US’s China Containment Policy Breeding Resentment, Distrust
17
December, 2012
The
US and China are playing a geo-political chess game in the
Asia-Pacific region that could develop into a new cold war, as US
allies adopt more aggressive postures toward China amidst increased
militaristic meddling
from Washington.
The
Obama administration’s so-called “Asia-Pivot,” is an
aggressive policy that involves surging American military
presence throughout
the region with
the aim of containing China’s rise.
Part
of this strategy involves reaffirming defense treaties with US allies
in the region, like Japan and the Philippines, both of which have
ongoing territorial disputes with China over uninhabited island
strips in the neighborhood.
Chinese
analysts see the US “as militaristic, offense-minded, expansionist,
and selfish,” according to Andrew J. Nathan and Andrew
Scobell in Foreign
Affairs.
According
to Nathan and Scobell, “China is the only country widely seen as a
possible threat to U.S. predominance. Indeed, China’s rise has led
to fears that the country will soon overwhelm its neighbors and one
day supplant the United States as a global hegemon.”
They
add that America “is the most intrusive outside actor in China’s
internal affairs, the guarantor of the status quo in Taiwan, the
largest naval presence in the East China and South China seas, the
formal or informal military ally of many of China’s neighbors, and
the primary framer and defender of existing international legal
regimes.”
Washington
has been building new military bases and refurbishing old ones in the
region in order to lay
the ground-work for an “air-sea battle” with
China. The idea is to have enough US bases peppered throughout the
region so that China would be too surrounded to safely attack.
A recent
report from the CSIS predicted
that next year “could see a shift in Chinese foreign policy
based on the new leadership’s judgment that it must respond to a US
strategy that seeks to prevent China’s reemergence as a great
power.”
“Signs
of a potential harsh reaction are already detectable,” the report
said. “The US Asia pivot has triggered an outpouring of
anti-American sentiment in China that will increase pressure on
China’s incoming leadership to stand up to the United States.
Nationalistic voices are calling for military countermeasures to the
bolstering of America’s military posture in the region and the new
US defense strategic guidelines.”
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