The coming war in Asia that nobody wants

The article’s author is foolish.

So don’t be too surprised if the US and Japan go to war with China next year

No. Any war with China won’t take place for a while yet, maybe 5-10 years. Maybe more. The war is, as things are now, inevitable, but China won’t be ready to start it until it feels its military modernization is substantially complete and it isn’t so utterly dependent on its economic ties to the US. So no, not next year.

No one in 431BC really wanted a war

Of course they wanted war, particularly Corinth and other states Athens had bullied, so Sparta declared war.

The push and shove over the islands has been escalating for months.

Actually no, the Senkaku dispute has been going on for many years, this was just a busier year than most because the Japanese government bought the islands to prevent nationalists from getting them.

Where will it end? The risk is that, without a clear circuit-breaker, the escalation will continue until at some point shots are exchanged, and a spiral to war begins that no one can stop.

Huh? How about no. Escalations don’t happen on their own. The escalations have been pathetic so far, with the japanese and chinese just yelling at each other over the radio to leave. Please.

No one wants this, but the crisis will not stop by itself.

Foolishness. People don’t act contrary to what they want. Politicians giving tough speeches is not the same as their policy decisions behind closed doors. Maybe you should read about the cuban missile crisis: each escalation was carefully considered. It isn’t like a married couple fighting and saying something in the heat of the moment.

Beijing apparently believes that if it keeps pushing, Washington will persuade Tokyo to make concessions over the disputed islands in order to avoid being dragged into a war with China, which would be a big win for them. Tokyo on the other hand fervently hopes that, faced with firm US support for Japan, China will have no choice but to back down.

Wrong, and foolish. Japan is more than able to fight China and win without US help. Japanese forces are far better quality than Chinese, and in any limited war Japan would have a huge advantage. Also, the US had no power to tell Japan how do act. We can’t even control Israel and Israel is far more dependent on us than Japan is. If we piss off Japan, we lose an important ally and access to important bases like Okinawa. Japan is our best ally in the region. The US is not going to ally any kind of serious pressure to Japan in China’s favor.

Unfortunately, the Chinese seem to see things differently. They believe America will not risk a break with China because America’s economy would suffer so much.

Wrong. China just thinks the US is weak, and Obama is weak. China is not so foolish that it thinks the US economy would suffer “so much”, China merely thinks we are spineless enough that it can use its lobbying powers (by manipulating US businesses that outsource to China, and by calling in all that illegal campaign finance stuff they do) to break US resolve and get us to back down and not intervene. However, thing is, US intervention is irrelevant to the Senkaku dispute. Japan is not Taiwan, it is one of the richest countries in the world, more advanced than China, and doesn’t need the US for this.

For Japan, bowing to Chinese pressure would feel like acknowledging China’s right to push them around, and accepting that America can’t help them.

False. More like Japan would look incredibly weak and submissive to China’s bullying, and would look incapable of defending their national sovereignty without US help. THAT would be the humiliation: that Japan can’t do anything unless the US comes in and does it for them, not that Japan would be accepting that the US is a bad ally. We aren’t. (yet)

And for Beijing, a backdown would mean that instead of proving its growing power, its foray into the Senkakus would simply have demonstrated America’s continued primacy.

Again, no. This is not an American dispute. Japan doesn’t need, and hasn’t asked for, US help on this. If China backs down it means China can’t even take on Japan, let alone America. For a country that has brainwashed its people into thinking that China’s main rival is the US and that China will inevitably replace the US as the dominant global power, backing down to Japan is unacceptable. However, this doesn’t mean China must escalate, either. Again, an actual battle with Japan which results in a loss for China would be devastating to the Chinese government, so China will avoid escalating until it feels very confident that it will win.

Another reason is that Chinese have a deep seated historical resentment against Japan for WW2, rape of nanking, and going back to the Sino-Japanese wars in the late 19th century. Japan really worked China over in the past and so China is extra sensitive to looking weak in regard to Japan.

kaltes on December 29, 2012 at 9:29 PM