Now that the Trump administration stood up on its hind legs and declined to recognize China’s ‘market economy’ status, it should do the military equivalent and withdraw Beijing’s invitation to the next Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercise in 2018.
RIMPAC is the US Navy’s premier multilateral exercise and is held biannually in Hawaii. Once upon a time, it was for America’s friends in the Asia–Pacific region.
China was first invited in 2012 and attended in 2014 and 2016 – and is scheduled to attend next year’s exercise.
These repeated invitations are perplexing, given the People’s Republic of China’s stated objective of displacing the United States in Asia and its demonstrated willingness to bring this about.
These repeated invitations are perplexing, given the People’s Republic of China’s stated objective of displacing the United States in Asia and its demonstrated willingness to bring this about.
From an intelligence perspective alone, the Chinese at RIMPAC is ill advised.
Any competent adversary at RIMPAC can gather useful acoustic signatures and other electronic intelligence. There are human intelligence opportunities, and close observation of ships, hardware, tactics and procedures, all offer intelligence advantages.
Spokesmen for the US Pacific Command, or PACOM, routinely claim China is shielded from the ‘sensitive’ parts of RIMPAC. Maybe. But this wouldn’t be the first time the US underestimated Chinese capabilities.
And true to form, expect Beijing to aggressively push for full RIMPAC participation – claiming discrimination and containment.
Despite these known (and ignored) intelligence risks, one hears other excuses for inviting China’s navy – all aiming at improved Beijing’s behavior.
It’s argued that extending the open-hand of friendship shows the Chinese they have nothing to fear. Perhaps, but not in the way American’s think: China now knows the US will do nothing, no matter what Beijing does.
Next, it’s said that if the Chinese just see how civilized people behave they will behave likewise. And if this doesn’t work, seeing American awesomeness first-hand will dissuade them from acting up.
These rationalizations presume the Chinese are just a little ‘slow’ and don’t know already how the other nations behave, or what the rules are.
Look at reality
The Chinese are not stupid. Could it be they know exactly what they are doing? Look at what the PRC has done since the first RIMPAC invitation in 2012.
It seized the Scarborough Shoals from the Philippines, a US ally. And it carried out an aggressive campaign in the South China Sea to construct seven artificial islands, three with major military airfields and all with significant naval facilities.
And all this despite President Xi Jinping’s assurances – given to the White House in 2015 – not to militarize the islands.
Further to gaining de facto control of the South China Sea, China’s Navy, Coast Guard, and ‘Maritime Militia’ continue bullying Vietnam and the Philippines and have served notice to Indonesia. And Beijing declared administrative control of most of the South China Sea – with enforcement to come later.
Meantime, Japan, America’s main ally in Asia, is under incessant harassment and pressure from Chinese ships and aircraft in the East China Sea looking to carve off Japanese territory. In tandem, Beijing continues a crude, racist propaganda campaign demonizing the Japanese.
And even the US, the RIMPAC host. gets bullied.
Recall the harassment of and near collision with USS Cowpens by a Chinese Navy combatant in 2013, as well as a US unmanned underwater vehicle the Chinese stole just a few kilometers off Luzon in late 2016 – after Mr. Trump was elected.
Read the Chinese press for a week to get a taste of the contempt for the United States and demands it clear out of Asia.
Read the Chinese press for a week to get a taste of the contempt for the United States and demands it clear out of Asia.
Some experts claim this isn’t ‘official policy.’ Right. Things the Communist Party of China doesn’t like don’t get published – more than once.
If all this is improved behavior, one wonders what constitutes bad behavior?
This is like holding a neighborhood party and inviting the neighbor who steals from your friends (and you), threatens them (and you), drives through their yards, parks his truck in their driveways while cocking his shotgun, and routinely declares he’s going to push you out of the neighborhood.
These repeated RIMPAC invitations show the US as supplicants – valuing the relationship more than does China. Not to mention the demoralizing effect on American allies.
In 2016, Japanese Navy officers were refused entry onto Chinese ships at Pearl Harbor – contrary to both exercise rules and good manners. Instead of raising merry hell and showing the Chinese Navy the door, the US hushed things up. The Japanese noticed.
Expect Beijing to demand equal billing as a RIMPAC co-sponsor before long. And eventually set up its own rival RIMPAC elsewhere.
All these concerns are well known, but China is still invited. Curiously, nobody knows who makes the decision to invite them.
Somebody in the Trump Administration or Department of Defense must go on record and reveal evidence proving that China’s participation in RIMPAC 2014 and 2016 improved Chinese behavior.
And then explain how inviting the PLA to RIMPAC 2018 is going to produce better results.
That’s a tough case to make, so expect to hear that we need China’s help with North Korea – even though Beijing insists it has no influence over Pyongyang.
Withdrawing the invitation to RIMPAC 2018 is easy. Just declare the timing isn’t right or that the matter is being studied. That’s how China does it. Or just invite Taiwan – a democratic ally that actually deserves to come.
Doing something dumb once is understandable. Doing the same thing twice is perplexing. Do it a third time and one recalls a US Marine infantry officer’s recent comment: ‘Sir, I think we want to lose wars.’
NEVER invite China, a bully Asian country! Not now, not ever! Sh*t China!
China’s actions in the South China Sea are to prevent a US naval blockade.
The US controls all the global trade choke points, so it can blockade any country at will. The US also has long history of blockading the enemy, as far back as the US civil war.
For China, developing countermeasures to common American military tactics, is just common sense.
Ram Nath A bit late with Japan, China is already Japan’s biggest trading partner.
India is bit different, as it has a large trade deficit with China. The US cannot competitively supply the goods that India needs, so an alliance with the US would not help India.
It is never a good thing to treat China as an enemy !
Why wouldn’t China try to do that? Wouldn’t the US try to dislodge China or Russia or any other country from the other side of the world to run roughshod in the Caribbean?
that’s what happen when you take away their drug dealer supplier, Fat Leonard. The US navy is suffering from withdrawal all junkies have to suffer when you take away their supplier.
he isn’t trash, just snobby and stupid
only the Americans can think that the invitation to participate in joint military drill as a reward. Others think of it as to establish better relationship with other countries.
If you ask US officials whether they are trying to "contain" China, they will deny it. Inviting China to RIMPAC supports this fiction. It allows participation of those countries which may not want to join in the containment strategy.
China wants everybody to trust them. As soon as China believes it can interdict battlegroups in the south China Sea it will enforce it’s 9 dash line. Hegemony versus International law. Can’t sea it looking favourable for the PLA Navy. Have a nice day.
Ram Nath ….May I suggest an idea to you, or to India? That is, India draws a 9 dash-line on the Indian Cocean and claim thousands of nautical miles of the Ocean as her territorial waters. Of course India will use the Chinese template as the basis for her claim.
There is only one hope of containing China: the US should go all out to build a strong alliance with India and Japan, and drastically restrict Chinese commericial access to the US market. In allying with China to destroy the Soviets, the too-smart Americans have created a threat 1000 times more dangerous.
The US today is where the British were around 1936. Knowing in their guts that Hitler means terrible trouble but desperately hoping the fellow will behave if flattered.
There is only one hope of containing China: the US should go all out to build a strong alliance with India and Japan, and drastically restrict Chinese commericial access to the US market. In allying with China to destroy the Soviets, the too-smart Americans have created a threat 1000 times more dangerous.
Royal Navy officers were still participating in sailing regatta in Kiel just months before the outbreak of WWI. Come on, be a good sport.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ww1-archive/10921065/Daily-Telegraph-June-26-1914.html
Grant Newsham,
Why this incessant lie about China’s Nine-dash Line of South China Sea Islands?
Read this extract from:
https://www.quora.com/Why-has-Xi-Jinping-aggressively-pursued-Chinese-terroritorial-claims-in-the-South-China-Sea
"South China Sea reporting in the West is the most biased and wrongful one against China and one, if not corrected, can lead to a disastrous war that no one wants.
This story is not about China, or Xi Jingping, aggressively trying to take over areas of sea that did not belong to China. It is about how US changed a post World War II world order established between it, China and England.
Let me start with Japan. After WWII, when Japan surrendered. Potsdam Declaration – Wikipedia also known as the Proclamation Defining Terms for Japanese Surrender, contains the following statement: “ the "Japanese sovereignty shall be limited to the islands of Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu, Shikoku, and such minor islands as we determine," as had been announced in the Cairo Declaration in 1943”. This document was signed with Chinese participation. That is the “we” in the sentence.
Please note that Japan was not allowed to have Okinawa, on which there has been years of protest against US military bases. Neither was Japan allowed to occupy the island “in dispute” with China. US recognized this fact from the end of WWII until 1951, when it convened the so-call “San Francisco Conference of 1951” by specifically excluding China. In it, US made unilateral arrangement that would deny Chinese ownership of the islands that it previously recognized as belonging to China right after WWII and put them all “in dispute”.
These include island “in dispute: with Japan, Philippines, Vietnam and all others.
To this day, Japan does not have sovereignty over the island “in dispute” with China. America took over its “administrative” duty at San Francisco Conference from China and promised to relay it to UN. It never did. US kept the “administrative” rights until 1971 and then gave to Japan, at the opposition of China. When US signed defense agreement with Japan, the document had to be modified to cover “administrative” regions, instead of just the sovereign areas like all the other defense treaties it signed with other countries.
For betraying China, US, in return, got Japanese record of biological experiments done on Chinese people without anesthetics as well as biological weapons and denial of atrocities against Chinese people during its invasion of China. Japan is a country whose territorial ambition exceeds the size of her sovereign lands. For lying and for hiding from war crimes shielded by US, Japan is willing to subject its country to be a shameless vassal state of US. It is a country existing in shame with national psychological ramifications.
Now let us talk about Philippines. Why did US not return the island “in dispute” with China back to the Philippines when it left as the colonial master of the Philippines? The answer is very simple – US knew that the island never belonged to Philippines.
When US defeated Spain and took over as the colonial master of the Philippines in 1898, these two countries signed the Paris Treaty of 1898. In it, both countries acknowledged that the territories of Philippines lied EAST of east meridian 118. The island in dispute? It lies west of east Meridian 118!
It is really that simple. Philippine did not grab these island until after the San Francisco Treaty of 1951, from a still-militarily-weak China. But for the policy of “anyone but China” by the world’s hegemony, there should have never had any dispute in the South China Sea.
It is the same story for all the other island in South China Sea."
LOL. ‘Clear and Present Danger’ for Asian civilian ships.
Given the recent collisions, the US should invite merchant marines of every country and remind them again that their cargo ships are supposed to give US navy vessels the right of way, regardless what international maritime law stipulates.
Read of half the trash this guy writes and its enough to judge that he is just trash. Its simply pathetic that we have a so called academic who writes with no logic and rationale, who churns out untruths and lies. He is manifesting his dishonesty and stupidity so openly. The US where it is now and has been for the last many decades being the strongest economic and military power in the world is not naive and stupid to invite China to RIMPAC for no objectives or gains. It do not need you of all people to advise that it disinvite China for the reasons you gave. I am sure the US has many more good reasons to continute to do so. In a democracy, everyone can have the right to be stupid, but please don’t abuse that privilege.