I've watched with fascination as the Japanese Senkaku islands slowly and gradually came to be labeled 'disputed' in the western media, after China's recent claims.
It seems like China has figured out a way to hack the media (the free media outside of China, I mean -- the government there obviously has root on Chinese TV and newspapers).
Japanese ownership of this territory is basically as settled under international law as anything of this nature can be; the islands have been held by Japan since the 1800s, then controlled by the USA for a time after it defeated Japan in WWII, and eventually returned to Japan along with the return of Okinawa.[1]
But after China's slow and steady media campaign, it has somehow become widely reported as 'disputed territory'. (Which it is in a meaningless and pedantic sense only.)
This island-building is another hack, and maybe a clever one. Killing 70 Vietnamese soldiers in the military action in the 1980s to seize a submerged reef didn't make China look good at all.
But perhaps by building new 'islands' to buttress its aggressive and expansionist claims to the territorial waters of other nations, we may end up seeing the western media in ten years uncritically reporting that "China, which has 9 islands in the disputed waters, insists that it is merely defending its territory..."
Which is very important, because none of the countries whose territories China is going after -- not even Japan -- would do well in a straight up military conflict. The Philippines only hope is American protection. So the way China's aggression is covered in the western media is actually very important.
Here's the things about "disputed" territorial claims, national rights, sovereignty and such: They are not real. There is no objective basis for resolving them. Borders, maritime boundaries the existence of such a thing as "Chinese," "Scottish" or "Kurdish" is only given substance by people believing it and acting as if it were real.
Every piece of land in the world has been competed for and disputed many times. Sometimes identities such as "Chinese," "Scottish" or "Kurdish" are created or hardened specifically to serve that dispute. Other times they are dissolved by the outcome of the dispute.
I'm not trying to make some grand claim that "It's all an illusion." China is disputing Japan's ownership of these islands. The ownership of these islands is in dispute. We can either have some sort of lawful (or otherwise peaceful) way of resolving these disputes or we can go back to the traditional method of war and intimidation.
Our international legal systems were put in place in politically difficult circumstances to prevent world wars. They have definitions of territorial claims and some shambles of a system for resolving them and (theoretically) enforcing them. But this system (being a shambles) get very little respect. They are ignored by major power, minor powers and sometimes by upstarts (ISIS declared the border between Iraq & Syria dissolved and implemented that declaration).
... Japan’s diplomats say their country “discovered” the islands in 1884.
... They are recorded in “Voyage with a Tail Wind”, published in 1403, a portolano recounting a journey from Fujian province to Ryukyu, the old name for the Okinawa chain of islands. By the following century, in “A Record of an Imperial Envoy’s Visit to the Ryukyu Kingdom”, Chinese names were given to all the islets in the Diaoyu group. Japanese diplomats do not bring it up, but the great Japanese military scholar, Shihei Hayashi, followed convention in giving the islands their Chinese names in his map of 1785, “A General Outline of Three Countries” (see map). He also coloured them in the same pink as China.
Following the same logic, the Portuguese would now own half of the World and the Spanish another half.
Like any large country that tastes power and prosperity for a couple decades, China got rich with money from exports and drunk with power, and like any other country including the U.S. it will not end well. Too bad i makes life miserable for their neighbors too.
the claims on the South China sea are patently ridiculous, but I don't think it can be compared with the senkaku islands. From what I've read China actually did have better claim over those islands prior to 1884 and immediately after WWII, but didn't assert those claims because well.. the islands were worthless. Now that they've found oil they want to roll back the clock.
I think there is a fundamental cultural difference in the way the west and China views the dispute. To the west if you found a piece of land and lived there for 100 years, it's yours - that's how the US was founded after all. But to China it's just the latest in a series of conflicts with Japan going back hundreds of years.
> To the west if you found a piece of land and lived there for 100 years, it's yours - that's how the US was founded after all
Some say the genocide of the natives also helped a lot. These kind of logic just can't be applied to the problems in Asia, where the territory disputes trace back to hundreds of years ago. It's not a west vs east thing.
It helps that China has been around for, what, millenia? During the thousand(s) of years, you can probably find a century somewhere in there that they had/enforced a claim to most pieces of land, either owning outright or controlling access to.
Japan's self-defense force is better-equipped, I will grant, but there are a few reasons.
One is that there is always a higher level China could escalate to. I mean, in the end game they have nukes and Japan doesn't. But even if it didn't get to that level, China is a totalitarian regime with a history of brutally suppressing dissent, and I also assume that China would be willing to lose a lot more lives to make gains.
Japan is a high-functioning democracy, and has been one of the most peaceful advanced economies of the world since losing the war. Before that, yeah, they were a definite bad actor on the world stage. But they haven't committed any military aggression toward any country in more than 65 years.
It is my personal opinion that there is almost no way that the people of Japan (where I live, though I am American) would support a war against China. Even if China just up and landed an occupying force on Japan's Senkaku islands.
In a democracy, that public support really matters. In a totalitarian regime, not so much.
I don't personally know that much about the military stuff -- how much would Japan's superior equipment matter in an actual conflict -- so I'd be interested to hear more knowledgeable people chime in. But in Japan, a war with China would be politically untenable unless China like, invaded Tokyo, or something. Which is highly unlikely.
As with the Philippines, I think the USA is the main deterrent to Chinese aggression. And these days it's a pretty shaky deterrent.
In a democracy, that public support really matters.
Indeed.
Since the end of World War II, there have been 248 armed conflicts in 153 locations around the world. The United States launched 201 overseas military operations between the end of World War II and 2001, and since then, others, including Afghanistan and Iraq.
Yeah, my point wasn't that democracies don't wage wars -- just that they can't ignore the will of the citizenry (unless they don't actually have a democracy).
As an American, the USA's bottomless well of rah-rah nationalism any time they trot out the troops has always been a mystery. But it's definitely there, and I don't think any other country since the USSR has come close to the USA in terms of attacking other countries.
I also disagree with the comment below about a war-weary USA having a tepid response to China seizing a minor uninhabited American island. I think public support for a military response would be huge, like always.
What I was saying was that in Japan specifically, that knee-jerk support would not be there.
Huge support would be a massive understatement. Half the congress would be for an all out ICBM strike and other half would be for levelling the country and sending it back to stone age.
> But they haven't committed any military aggression toward any country in more than 65 years.
Well, yeah. It's in their constitution.
> It is my personal opinion that there is almost no way that the people of Japan (where I live, though I am American) would support a war against China. Even if China just up and landed an occupying force on Japan's Senkaku islands.
Perhaps not over the Senkaku Islands, but I think that if China were aggressive toward one of the four main islands (or Okinawa), the Japanese people would definitely support war -- even if not in actual name. I was really surprised at the general sentiment toward the proposed amendment in that it was a lot more supportive than I personally would have expected from a heiwa-boke Japan.
Especially against China though, there's already a lot of dark, anti-China sentiment (especially with the recent chicken fiasco) that I feel like could be stirred up into support for a non-War armed conflict/proportional response... though I don't know how the people would act after seeing the results.
Edit: In addition, I feel like war-weary Americans would be similarly ambivalent about entering war against China if China tried to annex, say, Wake Island.
> As with the Philippines, I think the USA is the main deterrent to Chinese aggression.
This is for me personally the number one reason I don't think that China would be willing to escalate against Japan, actually. American bases in Japan can not only provide support, but attacks on them would draw America into the conflict necessarily.
Americans are weary of pointless, stupid wars involving people we never heard of in countries we can't find on a map.
But touch our territory, and you're going to wish you hadn't. It doesn't matter if nobody knows where Wake Island is or if nobody lives there. It doesn't matter if it's fairly unimportant. It's ours, and Americans are intensely territorial.
If China landed troops on Wake Island, I'm pretty sure that the less war-hungry side of Congress, whichever that may be at the time, would be calling for bombing campaigns, carrier task forces, and an immediate counter-invasion. The hawks would need to be bodily restrained from launching ICBMs.
Attacks on Japan would draw America into the conflict. We provide their defense by treaty (and vice-versa, for what it's worth - Japan is committed to help the US if it is attacked, although this would typically be in the form of logistics and money since they don't have a lot of military ahrdware or experience these days): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Mutual_Cooperation_an...
Funny, the Argentines felt that the British wouldn't respond to invading the Falklands. Most wars are a result of one government failing to understand how another government will respond.
I think you seriously underestimate Japanese willingness to fight.
Lets say China decides to call US bluff and lands Marines on Senkakus tomorrow. To do that they would need to sink multiple Japanese coast guard vessels and kill a lot of Japanese sailors. What next? Obama says something about how he is unhappy. Japan is now probably incapable of direct landing on Senkaku right now IF it is opposed. It is however more then capable to sweeping Chinese planes out of the sky in the area. In the air war tech and training >> numbers. The other aspect of the war will be naval and Japan operates the best submarine fleet in Asia, given freedom they would inflict horrendous losses on Chinese surface fleet.
Chillingly at the same time PM of Japan knowing that he was betrayed by US would give an order to weaponize Japanese stockpile of weapon grade material and in a matter of weeks? month? Japan will test multiple fusion devices. Now the real game begins.
In reality I do not think that China will play this game now, their leaders are not Putin and Japan is not Ukraine. I think confrontation or war between China and India and/or Japan will happen but not yet. 10-15 years from now?
Japan may not officially have nuclear weapons, but they do not lack the capability - if they decided to weaponize (which would never happen short of a Chinese existential threat), they could do so in a matters of days, not months - the nuclear knowhow is clearly there.
The rest of your point is fair - for Japan to go to war would take a fundamental shift in the country, and its questionable whether the Senkaku Islands would meet that level. China is an aggressive, scary power in a lot of ways, and we ought to be cognizant of the dangers it poses - and the Japanese (and the Vietnamese, and the Phillipinos) are.
"Days" seems way too short. I Googled a bit, and the pages that came up (see below) suggest between 6 months and 10 years.
The estimates vary depending on how many and what kind of weapons they would build. Apparently Japan has a small stockpile of weapon-grade plutonium, and a huge stockpile of less refined plutonium. So they could build a small number of bombs quickly (the 6 month estimate), but building more would require either designing the weapon around less refined plutonium (which increases the risk that it would not work) or building a refinement plant (several years). They would also need some way to deliver the weapons---the most difficult option is ballistic missiles, which gives the 10-year estimate, while cruise missiles on submarines would be faster.
> A nuclear triad — land- and sea-based missiles combined with weapons delivered by manned bombers — holds little promise in light of Japan's lack of geographic depth and the vulnerability of surface ships and aircraft to enemy action. That means fielding an undersea deterrent would be Tokyo's best nuclear option.
> Japan may not officially have nuclear weapons, but they do not lack the capability - if they decided to weaponize (which would never happen short of a Chinese existential threat), they could do so in a matters of days, not months - the nuclear knowhow is clearly there.
You don't make nuclear weapons in days. Unless you have no idea what you are talking about. Weapon grade uranium takes months to produce. Why do you think Iran has been trying for so long to make such material ?
Ok then. With that and since they've almost certainly designed a device and worked out the logistics just in case I'm quite willing to believe they could get a number of boosted fission devices assembled in less than a month.
Japan has one of the worlds largest stockpiles of plutonium. Nine tons stored at home, and thiry five tons stored in Europe waiting to be reprocessed into MOX fuel.
I wonder how confident the CPC is in the political stability of China. Conflict is a wildcard and it can have all sorts of consequences.
I don't really know how to evaluate the claim myself as a removed outsider, but there seems to be a pretty credible claim that politically, China is economic growth addicted. IE, any kind of stagnation or substantially reduced growth rate endangers the political status quo.
People standing over their 14 year old kids to get the grades expect a salaried lifestyle for that kid in 10 years that isn't available today. They are expecting economic growth to create it. If, when that kid is 19 and in University it starts to look like a white collar job for graduates is unlikely, this kid studying Business and International Studies is not going to achieve what his parents worked. If he finds himself with something they unanimously agree is beneath him….
> any kind of stagnation or substantially reduced growth rate endangers the political status quo.
OTOH, using (even engineering) an external crisis -- including outright war -- to redirect popular anger over current or expected domestic economic conditions is not unheard of.
I almost choked on that one. Yeah, a democracy when there's a change of prime minister every single year or less, can surely be defined as "high functioning". It's as functional as the 4th Republic was in France.
> But they haven't committed any military aggression toward any country in more than 65 years.
They have unconditionally supported the US war operations in many theaters around the world, though. they have not taken directly taken part in conflict but support the US in their wars. That's just because their constitution prevents them to, not that they don't want it...
I don't judge the functioning of a democracy by how long a prime minister stays in office, I judge it by whether the citizens have the unfettered ability to vote, whether non-incumbents can get on the ballot, and whether election results accurate and largely free of fraud/corruption.
On all three of those metrics, Japan does better than, say, the United States.
If the will of the people is 'meh/who cares/none of the above', then that's a different problem, IMO.
> I judge it by whether the citizens have the unfettered ability to vote, whether non-incumbents can get on the ballot, and whether election results accurate and largely free of fraud/corruption.
Free of corruption, Japan? Really ? You have a twisted understanding of Japanese politics then.
And by the way, Japan is very much like the US in the fact that you have a bi-party system, with one party more often than not always in power. Hardly a good sign of a healthy democracy when there's so little choice available to voters.
Free of election-related corruption as in, the not-really-a-functioning-democracy kind of corruption. There is nowhere in the world where politics itself is free of corruption.
Japanese election results overwhelmingly reflect who actually got the most votes; I have never even heard that point contested.
And little choice? Two-party system? I wonder: have you ever actually seen a Japanese election?
There are so many candidates and parties now that it takes an hour just to google them all. Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), the Japanese Communist Party, New Komeito, the Social Democratic Party, Nippon Isshin, the New Rennaissance Party, then we have the Green Wind Party and the Smile Party... and I am definitely missing a whole bunch more -- all of whom have actively serving winners in local government positions and the Japanese Diet.
And in most recent gubernatorial election in Tokyo, where I live, the guy who won wasn't even in any of those parties, but AFAICT made his own party with only himself in it...
> As with the Philippines, I think the USA is the main deterrent to Chinese aggression. And these days it's a pretty shaky deterrent.
You must be kidding. The US military power is like 50 times what the Chinese can hope to come up with during a conflict. Even in 2014, if China were to try to take on the Pacific, they would be squashed like a mosquito if the US was to be involved. And believe me, they would be involved.
> In a democracy, that public support really matters.
I guess the American's population strong opposition to the Vietnam war or the second Iraq war says a lot about the validity of your comment. No, even democracies can go to war without much public support. Most democracies have actually special measures to go to war without any kind of popular vote.
The Economist has talked about their coverage of the Senkakus in a few videos. They have mentioned a few times how if they write anything without mentioning the "dispute" they take heat. Thus they resort to always using both names.
Senkaku islands is never undisputed. It is brought into spotlight mainly because the relationship between two countries went very bad in recent years due to Japanese PMs' frequent visits to Shinto shrine despite the constant protests from China and South Korea.
Not necessarily true. Not even probably true. The nuclear-armed USA has invaded a number of smaller and weaker countries over the past decades. China has also attacked several neighbors, though in a less balls-out manner. Armageddon did not ensue.
The scariest scenario in Asia right now is: China attacks Japan (e.g. invades the Senkakus, or even accidentally kills some Japanese soldier in one of China's frequent reckless acts of attempted intimidation, like flying dangerously close), the Japan retaliates, the China escalates, then USA intervenes, and somehow USA and China end up in direct armed conflict.
But even there, China and USA have directly fought each other in a war (Korean war) and nobody pulled out their nukes (though China didn't have them yet iirc). The USSR and USA were always invading somebody or other. The nuclear Armageddon scenario is probably a lot less likely than feared--whereas I think the possibility of a nevertheless-vey-bad war in Asia is broadly underestimated.
The only direct conflict between two nuclear powers in history was the Kargil War between India and Pakistan in 1999. This was a fairly minor conflict among two somewhat minor powers subject to intense international pressure to stop the fighting before it spread.
Nobody really knows how an armed conflict between two major nuclear powers would play out, because it's never happened. The Korean War was a completely different scenario. China didn't have nuclear weapons. The Soviets barely had nuclear weapons. The USA was essentially the only nuclear power at the time. The USSR didn't gain the ability to inflict MAD levels of destruction until sometime in the 1960s, more than a decade later.
Probably the closest we came to a direct conflict between two major nuclear powers was the Cuban Missile Crisis. At one point that conflict was prevented from going nuclear only by the stubborn insistence of a single submarine officer arguing with two of his fellows. And that conflict was barely a fight at all!
Maybe a war between major nuclear powers has little chance of going nuclear. But nobody knows. There are good reasons to think that it could be hard to avoid.
Someone attacks a Great Power, they demand lots from a small country. Another Great Power swears to protect the small country. Another Great Power will defend first Great Power. Then before you know it, the power keg explodes.
I tend to agree. You have a high number of global flashpoints where conflict already exists or is barely contained and institutional fragmentation of different kinds within great power areas. It's deeply worrying.
not necessary. A modern conflict can happen in the disputed area without anybody bombing cities of the opponent. iPhones will continue to be shipped to US from China while J-20 will be playing hide-and-seek with F-22/35 over, say, the South China Sea. A very related example - Great Britain didn't bomb Buenos Aires 32 years ago nor did Argentina strike at anything Britain's outside of the war zone.
Argentina didn't have the military capability to attack anything outside of the war zone. Great Britain simply exercised restraint in their attacks on the mainland.
that is the main point. Any country escalating a conflict outside the war zone would pay a heavy price that would make it not worth it. They wouldn't win the war that way, they'd lose it. It is not their good will, it is just their desire to win, not lose. Bombing Argentina outside of war zone would pit Great Britain against whole world - a loosing position, or not-wining at the very least. You wanna fight - take it outside and everybody is happy.
It seems like China has figured out a way to hack the media (the free media outside of China, I mean -- the government there obviously has root on Chinese TV and newspapers).
Japanese ownership of this territory is basically as settled under international law as anything of this nature can be; the islands have been held by Japan since the 1800s, then controlled by the USA for a time after it defeated Japan in WWII, and eventually returned to Japan along with the return of Okinawa.[1]
But after China's slow and steady media campaign, it has somehow become widely reported as 'disputed territory'. (Which it is in a meaningless and pedantic sense only.)
This island-building is another hack, and maybe a clever one. Killing 70 Vietnamese soldiers in the military action in the 1980s to seize a submerged reef didn't make China look good at all.
But perhaps by building new 'islands' to buttress its aggressive and expansionist claims to the territorial waters of other nations, we may end up seeing the western media in ten years uncritically reporting that "China, which has 9 islands in the disputed waters, insists that it is merely defending its territory..."
Which is very important, because none of the countries whose territories China is going after -- not even Japan -- would do well in a straight up military conflict. The Philippines only hope is American protection. So the way China's aggression is covered in the western media is actually very important.
Interesting times.
[1]: http://csis.org/publication/japan-chair-platform-senkaku-isl...