The 21st century tinderbox for war

Peter Symonds
Writing in Foreign Policy magazine in 2013, former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd warned: “These are no ordinary times in East Asia. With tensions rising from conflicting territorial claims in the East China and South China seas, the region increasingly resembles a 21st century maritime redux of the Balkans a century ago — a tinderbox on water.”
A year later, as the world marks 100 years since the outbreak of World War I, the dangers of another global catastrophe erupting in Asia have not diminished, but become increasingly acute. None of the feeble diplomatic palliatives suggested by Rudd in his essay have been taken up. The tensions to which he pointed — especially between China and Japan — have deteriorated markedly.

Above all, the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia,” directed at undermining China diplomatically, economically and militarily, has further inflamed the Asian tinderbox. Relations between Tokyo and Beijing have all but broken down as the right-wing Japanese government of Shinzo Abe, encouraged by Washington, has turned toward remilitarisation, increasing military spending for the first time in a decade.

Abe’s visit, late last month, to the notorious Yasukuni Shrine prompted China’s ambassador to the US to comment in the Washington Post recently that the Japanese prime minister “risks ties with China” by paying homage to war criminals.

Rising tensions over disputed islands in the East China Sea reached a dangerous point last month when China announced an air defence identification zone in the area. The US immediately challenged Chinese authority by flying nuclear-capable B-52 bombers into the zone unannounced, raising the danger of an error or miscalculation leading to a clash. Tokyo further exacerbated the situation by announcing its intention this week to register 280 outlying islands as “state property.” Japan’s decision in September 2012 to “nationalise” the Senkaku/Diaoyu islets dramatically escalated the territorial dispute with China.

South East Asia has become a diplomatic battleground as the US, Japan and India vie with China for influence. Abe has made a point of visiting every member of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). President Obama failed to take part in last year’s ASEAN summit, but US officials again exploited maritime disputes in the South China Sea to drive a wedge between China and its neighbours. Just this week, the US intervened once more in the South China Sea tinderbox, backing Vietnam and the Philippines, by denouncing newly announced Chinese fishing regulations as “provocative and potentially dangerous.”

While not mentioned in Rudd’s essay, the Korean Peninsula remains an explosive regional flashpoint.
Last April, war tensions reached fever pitch after the North Korean regime responded to new US-led sanctions with belligerent, but largely empty threats. Far from easing tensions, the US took a series of intimidating steps, including the dispatch of B-52 and B-2 bombers to South Korea, aimed at forcing Pyongyang to back down or risk war. Washington’s relentless isolation of North Korea is destabilising the regime — as evidenced by last month’s bloody purge — and bringing the country to the brink of collapse. This utterly reckless policy has unpredictable and dangerous consequences in a strategic region of the globe where the interests of China, Russia, Japan and the US intersect.

The driving force behind the rising danger of war is the deepening global crisis of capitalism. Five years after the 2008–09 financial meltdown, the world economy remains mired in slump and the policy of “quantitative easing” has set the stage for a new financial crisis.
Global capitalism remains ensnared in the same fundamental contradictions — between private ownership of the means of production and socially organised production; and between world economy and the outmoded nation state system—that fuelled the eruption of World War I.

The Obama administration’s “pivot” reflects the rise of Asia, above all China, as the prime cheap labour platform for the globalised production that has emerged over the past three decades. Those commentators who claim that the close international economic integration make war impossible ignore the fact that the same integration has greatly heightened geo-political rivalry.

The most explosive factor in world politics is US imperialism’s attempt to offset its relative decline through the use of military might.
The US “pivot” is above all aimed at ensuring continued American dominance over the Asian economic powerhouse in order to dictate terms not only to China, but to its European and Asian rivals.

If China is the chief target, it is not because China has become an imperialist power akin to 20th century Germany, but because its rapid economic expansion and demands for energy and raw materials are disrupting a long-established imperialist order dominated by the US. — WSWS.