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Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 409–422
doi: 10.1002/app5.38
Original Article
A New Regional Cold War? American and Chinese Posturing in
the Pacific
Steven Ratuva*
Abstract
1. Introduction
It is often argued that the United States and
Chinese engagement in the Pacific manifests a
clash of foreign policies that mimics the cold
war confrontation of the post-World War II
era. The article argues that rather than a
dichotomous contestation of foreign policies,
the United States–China engagement is more
complex in nature and needs to be understood
using more ‘syncretic’ lenses to understand the
complex synergy in their relationship, which
oscillates between tension and accommodation, cooperation and competition. While there
are areas of policy contestation, there are also
areas of policy appeasement and convergence.
This may act as a stabilising factor in the
region as the two powers acknowledge the significance of the other and the long-term cost of
direct confrontation on their respective interests. This potentially contributes to a ‘stable’
environment where the Pacific Island Countries are prevented from taking sides, which
could potentially exacerbate tension and
regional instability.
When the late Fijian–Tongan anthropologist
Epeli Hau’ofa (1993) coined the phrase ‘our
sea of islands,’ which became a popular aphorism in Pacific Studies discourse, he was
making reference to the Pacific, not as a group
of tiny and disparate islands in an empty
ocean, but as a large oceanic continent that
defined the Pacific people’s sense of being and
primordial claim to sovereignty and ownership
of their oceanic cosmology. Ironically, the
notion of ‘our sea’ has been expropriated and
redefined in a new lexical context as competing hegemons in the form of the United States
and China stake their claim and legitimacy in
the Pacific. The geopolitical dynamics has
consequently stretched the ontological boundaries of ‘our sea’ to include the United States
and China who now see themselves as an
inseparable ‘part’ of the Pacific.
This article is not about deconstructing the
epistemological and ontological dimensions
of ‘our sea’ as the philosophically inclined
Hau’ofa would have loved me to do, but
simply attempts to examine some salient features of the geopolitical engagement between
the United States and China in the Pacific as
they attempt to assert the legitimacy of their
respective claims as Pacific states. Thus, the
questions we need to pose here are: Is this
exertion of influence and legitimacy in the
Pacific by the United States and China to be
framed through the cold war prism, which
depicts relations in terms of fundamental contestation of strategic and economic policies?
Key words: diplomacy, aid, strategic, pivot,
cold war
* Centre for Pacific Studies, University of
Auckland, Auckland 1142, New Zealand; email
⬍[email protected]⬎. The author wishes to
acknowledge the New Zealand Marsden research
grant for supporting the regional security program
of which this article is part.
© 2014 The Author. Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies
published by Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd and Crawford School of Public Policy at The Australian National University.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which
permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for
commercial purposes.
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Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies
Or is the engagement between the two
powers shaped by more complex diplomatic
policy considerations to maintain power
‘equilibrium’?
This article makes the argument that the
relationship between the United States and
China in the Pacific is more complex than
simply framing it fundamentally in cold war
hyperbole. The dynamics are more syncretic
than dichotomous. The term ‘syncretic’ is used
here to refer to the coexistence and complex
synergy between tension and accommodation,
cooperation and competition (Ratuva 2004).
While there are areas of policy contestation,
there are also areas of policy appeasement and
convergence.
The conceptual boundaries and the specific
contexts of the often ambiguous term ‘Pacific’
needs clarification here because of the diverse
ways and situations in which the term is used.
In this article, the term needs to be understood
in terms of two interlinked geopolitical entities. The first is a rather loose generic reference
to the Asia-Pacific region, which incorporates
the Pacific Rim countries in East Asia as well
as the Pacific island states. The second refers
specifically to the Pacific Island Forum countries (PIFCs). Where appropriate, the specific
designation is used.
2. The Context: China–United States
Engagement in Oceania
Because of its central location between the two
powers, the Pacific Ocean is where the United
States and Chinese sovereign claims and strategic projections intersect, and as a consequence, PIFCs find themselves as ‘collateral’
players in the wider geopolitical chess game.
Of the two, the United States is closer and
more influential to the PIFCs politically, economically and culturally (Keown et al. 2014).
Unlike China, it has been a colonial power in
the Pacific for a long time, and since the beginning of the twentieth century, US influence in
music, fashion, film, art, media, food, education, literature and corporate culture has contributed significantly in the transformation of
the sociocultural landscape of Pacific island
communities in profound ways (Crocombe
May 2014
2001). As the dominant power since World
War II, US strategic posturing was to ‘prevent
any potential adversary from gaining a strategic posture in the South Pacific’ that could
pose a challenge to its hegemony (Congress
Research Service 2007, p. 2). Key to US interests were protection of its territories (Guam,
the Northern Mariana Islands and American
Samoa), the Freely Associated States (Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau) and military bases on Guam and Kwajalein atoll
(Marshall Islands) (Erickson & Mikolay 2006;
Lutz 2010). Other interests include preventing
transnational crime and the harbouring of terrorist cells, and working with Australia and
New Zealand to meet common regional goals
(Friedman 2001; Congress Research Service
2007).
During the cold war, the Pacific was often
dubbed the ‘American Lake’ because of the US
strategic and military dominance through its
numerous bases, military networks and alliances around the Pacific and Pacific Rim countries (Zarsky et al. 1986). The approach was
based on the ‘strategic denial’ doctrine, which
involved the central role of the ANZUS alliance, consisting of Australia, New Zealand and
United States, to keep the Pacific free of Soviet
influence through aid, diplomacy and other
means. At the end of the cold war, the United
States reduced its active engagement with the
PIFCs because of priorities elsewhere and it
was assumed that Australia, the United
States’s closest ally in the Pacific, was to take
care of the Pacific on its behalf as ‘deputy
sheriff’ (Fry & Kabutaulaka 2008). However,
recent increase in Chinese influence has
altered the US strategic approach from indirect
engagement to direct involvement.
On the other hand, China is not as culturally
and politically influential as the United States
among the PIFCs, although the presence of
Chinese settlers dates back to the 1800s. Over
the years, a significant number of them had
settled in several countries such as Fiji and
Samoa as labourers and small-scale entrepreneurs and many intermarried with local
women (Pan 1998). By the mid-1900s, many
PIFCs had sizeable Chinese populations who
were mostly involved in commerce and some
© 2014 The Author. Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies
published by Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd and Crawford School of Public Policy at The Australian National University
Ratuva: A New Regional Cold War?
of their descendants even became prominent
personalities in politics, civil service, academia and sports (Crocombe 2007). Since the
beginning of the twentieth century, there have
been further waves of Chinese migration to
PIFCs either as traders, farmers or as part of
transnational crime networks. The first
Chinese embassy to be established in the
Pacific was in Fiji in 1975 followed by Samoa
in 1976, and since 1980, competition against
Taiwan over recognition became a dominant
factor in China’s economic and political relations with PIFCs (Wesley-Smith 2007;
Atkinson 2010; Brady 2010). There is a view
that the growth in Chinese interests in the
Pacific has been attributed to ‘a political
vacuum created by US neglect’ since the end
of the cold war (Congress Research Service
2007, p. 14). This US-centred perception does
not take into consideration China’s geopolitical competition with Taiwan as well as China’s
own global ambitions and ‘grand strategy’ as a
growing power to maintain a certain degree of
diplomatic and economic influence in various
regions of the globe including the Pacific
(Yang 2009a, 2009b, 2011b).
The United States deploys three basic strategies in its engagement with China in the
Pacific. The first is extensive diplomatic
engagement to rekindle US historical ties and
pro-US loyalty among the traditionally pro-US
PIFCs. This started when President George
Bush pledged to ‘re-engage’ with the region
and declared 2007 ‘The Year of the Pacific’
during the Pacific Islands Conference of
Leaders (PICL) triennial meeting in Washington DC in May of the same year. Issues discussed in the conference included expansion
of public diplomacy, strengthening economic
ties, US military expansion in Guam and
impact on the region, cultural and educational
exchanges, aid, trade, global warming and
democracy (U.S. Department of State 2007).
To further bolster its commitment to the
Pacific, in September 2012, Ms Clinton
attended the Post-Forum Dialogue at the
Pacific Island Forum leaders meeting in
Rarotonga, Cook Islands, where she committed long-term US aid and engagement with the
PIFCs and declared that ‘the Pacific is big
411
enough for all of us,’ an obvious reference to
China and other foreign powers (Australian
Broadcasting Corporation 2012a).
The second strategy is enhancement of its
aid delivery in the region as symbolised by the
reopening of the United States Agency for
International Development office in Port
Moresby, Papua New Guinea, in 2011 (15
years after the Suva office closed), promise of
more aid and increased investment. In
Rarotonga, Ms Clinton made the assurance
that ‘the United States is already invested in
the Pacific’ and ‘we are increasing our investments, and we will be here with you for the
long
haul’
(Australian
Broadcasting
Corporation 2012a). She also announced new
aid initiatives worth US$30 million on issues
such as sustainable development, climate
change and marine protection.
The third strategy is to revive and strengthen
the ANZUS alliance with Australia and New
Zealand and a key to this is to rejuvenate military links with New Zealand after 30 years
since New Zealand’s active participation
lapsed following its 1984 nuclear-free policy,
which disallowed US nuclear powered ships
from entering its ports. The United States
responded in 1986 by banning New Zealand
warships from entering the United States, but
this was lifted in September 2012 as the two
countries have decided to revive and expand
military cooperation (Australian Broadcasting
Corporation 2013).
In contrast, China is more focused on ‘soft
power’ approach through diplomacy and economic relations (Wesley-Smith & Porter
2010). Although the figures are not conclusive,
in the last 10 years, China has spent about
US$600 million in aid in the Pacific and this is
expected to rise significantly (Lowy Institute
2012). Another estimate puts Chinese aid disbursed in the Pacific from 2006 to 2011 at
about US$850 million, which is roughly
US$141 million a year, or around 6 per cent of
total aid to the region (Pryke 2013). China’s
aid has been largely in the form of visible and
symbolic public infrastructure compared with
the less visible US aid. Because of the Chinese
economy’s sustained surplus in contrast to
the United States’s constricted economic
© 2014 The Author. Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies
published by Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd and Crawford School of Public Policy at The Australian National University
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Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies
situation, China’s aid to PIFCs is expected to
be more sustainable in the long run. However,
the cost of Chinese aid to the PIFCs has been
an issue of concern especially the amount of
debt incurred through soft loan, inferior
quality of workmanship by Chinese companies
who are often contracted for the projects and
the tendency by Chinese contractors to flout
local building codes and employment legislations. The Chinese contractors usually bring
their own workers with them from China
despite the abundance of local labour.
Both China and the United States, as well as
other regional powers such as Australia, New
Zealand, Taiwan and Russia, see the Pacific
Island Forum (PIF) as an important mechanism for regional influence. In as far as China
is concerned, bilateral and subregional engagement is far more critical especially given the
fractured and weakening state of the PIF.
China’s soft power strategy as manifested in
its support for the increasingly powerful Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) as well as the
Fiji-led Pacific Islands Development Forum
(PIDF) gives it the head start and edge over the
United States whose tactic tends to be based
more on appeal to historical loyalty than focus
on the PIFCs contemporary interests. A significant feature of Chinese aid has been the shift
from the classical ‘cheque book diplomacy’
where grant was readily provided without any
obligation for repayment to provision of ‘soft
loans’ on badly needed public infrastructure.
Unfortunately, this has worsened the accumulated debt burden for some PIFCs.
One of the most critical components in the
United States–China posturing in the Pacific is
the ‘Fiji factor’. Because of Fiji’s importance
as a regional hub and its regional dominance
over the years, both China and the United
States consider it vital to their interests.
3. Fiji: Centre of United States–China
Contestation?
Fiji’s close relation with China was influenced
by Fiji’s ‘look north’ policy, which endeavoured to seek alternative friends as a consequence of sanctions by Australia and New
Zealand following the 2006 coup (Yang 2011a;
May 2014
Firth 2013). In his article ‘A cold war in the
warm Pacific’, John Wineera, a New Zealand
military analyst, argued that because of its
central location as the economic and political
hub of the South Pacific, Suva has become the
‘mid-point of confrontation’ for United States–
China geopolitical rivalry, which will reverberate around the Pacific (Wineera 2012, p. 1).
While the cold war rhetoric may be a bit of an
exaggeration, the pertinent issue here is the
potential Fiji has to be leveraged by either
power as a fulcrum for influence among the
other PIFCs. It appears that the United States
is not so much concerned with Chinese aid
itself but how much influence China is able to
wield as a result of aid and diplomacy as well
as China’s latent long-term strategic interests,
which are often denied publicly (Yang 2011a).
A critical issue in this regard is the anxiety
over increasing military and political links
between China and Fiji, traditionally a US ally.
Visits to Fiji by Chinese surveillance ships and
senior Chinese officials have become a
common occurrence within the last 6 years.
The most senior official to visit Fiji was Vice
President Xi Jinping in 2009. According to
leaked cables from the New Zealand embassy
released by Wikileaks, New Zealand and Australia had attempted unsuccessfully to stop
Jinping’s visit to Fiji because it would ‘send
the wrong message in light of international
efforts to urge the government in Suva to carry
out democratic reforms’ (Field 2011, p. 1). The
cable went on to say that ‘Fiji remained strategically important for China and Beijing was
privately candid about linking development
assistance and economic engagement with
guaranteed political support on issues of interest to China’ (Field 2011, p. 1). A number of
senior Chinese officials have visited Fiji since
the 2006 coup, and in May 2013, Fijian Prime
Minister Frank Bainimarama visited China
and met President Xi Jinping and Premier Li
Keqiang who promised to engage in further
economic, military and diplomatic cooperation
(Islands Business 2013).
Apart from the usual infrastructural aid, one
of the most politically significant Chinese
projects in Fiji will be the setting up of
a Centre for International Studies and
© 2014 The Author. Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies
published by Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd and Crawford School of Public Policy at The Australian National University
Ratuva: A New Regional Cold War?
Diplomacy incollaboration with the Shanghai
Institute of International Studies (SIIS) one of
the leading foreign policy research institutes
and think tanks for the Chinese government
(Fiji Ministry of Information 2013). The SIIS
has been tasked with training Fijian diplomats
and other civil servants for local and foreign
deployments. This is significant because
creating a cadre of Chinese-trained Fijian
intelligentsia would be a powerful tool for
intellectual and ideological hegemony to shape
policies, which are sympathetic to China’s
regional and global interests.
Also of considerable concern is the highly
speculative assumption that China may set up
a military base of sorts in Fiji and this suspicion is continuously fuelled by the increasing
military ties between the two countries in
terms of training and provision of equipment.
In January 2013, Major General Qian Lihua,
Chief of Foreign Affairs Office in China’s
Ministry of Defence visited Fiji as part of an
‘annual defence co-operation briefing’
(Pacnews 2013, p. 6). Being the highest
ranking Chinese military official to be welcomed into Fiji, Lihua’s visit was both symbolic and strategic, more so after he discussed
delivery of military hardware in the form of
Chinese-made naval boats and other equipment to strengthen Fiji’s military capability.
The two sides made an agreement that the People’s Liberation Army ‘would help and
support the Fiji Military Forces (FMF)’ in the
areas of ‘co-operation, training and development’ (Pacnews 2013, p. 6).
Amidst the anxiety, China’s Vice Foreign
Minister Cui Tiankai denied rumours of a
potential Chinese military base in Fiji by
saying, ‘We are not interested in sending our
military forces everywhere in the world-we
have no interest in doing that . . . What we are
doing there (Fiji) is to help the country, the
people there, to achieve their development’
(Reeves 2012). Nevertheless, the dilemma for
the United States is that while the pivot (which
shall be discussed later) is meant to contain
Chinese military overtures, the challenge is to
devise a diplomatic strategy to win back Fiji’s
loyalty. The United States’s military links with
Fiji goes back to WWII when Fiji was used as
413
base for the US military during the Pacific war
(Lowry 2006) and this continued over the
years through training for Fiji military officers
in the United States. During the cold war, Fiji
was ideologically aligned with the United
States, and Fiji, like many other PIFCs, has
always been part of the pro-US voting bloc in
the United Nations.
Fiji’s suspension from the PIF and imposition of sanctions by Australia and New
Zealand compelled Fiji to redefine its regional
and global options and alliances. Among these
was the pro-China policy to make up for the
severed links with Australia and New Zealand.
Fiji also mobilised the support of the Chinesefunded MSG subregional block consisting of
Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands,
Vanuatu, Front de Libération Nationale Kanak
et Socialiste (the Kanak political group in New
Caledonia) and Fiji as a counter to PIF, which
has been described as ‘Australian-dominated’
(Grynberg 2013, p. 1). Fiji also supported the
relocation of the African Caribbean Pacific
secretariat from the PIF to Papua New Guinea
in a move that ‘weakens both the Pacific
islands Forum and the influence that Canberra
has long enjoyed through it’ (Herr 2012, p. 1).
In addition, Fiji formed the PIDF as a possible
alternative to the PIF, and China is already said
to be a possible funder of the proposed Suvabased secretariat. Fiji’s growing selfconfidence was given a major boost after it was
elected chair of the G77 plus China, an association of 132 member developing countries
within the UN (Swami 2012).
In a way, all these developments have seen
the strengthening of China’s power and the
relative demise of regional influence by Australia and New Zealand, the United States’s
major regional allies (Zhang 2007). By lifting
sanctions and intensifying engagement initiatives with Fiji, the United States probably
hopes to counter Fiji’s growing support for
China. The lifting of sanctions on Fiji by Australia and New Zealand in early March 2014 as
a result of positive developments towards
Fiji’s election in 14 September 2014 may thaw
the situation to some extent; this is not
expected to change the regional power dynamics significantly in the short term.
© 2014 The Author. Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies
published by Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd and Crawford School of Public Policy at The Australian National University
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Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies
While playing the China card may provide
Fiji with temporary psychological advantage
over Australia and New Zealand in the geopolitical manoeuvring game, the down side is
that there seems to be an increase in Chinaaid fatigue in Fiji. The poor quality of workmanship, failure to pay for worker’s
provident fund and breaching of local building laws and regulations by Chinese companies have become controversial subjects of
discussion in Fiji. On the basis of these negative experiences, the Fiji government has
reassessed its technical preference by contracting three New Zealand companies to
construct and repair Fiji roads instead of the
once preferred Chinese companies such as
China Railway. Beneath the veneer of diplomatic showmanship is the growing anxiety
and concern about the appropriateness of
Chinese technology and development ethics.
Moreover, both Fiji and China use their
close relationship as means of achieving their
respective political and economic interests.
For China, it’s a way of establishing a vital
foothold in Oceania to facilitate its diplomatic,
economic and strategic reach, while for Fiji,
China is a generous source of development
money and a convenient political leverage to
use against its hostile neighbours, Australia
and New Zealand (Zhang 2007; Yang 2011). It
must be noted that for economic, political and
strategic reasons, China values its relationship
with New Zealand and Australia more than Fiji
and thus one would expect it would be sensitive to unnecessarily antagonising them.
The validity in Wineera’s suggestion that
Suva has become the centre of cold war contestation in the Pacific is perhaps in relation to
the United States’s calculated response to
Chinese influence; however, there does not
seem to be any evidence of direct gunboat-type
contestation. Both countries use delicate diplomatic engagement strategies with Fiji. The
United States is trying to revive historical
friendship with Fiji and China is trying to consolidate new ties, and they both do so with the
consciousness that they need to coexist in a
mutual way, as Ms Clinton suggested, and
mindful of the fact that open competition can
only be detrimental to both sides’ interests.
May 2014
Meanwhile, Fiji appears to enjoy playing one
against the other to fulfil its own aspirations as
a mini regional power.
4. The Asia-Pacific Pivot
In the broader scheme of things, it would be
relevant at this point to situate the recent
US-increased engagement in the Pacific in the
context of the Asia-Pacific pivot. While Bush’s
declaration of ‘Year of the Pacific’ was rather
low keyed, the new surge in US interest in the
Pacific under Obama’s pivot is much more
comprehensive and encompassing.
The Asia-Pacific pivot is the United States’
broad strategy to ‘rebalance’ power in the
Asia-Pacific region in response to Chinese
economic, political and military interests
(Congressional Research Service 2012). While
more focus seems to be on Asia as a large
market and source of raw materials, the
‘spill-over’ of the pivot on the PIFCs are
still significant because of the geopolitical
interconnectedness between Asia and the
Pacific. The Pacific is the common ‘shared’
space between China and the United States
because it is where they define, project and
protect their respective sovereign sea borders;
thus, both see themselves as Pacific powers.
In his speech to the Australian Parliament in
November 2011, President Obama referred to
the Asia-Pacific as a ‘top priority’, and added
that ‘as a Pacific nation, the United States will
play a larger and long-term role in shaping this
region and its future . . . The United States is a
Pacific power, and we are here to stay’ (quoted
in Powers 2013, p. 1).
Inherent in this broad strategy is proactive
diplomatic engagement as well as consolidation of US military deployment in the Pacific
through increased projection of naval power. It
is envisaged that by 2020, about 60 per cent of
the US naval forces will be stationed in the
Pacific, an increase of 10 per cent from the
current situation (BBC 2012) and there is also
a plan to increase troop numbers from the
current 320,000 stationed in the Pacific region.
Extra locations for US military bases have
been identified in addition to the existing ones
and among these is Darwin in Australia where
© 2014 The Author. Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies
published by Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd and Crawford School of Public Policy at The Australian National University
Ratuva: A New Regional Cold War?
2,500 marines will be stationed by 2016
(Packham 2011). There are also plans for more
US ships and military aircraft—including B52
bombers—to operate from Australian bases
(Packham 2011). In addition, the United States
has consolidated its foothold in the Asian continent by strengthening its links with countries
such as Japan, Vietnam and Philippines, which
have been involved in sovereignty disputes
with China (Powers 2013).
The pivot allows the United States to demonstrate its unsurpassed prowess in war technology and strategy. For instance, it has been
argued that ‘the pivot is not just a redirection
of attention toward Asia; it is a proclamation of
a new form of warfare, Air-Sea Battle, to solve
the problem of China’s presumed military
ambitions in the Pacific with an assemblage of
existing and new long-range, precision-strike
weapons’ (Wheeler 2013, p. 1). The notion of
Air-Sea Battle (ASB), which is a central plank
in the pivot’s military posture, is based on projecting an integrated air and sea power in the
Asia-Pacific to directly confront China at its
own doorsteps. The Micronesian islands of
Guam, Northern Marianas and Marshall
Islands, which have important US military
presence, may be directly involved in the
broader ASB strategy. The same could be said
of Australia and New Zealand, which have
vital communication bases for US global military and strategic networks. Although the other
PIFCs may not be directly linked to ASB in
purely military terms, the political and diplomatic spillover from the United States–China
contestation may impact their diplomatic and
political alignment as well as socio-economic
development. In order for the United States to
extend its military foothold in the Pacific, it
needs to have loyal friends in the vicinity.
The pivot is strongly associated with the
document ‘Global Trends 2030: Alternative
Worlds’, released in early December 2012 by
the National Intelligence Council and which
comes out once per presidential administration. It maps out the possible trajectory of
global geopolitics in the next couple of
decades to 2030. The most significant factors
identified in the document are China’s expanding power and the need for decisive response
415
(US National Intelligence Council 2012). The
obsession with Chinese threat is reflected in
the fact that China is mentioned 300 times in
the report and the final verdict is that the
United States–China relationship is no doubt
the most crucial bilateral engagement shaping
the future.
Part of the larger pivot project is intelligence
gathering through high tech electronic means,
not only by the United States but also by Australia on Asian and Pacific countries such as
China, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, East Timor and Papua New Guinea
(Symonds 2013). The revelations in November
2013 regarding the role of the Australian
Signals Directorate in establishing a ‘string of
covert facilities’ inside Australian diplomatic
posts for the US National Security Agency
(NSA) has raised widespread condemnation
(Symonds 2013, p. 7). This came in the wake
of embarrassing revelations of NSA spying on
a number of world leaders.
In a way, the pivot has ‘raised’ the strategic
value of some Pacific island states used for US
bases (Palau, Guam, Marianas, American
Samoa, Australia, New Zealand, Marshall
Islands and Federated State of Micronesia) as
well as enhanced the diplomatic and political
value of others in the vicinity as the United
States increases engagement in a more proactive way to rebalance the increasingly deepening Chinese influence (Bremme 2012). This
means that the Pacific will be more militarised,
and US aid may increase significantly in the
future. These will potentially shape the geopolitical dynamics in the Pacific substantially, but
I suppose the critical question here is, does the
pivot constitute a new cold war scenario or is it
merely symbolic posturing?
5. The Pivot and Cold War Rhetoric
The use of the cold war rhetoric is not only
limited to the pivot. Way back in 2005, prominent US strategic adviser Robert Kaplan
(2005, p. 1) referred to the post-1990 situation
as ‘this second cold war—which will link
China and the United States in a future that
may stretch over several generations’. He goes
further to make the prediction that ‘Given the
© 2014 The Author. Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies
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Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies
stakes, and given what history teaches us about
the conflicts that emerge when great powers all
pursue legitimate interests, the result is likely
to be the defining military conflict of the
twenty-first century: if not a big war with
China, then a series of cold war—style standoffs that stretch out over years and decades’
(Kaplan 2005, p. 1).
More recently, in an article titled ‘US
declares cold war on China’, Robert Maginnis
(2011, p. 1), a US military analyst, succinctly
captured the classical realism stance when he
demonised China for its ‘aggressive behaviour
and threatening rhetoric’, which are ‘complemented by massive militarization’. As if preempting and even encouraging a military
showdown, Maginnis referred to Obama’s
visit to Asia in September 2011 as an attempt
‘to declare a cold war with China’ (Maginnis
2011, p. 1).
Expressing the same sentiments but with
lesser dogmatism, Ian Bremmer, a geopolitical
analyst and President of the Eurasia Group
declared: ‘It’s already becoming a new kind of
cold war,’ however, he later made the restraining assertion that ‘Americans and the Chinese
will be frenemies’ meaning they will be neither
friends nor enemies (World Economic Forum
2012).
The new cold war rhetoric is predicated upon
the assumption that US dominance is part of an
unquestioned historical destiny and China’s
emergence, as a potential competitor, needs to
be kept in check and if need be, vehemently
resisted. This view has resonance with the unipolar thesis, first advanced in the immediate
post-cold war period of early 1990s, which
unequivocally assumed that ‘no single power
can come close to the United States in its role as
a unipolar world leader’ (Christopher 1992, p.
ii). The United States’s undisputed global role
in this unipolar scenario is elaborated thus:
Under the unipolar system the single world leader
would preserve world order by making other
nations follow the rules. It would attempt to stabilize the world by seeking and obtaining security, a concert of world community actions and, to
a certain extent alignment of the major world
player’s foreign policies to that of the leader
(Christopher 1992, p. 18).
May 2014
The rise of China is seen as a threat to this
unipolar system and United States’s status as
‘single world leader’, and this needs to be
resisted militarily, politically and economically to ensure that the United States repositions itself again as undisputed global power.
The current bipolar United States–China
fracas is seen as a temporary phase in the historical mission to make the world truly unipolar where the United States is the lawmaker,
policeman, prosecutor and judge of the global
order.
This ideological grandstanding could divert
attention away from some deeper interests
(Trout 1975). For instance, an important aspect
of the pivot posturing, which is not often
understood, is the corporate marketing factor
with potential for the increased militarisation
of the Asia-Pacific region. Indeed the propaganda against a supposed imminent Chinese
threat can also be seen as an effective marketing device for US arms sale in the region. Fred
Downey, Vice President for National Security
at the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA),
a trade group that includes top US arms
makers, said that the pivot ‘will result in
growing opportunities for our industry to help
equip our friends’ (quoted in Wolf 2013, p. 1).
The increase in the Asian arms sale has the
potential to offset the slowdown in European
arms sale by AIA, a trade group that engages
Pentagon suppliers such as Lockheed Martin
Corp., Boeing Co. and Northrop Grumman
Corp. The Pentagon’s Defence Security Cooperation Agency, which has overseen a boom in
worldwide deals under President Obama,
revealed information that there was a 5.4 per
cent increase in arms deals to US$13.7 billion
during the 2012 fiscal year compared with the
previous year in the US Pacific Command’s
area of activity (Wolf 2013).
In 2012, there were about 65 notifications to
Congress of proposed government-brokered
foreign military sales and this constituted a
combined potential value of more than US$63
billion. Also, more than 85,000 licence
requests were received by the State Department office that regulates direct commercial
sales in 2012, a record to date (Wolf 2013).
According to the nonpartisan Congressional
© 2014 The Author. Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies
published by Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd and Crawford School of Public Policy at The Australian National University
Ratuva: A New Regional Cold War?
Research Service, in 2011, the United States
reached arms transfer agreements totalling
US$66.3 billion, or nearly 78 per cent of all
such worldwide agreements on arms. The
pivot will no doubt increase the defence
budgets of Asia-Pacific states and possibly
close the gap with the largest two arms buyers
Saudi Arabia (US$33.4 billion in 2011) and
India (US$6.9 billion in 2011) in the future as
the demand for more American military hardware increases (Wolf 2013).
The increased militarisation in the AsiaPacific region may have a direct impact on the
PIFCs (and observer countries) with direct
military links with the United States but by and
large the secondary impact in terms of China
and the US competition for diplomatic influence cannot be easily discounted. This has
potential to reshape regional geopolitics as the
two powers attempt to carve out their respective extended spheres of influence in the
broader Pacific region.
It appears that the pivot is vital to help keep
the wheels of the US military industrial
complex spinning at a time when the US
economy is at a critical juncture in its recovery
from the recession. Making profit from
demonisation of the enemy is clever business
acumen. Although Leon Panetta, US Secretary
of Defence, assured that the pivot was ‘not
aimed at containing China’ while addressing
military cadets Beijing in 2012, whether the
Chinese will buy the argument so easily is of
course highly debatable. While Panetta’s
Orwellian overtures were aimed at reinforcing
the US appeasement strategy to balance its
military expansion into the region, it may not
necessarily lessen the tension. Because the
PIFCs are minor pawns in the global game, the
economic fallout of the pivot may not be
immediately obvious but in the long run, the
PIFCs would be seriously sought after for
resources such as sea bed mining.
The economic value of the pivot to the US
military industrial complex and the US
economy generally through market and raw
material access makes it imperative for the
United States to play multiple cards at once.
This means demonising China and magnifying
its threat to keep other Asian countries on the
417
US side while appeasing China at the same
time to maintain their critical economic relationship (Round 2013).
Does the cold war thesis really stand up to
the complexities of pragmatics?
6. Cold War or Diplomatic Appeasement?
China’s response to the pivot and the associated
military and economic sabre rattling is largely
restrained and based on the use of ‘soft power’
diplomacy. This is perhaps because of recognition of its own comparative inferiority in military capacity and also, as a developing country,
its priority is consolidating its economic interests rather than strategic expansionism.
A view among some Chinese policy thinkers
is that there should be a strategically balanced
approach to ensure potential cooperation with
the United States, but at the same time, one has
to be fully conscious of the implications of the
strategic shift towards the region to China’s
sovereignty and interests (Chase & Purser
2012). For instance Major General Luo Yuan,
Deputy Secretary-General of the China Association for Military Science, proposed an
approach that was ‘simultaneously vigilant
and calm’ (yi yao jingti, er yao danding),
which in practical terms means that China
should intensify its economic power and
strengthen its military capability while maintaining good international relations. Yuan
added that the best way to deal with the United
States was not through military confrontation
but to outmanoeuvre it diplomatically in the
region (PLA Daily 2012).
Prof Zhu Feng of the Center for International and Strategic Studies at the Peking University endorsed similar sentiments suggesting
utilising the power of political charm ‘by coupling strength and gentleness, and using softness to conquer strength’ (gangrou bing ji, yi
rou ke gang) (Global Times 2012). The
Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai
was adamant that China should not get carried
away by US threatening behaviour by ensuring
good and stable relations between the United
States and China (Xinhua 2012).
Interestingly, the Chinese soft diplomacy
approach may have compelled the United
© 2014 The Author. Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies
published by Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd and Crawford School of Public Policy at The Australian National University
418
Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies
States to rethink its assertive stance. For
instance, while responding to attempts by the
Republicans to cut US aid program in 2011,
Ms Clinton made very strong comments
before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations thus:
We are in a competition for influence with China.
Let’s put aside the humanitarian, do-good side of
what we believe in. Let’s just talk straight realpolitik. We are in competition with China
(Washington Post 2011).
She then accused China of ‘wine and dine’
diplomacy by inviting and entertaining Pacific
leaders in Beijing as well as its support for
Fiji’s ‘dictatorial regime’ (The Telegraph
2011).
However, a year later while visiting Australia, Ms Clinton’s tune had suddenly changed
into a conciliatory one. The projected image of
China suddenly changed from that of a hostile
dragon with fiery nostrils to that of a friendly
cuddly panda:
The entire region can benefit from a peaceful rise
of China and as I’ve said many times we
welcome a strong and prosperous China that
plays a constructive and greater role in world
affairs. The Pacific is big enough for all of us and
we stand to benefit from increased cooperation
across the Asia-Pacific region as long as it is a
level playing field (The Telegraph 2012).
Ms Clinton sounded as if she was reading
from a Chinese script because very similar
words were uttered earlier by China’s Assistant Foreign Minister Le Yucheng in December
2011:
In my view, the United States has never left the
Asia-Pacific, so there is no ‘return’ to speak of.
China does not want to and cannot push the
United States out of the Asia-Pacific. We hope the
United States can play a constructive role in this
region, and that includes respecting China’s
major concerns and core interests. The Pacific
Ocean is vast enough to accommodate the coexistence and cooperation between these two big
countries . . . In the face of the changing situation,
we should seek cooperation, not confrontation, to
solve issues. We must be confident that as long as
China is committed to peaceful development,
openness and cooperation and can attend our own
May 2014
affairs well, nobody can encircle us or keep us
out’ (Ministry of Foreign Affairs People’s
Republic of China 2011)
Without any need for serious content or discourse analysis, it is of interest to note that Ms
Clinton’s utterances about a year later was
almost an exact copy of Yucheng’s statement
when she said, ‘We never actually left Asia.
We’ve always been here and been a presence
here, we consider ourselves a Pacific power
but in the 21st Century, it’s important that we
make absolutely clear that we are here to stay’
(Australian Broadcasting Corporation 2012b).
This emerging consensus for coexistence is
a far cry from the pre-emptive and hostile scenario painted by the cold war enthusiasts.
However, having said that, this unlikely spirit
of mutuality does not necessarily imply any
convergence of political interests. It is more
likely that as they size each other up, both
powers are keen to play the game of psychological appeasement and manoeuvring to
avoid tension, which might be detrimental to
both side’s interests.
Nevertheless, this consensus is evolving in a
scenario where both sides are fully conscious
of the significance of the region as the new
‘centre of gravity’ where their economic and
strategic interests intersect as reflected in Ms
Clinton’s words:
It is becoming increasingly clear that in the 21st
century, the world’s strategic and economic center
of gravity will be the Asia Pacific, from the Indian
subcontinent to the western shores of the Americas. And one of the most important tasks of American statecraft over the next decades will be to lock
in a substantially increased investment—diplomatic, economic, strategic, and otherwise—in this
region (US Department of State 2011)
By openly declaring its interests in such
manner, the United States may hope to lessen
tension, give more moral strength to its claim
as a ‘Pacific power’ as well as redefine the
global boundaries of US hegemony.
7. Conclusion
The ongoing geopolitical dynamics in the
Pacific has probably stretched the boundaries
© 2014 The Author. Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies
published by Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd and Crawford School of Public Policy at The Australian National University
Ratuva: A New Regional Cold War?
of Hau’ofa’s ‘our sea’ as the two hegemonic
states, the United States and China, stake their
claims as Pacific powers, and as a consequence, different layers of contestations and
alliances come into play. Diplomatic
manoeuvrings to win hearts by China and the
United States have redefined the ontological
sense of the Hau’ofan ‘our’ in a dramatic way.
China sees the PIFCs as potential members of
its sphere of influence and so does the United
States, which has traditionally saw the Pacific
as its backyard and PIFCs as its loyal allies. To
complicate the equation further, there are also
foreign powers involved in mobilising alliances in the Pacific. These include Russia and
Georgia (competing for support for the Georgian breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and
Abkhasia) as well as the Arab League, through
the United Arab Emirates aid, and Israel
(support for Palestinian vote in the UN) and
Indonesia (to lobby against support for West
Papua independence) (Firth 2013). It appears
that sovereignty has become a political commodity that can be bought or sold in the international geopolitical market (Firth 2013). In
short, if ‘our sea’ is defined purely in geopolitical terms, as opposed to cultural cosmology, its
ontological boundary has extended far beyond
what Hau’ofa had originally envisaged.
Having said that, it must be re-emphasised
that there is little evidence to suggest that the
geopolitical contestation between the United
States and China is potentially destabilising in
a cold war-type confrontation. The situation is
far more complex than using the prism of a
dichotomous relationship based on irreconcilable ideological differences. While there is a
certain degree of distrust between the two
powers, there is also a shared understanding
that their interests are best served through diplomatic appeasement and mutual agreement
for coexistence in the Pacific. Although the
two powers have divergent strategic interests,
their economic interests are deeply integrated
through mutual dependency. In a way, this
global interdependency contributes to lessening tension and helps generate conditions for
greater mutuality.
This developing consensus, no matter how
tactically and conspiratorially framed it may
419
be, has the possible effects of neutralising any
serious cold war-type confrontation. It is thus
too simplistic to frame the relationship
between the two powers purely in terms of the
realist lenses, which depicts the two powers
engaged in sabre rattling and uncompromising
zero-sum gamemanship. The situation is much
more complex and involves a syncretic
mixture of geopolitical contestation and diplomatic accommodation as both powers attempt
to allay the anxiety of regional states that are
sandwiched between the two powers. For the
PIFCs, the mutual diplomatic posturing
between the two powers provides them with
the opportunity to engage in a more enterprising way with the two powers to ensure
maximum economic and political benefits. Fiji
has been doing it, and some have taken advantage of the situation to play one power against
the other to extract aid and other benefits
without having to take sides.
While the pivot is seen as a declaration of
cold war by some, the reality is that it has
much more complex characteristics. It consists
of military, economic as well as diplomatic
posturing where tension and diplomatic
appeasement take place simultaneously in a
syncretic way. At one level, there is sabrerattling politics and at another level there is
intensive diplomatic appeasement driven by
pragmatic rather than ideological interests,
unlike the United States–Soviet global contestation of the classical cold war period. Rather
than deploying a cold war, strategic, denialtype strategy to keep its adversary out of the
Pacific, the United States is keen to engage in
a game of appeasement and consensus with
China in the shared belief that the Pacific is big
enough for both and both are inherently part of
the Pacific.
Unlike the classical cold war where the
United States and Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics were in direct ideological, cultural,
economic and political contestation with each
other, the current situation between the United
States and China is far more subdued and in fact
the ideological line of demarcation is not easily
discernible. Although the PIFCs may not have
land resources nor provide an attractive market
compared with Asia, the Pacific Ocean they
© 2014 The Author. Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies
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Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies
occupy provides the security buffer and
meeting place for both the United States and
China and having influence among ‘our sea of
islands’ may have long-term strategic value.
May 2014.
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