A storm is brewing in the Western Pacific. As the Asia-Pacific region descends into a period of destabilizing conflict, the Philippines is quickly becoming a frontline state in the U.S. strategy to contain China—the central thrust of the Obama administration’s...
The “Pacific pivot” of the United States is nothing new. At the same time, it doesn’t really exist. And yet, even though it doesn’t exist, this pivot is partly responsible for the escalation of tensions in and around the Korean peninsula. How can all three of these statements be simultaneously true? Such are the paradoxes of the U.S. shift in attention toward the Pacific Rim.
A major game changer is needed to break the silent stalemate between the United States and North Korea. And it’s going to take more than Dennis Rodman’s trip to North Korea. It will require the United States to take greater responsibility and leadership to end the Korean War, as well as a feminist, anti-militarist approach to achieve peace and justice on the Korean peninsula.
Over the last two years, the Obama administration has executed what the president has termed the “Pivot to Asia” strategy, whereby the United States’ global military force posture is being reconfigured to focus on the Asia-Pacific region as Washington’s central front. Containment of China is the aim of the Pivot strategy, which has drawn criticism from liberal critics of the policy.
The Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) is a nationalist political organization that has been waging an armed struggle against the Philippine state since its establishment in 1969. MNLF Central Committee member Commander Haji Ibrahim “Bambi,” 67 years old, met the author for an interview in January 2013 at an undisclosed location in Sabah, Malaysia.
The United States is a Pacific power, but Asia is a very different place than it was two hundred years ago. You can’t dispatch “Chinese” Gordon and a couple of gunboats and get your way anymore. Nor can you deal with rivals by building Cold War-style alliances and threatening to use force. The world is too small, Asia is too big, and war would be catastrophic. The Pacific is no one’s “lake,” but an ocean vast enough for all.
Anyone expecting Obama to be decidedly more pro-peace this time around is likely to be sorely dispirited. However, there is a diverse, growing peoples’ movement in the United States linking human and environmental needs with a demand to end our wars and liberate the vast resources they consume.
As many pundits have noted, if the rest of the world were voting in the U.S. presidential election, the third presidential debate would probably have proceeded differently. But since only about 200 million people on earth are eligible to vote for the man whose policies will impact all of us, the final stretch of the campaign has turned into a bipartisan exercise in imperial chest-thumping.
Peace and tranquillity never really seem to last long in Okinawa. Looking over the dark blue Pacific on a cloudy morning, an Okinawan fisherman will hear a steady drone emanating from a U.S. Air Force C-130 transport aircraft. As it thunders low over the island’s small houses, the deafening roar from four Rolls-Royce engines drowns out school teachers and rattles window panes. The behemoth descends to land at Kadena Airbase and calm is temporarily restored.
While the proponents of the U.S. pivot to Asia argue that it enhances regional security, it is in reality precipitating a much more explicit Sino-American rivalry, thus undermining the prospects of an amicable and pluralistic regional order. Ultimately, America’s growing military presence in the region could backfire, giving birth to what it dearly seeks to prevent.