John Kerry’s visit to Asia this week – like Ashton Carter’s last month – is designed to offer reassurance that America’s commitment to the region remains unwavering in the face of increased Chinese aggression. Yet despite these visits, leaders in the region have profound doubts whether the United States is serious about standing up to China. The Obama administration has caused those doubts through its passive, anodyne language. To inspire confidence and give meaning to the oft-derided “Asia Pivot”, the administration must dramatically strengthen its rhetoric and frame China’s aggression in moral terms.
In the South China Sea, in waters between the Philippines, Malaysia, and Vietnam, China has been turning reefs into full-fledged islands replete with long runways, sophisticated radar equipment, and facilities for storage and living quarters. In the same area, China is asserting control over international airspace. Chinese naval vessels have rammed Vietnamese fishing boats, and China has placed oil-drilling rigs in waters claimed by Vietnam. Chinese aggression also extends eastward, towards Japan, where the country has regularly entered Japanese waters near the disputed Senkaku Islands.
None of this, of course, has gone unnoticed by the United States. Under the Asia Pivot, the Obama administration has increased the number of marines stationed in Australia. In 2013 it flew several B-52s through airspace that had been improperly claimed by China. It has arranged for the Philippines to grant the U.S. navy access to several bases. And the United States is currently considering sending warships and military planes through the South China Sea to protest Chinese land reclamation there – a threat on which the United States should certainly follow through.
All of these practical countermeasures, however, have been neutered by the administration’s weak and feckless rhetoric. Take Secretary Carter’s statement while in Vietnam last month that “the United States opposes militarization and the creation of tensions in the South China Sea, even though we are not a claimant to the South China Sea.” Or President Obama, who recently said that, “it may be that some of [China’s] claims are legitimate, but they shouldn’t just try to establish that based on throwing elbows and pushing people out of the way.”
The administration is speaking so softly that it is undermining its own stick – while at the same time failing to create any sense of urgency to conclude initiatives like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a strategically important free trade agreement that is again stalled after several days of unsuccessful talks, or transfers of military technologies to U.S. allies in the region.
President Obama’s soft rhetoric and caveats – mirrored by the words of Secretary Carter – suggest that he thinks he owes China some deference because the territories in question are part of the country’s notional sphere of influence. But that is not the right conceptual framework, and certainly not how the president should talk about the issue publicly. Rather, the administration needs to forcefully frame this issue in terms of values and international norms of conduct.
The United States stands for freedom of navigation and for the unfettered use of international airspace. It believes in solving territorial disputes through arbitration, not use of force and unauthorized land reclamations. It rejects the notion that large countries can trample on the rights of other countries in their neighborhood, simply because those countries are smaller. America’s disagreement with China is not about spheres of influence. It has to do with the fact that China is violating all of these bedrock principles – and doing so in a region that is vital to global commerce as well as international peace and security. The United States recognizes China’s behavior for what it is, and deems the behavior unacceptable.
President Obama would do well to consider giving a speech touting these important U.S. values from on board a U.S. aircraft carrier sailing right through the international waters of the South China Sea.
Those who say that such rhetoric would be overly provocative must not remember how every single U.S. president responded to acts of aggression by the Soviet Union, the world’s second superpower during the 20th century. Whether it was Ronald Reagan praising the freedom of West Berlin mere steps from the Brandenburg Gate while calling on the Soviets to tear down the Berlin Wall, or President Kennedy announcing a naval blockade of Cuba by explaining that the U.S. seeks “not the victory of might, but the vindication of right”, the United States has never shied away from standing up to foreign aggressors big or small, and doing so on moral grounds. The Obama administration must not lose sight of that proud tradition.
Alexander Benard is the COO of a private investment firm focused on frontier markets. He previously worked at the Department of Defense and is the author of a Foreign Affairs article on U.S.-China competition.
