamental fact that while the United States upholds the notion of the global commons, China cherishes the idea of the “nine-dash line.” With this idea, Beijing considers the domain indicated by the “nine-dash line” as something like a sovereign realm it has lost to others and it is entitled to get back. China and the United States may share the same view when it comes to nautical freedom in most maritime areas on earth, but the South China Sea is a special case because of the “nine-dash line.” While Washington acknowledges the right of everyone, even its enemies, to freely access the waters and skies in this region, Beijing reserves the right to itself. When China says it guarantees freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, the tacit understanding is that as a benevolent power, it opens its gates to everybody, but others must respect its sovereignty.

    China is far from being able to control all the “gates” along the “nine-dash line,” and even if it can do so, it will not close these “gates.” After all, China has an enormous vested interest in keeping the flow of commerce through the South China Sea unimpeded. The threat posed by China to freedom of navigation and overflight in this area affects the normative basis of this freedom more than the practical situation. If the Chinese Navy becomes the custodian of nautical freedom in these waters, most vessels, most of the time, can still sail through them unhindered, but that is not because nations enjoy the objective right of free access, but because they enjoy China’s subjective benevolence, which at times can be selective and arbitrary. This subtle detail may not be important for insurance and shipping companies, but it will have far-reaching consequences for world politics. It means that in the regional order underwritten by China international law must yield to Chinese policy.

    Even if China will behave the same as the United States does, Chinese supremacy in the East and South China Seas will still pose a grave threat to U.S. leadership in the region. The concentration in this domain of Asia’s chief arteries means that, to paraphrase Harold Mackinder, he who controls the East and South China Seas, dominates Asia; and with the rise of Asia, he who dominates this region, commands the world. For seventy years since the last days of World War II, U.S. naval supremacy in the Western Pacific has enabled Washington to play a leadership role in Asia. For its part, China has increasingly exhibited the conviction that its road to Asian primacy also runs through supremacy in these waters. 

    The debate is worth reading in full. Vuving’s distinction between American and Chinese conceptions of "freedom of navigation," in particular, should be remembered in all of discussions of Chinese claims in both the South and the East China Seas. But in some ways the terms of this debate were painfully limited. Like most editorials and policy memos written on the South China Sea, the essays in this debate dissect American policy in the South China Sea without reference to the larger context in which American policy is made.

    The South China Sea is not the only crisis zone on Washington’s radar. For every opinion piece urging Washington to take the South China Sea more seriously, there is one lamenting the failure of American resolve in Afghanistan, another exhorting the United States to show greater commitment to our allies in Eastern Europe, and two more pushing for a larger American role in the fight against ISIS. The United States needs to shore up its prestige just about everywhere.

    This is not possible. We live in a sequester era. Americans are sick of foreign entanglements, Congress is a dysfunctional mess, and budget cuts are sweeping across the services. The United States simply cannot be everything to everyone. We have to choose what battles are most important to win–and by extension, what battles can be lost and forgotten. The question is not "are the territorial disputes in the South China Sea vital to American interests?" but "are the territorial disputes in the South China Sea more vital to American interests than what is happening in Syria, Ukraine, North Korea, and other crisis zones across the globe?" 

    Americans are always uncomfortable when I state the problem this way, but this is a reality we have to face.  To strategize is to prioritize. To argue for active American involvement in the South China Sea is to argue that other regions, problems, and commitments should receive less attention from Washington. Those who want the United States to step up in the South China Sea must recognize that this means stepping down somewhere else. It is far past time for those who argue thus to justify why the South China Sea should take priority over America’s other commitments.

    link: http://scholars-stage.blogspot.tw/2015/10/why-should-america-give-whit-about.html

来源时间：2016/7/13   发布时间：2016/7/13

旧文章ID：10835

作者：Posted by T. Greer  来源：中美印象

   
   联合南海周边国家——菲律宾和越南等，美国正在从南海争端的幕后走向台前。美国认为，中国要么选择遵守国际规则，按照联合国海洋法公约约束其南海行为，要么无视这些国际规范，按照自己的想法为所欲为，自我孤立。美国好像给了中国一个选择，然而事实是，中国早已经做出了选择，在共产党政权的治理下，中国从来没有任何加入西方国际秩序的打算，中国将之视为邪恶的，不公平的，不利于自身发展的。美国的问题不是等中国做出选择，而是如何与早已做出选择的中国相处，如何与一个崛起的并非自由主义的大国相处，承认且认同中国与其有着不同的价值观。美国应该如何做仍然是未知的，需要更为细致的讨论和研究。

    China Does Not Want Your Rules Based Order

    Posted by T. Greer

    While the sun and moon endure
    Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure,
    I’d face it as a wise man would,
    And train for ill and not for good.
    —A.E. Housman, "Terence This is Stupid Stuff," (1896)

    The words of Senator John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, delivered on the 3rd of June to the assembled leaders and representatives of the Southeast Asian nations then gathered in Singapore:

    The choice for Southeast Asia in the 21st century is not between the United States and China, as some would make it out to be. Instead it is a choice between two futures—one in which the rules-based order is upheld and its benefits expanded to ever more people in Asia, or a darker future that resembles the past in this region and the world, where might makes right, and bullies set the rules and break them.

    The rules-based order has not and will not enforce itself here in Southeast Asia. Nor can America, despite its great power, achieve this feat alone. It requires its stakeholders, including the nations of Southeast Asia, to uphold its principles, especially when they are challenged. America and the world are counting on the nations of Southeast Asia to recommit their power and resolve to upholding this system on which our shared security and prosperity depend.

       Like Southeast Asia, China also faces a choice. No nation has benefited more from the rules-based order than China. In just a single generation, China has become an economic superpower and a major player in international affairs. No nation in history has risen so high, so fast, and in so many different dimensions. And no nation has been a greater advocate for China’s success than America. Let me repeat: No nation has done as much to contribute to what China calls its “peaceful rise” as the United States of America.

       Regrettably, in recent years, there have been disturbing signs that China is maneuvering toward a policy of intimidation and coercion—harassing fisherman from the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia; using trade as a weapon in disputes with its neighbors; using cyber to steal intellectual property from foreign businesses to benefit its own industries; conducting dangerous intercepts of military aircraft flying in accordance with international law; and in the South China Sea, shattering the commitments it made to its neighbors in the 2002 Declaration of Conduct, as well as more recent commitments to the U.S. government, by conducting reclamation on disputed features and militarizing the South China Sea at a startling and destabilizing rate.

    The choice for China is how it uses its growing power and position. China could continue to coerce and intimidate its neighbors and unilaterally enforce its territorial claims. It could pursue mercantilist economic policies. And it could engage in a zero-sum game for regional power and influence. China could do all of this, and it would harm the interests of every nation in this region, including its own.

    Alternatively, China could choose a better path. It could cooperate with its neighbors and manage disputes peacefully, consistent with the same international rules that have benefited China so greatly. It could expand free and open trade with the region and the world. And it could expand cooperation with other Pacific powers on regional security challenges, from piracy to stability on the Korean Peninsula.

       In short, China can choose to disrupt the rules-based order. Or it can choose to become a vital partner in maintaining it. I fear the consequences if China chooses the path of disruption. But I am confident that if China chooses the path of partnership and cooperation, China’s growing influence will be welcomed by the international community. And the benefits of greater security and prosperity will extend to more citizens of this region than ever before, China’s included. 

    McCain’s words echo those spoken by Secretary of Defense Ash Carter last week to the graduating midshipman at Annapolis. Read them both. Compare what they say. Behold the quickly crystallizing American narrative on China. This is a bipartisan message. It will be the starting point of a President Clinton’s policy. Whether a President Trump will endorse it is hard to say. In either case, it is a narrative whose momentum is building.

    There is much that is good in this narrative. McCain proclaims that "no nation has done as much to contribute to what China calls its “peaceful rise” as the United States of America." He is right to do so. No nation has done more to enable China’s rise than America has. No country’s citizens have done more for the general prosperity of the Chinese people than the Americans have. This is true in ways that are not widely known or immediately obvious. For example, the role American financiers and investment banks played in creating the architecture of modern Chinese financial markets and corporate structures is little realized, despite the size and importance of their interventions. Behind every great titan of Chinese industry–China Mobile, the world’s largest mobile phone operator, China State Construction Engineering, whose IPO was valued at $7.3 billion, PetroChina, the most profitable company in Asia (well, before last year), to name a few of hundreds–lies an American investment banker. I do not exaggerate when I say Goldman Sachs created modern China. [2] China has much to thank America for.

    However, I cannot endorse all that is included in this emerging narrative, for part of it is deeply flawed. The flaw may be by design; if the purpose is to stir cold hearts and gain moral admiration of others, such flaws can be excused–that is how politics works. But this sort of things can only be excused if those delivering the speeches do not take the implications of their own words seriously when it is time to make policy.

    I speak of  China’s "choice." The thread that runs through all of these talks is that the Chinese have yet to choose whether they aim for order or disruption, the existing regime or the chaos beyond it. The truth is that the Chinese have already chosen their path and no number of speeches on our part will convince them to abandon it. They do not want our rules based order. They have rejected it. They will continue to reject it unless compelled by overwhelming crisis to sleep on sticks and swallow gall and accept the rules we force upon them.

    China has made its choice. The real decision that will determine the contours of the 21st century will not be made in Beijing, but in Washington.

    Observers of Chinese affairs have come to recognize two uncomfortable truths. The first is that China is a growing power whose might will continue to grow in every dimension we can measure for decades. The second is that the Chinese system of government is a fundamentally illiberal one, and the system of international relations the leaders of this system prefer reflects their illiberalism. These two things are not determined in the stars; either may change, and may change quite suddenly. But Americans will be better served if we plan as if both of these truths will remain true to the end of our lives.

    This is not what we have been doing. For the most part Americans were able to accommodate themselves to the first of these realities by pretending that the second was not true. China could become more powerful, we said, because it will not be illiberal for long. After all, on this Earth the arc of history bends towards justice. Those on the ‘wrong side’ of history do not last long. How can the illiberal hope to endure?

    Last spring it finally sunk in. Chinese illiberalism not only can endure, it is enduring. The old consensus cracked apart. No new consensus on how to deal with China has yet formed to take its place.

    But old habits die hard. We see this at the highest levels of policy, as in the McCain speech, where American policy is justified in terms of giving China a chance to choose the right. The same spirit is invoked further down the line. Ash Carter, for example, recently described American tactics in the South China Sea as a "long campaign of firmness, and gentle but strong pushback… [until] The internal logic of China and its society will eventually dictate a change." [3] In other words, American policy is a holding action until the Chinese see the light.

    What if they never do?

    The Chinese believe that our international order is a rigged system set up by the imperial victors of the last round of bloodshed to perpetuate the power of its winners. They use the system, quite cynically, but at its base they find it and its symbols hypocritical, embarrassing, outrageous, and (according to the most strident among them), evil. In their minds it is a system of lies and half-truths. In some cases they have a point. Most of their actions in the East or South China Seas are designed to show just how large a gap exists between the grim realities of great power politics and soaring rhetoric Americans use to describe our role in the region. Murphy Taggart describes how the Chinese were able to exploit tensions over the Senkakus to manipulate the Japan and America’s relations:

    Beijing saw what happened in the wake of Ozawa’s comments to Hillary Clinton on her February 2009 visit to Japan, not to mention the coincidence of the ersatz “investigation” into Ozawa’s finances that destroyed his chances of becoming prime minister. Chinese leaders noted the spasms of hysteria that shook the American foreign policy establishment after Ozawa led his 600-person delegation to their country. They understood how the Hatoyama administration had been deliberately sabotaged by a de facto alliance of Pentagon functionaries, the establishment press in Japan, and Japanese spokesmen in the United States committing what amounted to treason against their own government. And they decided to call Tokyo’s— and Washington’s— bluff. [4]

    Another example was the crisis started when Beijing moved the oil rig HYSY981 into Vietnamese waters:

    “The deployment of the CNOOC mega rig was a pre-planned response to President Barack Obama’s recent visit to East Asia. China was angered by Obama’s support for both Japan and the Philippines in their territorial disputes with Beijing. Therefore China manufactured the oil rig crisis to demonstrate to regional states that the United States was a “paper tiger” and there was a gap between Obama’s rhetoric and ability to act.”

    President Obama’s tour, which ended shortly before the whole HYSY-981 fiasco began, brought the President to Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Tokyo, and Seoul. One wonders if it was wise to exclude Beijing from this list—particularly seeing as the President’s agenda included signing a ten year military pact with the Philippines, declaring that the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands are under U.S. military protection, and cajoling South Korean and Malaysian government officials and corporate bigwigs into joining the Trans Pacific Partnership. From the Chinese perspective it is hard to look at this trip as anything but a hostile attempt to draw tight the noose and solidify a regional alliance to contain it.

    Prompting a crisis was an adroit way to show that the PRC cannot be contained. Washington will not crusade against Moscow and Beijing at the same time. Beijing has forced the Americans to choose between the two. To the chagrin of our Asian allies, Washington’s priorities are not those proclaimed in the President’s speeches last month. ASEAN’s inability to stand as a united front against China’s actions is icing on the cake. Reports from the ASEAN negotiations have been more muted than the last time China was able to sow disunion in ASEAN’s ranks, but it is a safe guess that Chinese diplomats were able to pull many of the same strings they did in 2012. One suspects that China specifically timed the crises to display ASEAN’s disunity, showing the region’s middle tier powers that attempts to use ASEAN to stifle China’s ambitions are nothing but a pipe dream. [5]

    A similar story can be told for numberless Chinese diplomatic and military initiatives, from 2012’s failed ASEAN summit to the seizure of Scarborough Shoal. This is what the Chinese do. I am convinced that the Chinese are so adept at doing this—finding the places where one small push is all that is needed to display American impotence or indifference—because they are trained from the beginning to see the entire edifice as a lie, and thus are aware in a way most Americans are not of the gap between the way we talk about our alliance system and the way Asians experience it.

    Wedded to this cynical vision of the current arrangements is an equally cynical take on the history of America’s imposed order. Beijing is well aware that if it decided to do to Tonga now what the United States did to Hawaii more than a century ago it would mean war. At the time the United States suffered nothing of the sort. Not that American wars were without their own rewards—the Americans claim island bases like Guam and Saipan as prizes won through conquest. China is not allowed to conquer its own prizes. It cannot fight wars to give its forces a new ports and bases; it is not even allowed build little artificial islands for the purpose.

    Never mind that all of that strikes the Chinese’s ire happened generations ago. Anything this side of the Taiping is modern history for the Chinese. American attempts to deny that, to claim that the world should work differently now than it did when the American star first began to rise, simply prove that morality and sweet sounding words like ‘international norms’ are for the winners. All of that talk about being a responsible stakeholder is just a nicer way to say we plan on kicking down the ladder now that we have finished climbing up it.

    In simpler terms, the Chinese equate “rising within a rules based order” with “halting China’s rise to power.” To live by Washington’s rules is to live under its power, and the Chinese have been telling themselves for three decades now that—after two centuries of hardship—they will not live by the dictates of outsiders ever again.

    The Chinese will never choose our rules based order. That does not necessarily mean they want to dethrone America and throw down all that she has built. The Chinese do not have global ambitions. What they want is a seat at the table—and they want this seat to be recognized, not earned. That’s the gist of it. Beijing is not willing to accept an order it did not have a hand in creating. Thus all that G-2 talk we heard a few years back. The Chinese would love to found a new order balancing their honor and their interests with the Americans. It is a flattering idea. What they do not want is for the Americans to give them a list of hoops to jump through to gain entry into some pre-determined good-boys club. They feel like their power, wealth, and heritage should be more than enough to qualify for  automatic entrance to any club.

    The decision then, lies not with them, but with us. An illiberal China is rising. No matter how nuanced our negotiation or how righteous our indignation, the Chinese will always feel that any attempt to get them to play by rules they did not have a hand in making is 1) morally wrong and 2) damaging to the Party’s domestic power. They are interested in making a new order for the 21st century. In this the Chinese of today are not too different from the Americans of yesteryear. We forget that sometimes. There was once an era where Americans were the ones demanding that the shape of the world change to better match their values and interests.

    The question before us then is whether we can compromise with the Chinese on this, and if so where those compromises can be made. What form that compromise might take—spheres of interest are the classical model here, though others exist—is still up for discussion. If this is our path then these discussions must be had with fierce urgency.

    The alternative to compromise is containment. If we decide that any compromise with illiberal China would poison the international order beyond repair then we must move swiftly to contain China before its power grows further still. Our aim will not only be to restrain but also to reduce Chinese power when and where we can. This too will require spirited discussion, for containment is fraught with danger. We must ponder long and hard how we might go about limiting Chinese power without making the Party’s domestic position so vulnerable that they see no alternative but war before them.

    Both paths before us require careful thought and vigorous debate if we hope to traverse them safely. These discussions are not happening. As long as we cling to the illusion that China has not made her choice they will not happen. The fruits of this foolishness are not hard to see: we do not contain yet we refuse to compromise, suffering the costs of both choices while reaping the benefits of neither.[6] The hope that the Chinese will admit their wrongs and ask to join our rules-based club is a mirage. It must be given up. We hold to it only because we fear the responsibility the truth would force upon us.  The Chinese have made their choice. The ball is in our court now.

    原文链接：http://scholars-stage.blogspot.tw/2016/06/china-does-not-want-your-rules-based.html

来源时间：2016/7/13   发布时间：2016/7/13

旧文章ID：10834