With China’s dogged aggression in the South China Sea, what implications could a new White House have for New Zealand?
In ordinary fashion Trump shared the results of a new Washington Post-ABC News poll on Facebook by quoting The Hill’s underlying evaluation: “Trump’s approval rating hits its highest point in his presidency”. That was early last week and what should have since transpired is a disconcerting dread felt by New Zealand confronting the possibility (probability?) of another four more years of an unpredictable and capricious Trump foreign policy. This dread of course is compounded by the rise of China that relents to yield to international pressure on such fronts like the South China Sea.
For most of the 20th century, Australia and New Zealand’s security has been underwritten by American hegemony in the Asia Pacific, which in turn has championed liberalism and protected the rule of law. This has been the bedrock for New Zealand’s defence, dependent on a predictable and consistent rules-based order.
China’s rise pricks the fabric of any liberal domain. No more is this self-evident than its growing assertiveness in the hotly contested South China Sea, which threatens to destabilize the region and erode international norms New Zealand’s security is acutely contingent upon.
Earlier this month, China completed a series of anti-ship ballistic missile tests in the South China Sea that ushers in a new type of military activity to the disputed waters. In what the Pentagon has criticized as “disturbing” and construed to intimidate, the location of the drill sows’ further distress: it was the furthest south the Chinese had conducted a major wargame.
“This … means the [Chinse People’s Liberation Army] is preparing for a major confrontation this far in the South China Sea and really training for such an eventuality,” inferred Collin Koh, a scholar at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
Others remain more skeptical. Kerry Brown, Director of the Lau China Institute at King’s College London, instead sees China’s moves in the South China Sea as a distraction and part of a greater psychological game. He borrows from French philosopher Francois Jullien in characterizing that Chinese power “haunts but it doesn’t act”. Its real power, Brown elaborates, resides in its ability to prey upon observer’s expectations to cultivate unbridled insecurity. The spooked response from Canberra in April last year about the prospect of a Chinese naval base in Vanuatu – sentiments echoed diplomatically by Prime Minister Ardern – neatly illustrates his assessment.
Similarly, President Xi’s One Belt, One Road Initiative (BRI), often referenced by China sceptics as a scheming masquerade for debt-trap diplomacy (with the Hambantota Port in Sri Lanka as its infamous poster child), is another example where considerable apprehension appears ill-founded. Deborah Brautigam and her team at the John Hopkins University could largely dismiss damaging allegations of the BRI as usually “overstated or mischaracterized” in a recent article for The New York Times.
The underlying point, and what Brown I think aims at, is that when confronting China or assessing its threat, it’s imperative to demarcate legitimate concern from unguided paranoia and speculation.
So, what are the legitimate concerns?
Well to begin with, Beijing has made claim to over eighty percent of the South China Sea, which substantially encroaches upon the economic exclusive zones of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam. Territorial disputes are consequentially frequent and exacerbate tension in the region. In fact, Vietnam and China are in the midst of a week-long confrontation over a reef with two Chinese and four Vietnamese patrol vessels squaring up to each other. There’s a risk that it could escalate to become the biggest clash between the two countries in recent years.
Then there’s China’s continued militarization of the region.
Since the 1980s, China has steadily built up its naval fleet, which now eclipses the U.S to be the largest in the world (though the US navy remains technologically superior). Beijing has utilized its fleet to stifle access to its claimed waterways and project its power.
China too has adopted less conventional ways to assert its presence. A quasi “maritime militia” of well-equipped patrol vessels routinely intimidate and confront neighboring intruders. Cases of local Vietnamese and Filipino fishermen detained by Chinese maritime law enforcement has become commonplace and increasingly brazen. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, China have been involved in 73 percent of all reported clashes in the South China Sea since 2010.
Perhaps most controversially however, are the construction of artificial islands in disputed waters. Back in December 2013, the Tianjing dredger began depositing sediment onto the Johnson South Reef in the contested Spratly archipelago. In just four months a 25-acre island emerged. Since then, six more artificial islands have propped up – adding some 3,200 acres of new land according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies – each equipped with military installations of varying descriptions. These include military-grade runways, radar facilities, bunkers and shelters for surface-to-air missile systems.
A 2015 pledge from President Xi Jingping not to further militarize its outposts in the South China Sea evidently doesn’t hold water. The series of tests conducted earlier this month is just one example in a pattern of behavior that directly contradicts this pledge.
While New Zealand is nested by some distance from the front lines of the South China Sea dispute, it nevertheless poses reckoning questions about our security. Wellington’s pragmatic approach in keeping relatively obsequious to Beijing to preserve our economic relations – which at times has deviated from the harder line Canberra has taken – remains viable only so far it doesn’t alienate us from our security partners.
Though New Zealand will continue to respect and encourage increased Chinese engagement on international issues commensurate to its rising stature, it must delineate between engagement that’s pursuant to existing norms and condemn activities that fall outside it. Having someone predictable in the Oval Office helps make the latter a little easier.
Which brings me back to Trump.
Although the current administration has conducted numerous freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs) to challenge China’s excessive maritime claims and emphasized a “free and open Indo-Pacific”; Trump’s “America First” mantra towards conducting foreign relations withers confidence of his commitment in defending allies.
Trump’s demand for a substantial raise in the Special Measures Agreement (which outlines the host’s contribution to the costs of housing American troops) from South Korea earlier this year – against the backdrop of a volatile Korean peninsula – reveals his transactional worldview and seeds uncertainty for New Zealand’s security.
“If the United States believes that it doesn’t need an alliance with the Republic of Korea, I would say it’s okay. If the United States doesn’t want the alliance, we don’t have to beg for it,” declared the leader of South Korea’s legislature in May.
Should Beijing continue to exhibit expansionist advances, what’s to say Trump wouldn’t field the cheque to Wellington for any American deterrence or intervention were our interests in the Pacific to ever become in jeopardy. In the same vein as the South Korean politician, would it be no longer feasible for New Zealand to be a parasite of Washington even with an aggressive China in our backyard?
New Zealand would likely be better served if a Democrat wins 2020. Although Trump has consistently been staunch on China – from calling out Beijing on its unfair trade policies to blacklisting Huawei over security concerns – a Democratic president would quell any insecurity over transactional US commitment and offer a sturdier counterweight to China. For instance, dismantling Trump’s protectionist trade policies would reengage the US with its economic partners and knit closer ties with regional governments through greater economic integration. Current Democratic front-runner former Vice President Joe Biden was a key advocate for the TPP. Could we see under a Biden Administration another sweeping free-trade agreement that hedges New Zealand against China?
Currently most polls are optimistic on a Democratic nominee winning 2020. In the aforementioned Washington Post-ABC News poll Trump lags ten-points behind Biden and his approval rating on voter’s concerns (including Taxes, Foreign Policy, Immigration, Gun Violence, Abortion and Climate Change) was net negative. However, it’s hard to take solace in surveys and polls that spectacularly failed to predict Trump’s victory in 2016.
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