A Great War in the East China Sea: Why China and Japan Could Fight

We can see why if we look back half a century. Shortly before the crisis broke in October 1962, Kennedy had publicly promised to prevent Moscow from deploying missiles to Cuba. Recent scholarship suggests that Khrushchev saw this as an opportunity to score an easy win over his younger and less experienced adversary. He believed Kennedy would not risk war to back up his promise, because Khrushchev did not believe that Soviet missiles in Cuba would materially affect U.S. security, and he didn’t believe Kennedy would think they would either. He therefore decided to call Kennedy’s bluff, make him back down, and gain a psychological and political advantage. That was why he sent the missiles to Cuba.

In the event, of course, Kennedy turned out to be tougher—or more reckless—than Khrushchev had expected, and Khrushchev suffered the consequences. However, there is a risk that Beijing might respond—as Khrushchev did to Kennedy—to Obama’s less-than-credible affirmation of U.S. support to Japan, seeing it as an opportunity to call his bluff and damage his, and America’s, credibility in Asia. The more Obama commits himself to support Japan, the worse it will look for America, and the better it will look for China, if he doesn’t.         

This suggests that Obama should be very wary about bold affirmations of commitment to defend Japan, unless he can be sure that China will believe them. The best and perhaps only way to do that is to persuade Beijing that their assumptions about how such a war would go are wrong. He needs to convince Beijing that America does indeed have credible military options to defeat China in an East China Sea conflict. To do that he needs to do more than just boast about America’s unmatched military power, because Beijing does not buy that line anymore. He needs to look carefully at how exactly America could prevail over China militarily. If, having done that, he believes there is a workable military option, he needs to say enough about it publicly to convince the Chinese of that. If not, of course, then he needs to rethink his whole strategy in Asia.

What about Japan? Is there any risk that Tokyo might decide deliberately to start an armed clash with China? On the face of it this seems a much less likely possibility, but it cannot be dismissed completely. Japan’s leaders might decide that their interests would be served by bringing on a clash and settling the question of U.S. commitment to Japan’s security once and for all. They could well think that time is not on their side. After all, if they are worried today that America might not be willing to confront China on their behalf, how much less confident can they be about what would happen if they clashed with China five or ten years from now? That might lead them to think that it would be better to bring a conflict on now, hoping that Washington would step forward with a robust military response which would force China to back off and drop its challenge to U.S. leadership in Asia, while restoring Japanese confidence in America’s security guarantees. Students of history will see some echoes here of the thinking which brought Japan to Pearl Harbour in 1941.

Of course, Japan’s leaders would recognize the real possibility that America would fail a test of its commitment. But they might think Japan would be better off knowing now that America will not protect them from China, rather than remaining uncertain. It is not hard to imagine Japanese leaders like Shinzo Abe concluding that if Japan must in the future stand on its own against China without U.S. support, the sooner this becomes clear, the better. And the sooner Japan can start to take the necessary steps to defend itself independently, the better.

None of this suggests that conflict in the East China Sea is inevitable, or even that it is probable. But it does suggest that more needs to be done to prevent conflict than just avoid accidents or miscalculations. And it also suggests we need to move quickly.

Hugh White is professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University in Canberra. His book The China Choice: Why We Should Share Power was published in the US last year by Oxford University Press.

 Image: Flickr/Official U.S. Air Force/CC by-nc 2.0