Imperialism in the South China Sea

We are very unlikely to hear about the Spratly Islands or the South China Sea in the presidential debates for the very simple reason that the candidates most likely never heard of them. Nor does the public know of them, as they are seldom, if ever, featured on TV or in print; they do not generate sensational news that captivates eyeballs. And yet, this is where China and the US are engaged in a gigantic struggle for imperial control of the world..

The US involvement in a half dozen disastrous wars in the Middle East, specifically Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, the Yemen ( with Saudi Arabia as proxy), and Bahrain (also by Saudi proxy) absorbs much of US military might and media attention. Preoccupied with the blight of ISIS in many of these countries, little attention is being given to the South China Sea. Meanwhile, China is building alliances in Africa and South America of a different nature, which are strengthening its economic, diplomatic and trade roles at the expense of a US bogged down in military exploits. Already China is clearly the strongest economic power in the world, although not the largest, leaving the US only the military domain for international dominance and hegemony. This does not augur well for the American empire, as Britain learned at an earlier period as the previous hegemonic empire of the world.

Now enter China’s foray into the South China Sea, heightening the US’s troubles. The Spratly Islands in the South China Sea are named for a British whaler named Richard Spratly who passed by the area in 1843. There are about 750 such islands, reefs, cays, atolls and islets in the archipelago, covering a nautical area of 164,000 sq. miles while having a land area of merely 1.5 sq. miles. Their only economic value is their possible oil and gas reserves, estimated to be in the billions of barrels. Their strategic importance is that they are in key shipping lanes in these seas. They, however, are also contested terrain claimed variously by Vietnam, the Philippines and Malaysia. Over the past few years, China has been building artificial islands on some of these rocky outcrops through dredging sand and rock from the surroundings seas. Concerned with the rise of China as a challenge to US military and navy hegemony, the US is in the midst of forming and strengthening alliances with all the countries mentioned but especially with Japan.

In 2011, President Obama announced a ‘pivot towards Asia’ providing an extension and diversification of US military presence in the area. Perhaps the most important of the elements in this military expansion is the move to get Japan to change its constitution, which forbad it from involvement in military adventures of any kind. Article 9 –drafted at US instigation in 1947- declared that the Japanese people “forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes”. Now under a neoconservative Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, Japan’s Parliament passed a bill in September 2015 that authorizes the country’s military to engage in overseas combat missions. By its silence, the US favors Japan’s growing militarism as part of the alliance to rein in China.

There are many other elements in the escalating militarization of these seas. The US is seeking or has secured the use of military facilities in the Philippines, Malaysia, Pulau and the Marianna Islands. The US Navy is also seeking funds to equip its ships with anti-ship missiles. The campaign by the Obama administration to pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership is yet another effort to isolate China economically and threaten it militarily. The Alliance of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), which excludes China once more, is a US-supported effort to weaken China’s growing alliances and interests.

The anti-China campaign is full of contradictions. To begin with, the US economy would virtually collapse without China. Most of US manufacturing capability has moved to China, making it semi-dependent on the cheap labor of its manufactured products. No amount of military alliances will change that equation. With such heavy US military involvement in the Middle East since 2003, the country is suffering from military exhaustion and fatigue. There is popular exhaustion with the military exploits to boot. But in the history of empires this looks like par for the course as the empire declines. Britain had virtually lost its hegemony in 1900 but that did not prevent it from more audacious military exploits for the next 45 years. Empires are at their most dangerous when in decline. The only force that has the capacity to curtail or reverse this trend is popular education into the reality of our involvement in the area and a mobilization of resistance against imperialism both of the US and the Chinese brand.

Michael Drohan is a member of the Editorial Collective and of the Board of the Thomas Merton Center

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