The root of insecurity

AS that old saying goes, a statesman thinks of the next generation, while a politician thinks only of the next election.

During World War II, while living in exile, a Filipino leader told an American official that the Philippines would do better to establish an alliance with Japan, than with China – even though Japan was, at the time, occupying the Philippines and China.

From Richard Nixon – who opened relations with China to counter the then-soviet Union, helped China take Taiwan’s seat in the United Nations, and gain a permanent seat on the Security Council – to Bill Clinton who presided over China’s accession to the World Trade Organisation,

America believed that binding China to the security, diplomatic, and economic institutions put in place after WWII would both limit and subordinate China. Instead, as China’s economic growth has allowed it to increasingly flex military and diplomatic muscle, what China is doing is establishing parallel institutions that could one day supplant the “rules-based order” America was able to impose after WWII.

Much as the Philippines’ own policy of performative martyrdom has successfully countered China’s muscular annexation, China believes it has two things America lacks: concentration and time. The China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations has codified this thinking in a chapter titled “General Laws of the Rise of Great Powers”, in a recent publication, National Security and the Rise and Fall of Great Powers. Its American translators attribute it to a scholar named Zhang Yunchen and summarise his ideas as follows: International relations are defined by competition between nations, which should be won by the nation that marshals superior resources, makes use of territorial advantages, and throws vast populations into conflicts. But scientific, technological, commercial,

and political advancement can level the playing field.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and his mantra of “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” means rivalry between the United States and China is now centre stage in practically every corner of the globe. But a strangely parallel series of corruption scandals points to the problems faced by both countries.

Each nation has its own way of rectifying matters: the United States, eager to get hold of a Malaysian known to his US Navy friends as “Fat Leonard”, negotiated with its enemy, Venezuela, to get hold of him; China has mounted purges of its military, specifically a defence minister and top brass in its elite rocket forces, over allegations of corruption.

In both cases, the corruption (exposed by journalists in the American case, and pieced together by analysts from official statements in China’s case) could potentially weaken the military readiness and capability of each country – an unwelcome variable in an increasingly high-stakes confrontation.

At one of the many high-tension moments of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, US president John F. Kennedy remarked, “There is always some son-of-a-bitch who doesn’t get the word”. He was referring to the possibility a lost American pilot might trigger a Russian attack, just when both sides were trying to prevent a further escalation of tensions. – Philippine Daily Inquirer/asia News Network