[Peace-discuss] Permanent interests

[David Green]

There was an op-ed in the NG a few days ago by some thinktanker trying to 
ratchet up anxiety about China, Taiwan, etc., like it's 1958. It's ridiculously 
anachronistic, but apparently there's still a need to demonize China. Don't 
forget, this was what was going on during the first 8 months of the G.W. Bush 
administration, but was forgotten after 9/11.

DG




________________________________
From: C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>
To: Peace-discuss List <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
Sent: Thu, August 26, 2010 8:47:27 AM
Subject: [Peace-discuss] Permanent interests

{Lord Palmerston, prime minister at the height of Britain's imperial power, 
said, "..it is a narrow policy to suppose that this country or that is to be 
marked out as the eternal ally or the perpetual enemy of England. We have no 
eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and 
perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow."  The comment is often 
paraphrased as, "Nations have no permanent friends and no permanent enemies. 
Only permanent interests."]

    US forges closer military ties with Vietnam
    By Peter Symonds
    26 August 2010

Washington has recently taken several steps to boost its military
relationship with Vietnam as part of a broader Obama
administration strategy aimed at undermining Chinese influence in
East and South East Asia.

Last week, the two countries held their first-ever defence
dialogue in Hanoi. At a joint press conference on August 17, US
Deputy Assistant Defence Secretary Robert Scher declared that the
talks represented “the next significant historic step in our
increasingly robust defence relationship”. Previous security
talks, which began in 2008, were conducted by the US State
Department and Vietnamese foreign ministry, rather than defence
officials.

While nominally the topics involved marine security and
international peace keeping, both sides obviously discussed
China’s military presence in the region. “I did share at our
meeting our impressions of Chinese military modernisation,” Scher
told reporters. Last week, the Pentagon released its annual report
to Congress, expressing concerns about China’s military expansion
and warning that its “limited transparency… increases the
potential for misunderstanding and miscalculation”.

The dialogue followed provocative comments by the US Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton at an Association of South East Asian
Nations (ASEAN) regional forum in Hanoi last month. Clinton
declared that the US had “a national interest” in ensuring
“freedom of navigation” in the South China Sea. Her remarks cut
across China’s claims to sovereignty over much of the South China
Sea. Earlier this year, Beijing told senior US officials that the
maritime area constituted one of China’s “core interests,” like
Taiwan and Tibet.

Clinton also intruded into the longstanding territorial disputes
in the South China Sea between China and ASEAN countries,
including Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines. She offered “to
facilitate initiatives and confidence-building measures” aimed at
establishing an international code of conduct. Washington’s
“offer” was aimed at undermining Beijing’s efforts to settle the
disputes on a bilateral or regional basis, and provoked an angry
reaction from Chinese officials.

Prior to the US-Vietnam security dialogue, the huge aircraft
carrier, the USS George Washington, and several destroyers arrived
off the Vietnamese coast—ostensibly to mark 15 years since the
normalisation of relations between the US and Vietnam in 1995. On
August 8, US naval officers hosted a delegation of Vietnamese
military and government officials, who flew out to the aircraft
carrier.

As both sides were well aware, the real purpose of the exercise
was to forcefully underscore US claims to “freedom of navigation”
in the South China Sea. Speaking to reporters as US warplanes took
off from the deck, Captain David Lausman, commander of the USS
George Washington, declared: “These waters belong to nobody, yet
belong to everybody. China has a right to operate here, as do we
and as do every country of the world.”

Two days later, on August 10, the USS John S. McCain, a guided
missile destroyer, docked at Da Nang in Vietnam to conduct the
first-ever joint military exercises with the Vietnamese navy. The
US described the program as a “series of naval engagement
activities” focussing mainly on non-combat training, such as
damage control and search and rescue. US and Vietnamese naval
vessels did not operate together at sea, but the exercise was
clearly a step in that direction.

Last month the US navy held large-scale joint operations with
South Korea in the Sea of Japan, to the east of the Korean
Peninsula, in which the USS George Washington was involved. The
exercise was in part a show of force after the sinking of the
South Korean warship, the Cheonan, in March, allegedly by North
Korea. While the war games were moved from the Yellow Sea after
Beijing’s protests, the Pentagon has since announced the further
joint naval exercises in coming months with South Korea in this
sensitive area close to the Chinese mainland.

Commentaries in the Chinese press clearly expressed Beijing’s
concerns regarding what one columnist described as the “Pentagon’s
gunboat policy”. Another column in the state-owned People’s Daily
by Li Hongmei, headlined “Vietnam advisable not to play with
fire,” warned: “Vietnam’s actions now are very selfish… It might
well overestimate the capacity of Uncle Sam’s protective umbrella.
It is advisable for Vietnam to give up the illusion it can do what
it likes in the South China Sea under the protection of the US
Navy. Should China and Vietnam truly come into military clashes,
no aircraft carrier of any country can ensure it will remain secure.”

Like governments throughout the region, the Stalinist regime in
Vietnam is engaged in a delicate balancing game amid the growing
rivalry between China and the US. Visiting Beijing this week,
Vietnam’s vice defence minister, General Nguyen Chi Vinh played
down ties with the US and described China as “a good friend of
Vietnam”. China and Vietnam have already established military
relations. Since 2006, the two countries have held at least nine
joint naval patrols in the Gulf of Tonkin. Vietnam has hosted
three port calls by the Chinese navy this year.

Nevertheless, there remains considerable suspicion and rivalry
between the two countries. With the support of the US, China
launched a devastating border war against Vietnam in 1979 aimed at
undermining the regime, which had just ousted China’s ally Pol Pot
in neighbouring Cambodia. China and Vietnam clashed in 1988 over
their disputed claims to the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.

Despite the bitter legacy of US imperialism’s war in Vietnam until
1975, Hanoi has had no scruples about developing closer economic
and strategic relations with Washington. Having transformed the
country into a cheap labour platform, the Vietnamese regime is
reliant on the US as its top export market and source of foreign
investment. Over the past year, the two countries have been
negotiating a nuclear deal that would pave the way for US
corporations to construct nuclear power plants in Vietnam, which
already faces energy shortages.

While cautious not to offend Beijing, Hanoi has been forging
closer defence ties with the US. Defence analyst Carlyle Thayer
writing in the Wall Street Journal on August 19 observed: “Vietnam
started last year to engage in a very delicate game of signalling
that it views an American military presence in the region as
legitimate. Last year, for example, Vietnamese military officials
flew to the USS John C. Stennis to observe flight operations in
the South China Sea. Later that year, Vietnamese Defence Minister
Phung Quang Thanh stopped off at Pacific Command in Hawaii on his
way to Washington and was photographed peering through the
periscope of a US nuclear submarine. The cooperation intensified
this year when Vietnamese shipyards repaired two US Military
Sealift Command ships.”

Vietnam clearly calculates that closer US ties will provide it
with greater bargaining power in its disputes with China in the
South China Sea. A US Congressional Research Service paper on
US-Vietnam relations published last month noted: “Vietnam
reportedly intends to use its chairmanship of ASEAN in 2010 to
‘internationalise’ the disputes by forming a multi-country
negotiation forum which would force China to negotiate in a
multilateral setting. Vietnamese officials have begun to ask their
US counterparts more frequently and with greater intensity whether
the United States will support Vietnamese efforts to combat what
they see as China’s encroachment in the South China Sea. In a news
conference releasing the Vietnamese Defence Ministry 2009 White
Paper, Deputy Defence Minister Nguyen Chi Vinh [the same general
who is now in China] said that sovereignty disputes in the South
China Sea have created ‘concerns and new challenges for Vietnamese
national defence.”

At last month’s ASEAN forum, Clinton clearly answered Vietnam’s
appeals for US backing in the South China Sea in the affirmative.
She also declared that the Obama administration was prepared “to
take the US-Vietnam relationship to the next level”—as has now
been rapidly demonstrated by the first security dialogue and first
joint naval exercise between the two countries.

While Vietnam is looking for US backing in its disputes with
China, the US is engaged in a far broader and more dangerous
strategy of forging and strengthening alliances and security
arrangements with a string of countries around China’s
borders—from Japan and South Korea in North East Asia to Vietnam,
the Philippines, Singapore and Australia, through to India,
Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia.

The South China Sea, however, has a particular strategic
significance as the main sea-lane through which China ships the
bulk of its energy imports from the Middle East and Africa. Since
the end of World War II, a key element of American strategic
thinking has been to ensure naval control over key “choke points”
such as the Strait of Malacca, thus holding a trump card over its
potential rivals, including China and Japan, in the event of war.
Washington’s determination to hold on to its advantage is thus a
direct threat to China, with the potential to further inflame the
tense relations between the two major powers.

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/aug2010/viet-a26.shtml



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