Last week, the People’s Republic of China (Red China) infamously added an uninhabited small island chain to an East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone; an area the Peking/Beijing government has considered the Diaoyu Islands (Diàoyú) since the time of the Ming Dynasty. For centuries, these islands have long been recognized as an ideal fishing spot for commercial fishermen. Had potential oil and gas reserves not been discovered nearby in 1969, it is likely these islands would’ve remained sleepy mounds of earth they were once before.
With this recent expansion of Chinese airspace, along with frequent fighter jet maneuvers by the Chinese military over the islands, the biggest obstacle to international travel is rather trivial. Air traffic passing through will have to submit radio frequencies, transponder information, as well as flight plans to Chinese officials to avoid any unwanted hassle. The biggest obstacle to world peace however comes with concurrent Japanese and Taiwanese claims over the island chain as well. They are considered by those governments as the Senkaku (Senkaku) or Diaoyutai islands (Diàoyútái) respectively.
Between Japanese annexation from 1895 to the end of World War II, the following U.S. occupation until 1972, and hotly contested Japanese control to the present, common sense should spell out the dispute over Senkaku as a lengthy and complicated quagmire the U.S. should avoid altogether. It wasn’t so long ago when American presidents were well respected for mediating global disputes of this kind. When the U.S. Navy once did so from a position of neutrality between the warring Japanese and Russian Empires, this won Teddy Roosevelt a Nobel Peace Prize in 1905. But neutrality no more…
Instead, just last week, recently appointed Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel reiterated a prehistoric policy position that’s no longer relevant in the 21st Century.
Hagel w/Chinese Defense Minister Gen. Chang Wanquan
When Hagel was controversially nominated for the role by President Obama last winter, there was hope among libertarians and small government conservatives that his nomination would “loosen the neoconservative stranglehold on the GOP,” a sentiment shared by the CATO Institute’s Justin Logan at the time. While serving two terms as a Republican senator from Nebraska, Hagel publicly grew to oppose the Iraq War, bloated Pentagon budgets, and continued U.S. presence in Afghanistan the same as he’d opposed No Child Left Behind, Medicare Part D, and other big government Bush policies.
But sadly, Hagel’s votes for the PATRIOT Act, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, and his 1999 co-sponsorship of a failed authorization for deployment of ground troops to Bill Clinton’s senseless Kosovo crusade of “humanitarian bombing” should’ve shown us Hagel’s true colors as a mixed bag at best; or a closeted partisan war hawk at the worst. His reaffirmation that American mutual defense of Japan includes all of its territories invokes conditions of a 1952 treaty that still commit future generations of U.S. armed forces to protection of the country following World War II.
Given the Cold War climate of Soviet expansion in Europe and elsewhere that existed sixty years ago, perhaps fears of Stalin setting his sights on Japan could have carried more credibility back then? But now over half a century later, with Emperor Hirohito gone, and the Soviet empire long since collapsed, the Japanese are still legally prohibited from providing their own common defense. Instead, we have to pay for it dangerously at the expense of our own defense.
Today, there are still U.S. bases on Okinawa and millions in foreign aid doled out to the Japanese government every year. Today’s Japan is also a first world nation with a higher GDP (gross domestic product) than Germany’s. So why does East Asian Pentagon policy still reflect 1945 in the year 2013? B-52 bomber flights over the Senkaku islands, just to spite a militaristic China, are expensive at the very least – a whopping $50 million per plane. How is this government service essential in any way? Isn’t our money better spent on Cyber Monday sales event products that are made in East Asia to begin with?
If the worst should happen in the neocon remnant’s eye, and China annexes the Senkakus militarily, a concern over ownership of the islands’ possible oil reserves has been in question. But if oil is all Pentagon policy hacks lose sleep over, they should remember Milton Friedman’s take on Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. In 1995, the Nobel Prize winning free market economist confided with Reason magazine stressed he:
“was persuaded that the major argument used to support (Desert Storm) was fallacious.
After all, if Iraq took over the oil, it would have to do something with it. If they don’t want to eat it, they’d have to $ell it. I don’t think the price of oil would have been much affected. The more important consideration was the balance of power with Iran and Iraq.”
If Japan, the Republic of China (Taiwan – another costly foreign welfare queen), and Mainland China make the mistake to risk regional trade and escalate a petty border dispute beyond the world’s largest water gun fight, U.S. foreign policy would do well to want no part of it. As George Washington wisely warned in his Farewell Address as president, and Thomas Jefferson and most early presidents made a frequent point to reiterate until the Spanish American War, the United States ought to pursue a policy of:
“peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”
Our future might depend on it, along with keeping us out of these explosive Cold War era commitments our government can’t afford to keep.
