- After Imperial Japan’s attack on the United States at Pearl Harbor, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto reportedly wrote in his diary, “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant.” Communist China’s aggressive actions against the international system have awakened three long-slumbering giants: the United States, Japan, and Europe.
- Washington, through President Nixon’s historic opening to China in 1972, led the West in welcoming China into “the family of nations.” Six succeeding administrations, counseled directly or indirectly by Henry Kissinger, uncritically followed Kissinger’s advice in his self-selected role as Beijing’s chief Western advocate.
- American, Asian, and European business interests welcomed the economic benefits of low labor costs and the huge Chinese market. As the China coupling expanded and deepened under the “win-win” banner, it blinded Western governments to what was happening to populations under Beijing’s control, neighboring countries, and the rules-based international order. Virtually all in the West were content to look the other way as the good times rolled.
- The transformative China policies of President Trump’s national security team, followed and expanded by the Biden administration, interrupted the slide toward total Chinese domination of the economic and political order. Washington’s example encouraged other governments to reexamine their own security posture.
- Japan was always wary of Beijing’s designs on the Senkakus Islands, but for years it shied away from embroilment in the U.S.-China contentions over Taiwan’s future. That began to change in 2005, under the impetus of Shinzo Abe, then-head of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party and prime minister heir apparent. Tokyo joined Washington in stating that security in the Taiwan Strait is a “common strategic objective” under the U.S.-Japan Mutual Security Treaty, without specifying the implications for Japan.
- Taiwan’s special representative to Japan welcomed the change, “We’re relieved that Japan has become more assertive.” In 2022, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told Nikkei Asia, “The peace and stability of the Taiwan Strait is critical not just for our country, but for the whole international community. The Group of Seven is united on this.”
- Europe, given its distance from the region, understandably has been slower to evolve from accommodating partner with China to concerned skeptic. But Beijing’s growing economic aggressiveness under Xi Jinping, and international exposure of its human rights depredations against the Uyghurs, began to open eyes in European capitals. Attitudes changed with China’s sweeping claim to sovereignty over the entire South China Sea and its aggressive actions pursuing that claim despite an adverse ruling by the United Nations’ Arbitral Tribunal.
- While President Biden frequently expresses his fear about World War III, China and Russia are already waging it on a preliminary level. Russian strongman Vladimir Putin conducts a violent war that kills Ukrainians but not Americans, while Beijing has devised a way to kill untold young American men of military age each year without a war and losses of Chinese soldiers, by flooding the United States with addictive drugs like fentanyl.
Source:
The Hill
