SIBERIA AND THE SOUTH CHINA SEA

[Note:  I am off to Socotra and beyond.  Jack Kelly is also away on a well-deserved vacation.  In our absence, Joe Katzman will man the HFR ramparts.  He is asking TTPers to send him their suggestions for what recent events of note deserve inclusion in the HFR.  Send them to [email protected] .  Thanks, and thanks, Joe!]

Here’s an interesting question:  Do Russians and Chinese exist?  Obviously yes in an ordinary sense.  But do they possess any individual identity beyond being simply members of their tribal collective?

Human beings seem genetically hard-wired to be tribal.  Just about all of us derive at least part of our self-identity via membership in one or more tribes.  But most in the West do not submerge their identity into the tribe.  An exception might be a substantial fraction of American Blacks, for whom being "black" overrides everything else. 

This, of course, is racism, but all forms of racism are merely a variety of tribalism.

For most of us, however – and this includes a great many American Blacks – what we see in the mirror is an individual human being distinct and separate from others.  Our participation in the welter of groups and tribes to which we belong is something more of choice than necessity, something that we could withdraw from without feeling at a loss to know who we were.

This is not the case with the great majority of Russians and Chinese.  Having little sense of individual empowerment, the average Russian gets a frisson whenever his government pushes other governments and countries around. 

They want Russia to be a bully.  They want other people to be afraid of them because they are Russian.

It is little wonder that Putin’s popularity has soared after seizing Crimea by force, instead of by negotiated diplomacy.  He’s popular because he’s a bully who treats the US and the EU with contempt.  They want him to invade and seize eastern Ukraine, have Ukrainians freeze in the cold with no Gazprom gas, threaten to seize Karelia from Finland, reconquer Estonia, and reconstitute the Soviet Union.

"Communism" or "Marxism-Leninism" was merely a façade, the ideological rationale, for Russian Imperialism.  Save for the few true-believing Bolsheviks whom Stalin quickly liquidated, no Soviet leaders were ever actually Commies.  They were straightforward Russian imperialists, just as are the substantial majority of average Russians. 

Russians are then, by and large, a Potemkin People.  There’s nothing behind the façade of their collective identity in Mighty Bullying Russia.  So they will back Putin’s bullying to the hilt – which Putin will get away with until we have a president unafraid of him and them, who will target Russia’s mortal vulnerabilities until Russia is reduced to the Duchy of Muscovy.

Are the Chinese the same?  Do they see themselves as indistinguishable as Coke bottles, having no individuality apart from being Han Chinese?  Well, not in Taiwan.

 98% of Taiwanese are Han – but as Taiwan is the first democracy in 5,000 years of Chinese history with vastly more individual freedom than in Chicom China, there’s a lot of individuality.

Any country that allows itself to be ruled by dictators has a population disinclined towards individuality.  The PRC – People’s Republic of China, Chicom China – was established and ruled for almost 30 years by the greatest mass murderer in the history of mankind, and whose face adorns every denomination of Chicom currency. 

So there should be no surprise that Chinese cheer and root for their government’s bullying their neighbors and militarily seizing, or threatening to, their neighbors’ territory – exactly like Russians root for Putin.

China has more countries on its borders (land and claimed territorial waters) than any nation in the world: 20. 

Russia, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos, Burma, Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan.  They have picked fights and border disputes with most.

The good news is that defensive alliances are forming among China’s neighbors to stand against Chicom imperialism and bullying.  The main effort is being led by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (ah-bay).

Here’s what to watch for as Abe’s strategy emerges over the coming months. 

He will argue at every opportunity that China’s neighbors must face the reality that China is conducting a full court press to make them all vassals of Beijing.

The crux move in creating Abe’s Defensive Alliance is the first:  reaching out to South Korea.  Their sensitivities and, yes, grudges, must be acknowledged and respected.  Avoiding provocative gestures and replacing them with conciliatory ones is critical.  An example would be to face up to the truth of South Korean "comfort women" during WWII.

Concretely, it is necessary for Japan to acknowledge ROK sovereignty over the Liancourt Rocks (Takeshima for Japan, Dokdo-ri for ROK), and relinquish any claim upon them.  Here is the ROK case.  It’s a good one: http://www.dokdo-takeshima.com/.

Abe knows he must do this, and a lot of folks are watching to see if he has the moxie.

Also critical are the elections in India next month.  If Narendra Modi is elected PM with a governable majority, Abe will jump on the first plane to New Delhi  to enter into a defense treaty with India.  Do not be at all surprised if representatives from Hanoi accompany him.

Additionally, Abe will support the emerging alliance between the Philippines and Vietnam.  Once the alliance is on the road to solidity, then Japan can request to participate..

You may be familiar with Beijing’s infamous "9 Dash Line" claiming the entire South China Sea as PRC sovereign territory.  Last year, Beijing poured more gasoline on this fire by increasing its claim to a 10 Dash Line.

Here’s a map showing what the South China Sea countries are entitled under international law recognizing a 200 nautical mile EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zone: China in green, Vietnam in yellow, Philippines in blue – with Beijing’s claim in dashed red.

China is backing up its claims with continual harassment of small Philippine garrisons on shoals and islets such as Scarborough Reef and Second Thomas (or Ayungin) Shoal.  On Sunday (3/30), a relief ship was able to slip through the Chicom blockade at Ayungin.

And just as with Russian bullies in the Kremlin, the Chicom bullies in Beijing have fist-pounding hissy fits when anyone dares to denounce their bullying and thugishness.

Comparisons of Putin’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea with Hitler’s annexation of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland in 1938 are many.  Yet Philippine leader Benigno Aquino made that exact comparison with China before Putin’s aggression.

In an interview with the New York Times on February 4, Aquino stated regarding the Chicom seizure of Philippine territory in the South China Sea:

"If we say yes to something we believe is wrong now, what guarantee is there that the wrong will not be further exacerbated down the line… At what point do you say, ‘Enough is enough’? Well, the world has to say it – remember that the Sudetenland was given in an attempt to appease Hitler to prevent World War II."

The Chicoms lost their apoplectic minds when Aquino compared them to Nazis – but the comparison is as exact as it is with Putin.  Appeasement of imperialist dictatorships never works.

Proof of this is that, astoundingly, as of mid-March, the Chicoms started picking a fight with Indonesia.  Take another look at the map above.  You’ll see "Riau Islands" below the bottom of the Chinese red line.  Indonesian territorial waters right off Riau now belong to China, as displayed on the map of China in the latest Chinese passports.

Indonesians and their government is seriously ticked off.  It’s a clear opportunity for Abe to support Indonesian sovereignty over the Riau Islands, to stand with Indonesia against China.

If Abe succeeds in persuading South Korea, the Philippines, and Vietnam working with Japan to jointly oppose Chicom imperialism (and with possible Indonesian cooperation), the next move will be to add Taiwan.

It would be in Taipei’s obvious interest to join.  To do so, which would greatly enhance Taiwan security, Taipei would have to relinquish any claim upon the Senkaku Islands and acknowledge the South China Sea as international waters. 

Taiwan would have to acknowledge Philippine sovereignty over Scarsborough and Second Thomas Shoals, for example, denying any Chinese claim over the Spratlys.

Abe will have to wait until the current Kuomintang government in Taipei – which fantasizes about reunification with the PRC – changes.  Huge anti-Kuomintang protests called the Sunflower Movement have been going on for the last two weeks. 

It’s a beautiful sight to see 100,000 students protesting against Communism and appeasement to it.  It might not be long until Abe and Aquino (and Modi) have a Taiwan government they can work with.

But to what end?  It’s one thing to try to blunt Chicom aggression head-on – especially when it’s egged on by hundreds of millions of Chinese.  It’s another to engage in geopolitical aikido – to redirect your opponent’s energy away from you. 

If I were advising Abe, I would suggest that, in addition to creating his defensive alliance, he initiate a program to redirect the attention of those hundreds of millions of cheerleaders for Chicom bullying towards… Siberia.  Towards all that land that Russia under Czar Alexander II stole from them. 

Notice any difference in these two maps?

That’s hundreds of thousands of square miles China lost to Russia, when the Qing government was weak and the Czar moved tens of thousands of Cossack troops in to seize it.  Here is where to redirect Chinese imperialism and their legions of cheerleaders. 

How many Chinese can live on shoals underwater at high tide in the South China Sea – and how many can live where hordes of them once did in a homeland that was once theirs?

In that Siberia 1900 map, notice a string of islands in white extending above Japan’s island of Hokkaido.  Those are the Kuril Islands which Stalin stole from Japan at the end of WWII.  Because Russia refuses to return them, Japan never signed a peace treaty with the Soviet Union/Russia, and technically they are still at war.

One way for Japan to get them back would be for China to get back their Maritime Provinces.  You can bet that Abe is thinking hard about all of this. 

It may not be long now when the Chinese are talking more about Siberia than the South China Sea – and start drawing dashed lines around it.  

Ps:  Remember to send your HFR suggestions to Joe Katzman at [email protected]!

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