Vj day, china and the challenge for america | thearticle

This Saturday marks VJ Day, the anniversary of the Japanese surrender that ended the Second World War. The Pacific War had been no less hard-fought than that in Europe. In a few months,

Imperial Japan had conquered a vast area from Burma to the Philippines, shattering the European empires and humiliating the United States in the process. Even though the “Greater East Asia

Co-Prosperity Sphere”, as Japanese propaganda called their version of oriental despotism, lasted less than four years, the idea of an Asian superpower, able to compete with America, Europe

and Russia for global hegemony, was not lost on Mao and his successors in Beijing. Seventy-five years crammed with incident have passed since peace broke out a lifetime ago, but one lesson

that we in the West ought to have learned is: never take our eyes off South-East Asia. In the decades immediately after 1945, that was never likely to happen. The Korean War and the Vietnam

War brought the world close to superpower confrontation, but in the half-century that followed, tensions were defused and the region prospered. Until the Chinese dragon began to stir, the

West paid little attention — and even then, we were happy to acquiesce in the new balance of power as long as we shared in the benefits. The post-Cold War era was still largely overshadowed

by conflicts in Europe and the Middle East. When President Obama announced his “pivot to Asia” in 2011, it amounted to little more than a rhetorical flourish. The full significance of the

accession of Xi Jinping to supreme power in China in 2012 was not grasped until much later. Even Donald Trump, elected on a protectionist ticket to curtail the Chinese commercial ascendency

in America, preferred to focus on North Korea.  Now, after a whole series of unpalatable facts about China have emerged, it seems that the West can no longer avoid confrontation. The

sustained aggression now emanating from Beijing is impossible to ignore. New threats are issued on a daily basis, while facts are created on the ground wherever possible. A demonic energy

seems to have possessed the mandarins of the People’s Republic which has echoes of the Mao era. Instead of turning on itself, as the Chinese Communist Party did in the Cultural Revolution,

it is turning on supposed “traitors” wherever they can be found and punished. The new security law in Hong Kong, for example, is already being used to snuff out the freedom of the press and

applied retrospectively to democracy activists. This week’s arrest of Jimmy Lai, owner of the _Apple Daily_, means that any critic of Beijing risks being put on trial for treason. In the

mainland province of Xinjiang, the incarceration and forced sterilisation of the Uighurs is a crime against humanity which, by rights, should land Mr Xi before a court in The Hague. Their

ordeal offers a foretaste of the fate that awaits those who fall foul of the new Chinese imperialism. In geopolitical terms, South-East Asia constitutes a gigantic archipelago, characterised

by peninsulas and offshore islands that are especially difficult to protect against superior naval and airborne forces — as we discovered to our cost in the early part of the war against

Japan. The domination of the seas and the air by the United States has hitherto preserved the tranquillity of the not always aptly named Pacific Ocean; but it has always been a precarious

peace. Whereas in Britain we tend to focus on our former colonies, especially Singapore and Hong Kong, Americans are more engaged in Korea, where they maintain a large garrison, and Taiwan.

It is the latter that is now likely to be the next target of Xi’s determination to restore the territorial integrity of the Middle Kingdom and consolidate his own power.   On Sunday, the

Chinese navy will begin two days of live-firing off the Zhoushan Islands, just 140 miles off Taiwan. A potential flashpoint is signalled by these exercises, which appear to be a rehearsal

for the seizure of a similar archipelago. At a strategic point between the South China Sea and the Pacific lie three atolls administered by Taiwan, known as the Pratas or Dongsha Islands. If

the Chinese were to occupy these islands, not only Taiwan but the United States would inevitably be forced to react with force. Hence this week’s decision by the Pentagon to announce the

deployment of three B-2 stealth bombers to Diego Garcia, the US base in the Indian Ocean. These aircraft, with capabilities that China has yet to match, are a powerful deterrent to any

temptation by Beijing to provoke a confrontation over Taiwan. Much more will need to be done, of course, if the US is to contain Chinese expansionism, especially in the South China Sea.

Decades of retrenchment in American defence budgets cannot be reversed overnight. The Trump Administration is increasing military spending to $700 billion, but this is still below the 4 per

cent of GDP that has been seen as a minimum since the much higher levels seen during the Cold War. Any real increase would require bipartisan support — well-nigh unthinkable in time of

plague. This is why it is vital that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are held to account on the issue of China during the remainder of the presidential campaign. Like other Democrats, they have

denounced Trump for his isolationism, but so far neither has fleshed out their thinking about foreign policy. As was argued here this week, without foreign policy intellectuals of the

calibre of John Bolton — or, in the past, Henry Kissinger and the late Brent Scowcroft — Trump is flying blind. Yet the same would apply to a future Biden Administration. The diplomatic

strength in depth that still underpinned US strategic thinking in the Clinton era was conspicuous by its absence under Obama. The world is now paying for the failure of the last Democratic

Administration to grasp the scale of the Chinese threat in good time and take steps to deter it. Biden must share responsibility for Obama’s sins of omission. But Kamala Harris, who

professes to care deeply about human rights and the rule of law, hasn ’ t much baggage on foreign affairs. She could speak out for a tough policy towards China and a strong defence posture.

It would hardly please her party, but it might reassure voters that “Sleepy Joe” won’t be caught dozing if and when the Chinese make their move.