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Inherency:US acknowledges Senkakus fall under Article 5 of Defense Treaty while maintaining ambiguity on whether they consider them to be under Japan’s sovereignty. Panda, 2017 (Ankit, editor-at-large of The Diplomat, "Mattis: Senkakus Covered Under US-Japan Security Treaty," https://thediplomat.com/2017/02/mattis-senkakus-covered-under-us-japan-security-treaty/, DoA 7/30/2020, DVOG)

On Saturday, U.S. President Donald Trump’s defense secretary, James Mattis, reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to defend Japanese territory from attack.

Mattis specifically mentioned that Article 5 of the U.S.-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security would cover the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea , which Japan administers, but China claims.

In a press conference following consultation between Mattis and his Japanese counterpart Tomomi Inada, Mattis offered the affirmation: “I made clear that our long-standing policy on the Senkaku Islands stands — the U.S. will continue to recognize Japanese administration of the islands and as such Article 5 of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty applies.”

Article 5 of the U.S.-Japan treaty commits the United States to defend aggression against territories under Japanese administration.

With his statement on the Senkaku Islands, Mattis became the highest-level U.S. official to affirm that Article 5 of the U.S.-Japan treaty covered the islands since former U.S. President Barack Obama’s 2014 visit to Japan.

Obama was the first U.S. president to explicitly mention that the alliance extended to the Senkakus: “The policy of the United States is clear—the Senkaku Islands are administered by Japan and therefore fall within the scope of Article 5 of the U.S.-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security. And we oppose any unilateral attempts to undermine Japan’s administration of these islands,” Obama had stated in 2014, in an interview with Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun.

Plan: The United States Federal Government should amend the Mutual Defense Treaty with Japan to explicitly exclude mutual defense of the Senkaku Islands.

Advantage 1:

The era of US unipolarity is over—COVID accelerated the declineCooley, Political Science Professor at Barnard, and Nexon, Government Professor at Georgetown, August 2020 ("How Hegemony Ends," Foreign Affairs, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2020-06-09/how-hegemony-ends, DoA 8/22/2020, DVOG)

Great-power contestation, the end of the West’s monopoly on patronage, and the emergence of movements that oppose the liberal international system have all altered the global order over which Washington has presided since the end of the Cold War. In many respects, the COVID-19 pandemic seems to be further accelerating the erosion of U.S. hegemony. China has increased its influence in the World Health Organization and other global institutions in the wake of the Trump administration’s attempts to defund and scapegoat the public health body. Beijing and Moscow are portraying themselves as providers of emergency goods and medical supplies, including to European countries such as Italy, Serbia, and Spain, and even to the United States. Illiberal governments worldwide are using the pandemic as cover for restricting media freedom and cracking down on political opposition and civil society. Although the United States still enjoys military supremacy, that dimension of U.S. dominance is especially ill suited to deal with this global crisis and its ripple effects.

Even if the core of the U.S. hegemonic system—which consists mostly of long-standing Asian and European allies and rests on norms and institutions developed during the Cold War—remains robust, and even if, as many champions of the liberal order suggest will happen, the United States and the European Union can leverage their combined economic and military might to their advantage, the fact is that Washington will have to get used to an increasingly contested and complex international order. There is no easy fix for this. No amount of military spending can reverse the processes driving the unraveling of U.S. hegemony. Even if Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, knocks out Trump in the presidential election later this year, or if the Republican Party repudiates Trumpism, the disintegration will continue.

The key questions now concern how far the unraveling will spread. Will core allies decouple from the U.S. hegemonic system? How long, and to what extent, can the United States maintain financial and monetary dominance? The most favorable outcome will require a clear repudiation of Trumpism in the United States and a commitment to rebuild liberal democratic institutions in the core. At both the domestic and the international level, such efforts will necessitate alliances among center-right, center-left, and progressive political parties and networks.

What U.S. policymakers can do is plan for the world after global hegemony. If they help preserve the core of the American system, U.S. officials can ensure that the United States leads the strongest military and economic coalition in a world of multiple centers of power, rather than finding itself on the losing side of most contests over the shape of the new international order. To this end, the United States should reinvigorate the beleaguered and understaffed State Department, rebuilding and more effectively using its diplomatic resources. Smart statecraft will allow a great power to navigate a world defined by competing interests and shifting alliances.

The United States lacks both the will and the resources to consistently outbid China and other emerging powers for the allegiance of governments. It will be impossible to secure the commitment of some countries to U.S. visions of international order. Many of those governments have come to view the U.S.-led order as a threat to their autonomy, if not their survival. And some governments that still welcome a U.S.-led liberal order now contend with populist and other illiberal movements that oppose it.

Even at the peak of the unipolar moment, Washington did not always get its way. Now, for the U.S. political and economic model to retain considerable appeal, the United States has to first get its own house in order. China will face its own obstacles in producing an alternative system; Beijing may irk partners and clients with its pressure tactics and its opaque and often corrupt deals. A reinvigorated U.S. foreign policy apparatus should be able to exercise significant influence on international order even in the absence of global hegemony. But to succeed, Washington must recognize that the world no longer resembles the historically anomalous period of the 1990s and the first decade of this century. The unipolar moment has passed, and it isn’t coming back.

Plan is key to deescalate tensions between US and ChinaCouncil on Foreign Relations, August 13, 2020 (“Tensions in the East China Sea”, https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/tensions-east-china-sea, DoA 8/16/2020, DVOG)

Tensions between China and Japan over the contested Senkaku/Diaoyu islands continue to increase as both countries improve their military capabilities , particularly their radar and missile systems, in the region. To avoid accidental clashes at air and sea, China and Japan announced a new crisis communication hotline in June 2018. However, although Japan's Ministry of Defense reported that the number of times Japan's military had to scramble jets in response to Chinese air incursions went down 41 percent in 2017, that number increased in 2018 and is on trend to continue increasing in 2019 [PDF]. Recently, Japan has built new military bases on nearby islands, allegedly to monitor the Miyako and Tokara Straits and prevent China from further developing its military capabilities in the region.

Background

The Senkaku/Diaoyu islands were formally claimed by Japan in 1895 and have been privately owned by a series of Japanese citizens for most of the past 120 years. Aside from a brief period after World War II when the United States controlled the territory, Japan has exercised effective control over the islands since 1895.

China began to reassert claims over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands in the 1970s, citing historic rights to the area. Tensions resurfaced in September 2012 when Japan purchased three of the disputed islands from a private owner. The economically significant islands, which are northeast of Taiwan, have potential oil and natural gas reserves, are near prominent shipping routes, and are surrounded by rich fishing areas.

Each country claims to have economic rights in an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of two hundred nautical miles from its coast, but that space overlaps because the sea separating China and Japan only spans three hundred and sixty nautical miles. After China discovered natural gas near the overlapping EEZ-claimed area in 1995, Japan objected to any drilling in the area due to the fact that the gas fields could extend into the disputed zone.

In April 2014, President Barack Obama became the first U.S. president to explicitly state that the disputed islands are covered by the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, but the United States does not take a formal position on their ultimate sovereignty. An accidental military incident or political miscalculation by China or Japan could embroil the United States in armed hostilities with China.

Discussions between Japan and China to develop a crisis management mechanism tool began in 2012. Talks stalled when tensions peaked in 2013 after China declared the establishment of an air defense identification zone, airspace over land in which the identification, location, and control of civil aircraft is performed in the interest of national security. After Japan and China signed a four-point consensus document laying out their differences concerning the disputed islands, bilateral discussions resumed in early 2015, aiming to implement the maritime and aerial communication mechanism. After nine rounds of high-level consultations, the mechanism was launched in June 2018.

Concerns

Rising nationalist sentiments and growing political mistrust heighten the potential for conflict and hinder the capacity for peaceful resolution of the dispute. Though Chinese and Japanese leaders have refrained from forcibly establishing control over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands, unauthorized action by local commanders could result in the unintended escalation of hostilities. Through treaty commitments with Japan, a military confrontation could involve the United States. To preserve relations with China and continue cooperation on various issues, the United States has an interest in de-escalating tensions.

Those tensions spiral out of control—the US struggles to maintain dominance while China sees an opportunity and takes it. Kaplan 19 --- Robert D. Kaplan, senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a senior advisor at the Eurasia Group, "A New Cold War Has Begun," 1-7-2019, Foreign Policy, https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/01/07/a-new-cold-war-has-begun/

The good news is that all this may not lead to a bloody war. The bad news is that it well might. I believe the chances of a violent exchange are still nowhere near the 50 percent baseline, where warfare becomes probable rather than merely possible. Nevertheless, the chances have increased significantly . This has to do with more than merely the famous Thucydidean paradigm of fear, honor, and interest. It has to do with just how emotional the Chinese can get over an issue like Taiwan, for example, and how easy it is for air and naval incidents (and accidents) to spiral out of control . The more the countries fight over trade, and the closer Chinese and American warships get to each other in the South China Sea, over time the less control the two sides will actually have over events. As we all know, many wars have begun even though neither side saw it in its interest to start one . And a hot conflict in the South or East China Sea will affect the world financial system much more than the collapse of Iraq, Syria, Libya, or Yemen. What kept the Cold War from going hot was the fear of hydrogen bombs. That applies much less to this new cold war . The use of nuclear weapons and the era of testing them in the atmosphere keeps receding from memory , making policymakers on both sides less terrified of such weapons than their predecessors were in the 1950s and 1960s, especially since nuclear arsenals have become smaller in terms of both size and yield, as well as increasingly tactical . Moreover, in this new era of precision-

guided weaponry and potentially massive cyberattacks , the scope of nonnuclear warfare has widened

considerably. Great-power war is now thinkable in a way that it wasn’t during the first Cold War. What we really have to fear is not a rising China but a declining one. A China whose economy is slowing, on the heels of the creation of a sizable middle class with a whole new category of needs and demands, is a China that may experience more social and political tensions in the following decade. A theme of the late Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington’s 1968 book, Political Order in Changing Societies, is that as states develop large middle classes, the greater the possibility is for political unrest . This will encourage China’s leadership to stoke nationalism even further as a means of social cohesion . While skeptics, particularly in the world business community, see the South and East China seas as constituting just a bunch of rocks jutting out into the water, the Chinese masses don’t see it that way. To them, almost like Taiwan, the South China Sea is sacred territory. And the only fact that prevents China from becoming even more aggressive in the East China Sea is the fear that Japan could defeat it in an open conflict—something that would so humiliate Beijing’s leadership that it could call into question the stability of the Communist Party itself. So China will wait a number of years until it surpasses Japan in naval and air power. Beijing’s rulers know how closely their strategy dovetails with the feelings of the Chinese masses. Indeed, this new cold war is more susceptible to irrational passions fueled by economic disruptions than the old Cold War. In the second half of the 20th century, the United States and the Soviet Union each had internal economies-of-scale (however different from each other), that were far better protected from the destabilizing forces of globalization than the American and Chinese economies are now. It is precisely the fusion of military, trade, economic, and ideological tensions, combined with the destabilization wrought by the digital age—with its collapse of physical distance—that has created an unvirtuous cycle for relations between the United States and China. The geopolitical challenge of the first half of the 21st century is stark: how to prevent the U.S.-China cold war from going hot. Preventing a hot war means intensified diplomacy not only from the State Department but also from the Pentagon—American generals talking and visiting with Chinese generals in order to create a network of relationships that are the equivalent of the old Cold War hotline. This diplomacy must avoid the temptation of reducing the American-Chinese relationship to one contentious theme, be it trade or the South China Sea. It can mean playing hard on trade but always keeping the public rhetoric cool and reasoned. Passion becomes the real enemy in this competition, because in the megaphone world of global social media, passion stirs the impulse to assert status, which has often been a principal source of wars. And it means most of all stealing a concept from the American diplomat George Kennan’s

playbook on containment : Be vigilant, but be always willing to compromise on individual issues and

in crises. Wait them out . Because, in a very different way than the old Soviet system, the Chinese system — the more authoritarian it gets— is over time more prone to crack up than America’s.

Escalation results in nuclear war.Graham T. Allison 17. Professor and director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center. “How America and China Could Stumble to War.” The National Interest. 4/12/2017. https://nationalinterest.org/feature/how-america-china-could-stumble-war-20150?page=0%2C6

In the years ahead, could a collision between American and Chinese warships in the South China Sea, a drive toward national independence in Taiwan or jockeying between China and Japan over islands on

which no one wants to live spark a war between China and the United States that neither wants? It may seem hard to imagine—the consequences would be so obviously disproportionate to any gains either side could hope to achieve. Even a non-nuclear war conducted mostly at sea and in the air could kill thousands of combatants on both sides. Moreover, the economic impact of such a war would be massive . A 2016 RAND study found that, after just one year, American GDP could decline by up to 10 percent and Chinese GDP by as much as 35 percent—setbacks on par with the Great Depression. And if

a war did go nuclear , both nations would be utterly destroyed . Chinese and American leaders know they cannot let that happen. Unwise or undesirable , however, does not mean impossible . Wars occur even when leaders are determined to avoid them. Events or actions of others narrow their options, forcing them to make choices that risk war rather than acquiesce to unacceptable alternatives. Athens did not want war with Sparta. Kaiser Wilhelm did not seek war with Britain. Mao initially opposed Kim Il-sung’s attack on South Korea in 1950 for fear of blowback. But events often require leaders to choose between bad and worse risks. And once the military machines are in motion, misunderstandings, miscalculations and entanglements can escalate to a conflict far beyond anyone’s original intent . To better understand these dangers, Washington and Beijing have developed scenarios, simulations and war games. These often begin with an unexpected incident or accident. Individuals assigned to play the hand of China or the United States take it from there. Participants in these exercises are repeatedly surprised to find how often and easily small sparks lead to large wars. Today, there are at least three plausible paths to war between the world’s two greatest powers. IN WAR scenarios, analysts use basic concepts made familiar by the U.S. Forest Service. Arsonists cause only a small fraction of fires. Discarded cigarettes, smoldering campfires, industrial accidents and bolts of lightning are much more common sources. Fortunately, in the forest as well as in relations among nations, most sparks do not ignite a blaze. Background conditions often determine which sparks become fires. While Smokey the Bear’s warning that “only you can prevent forest fires” teaches campers and hikers about sparks, the Forest Service posts additional warnings after long dry spells or periods of extreme heat, occasionally closing high-risk areas. Moreover, it regulates the storage of flammable chemicals, propane tanks and gas depots, becoming increasingly stringent as conditions worsen. In relations between China and the United States today, relevant background conditions include geography, culture and history. “History,” Henry Kissinger observed in his first book, “is the memory of states.” China’s memory is longer than most, with the century of humiliation forming a core part of the country’s identity. Recent military engagements are also part of each state’s living memory. The Korea n War and Sino-Soviet border conflict taught Chinese strategists not to back down from more powerful adversaries . Moreover, both the American and Chinese militaries acknowledge that the United States has lost, or at least failed to win, four of the five major wars it has entered since World War II. The most pertinent background conditions, however, are Thucydides’s Trap and the syndromes of rising and ruling powers that China and the United States display in full. Thucydides’s Trap is the severe structural stress caused when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling one . Most contests that fit this pattern have ended badly . Over the past five hundred years, a major rising power has threatened to displace a ruling power sixteen times. In twelve of those, the result was war . The rising power syndrome highlights the upstart’s enhanced sense of itself, its interests, and its entitlement to recognition and respect. The ruling power syndrome is essentially the mirror image : the established power exhibiting an enlarged sense of fear and insecurity as it faces intimations of “decline.” As in sibling rivalries, so too in diplomacy one finds a

predictable progression reflected both at the dinner table and at the international conference table. A growing sense of self-importance (“my voice counts”) leads to an expectation of recognition and respect (“listen to what I have to say”) and a demand for increased impact (“I insist”). Understandably, the established power views the rising country’s assertiveness as disrespectful, ungrateful and even provocative or dangerous. Exaggerated self-importance becomes hubris; unreasonable fear, paranoia. LIKE GASOLINE to a match , accelerants can turn an accidental collision or third-party provocation into war . One cluster of accelerants is captured by what Carl von Clausewitz called the “fog of war.” Extending Thucydides’s insight about war as “an affair of chances,” Clausewitz observed that “war is the realm of uncertainty. Three quarters of the factors on which action in war is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty.” This profound uncertainty can lead a commander or policymaker to act aggressively when a fuller set of facts would advise caution, and vice versa. The advent of disruptive weapons that promise “shock and awe” makes the fog and uncertainty even worse. With attacks on command-and-control systems, enemies can paralyze a nation’s military command. In Desert Storm, U.S. forces demonstrated version 1.0 of this option. They destroyed Saddam Hussein’s intelligence and cut communication links to his commanders in the field. Isolated, his forces hunkered down; it was like “shooting fish in a barrel,” U.S. pilots remarked. Antisatellite weapons are one accelerant that military planners expect to play a big role in any U.S.-China conflict. Long a subject of science fiction, such weapons are today a fact of life, running the gamut from kinetic ones that physically destroy their targets to quieter systems that use lasers to jam or “dazzle” satellites, rendering them inoperable. In 2007, China successfully destroyed a weather satellite, and it regularly tests its antisatellite capabilities in less dramatic fashion. Satellites provide a crucial link in almost every U.S. military endeavor, from early warning of ballistic-missile launches and providing imagery and weather forecasts to planning operations. Global positioning satellites put the “precision” in almost all the military’s precision-guided munitions and allow ships, planes and ground units to know where they are on the battlefield. The United States depends on this technology more than any of its competitors, making it a perfect target for Chinese military planners. Cyberspace provides even more opportunities for disruptive technological transformations that could provide a decisive advantage, on the one hand, but might also risk uncontrolled escalation, on the other. The details of offensive cyberweapons remain heavily classified and are constantly evolving. But the public has seen glimpses of them in some cases, such as America’s cyberattack against Iran’s nuclear program or its “left-of-launch” attacks on North Korea’s missile tests. America’s primary cyberspace organizations, the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, as well as their Chinese counterparts, can now use cyberweapons to silently shut down military networks and critical civilian infrastructure like power grids. Moreover, by employing proxies and assembling an international web of compromised computers, they can disguise the origins of a cyber-operation, slowing the victim’s ability to identify the attacker. Like antisatellite measures, cyberweapons could create a decisive advantage in battle by disrupting the command-and-control and targeting information on which modern militaries depend—and without bloodshed. This presents a dangerous paradox: the very action that attackers believe will tamp down conflict can appear reckless and provocative to the victims. Similarly, cyberattacks that disrupt communication would intensify the fog of war, creating confusion that multiplies the chances of miscalculation. While both the U nited States and China now have nuc lear arsenals that could survive the other’s first strike and still allow for retaliation, neither can be sure its cyber arsenals could withstand a serious cyber assault . For example, a large-scale Chinese cyberattack against the U.S. military’s networks could temporarily cripple Washington’s ability to respond in kind, or even to operate some of its critical command-and-control and surveillance systems.

This creates a dangerous use-it-or-lose-it dynamic in which each side has an incentive to attack key links in the other’s computer networks before their capabilities are disabled. Compared with the bluntest instruments of war, especially nuclear bombs, cyberweapons seem to offer the promise of subtlety and precision. But this promise is illusory. Increased connectivity among systems and devices creates a domino effect. Unable to determine how the hacking of one system may affect others, attackers would find it difficult to narrowly tailor the effects of their operation and avoid unintended escalation. In 2016, 180,000 Internet-connected industrial control systems were operating around the world. Along with the proliferation of the “Internet of Things,” which encompasses some ten billion devices worldwide, the number of enticing targets is growing rapidly. Another accelerant might involve compromising the confidentiality of sensitive networks. Some are obvious, such as those that operate nuclear command and control. Each side, however, may perceive other actions quite differently. Take China’s “Great Firewall,” a collection of hardware and software that enables Beijing to monitor and block vast segments of online content. Washington could disable a system essential to the Great Firewall, intending it as a modest, private warning. But for Chinese leaders who regard the ability to control citizens’ access to information as vital, the operation could be misconstrued as the tip of a spear aimed at regime change. Given these background conditions, potential sparks can be frighteningly mundane. Escalation can occur rapidly. The following three scenarios show just how easily the United States and China can stumble into a war that each side hopes to avoid. CURRENTLY, AMERICAN and allied warships and aircraft are operating in greater proximity to their Chinese counterparts than ever before. U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyers periodically conduct freedom-of-navigation operations near Chinese-controlled islands in the disputed waters of the South China Sea. Suppose that during routine operations an American destroyer passes near Mischief Reef, one of the newly constructed islands where China has built runways for aircraft and installed air and missile defenses. As the

ship nears the contested site, Chinese coast guard vessels harass the destroyer, just as they did during the USS Cowpens incident in 2013. Unlike that encounter, however, the U.S. destroyer is unable to swerve in time. It collides with a Chinese ship and sinks it, killing all on board. The Chinese government now has three options. The dovish course would be to avoid escalation by allowing the American destroyer to leave the area and to protest its actions through diplomatic channels. At the other end of the spectrum, it could adopt an eye-for-an-eye approach and sink the destroyer using aircraft or missiles stationed on Mischief Reef. By refusing to be the “chicken,” while also not wanting to escalate, Beijing could opt for what it believes is a middle course. As the U.S. destroyer attempts to leave the area, a PLA Navy cruiser blocks its way, insisting that the destroyer entered Chinese territorial waters and demanding that its crew surrender and face justice for the deaths of the coast-guard personnel. China believes it is deescalating the situation by allowing for a diplomatic solution, akin to the deal that permitted an American crew to go free after a crash landing near Hainan Island sixteen years ago. The background conditions have changed since that incident. From a U.S. perspective, China’s reckless harassment of the destroyer caused the collision in the first place. China’s attempt to arrest American sailors in international waters would undermine the principles of the law of the sea. Surrendering would have far-reaching repercussions: if the U.S. military will not stand up to China to defend operations conducted by its own navy, what message does that send to America’s allies, including Japan and the Philippines? Not willing to undermine its credibility by surrendering, the destroyer could simply sink the Chinese cruiser blocking its path. Alternatively, to avoid further bloodshed and to show a degree of sensitivity to the nationalistic pressures Chinese leaders face at home, the United States could use a show of force to get the cruiser to back down peacefully. U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii, in consultation with leaders in Washington, could order nearby aircraft to fly to the area, send an aircraft carrier stationed in Japan toward the South China Sea, and forward-deploy B-2 bombers to Guam. American officials believe these actions will signal their seriousness without risking any further escalation. Events look different to Beijing, especially amid the fog of war. As China sees it, the United States has already sunk a Chinese vessel. Now scores of American aircraft are aloft, threatening attacks on the Chinese cruiser, other naval vessels, or military installations on nearby islands. Mindful of public opinion, Chinese leaders are especially conscious that any further bloodshed inflicted by the United States would force them to retaliate aggressively. But events are running beyond Beijing’s control. As U.S. fighter jets rush to the scene to assist the stranded destroyer, a Chinese antiaircraft battery panics and fires on the oncoming aircraft. The U.S. aircraft take desperate evasive action, and the destroyer begins firing on Chinese antiaircraft sites on the island. Under attack, the Chinese commander on the island bombards the destroyer with antiship missiles. The missiles hit their intended target, killing hundreds of American sailors and sinking the ship. Those who escape are now stranded in small lifeboats. Chinese leaders are desperate to avoid a full-scale war with the United States, but also cannot admit that their chain of command broke down. They claim their actions were a proportionate and defensive response because the American destroyer was the aggressor. Officials in Washington are stunned that China has sunk a $3 billion vessel and killed hundreds of American sailors. Though wary of going to war with China, those in the Situation Room cannot back down: video of the ship’s wreckage and stranded U.S. sailors on cable news and social media has made that impossible. Many in Congress are calling on the administration to authorize war plans based on the doctrine formerly named Air-Sea Battle, which calls for massive air strikes against missile and radar systems on the Chinese mainland. Realizing that attacks on China’s mainland would trigger war, the president authorizes Pacific Command to instead destroy China’s military bases on disputed islands in the South China Sea. The president reasons that this is a proportionate response, since these islands were directly responsible for the sinking of the destroyer. Furthermore, eliminating these military bases will allow U.S. ships to rescue the sailors stranded nearby. Most important, such an action would target only China’s artificial islands, leaving its mainland untouched. President Xi Jinping and other Chinese officials do not make this distinction. For years they have told the public that China has undisputed sovereignty over these islands. They are an integral part of China proper, and America has just attacked them. (Americans who scoff should recall that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor struck neither the mainland nor even a U.S. state, yet still rallied a nation to war.) Many in China are demanding that Xi order the PLA to destroy U.S. military bases in Guam, Japan and elsewhere in the Pacific. Some want China to attack the United States itself. No one is calling for China to exercise restraint. As millions of its citizens’ social-media postings are reminding the government, after its century of humiliation at the hands of sovereign powers, the ruling Communist Party has promised: “never again.” Still, President Xi clings to the hope that war can be avoided, an impossibility if China begins attacking U.S. military bases in Guam or Japan, killing soldiers and civilians and triggering retaliatory attacks on the Chinese mainland. Seeking a proportionate response to the U.S. attack on China’s island bases, Xi instead approves an alternative plan: using lasers, electronic and kinetic weapons to destroy or disable all U.S. military satellites in orbit above the crisis area, and using cyberattacks to cripple American command-and-control systems throughout the Asia-Pacific. The goal is to deescalate: Xi hopes that the United States will be shocked into backing down. But from the American perspective, these “blinding” attacks are indistinguishable from the first stage of a coordinated attack on the U.S. aircraft carrier and its strike group sailing from Japan—an event for which the PLA has spent decades developing its “carrier-killer” antiship ballistic missiles. The ninety-thousand-ton carrier, a floating city of 5,500 sailors that the United States describes as sovereign American territory, is simply too big to lose. The president is not willing to take the risk. On the advice of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the president reluctantly approves the only plan ready on short notice that has a chance of saving the carrier: a war plan based on Air-Sea Battle. Using those assets still operational after the Chinese attack, the United States military begins destroying China’s “kill chains,” the various satellite and surveillance systems that allow Beijing to accurately target American carriers with its antiship missiles. It also launches massive cruise missile and stealth bomber attacks on PLA missile sites and air bases on the Chinese mainland, which could at any moment be used to sink U.S. vessels anywhere within the first island chain. The attacks provoke exactly what they intended to avoid. Its mainland now under attack, and the targeting systems needed to operate China’s antiship weapons about to be lost, China must use them or lose them. Xi authorizes attacks on all U.S. warships within range, including the carrier group. American aircraft and naval escorts intercept Chinese bombers and fighter jets flying to the carrier, but a swarm of DF-21D ballistic missiles—the so-called carrier killers—prove too much to handle. Enough reach their target to sink the carrier, killing most of the 5,500 sailors on board—far more than died during Pearl Harbor. The dynamics of playing chicken with cyber and space weapons over the South China Sea has transformed a tiny spark into a roaring fire. IF TAIWAN were an independent nation, it would be among the most successful countries in the world. Its hardworking population of twenty-three million has developed a market economy twice the size of the Philippines, Thailand or Vietnam. Although many in Taiwan want independence, China views it as a province. Beijing is prepared to do whatever it takes to keep Taipei from asserting its sovereignty. No other country has been prepared to fight China over the matter. Suppose, however, that the Chinese government were to substantially increase repression at home, including in Hong Kong, where China promised to maintain considerable autonomy and freedom when Britain returned control of the city in 1997. Enraged that the Chinese government is backtracking on its promises, residents of Hong Kong take to the streets to demand that Beijing uphold its commitment to “One Country, Two Systems.” As the protests drag on for weeks with no resolution in sight, Xi orders the military to do what it did in Tiananmen Square in 1989: crush the protests. The ensuing violence shocks the Taiwanese, particularly the younger generation. Pro-independence and anti-Beijing sentiment soars. In this atmosphere, the Taiwanese president is emboldened to ramp up rhetoric emphasizing her people’s hard-won rights and democracy. Her political allies go further, insisting that what has occurred in Hong Kong proves that Taiwan can never guarantee its citizens’ freedom without becoming a sovereign, independent country. To signal disapproval of Chinese regression in Hong Kong, the American president pointedly announces his respect for the Taiwanese president’s strong stance and declares that the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act fully commits the United States to defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion. This is a major break from the long-standing U.S. policy of “strategic ambiguity” on the issue, and the Taiwanese president interprets it as tacit endorsement of a move toward independence. In an interview with the New York Times , she announces that Taiwan will apply for full membership to the UN (a move that China has long opposed) and rejects the so-called 1992 Consensus, under which both parties had agreed to the One-China concept while allowing for differing interpretations of what it actually meant. To punish Taiwan’s insubordination and scare it into backing down, China conducts an enhanced version of the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis by barraging Taiwanese waters with “tests” of ballistic and cruise missiles, severely interrupting the commercial shipping that constitutes the island’s lifeline to the world. When Taipei still refuses to withdraw its membership application, China uses other weapons, including mine-laying drones, to further disrupt shipping into and out of Taiwan. As a small island nation, Taiwan imports 70 percent of its food and most of its natural resources, including energy. A sustained blockade would grind its economy to a halt and cause large-scale food shortages. Despite opposition to Taiwan’s application to join the United Nations, the United States feels obliged to prevent its strangulation. Many pro-Taiwan members of Congress are demanding that the White House send aircraft carriers to Taiwan’s aid, just as Bill Clinton did during the 1995–96 crisis. But the administration knows that China’s antiship ballistic missiles would now pose a serious threat to any U.S. carriers moving into the area, and the American public has little stomach for another war. Instead, U.S. Pacific Command offers to escort commercial shipping through the affected seas, a gesture of support but not of willingness to fight. The escort campaign puts U.S. warships at risk of being sunk by the Chinese missile barrage, either deliberately or accidentally—an event that could instantly kill more than one thousand Americans and spark calls for retaliation. In this scenario, a Chinese antiship missile—ostensibly fired as part of ongoing test barrages—sinks the USS John P. Murtha , an amphibious transport dock ship acting as an escort to civilian shipping. All of the nearly eight hundred sailors and marines aboard are killed—more than the United States lost in the first year of the Iraq War. China insists that the sinking was accidental; the Murtha merely got in the way of a missile fired at a random patch of ocean. It reminds Washington that America accidently bombed China’s embassy in Belgrade in 1999. But in Washington, the secretary of defense and the chairman of the joint chiefs urge the president not to be deceived by this explanation. Instead they urge him to authorize the Air-Sea Battle plan to strike PLA antiship missile-launch sites on the mainland. Confronted with the sinking of the Murtha, the president accedes to pressure from military and political advisers, and agrees to preemptively strike antiship and other ballistic-missile systems on the Chinese mainland. Because China’s conventional and nuclear missiles are kept in the same locations, and their command-and-control systems are intertwined, Beijing mistakenly believes the United States is trying to eliminate its nuclear arsenal in a surprise first strike. In a desperate attempt to “deescalate by escalating”—an Orwellian doctrine that is nevertheless a pillar of Russian military strategy—China fires one of its land-based, nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles into an empty tract of ocean south of Okinawa. The nuclear threshold has been crossed. And while no lives have been lost in the strike, it is but a short step from here to all-out nuclear war. THE SPARK to a Sino-American clash need not initially involve American or Chinese military forces. Instead, it might result from a confrontation with or between third-party allies. Such a scenario nearly became reality in 2010, when North Korea sank the South Korean warship Cheonan, killing forty-six South Korean sailors. China supported North Korea’s denial of involvement. Seoul, meanwhile, insisted that Pyongyang be held accountable. Ultimately, the two Koreas and their allies stepped back from the brink. But with a new set of background conditions and accelerants today, it is not clear that it would be so easy to avoid war, especially if the third parties involved were less inured to the sort of slow, grinding tensions that the Korean Peninsula has endured for decades. Besides South Korea, the other major U.S. ally in China’s immediate vicinity is Japan, a country with a post–World War II history of pacifism, but whose politics have become increasingly militaristic in recent years. Conservative Japanese politicians have spoken ever more stridently about revising the pacifist constitution imposed on their country by the United States. They have also been chafing against Chinese claims of sovereignty in the East and South China Seas. In a crisis involving its historical rival Beijing, any steps Tokyo takes would certainly be shaped by these memories, and by the Japanese government’s shifting attitude toward military force. A likely flashpoint is the Senkaku Islands (known in China as the Diaoyu Islands), located near valuable fishing grounds, trade routes and potential oil reserves in the East China Sea. The United States controlled the islands after World War II, before returning them to Japan in the early 1970s. That same decade, China began claiming sovereignty over the islands. Chinese ships regularly pass through these waters, raising tensions between Beijing and Tokyo and risking a collision that could set off a chain reaction. Consider a scenario that provided the story line for a recent war game designed by the RAND Corporation. A group of Japanese ultranationalists set sail for the Senkakus in small civilian watercraft. On social media, they explain that they are headed for Kuba Jima, one of the smaller islands, which they intend to claim and occupy on behalf of Japan. They land and begin building unidentified structures. Taking a page out of the Chinese playbook, they live stream their activities for the world to see. China reacts swiftly, its coast guard arriving within hours with officers who arrest the Japanese dissidents and take them back to the Chinese mainland for trial. Does Japan allow them to face justice in a Chinese court? It could. Instead, rather than lose face, Japan dispatches some of its own coast-guard vessels to intercept the ship carrying the ultranationalists and prevent them from being taken to China. A pileup ensues as both the PLA Navy and the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force deploy warships and fighter planes to the area. Neither side backs down. To make matters worse, some of the Japanese vessels land amphibious troops to occupy Kuba Jima, doubling down on the nationalists’ actions. A skirmish has become a military confrontation. In an urgent call, the Japanese prime minister reminds the U.S. president that Tokyo expects Washington to uphold the seven-decade-old mutual defense treaty, noting that senior officials have repeatedly confirmed that America’s commitment applies to the Senkakus. As the standoff enters its third day, the president and his National Security Council must decide: Does the United States wholeheartedly respond to Japan’s appeal, putting air power over the disputed island to protect the Japanese troops now on the ground there? Or is there a more restrained course that will satisfy the Japanese without antagonizing China and further escalating the tense naval standoff? The president opts for the latter, directing the Japan-based carrier strike group to patrol outside the range of the PLA’s land-based carrier-killer missiles, but keeping aircraft and submarines close enough to aid Japanese vessels and territory if things get ugly. They do. The next morning, a Chinese destroyer collides with a Japanese fishing boat in the crowded waters off the Senkakus, and soon fighter jets from both sides are provocatively buzzing their opponent’s warships. The standoff erupts into a brief, bloody naval battle as a Japanese captain, fearing for his ship’s safety, downs one of the low-flying Chinese fighters, and the PLA Navy warships, in return, sink his vessel. Both sides are at the edge of war at this point, and so is the United States, which is in a position to sink Chinese vessels with its hidden attack submarines or to send its carrier’s air wing into action. At this juncture, however, before the next decision has been made, something unexpected happens. All communications between Japanese forces on and around the Senkakus and their headquarters go dark. A cyberattack has severely disrupted one of the Japanese military’s command-and-control systems. The United States and Japan immediately blame China. The attacker has even left the telltale signs of the PLA’s offensive hacking unit. There is little hesitation in Washington or at U.S. Pacific Command about what to do next. To prevent the Japanese naval force from being annihilated while it is incommunicado, U.S. submarines sink three PLA Navy warships off the Senkakus with torpedoes. China, Japan and the United States have now fired their opening shots in a three-nation war. But what if it was not the PLA that launched the cyberattack after all? What if it was a carefully timed false-flag operation by Russia, seeking to draw the United States and China into a conflict in order to distract Washington from its wrestling match with Moscow over Ukraine? By the time intelligence agencies around the world learn the truth, it will be too late. The Kremlin has played its hand brilliantly. From the Senkakus, the war zone spreads as China attacks more Japanese vessels elsewhere in the East China Sea. Tokyo is desperate for the United States to commit its

carrier strike group to the fight. If Washington makes that call, the same point of no return may well be crossed as in the collision-at-sea scenario: the destruction of one of the crown jewels of the U.S. Navy and the loss of life of all aboard could be the tragedy that the U.S. administration is forced to avenge with widening attacks on Chinese forces in a full-scale Pacific war.

WAR BETWEEN the United States and China is not inevitable , but it is certainly possible. Indeed, as these scenarios illustrate, the underlying stress created by China’s disruptive rise creates conditions in

which accidental , otherwise inconsequential events could trigger a large-scale conflict . That outcome is not preordained: out of the sixteen cases of Thucydides’s Trap over the last five hundred years, war was averted four times. But avoiding war will require statecraft as subtle as that of the British in dealing with a rising America a century ago, or the wise men that crafted a Cold War strategy to meet the Soviet Union’s surge without bombs or bullets. Whether Chinese and American leaders can

rise to this challenge is an open question. What is certain is that the fate of the world rests upon the answer.

The plan solves—excluding the Senkakus from US alliance obligations walks the tightrope between neo-isolationism and neo-realism; it resists provoking China while still reassuring Japan.Glaser, Political Science Professor at George Washington University, 2011 (Charles, Professor of Political Science and International Affairs and Director of the Institute for Security and Conflict Studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, “Will China’s Rise Lead to War”, Foreign Affairs, Mar/Apr 2011, https://politics.virginia.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Glaser-VISC.pdf, DoA 8/16/2020, DVOG)

What does all this imply about the rise of China? At the broadest level, the news is good. Current international conditions should enable both the United States and China to protect their vital interests without posing large threats to each other. Nuclear weapons make it relatively easy for major powers to maintain highly effective deterrent forces. Even if Chinese power were to greatly exceed U.S. power somewhere down the road, the United States would still be able to maintain nuclear forces that could survive any Chinese attack and threaten massive damage in retaliation. Large-scale conventional attacks by China against the U.S. homeland, meanwhile, are virtually impossible because the United States and China are separated by the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean, across which it would be difficult to attack. No foreseeable increase in China's power would be large enough to overcome these twin advantages of defense for the United States. The same defensive advantages, moreover, apply to China as well. Although China is currently much weaker than the United States militarily, it will soon be able to build a nuclear force that meets its requirements for deterrence. And China should not find the United States' massive conventional capabilities especially threatening, because the bulk of U.S. forces, logistics, and support lie across the Pacific. The overall effect of these conditions is to greatly moderate the security dilemma. Both the United States and China will be able to maintain high levels of security now and through any potential rise of China to superpower status. This should help Washington and Beijing avoid truly strained geopolitical relations, which should in turn help ensure that the security dilemma stays moderate, thereby facilitating cooperation. The United States, for example, will have the option to forego responding to China's modernization of its nuclear force. This restraint will help reassure China that the United States does not want to threaten its security--and thus help head off a downward political spiral fueled by nuclear competition.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE ALLIES? THE PRECEDING analysis, of course, overlooks a key feature of U.S. foreign policy--the important security alliances the United States maintains with Japan and South Korea, as well as other U.S. security commitments in Northeast Asia. Yet although adding U.S. allies yields a more complex picture, it does not undercut the overall optimism about China's rise. Instead, it raises the question of just how essential regional alliances in the Pacific are to U.S. security. The United States' alliance commitments have been remarkably stable since the beginning of the Cold War, but China's rise should lead to renewed debate over their costs and benefits. Arguing along lines similar to those mentioned above--that the United States can be secure simply by taking advantage of its power, geography, and nuclear arsenal--so-called neo-isolationists conclude that the United States

should end its alliances in Europe and Asia because they are unnecessary and risky. If the United States can deter attacks against its homeland, they ask, why belong to alliances that promise to engage the United States in large wars on distant continents? Protecting U.S. allies in Asia might require the United States to engage in political skirmishes and military competition that will strain its political relations with China. According to neo-isolationists, in short, China's rise will not jeopardize U.S. security, but maintaining current U.S. alliances could. Advocates of selective engagement, in contrast--an approach similar to existing U.S. policy--claim that their chosen strategy is also consistent with the broad outlines of structural realism. Whereas neo-isolationists want the United States to withdraw from forward positions in order to avoid being sucked into a regional conflict, those favoring selective engagement argue that preserving U.S. alliance commitments in Europe and Asia is the best way to prevent the eruption of a conflict in the first place. Examining how existing U.S. alliance commitments are likely to interact with China's rise is thus a crucial issue, with implications for both regional policy and U.S. grand strategy more generally. If the United States maintains its key alliance commitments, as is likely, it will need to extend its deterrent to Japan and South Korea while facing significantly larger and more capable Chinese conventional military forces. In many ways, this challenge will be analogous to the one the United States faced in extending its deterrent to Western Europe during the Cold War. Both superpowers had robust nuclear retaliatory capabilities, and the Soviet Union was widely believed to have superior conventional forces that were capable of invading Europe.

Advantage 2:Japan and China’s relationship is on the brink—they’re economically interdependent but the Senkakus are breaking down their political détente Min-Hua Chiang, November 16, 2019, is research fellow at the East Asian Institute (EAI), National University of Singapore. She obtained her PhD in economics from Université Pierre-Mendès-France, now part of Université Grenoble Alpes, in 2008 (avec la mention: Très honorable avec félicitations du jury). Before joining EAI, she held research positions at the Institute of International Relations, Chengchi University (2009), Taiwan External Trade Development Council (2009–2010) and Commerce Development Research Institute (2010–2011) in Taipei. https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s12140-019-09321-x.pdf

Beyond the US-China reconciliation in the 1970s, the visible economic benefits were another incentive for realizing China-Japan diplomatic normalization. However, the ever-increasing economic interdependence over the last 40 years has not prevented a number of political disagreements from repeatedly affecting Sino-Japanese relations. This shows the limited effect of economic ties on repairing political discrepancy. On the contrary, the political conflict seems to have impacted on the economic relations more obviously. Due to the widespread call to boycott Japanese goods after territorial disputes in 2012 , the sales of many Japanese-branded products in China, notably cars and electronic goods, were impacted [48, 55]. The economic effect from long-term political antagonism goes beyond the short-term market reactions . This explains the slowdown of Japanese investment in and trade with China in recent years. In short, the close economic connections were based on the strong political commitment to maintain a good relationship . With the changing geopolitical environment, the bilateral political ties are weakening . The Sino-Japanese economic relations have been gradually waning as a result. The China-Japanese relations are worth studying as they are the two largest economies in Asia. The GDP of the two countries combined is 65% of region’s total GDP [25].Footnote1 As such, the development of Sino-Japanese relations is critical to the regional economic stability . The amicable relations between China and Japan would enhance the regional economic cooperation. On the other hand, the impact on the whole region would be influential if the political tension turned out to be economic chaos. Although both sides have restrained from furthering tensions so far, the sources of conflict , such as historical issues and territorial disputes, have remained. In addition, with China’s economic rise and the strengthening military might, East Asia’s political economic structure that relied on Japan’s advanced industrial inputs and the US for national defense may be changed. Hence, the changing China-Japan relations not only have profound implications for the region but also for the global power structure. The study on the development of China-Japan relations provides an important empirical case in advancing international relations theory. the weakening Sino-Japanese economic ties after 2013 is a reflection of worsening political relations since the mid-2000s . Despite the improving diplomatic relations in recent years, it is uncertain how the changing geopolitical environment, notably Sino-US discrepancy, will proceed and affect China-Japan relations in the future. China-Japan economic relations can only be restored and be prosperous with persistently strong political relations in the long run.

Sino Japan relations key to prevent Asian war.CSIS, 2018 (lobal Go, 10-25-2018, "A Friend of a Friend: How Better China-Japan Relations Benefit the United States," No Publication, https://www.csis.org/friend-friend-how-better-china-japan-relations-benefit-united-states, DoA 8/22/2020, DVOG)

On October 25, 2018, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made a state visit to Beijing, a significant moment between the two countries—he is the first Japanese prime minister to visit China in seven years. A historically contentious relationship wrought by multiple wars, invasions, and periods of conflict escalation, China and Japan have struggled to forge mutual understanding for generations. Japan’s nationalization of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands in 2012 further complicated the China-Japan dynamic and hindered the development of productive bilateral relations between the two countries in recent years. Yet, this recent visit, alongside an ongoing series of bilateral meetings and a 2018 trip made by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang to Tokyo, marks an improvement in this crucial relationship. Not only did Prime Minister Abe’s visit mark an official thaw in Tokyo-Beijing relations, but it could also serve as an important regional stabilizer, counteracting the U.S.-China trade disputes.

As the current U.S. administration has embarked on a crusade to renegotiate trade relations with all major trading partners, many China watchers in the United States have feared that President Trump is unintentionally pushing traditional allies like Japan closer to strategic competitors like China, which would undermine U.S. interests. However, this view exaggerates the harm and downplays the benefits of the recent China-Japan rapprochement. The United States should not forget its role as the security guarantor of Japan, and thus, Washington should be confident that Tokyo would never sacrifice its security protection solely for economic development. Instead of seeing this change as counterproductive, the United States should view improved China-Japan relations as beneficial to U.S. interests, specifically in three distinct ways: greater accountability in global infrastructure development, improved strategic communications between the United States and China, and progress towards regional stability.

Most directly, the China-Japan rapprochement benefits regional infrastructure and development, an area in which the United States has shown increasing interests. The China-Japan thaw would lead to tangible progress in filling the $1 trillion gap in infrastructure spending each year in Asia. During a cooperative forum co-hosted by China and Japan in Beijing in October 2018, the two sides signed 52 cooperative agreements worth $18 billion. Multiple projects in Thailand could be the first to follow the cooperation initiative, as the Japan Bank for International Cooperation and the China Development Bank signed a financing agreement targeting countries, like Thailand, whose bilateral relations with both Japan and China are friendly. Japanese media have also reported collaborative projects in countries ranging from the United Arab Emirates to Kazakhstan. Through cooperation, both countries will achieve better coordination and allocate resources more effectively in Asia, where $1.5 trillion of U.S. foreign trade took place in 2017.

Washington worries that Beijing could employ its infrastructure investments as a form of foreign policy leverage, leading to disputes of the lack of competition in the Belt and Road Initiative projects, China’s trillion-dollar infrastructure development program. This flagship Chinese foreign policy provides infrastructure investments across the Eurasian landmass and has faced accusations of misconduct

abroad. In contrast, Japan’s Partnership for Quality Infrastructure—Tokyo’s infrastructure plan—has established a reputation of high standards in the United States, promoting project transparency and debt sustainability. Bilateral cooperation between Beijing and Tokyo will ensure that joint infrastructure projects will be held at a higher standard moving forward and thus be more aligned to Washington’s standards. By fostering collaboration between the respective Japanese and Chinese institutions, Washington could be reassured that shared standards and practices between the United States and Japan—including environmental regulations, labor rights, and financial sustainability—will be upheld by Tokyo.

Better Sino-Japanese relations also necessitate deeper and more frequent communication that improves information exchange between China and Japan. Ultimately, the flow of information and improved communication between the United States and China could occur through Japan, as Japan and the United States continue to maintain their close relationship. This is especially important given the current state of affairs; facing the uncertainty of trade conflicts, timely communication between the United States and China does not always occur. Prior to a dinner between Presidents Trump and Xi Jinping at the G20 in Buenos Aires, direct high-level negotiations between the two countries on trade issues were paused for months. The most significant high-level bilateral communication channels between the two nations, the four-pillar U.S.-China Comprehensive Dialogues, have been canceled outright or languish on the sidelines. Established on the basis that increasing mutual understanding could resolve major issues, the four dialogues are now in vain and desperately need supplements that could encourage information exchange. In contrast, between Li’s visit to Tokyo in May 2018 and Abe’s visit to Beijing in October 2018, China and Japan have conducted at least seven high-level official meetings. The indirect communication between the United States and Chi- na through Japan partially makes up for the lack of direct communication between the world’s two largest economies and lowers the risk of misunderstanding and miscommunication. As the world economy, and particularly the United States and China, face downward pressure, neither country could afford a strategic miscalculation that is solely due to inefficient communication or erroneous information.

Finally, the China-Japan thaw could lower political and security risks in North-east Asia. The delicate balance between China, Japan, and the Koreas is difficult to maintain. The improving relationship between China and Japan is a signpost that both nations have decided to temporarily place aside other complex issues, such as territorial disputes. Instead, they have elected to focus on constructive issues like third-party cooperation in which both countries help promote economic development in other nations.

This could open more productive conversations between China and Japan regarding other sensitive issues in the region, such as the denuclearization of North Korea, an issue that requires coordinated efforts between many countries, including the United States, China, and Japan. China and Japan share a complicated history that neither can ignore, but a forward-looking mindset could offset the historical grievances and produce a positive outcome. Given the uncertain future of the Korean peninsula, improvement in Sino-Japanese relations could mitigate more complicated hostility in the region and serve as an important security stabilizer.

Inherency EXT: The US says the Senkakus fall under the Mutual Defense Treaty Japan Times, July 29, 2020 (7-29-2020, "U.S. forces chief pledges to help Japan with Chinese ships near Senkakus," Japan Times, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/07/29/national/u-s-forces-chief-pledges-help-japan-chinese-ships-near-senkakus/, DoA 8/19/2020, DVOG)

The commander of U.S. Forces Japan vowed to help ally Japan deal with incursions by Chinese vessels in the East China Sea, accusing Beijing of a maritime intimidation campaign against countries in the region.

Lt. Gen. Kevin Schneider told a news briefing Wednesday that pressure could soon mount for Japan and its sole military ally, the U.S., with the end of a Chinese seasonal fishing ban in the middle of August. That could see the arrival of a contingent of trawlers, supported by coastguard and People’s Liberation Army naval ships in the waters around the islands, which are located close to Taiwan.

“The United States is 100 percent, absolutely steadfast in its commitment to help the government of Japan with the situation in the Senkakus,” Schneider told reporters in a video briefing. He used the Japanese term for the group of disputed islands that are called Diaoyu in China. “That is 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

This comes as Australia has joined the U.S. in rejecting China’s expansive maritime claims in the resource-rich South China Sea. Beijing has engaged in a campaign to build bases and other outposts on shoals, reefs and rock outcroppings as a way of deepening its claims. China said it’s operating within its rights and accused the U.S. of trying to stir up trouble.

“Beijing through the PLA continues to take aggressive and malign actions in the East China Sea and the South China Sea,” Schneider said. “In the South China Sea, they continue to bully partners, neighbors and others who have legitimate claims to territories, islands and features.”

In its dispute with Japan, China’s Foreign Ministry has said that having patrol vessels in the waters around the islands was its legitimate right. “Diaoyu Island and its affiliated islands have been China’s inherent territory since ancient times,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a briefing in Beijing on Wednesday.

Tensions are already flaring in an area known for rich fishing opportunities, as Chinese government vessels spend increasingly long periods of time inside what Japan sees as its territorial waters, prompting Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government to protest. The change in patterns of activity has come as Japan steps up criticism of China over its clampdown on Hong Kong.

In a white paper published earlier this month, Japan’s Defense Ministry expressed “grave concern” over Beijing’s actions in the East China Sea.

U.S. support will take the form of “information, surveillance and reconnaissance capability to help the government of Japan assess the situation,” Schneider told reporters. The U.S. has repeatedly said the islands fall under the 1960 treaty that obliges it to defend territory administered by Japan.

Obama and Trump administrations both agree the Senkakus fall under the treaty.Carpenter, senior fellow in security studies at the Cato Institute, 2020 (Ted Galen, 1-9-2020, "Washington Needs to Jettison Its Commitment to Defend the Senkakus," Cato Institute, https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/washington-needs-jettison-its-commitment-defend-senkakus, DoA 8/19/2020, DVOG)

Yet U.S. leaders insist that the U.S.-Japan mutual defense treaty include the Senkakus . James Mattis, President Donald Trump’s first secretary of defense, reiterated that position in February 2017, affirming the U.S. commitment to defend all Japanese territory from attack. Mattis specifically asserted that Article 5 of the defense treaty covers the Senkaku/ Diaoyu Islands. Trump himself subsequently reaffirmed that commitment in talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe .

Such a bold stance was not always Washington’s official position, though. In fact, it is a rather recent interpretation. Barack Obama was the first U.S. president to state explicitly that the alliance extended to the Senkakus: “The policy of the United States is clear—the Senkaku Islands are administered by Japan and therefore fall within the scope of Article 5 of the U.S.-Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security,” Obama stated in a 2014 interview with Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun. “And we oppose any unilateral attempts to undermine Japan’s administration of these islands,” he added.

Advantage 1 EXT:

Senkakus = US-China WarUS-Sino Senkakus tensions trigger warCarpenter, senior fellow in security studies at the Cato Institute, 2020 (Ted Galen, 1-9-2020, "Washington Needs to Jettison Its Commitment to Defend the Senkakus," Cato Institute, https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/washington-needs-jettison-its-commitment-defend-senkakus, DoA 8/19/2020, DVOG)

Washington is exposing the United States to an unnecessary security risk by adopting that stance. Beijing’s response to Mattis’ unequivocal support for Tokyo’s claims was quite firm. “Diaoyu and its affiliated islands have been Chinese territory since ancient times. These are historical facts that cannot be changed. The so‐ called U.S.-Japan security treaty was a product of the Cold War, and it should not harm China’s territorial sovereignty and legitimate rights,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang insisted at a press conference. “We urge the U.S. side to adopt a responsible attitude and stop making wrong remarks on the issue of the sovereignty of Diaoyu Islands,” Lu added.

Washington needs to rescind any implied commitment to defend the Senkakus. The current U.S. position is based on a strained, revisionist interpretation of the mutual security treaty text that only the last two U.S. administrations adopted. Worse, it needlessly inserts the United States into an emotional territorial dispute between Tokyo and Beijing—one in which it is unclear which party has the better case.

It is one thing to continue a security partnership with Japan to maintain stability in East Asia and balance China’s rising power and influence. There are at least respectable arguments in favor of such a policy, despite the risk of exacerbating existing tensions between Washington and Beijing. But inflicting damage on America’s relations with China—and perhaps risking a war with it—over Japan’s murky claim to uninhabited rocks is a case of foreign policy folly . Such risks are imprudent, even though there are valuable fishing grounds and possible energy deposits in the waters surrounding the Senkaku/Diaoyu chain. The Obama administration’s expansion of the U.S. security obligations to Japan was profoundly unwise. A continuation of the security relationship with Tokyo should be contingent upon the elimination of any U.S. commitment to back Japan’s claim of the Senkakus.

Increased Chinese aggression coupled with increased Japanese monitoring causes warCSIS, July 29, 2020 (Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, 7-29-2020, "Remote Control: Japan's Evolving Senkakus Strategy," https://amti.csis.org/remote-control-japans-evolving-senkakus-strategy/, DOA 8/19/2020, DVOG)

The East China Sea disputes had settled into an uneasy status quo over the last few years, but tensions persist. Recent events suggest that the risk of violence is again growing. China’s maritime forces deployed around the contested Senkaku Islands have become more capable and more determined. In response, Japan is upgrading its ability to project power from the nearby Ryukyus, or Southwest Islands.

The Japan Coast Guard reported on July 22 that Chinese patrol ships had navigated within the 24-nautical mile contiguous zone around the Senkakus for 100 straight days, the longest streak since at

least 2012, when the Japanese government nationalized some of the islands. And China Coast Guard ships have pursued Japanese fishing vessels within the 12-nautical-mile territorial sea around the islands twice in the past three months. That had only happened four other times over the past seven years, according to the Japan Coast Guard. Though the size and frequency of Chinese patrols are unchanged, their duration and assertiveness appear to have shifted in recent months.

Japan faces an uphill battle if it tries to maintain control over the waters around the Senkakus with ships alone. It cannot build them as quickly as China is. Nor can its coast guard vessels compete with the latest Chinese models on size and armaments. Instead Japan is looking to turn geography to its advantage. In recent years, Tokyo has invested in capabilities in its nearby Southwest Islands to better monitor and defend the waters around the Senkakus from land. AMTI last examined Japan’s efforts in 2017. At that time, most of the upgrades focused on better radar, signals intelligence, and patrol capabilities. Missile units were planned but not yet established. Since then, Japan has made substantial progress on existing plans and launched new initiatives.

One of the primary measures Japan has taken to enhance its island defense capability has been the deployment of anti-ship and surface-to-air (SAM) missiles throughout the island chain. In addition to a SAM unit deployed to Okinawa, Japan has recently constructed facilities and activated new units to facilitate missile deployments to three other islands: Amami Oshima, Miyako, and Ishigaki.

On March 26, 2019, the Japan Ground Self Defense Force (JGSDF) activated two new camps on Amami Oshima that it had begun constructing in 2016. Camp Amami (left, below) houses a 350-troop SAM unit equipped with Type 03 “Chu-SAM” missiles. Camp Setouchi (right, below) is home to a 210-troop unit equipped with Type 12 surface-to-ship missiles.

The JGSDF also activated a new camp on Miyako in March 2019, deploying 380 troops as the Miyako Area Security Force. In March 2020, anti-ship missile and SAM units were deployed to the camp, though the missiles themselves have yet to arrive. Concerns have been raised over plans to store them at an ammunition depot six miles from their launchers.

On the island of Ishigaki, land clearing began in 2019 for a site to host SAM and anti-ship missile units. Construction is ongoing as of summer 2020, with plans to deploy missile units before 2023. The Senkakus are nearly 200 nautical miles from the Chinese coast but less than 100 nautical miles from Ishigaki and Miyako. That places them within range of anti-ship cruise missiles on those islands.

Japan is also looking to upgrade the capabilities of these missile units. The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force is reportedly testing an air-launched variant of the Type 12 anti-ship missile designed for P-1 maritime patrol aircraft which would extend the missile’s range to 160 nautical miles. The Ministry of Defense is also developing a hypersonic anti-ship missile which it plans to deploy by 2026 for the defense of Japan’s “remote islands.”

Tokyo realizes that matching Chinese capabilities around the Senkakus ship for ship is a losing proposition. As the China Coast Guard grows more confident, it is spending longer periods in the territorial sea around the islands ignoring Japanese warnings to leave. And it appears to be more willing to assert authority over Japanese fishing vessels. These trends will increase the likelihood of violence. Given China’s widening numerical advantage at sea, Japan’s best hope to restore balance is by adding ground-based capabilities to the equation. And it appears committed to doing exactly that.

Senkaku conflict wouldn’t just be a skirmish—war games provePeck, defense analyst for Foreign Policy, 2020 (Michael Peck, 8-7-2020, "Slaughter in the East China Sea," Foreign Policy, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/08/07/slaughter-in-the-east-china-sea/, DoA 8/19/2020, DVOG)

The year is 2030. Chinese troops seize a Japanese island in the South China Sea. Japan dispatches an amphibious task force to retake the island. Soon, U.S. warships and aircraft arrive, accompanying a Japanese flotilla. Their orders are to support Japan while trying to avoid combat with Chinese forces.

That plan soon falls apart. According to a wargame run by the Washington-based Center for a New American Security (CNAS), it is impossible for the U.S. military to step in without American and Chinese troops firing on each other.

The simulation, titled “A Deadly Game: East China Sea Crisis 2030,” was run on July 20 (you can watch the video here). And it had an unusual twist: It was crowdsourced through Zoom, with CNAS staff presenting options to the public participants who would then vote to decide which strategies the Chinese and U.S./Japanese teams would implement.

“The stakes are high,” said Susanna Blume, CNAS’s defense director, to about 400 members of the public who were participating, mostly from the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. “Whoever wins this standoff has the potential to shape the Asia-Pacific region for the next decade.”

Almost like a Tom Clancy novel, the scenario ran as follows: In 2030, a Chinese flotilla lands 50 soldiers on Uotsuri Jima, an island in the East China Sea that is part of the Senkakus, an island chain owned by Japan but also claimed by China. Declaring a 50-mile exclusion zone around the Senkakus, Beijing deploys a ring of surface ships, submarines, warplanes, and drones—backed by ballistic missiles based on the Chinese mainland.

The Japanese invasion force (or liberation force, depending on your team) consists of amphibious assault ships, surface escorts, submarines, and special forces and marines, backed by aircraft in Okinawa. Steaming nearby are two U.S. carrier strike groups, as well as submarines, stealth fighters, and bombers.

The initial rules of engagement are almost suffocating. The American rules are to support Japan—with which the United States has a defense pact—while avoiding combat with Chinese forces. For Chinese commanders, the orders are to attack any Japanese forces entering the exclusion zone without hitting American targets.

What ensued over several game turns—each simulating about four hours of real time—was a series of moves and countermoves fought over a virtual game map, as both sides warily navigated the fine line between deterrence and belligerence. Both the Red (China) and Blue (United States and Japan) sides staked out their goals: Red would send a forceful message that Blue should back off, while Blue aimed to compel a Red withdrawal.

But how to balance goals and rules of engagement that are almost contradictory? The first choice for Blue was how to prepare for a likely mass salvo of Chinese anti-ship missiles when the Japanese fleet

enters the exclusion zone: Should U.S. Aegis air defense ships hug the Japanese fleet to shield it from anti-ship missiles, or should the United States use cyberwarfare and jamming to disrupt Chinese command and control links? By a 60-40 percent vote, the public opts to disrupt command links.

China mirrors this cautious approach: Given a choice between a missile strike on the Japanese fleet and using cyberwarfare to disrupt Japanese command links, 54 percent of the public vote for cyberwarfare. The umpire rules that Blue forces suffer more from the gambit than their Red counterparts, because the multinational team is more dependent on smoothly functioning communications.

In an all-too familiar pattern of history, escalation takes on a life of its own. When Japanese destroyers enter the exclusion zone, Chinese warships begin hostilities by sinking many of them with cruise missiles. Japanese destroyers retaliate by destroying a Chinese sub, while other subs play hide-and-seek. “The Chinese submarine is trying to find the Japanese submarine, and the U.S. submarine is trying to find the Chinese submarine,” quipped umpire Ed McGrady.

Rather than closing for a surface battle with the Red fleet, Blue opts for airpower with U.S. F-22 and F-35 stealth fighters, joining Japanese F-35s and F-15s, to destroy Chinese aircraft flying near the Senkakus, including Chinese drones relaying targeting data to land-based “carrier killer” anti-ship ballistic missiles.

With their ships and aircraft taking heavy losses, Chinese leaders eventually opt to attack the two U.S. carriers with missiles, badly damaging one of them. Then on the last turn, China makes a decisive move. Throughout the game, the airfields on Okinawa—an island that is a part of the Japanese homeland—were packed with American and Japanese aircraft. Beijing could no longer resist the temptation: Salvoes of missiles devastate the runways, severely damaging Blue airpower.

At that point, the game was called for time.

By end of the game, the situation seemed stalemated: China had sustained heavy losses, but still retained control of Uotsori Jima. And at any rate, focusing on who won isn’t the main purpose of these Pentagon-esque defense planning games.

For one, there are too many subjective or arbitrary factors in these simulations to simply declare that Nation X using Strategy Y would win in real life. For example, in the interests of simplicity and playability the CNAS wargame omitted factors such as logistics, information operations to shape public opinion, and political tensions within the Chinese leadership and the U.S.-Japanese alliance. Oddly absent were China’s growing fleet of aircraft carriers, as well as Japanese pseudo-carriers armed with F-35 fighters. And, of course, there is the fact that real-life leaders would be acutely aware of the possibility of nuclear involvement.

Instead, the value of these simulations is more about process and insight: How did events flow, why did players make the decisions they did, and what weaknesses and capabilities were revealed?

In terms of weaponry, “both sides have aces in the hole,” Blue Team leader Chris Dougherty told me. “For China, it’s their land-based bombers and missiles. For the United States, it’s their subs and bombers.” China enjoys the home field advantage: It can fire massive salvoes of missiles, and then rearm its bombers and land-based missile launchers from bases conveniently located on the mainland.

For U.S. aircraft operating from bases as distant as Guam—1,600 miles from the Senkakus—or flying from crowded and vulnerable Okinawan airbases, when to expend their ordnance was a tricky decision:

Once a B-52 or F-35 fired its missiles, it would take hours to return to base, rearm, and get back to the combat zone. That’s one reason U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper advocates building additional American bases in the Pacific.

“The United States can pulse striking power from its bombers, but without reliable airbases in the region, which would be under threat from Chinese aircraft and missiles, timing becomes a big issue,” Dougherty noted. “You saw that in this game—pretty much every big strike package for Blue was a one-shot deal.”

Further, a key aspect of modern combat is that what can be seen be destroyed, and what remains undetected can survive. Even the most sophisticated anti-ship missiles can’t locate ships on the immense ocean without targeting data relayed from satellites, drones, and surveillance aircraft. “This critical path creates an enormous incentive to conduct major counter-C4ISRK [command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] attacks as early as possible in the conflict, which both teams did here,” Dougherty says. “In past run-throughs of this game, if one team doesn’t pick ‘attack command and information’ in their first move, things usually go quite poorly for them.”

What was most significant about the CNAS East China Sea wargame was how hostilities steadily escalated. China and the United States entered the conflict intent on not attacking each other: By game’s end, they were destroying each other’s ships and planes. Both sides started wanting to localize the conflict to a few barren rocks in the ocean. But after a few turns, China felt compelled to lob missiles at Okinawa.

“We used the Rules of Engagement to control this in the game to some degree,” says Dougherty. “It’s questionable how well that would hold when push comes to shove.”

This raises troubling questions for whoever occupies the White House next year. The Trump administration has pledged U.S. support to Japan over the Senkaku Islands dispute, and it’s more than likely a new administration would also opt to support one of America’s most important allies. Yet as the CNAS wargame illustrates, backing Japan in a Sino-Japanese conflict risks the dangerous possibility of combat between American and Chinese forces. And once hostilities between the United States and China begin, they may be difficult to stop.

China war goes nuclearEast China Sea war goes nuclear.

Michael E. O’Hanlon, 5/2/2019 (Senior Fellow - Foreign Policy Director of Research @ Brookings Institution, “The Senkaku paradox: Preparing for conflict with the great powers,” https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2019/05/02/the-senkaku-paradox-preparing-for-conflict-with-the-great-powers/, DoA 8/22/2020, DVOG )

The Obama administration’s “Third Offset” strategy and former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis’s 2018 National Defense Strategy made deterrence of great-power

threats the nation’s top military planning priority for the first time since the Cold War ended 30 years ago. But over what issues might war against Russia or China really erupt? While it is important to take many scenarios seriously, an outright Russian invasion and annexation of a Baltic state or a Chinese enforcement of its claims to the entire South China Sea or attempted takeover of Taiwan, seem quite unlikely. Beijing and Moscow probably understand that the United States and allies could never tolerate such brazen acts; war would almost surely follow. However, what about smaller efforts to nibble

away at the existing world order that Beijing and Moscow often find objectionable? What if China decided to land forces on one of the eight

Senkaku/Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea ? These remote rocks are claimed by both Japan and China , uninhabited and effectively worthless except for surrounding fishing waters, but they are covered by the U.S.-Japan security treaty, as President Obama and Secretary Mattis have both publicly reaffirmed in recent years. Or, what if Russia decided to fabricate a “threat” to native Russian speakers in a small town in eastern Estonia or Latvia to create a pretext for “little green men” to swoop in (perhaps bloodlessly) to save the day? Scenarios involving the Philippines or other countries can be imagined, too. Why would Moscow or Beijing consider such actions? China or Russia might like the idea of sowing their hegemonic oats and getting back at neighbors they have not forgiven for past events. But Moscow’s or Beijing’s real purpose might be to weaken American alliance systems, and with them the U.S.-led global order, so as to increase its own power and dominance, especially in regions near its borders. For example, a Russian grab of just one small Baltic town could be expected to throw the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance into existential crisis. Some member nations would likely seek nonmilitary solutions to the threat, whereas others might favor a prompt military response—with the ensuing debate casting into doubt the whole purpose of the alliance. The state of military technology and expected trends in future innovation compound the problem. Deployment of large U.S.-led military force packages into the lion’s den near China’s coasts or into the Baltic regions of Europe near Russia is becoming a harder proposition to entertain.T The spread of the type of precision technology that the United States once effectively monopolized accounts for much of the reason why. The problem is exacerbated by other new or imminent weapons: miniaturized robotics that function as sensors or even weapons, individually or in swarms; small satellites that could function as clandestine space mines against larger satellites; homing anti-ship missiles and various types of superfast hypersonic missiles in general; and threats to computer systems from both traditional human-generated hacking and artificial intelligence (AI)-generated algorithms. No mid-sized U.S. defense buildup can likely reverse these dynamics. A scenario of the type sketched above would create a huge dilemma for the United States and allies—a situation I call the “Senkaku Paradox.” Mutual-defense treaty commitments under Article V

of both the NATO and U.S.-Japan treaties would appear to commit Washington to defend or liberate such allied territory. Yet, that could lead to direct war with a nuclear-armed great power over rather insignificant stakes. A large-scale U.S. and allied response could seem massively disproportionate. But a non-response would be unacceptable and invite further aggression. Washington needs better, less escalatory, and, thus, more credible options for such limited but serious scenarios. They should not formally displace existing policy, under which there is a strong implication of prompt U.S.-led military action to liberate any allied territory that might be attacked or seized by an aggressor. This current policy may have deterrence benefits, as well as reassurance benefits for allies, so it should not be formally scrapped. But such commitments may not be fully credible. They also may not give U.S. and allied policymakers sufficiently flexible and smart options in the event of deterrence failure. The right kind of response would have four main elements: Reinforcement of U.S. and allied military positions near the point of initial Russian or Chinese attack to deter any further aggression. A prompt buildup in the size (and cost) of overall U.S. military forces so as to make such new deployments sustainable, unless the crisis were resolved quickly. A strategy for economic war that applied a mix of sanctions tailored to the scale of the initial attack, including: a possible mix of broad-based tariffs; targeted sanctions against the assets and movements of individuals and companies most involved in the attack; sectoral sanctions against high-tech industries to slow Russia’s or China’s future economic growth; and possibly financial sanctions as well. If the aggression continued or intensified, consideration of asymmetric military attacks against Chinese or Russian interests in other theaters such as the Persian Gulf where the United States and allies have enjoyed preeminence and escalation dominance. Some would view such a strategy, which sought not to fire the first shot against Russia or China as long as possible, as irresolute or weak. It would not be. It would, however, be patient — concerned less about promptly reversing an initial aggression than at ensuring it was punished and that it did not metastasize. Adoption of this strategy requires a modest number of near-term actions as well. The U.S. and allies need to be better prepared for possible economic war, particularly against China.They can do so by taking steps to bolster its national defense stockpiles of key minerals and metals (many of which today come primarily from China) and ensuring that their dependence on China within global supply chains for key technologies not exceed a specified percent. Europe also needs to continue to improve its infrastructure for importing liquefied natural gas as a backup in case energy imports from Russia are interrupted in a future crisis. In military terms, the U.S. also needs to improve and increase its capabilities in areas such as long-range strike and stealth, hypersonic weapons, missile defense and nonlethal weapons of the type that might be used to incapacitate oil tankers bound for Chinese shores (for example). In the new age of great-power rivalry, it is time to get more creative, and more granular,

about how we prepare for war—so as to make deterrence more effective and prevent war in the first place. For the kinds of scenarios considered here, insisting on prompt liberation of the notional small Estonian town or uninhabited Senkaku island after enemy attack could, in effect,

destroy the village to save it. Such a direct counterattack might also greatly increase the danger of escalation, including to nuclear war.A Russia or China that found itself decisively losing a conventional conflict might choose to create nuclear risks or even utilize nuclear weapons tactically, in the hope of changing the conflict’s course. But fortunately, we have good options that avoid the Catch-22 of risking either nuclear war over small stakes on the one hand and appeasement and an ensuing weakening of the global order on the other.

Conflict in Asia risks nuclear war and extinction

Owen B. Toon et al, 2017 (Professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder, JOURNAL OF ASIAN STUDIES, May 2017, http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/ToonAsianStudies.pdf, Retrieved 8/17/2018)

OF THE NINE COUNTRIES known to have nuclear weapons, six are located in Asia and another , the United States, borders the Pacific Ocean . Russia and China were the first Asian nations with nuclear weapons, followed by Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea. Most of the world’s nuclear powers are reducing their arsenals or maintaining them at historic levels, but several of those in Asia —India, Pakistan, and North Korea— continue to pursue relentless and expensive programs of nuclear weapons development and production . Hopefully, the nuclear agreement reached in July 2015 between Iran, the European Union, and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council will be a step toward eliminating nuclear weapons throughout Asia and the rest of the world. As we will discuss below, any country possessing a nuclear arsenal is on a path leading toward self-assured destruction, and is a threat to people everywhere on Earth. Nuclear-armed countries are a threat to people everywhere partly because of the destructive power of single weapons —one weapon is enough to destroy a small city— and partly because of the growing ability of nations to launch missiles across the globe. Nuclear powers such as India and North Korea, the latter of which is thought currently to have a very small nuclear capability that is not in the form of useful weapons, are working on the means to deliver weapons globally. Each has capabilities now to launch weapons from submarines, and both are working on intercontinental ballistic missiles. India has already launched satellites to the moon and Mars, but these missiles are not thought to be suitable for India’s current nuclear warheads. However, it is not just the brute force attack, which kills people in the geographically limited target zone, that threatens people everywhere. Most people have forgotten nuclear winter. Many think that the theory was disproven, or that the end of the nuclear arms race and the subsequent reduction of Russian and American nuclear arse¬nals eliminated the dangers of global nuclear war. But they are wrong. Nuclear winter is an assault on the global climate system caused by smoke from fires ignited by the bombs. As the smoke rapidly spreads globally in the stratosphere, it will reduce temperatures and rainfall and destroy the global ozone layer, which shields us from harmful ultraviolet radi¬ation from the sun. Recently it has been shown that even the smoke created by the use of 100 weapons of the size used on Hiroshima in the Second World War, comparable to the arsenals of India or Pakistan, could cause environmental damage that would extend glob¬ally, threatening the world food supply and creating mass starvation worldwide (Mills et al. 2014; Özdog˘an, Robock, and Kucharik 2013; Robock and Toon 2012; Xia and Robock 2013; Xia et al. 2015). The effects of food loss would also be felt in the aggressor nation. Hence, being a nuclear aggressor is suicidal, and destruction is self-assured. The deaths from these environmental changes would likely be a factor of ten or more larger than the direct casualties from the explosions—potentially threatening the bulk of the human population—and would not be limited to the combatants.

US-China tensions rising now – aggressive actions escalate to nuke war Polina Tikhonova 17, Reporter, MA from Oxford University, citing Bruce G. Blair, the National Bureau of Asian Research, and Union of Concerned Scientists, 7/27/2017, “If Trump Orders A Nuclear Strike On China, Here’s What Happens”, https://www.valuewalk.com/2017/07/trump-orders-nuclear-strike-china/

The fact that Trump now has the obedience of the U.S. Pacific Fleet chief in the hypothetical, yet possible, decision to launch nuclear strikes against Beijing makes the whole let’s-nuke-China scenario even faster and easier to execute .¶ Less than five minutes. This is the approximate time that would elapse from President Trump’s decision to launch a nuclear strike against China to shooting intercontinental ballistic missiles out of their silos, according to Bloomberg estimations. The publication, citing

former Minuteman missile-launch officer Bruce G. Blair , also estimates that it would take about 15 minutes to fire submarine missiles from their tubes.¶ While the expert predicts that there might be some minor hiccups in the let’s-nuke-China scenario – like

some of the top brass trying to talk Trump out of launching a nuclear strike – it appears that it would be easier for the President to nuke an enemy than expected now that he has the public support from the commander of the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet.¶ US vs China Tensions Rising, But Is Nuclear War Imminent?¶ The mere thought of a nuclear war between the U.S.

and China – the world’s two biggest militaries – sounds intimidating. Amid strained relations between Washington and Beijing, and with Trump recently giving U.S. Navy more freedom in South China Sea, the territory that China considers vital to its national and security interests, the possibility of the two nations going to a nuclear war cannot be ruled out anymore.¶ With Trump pledging to rein in China’s aggressive territorial expansion in the South China Sea during his presidential campaign, the Trump administration has made quite a few moves that could be push ing the two nations to the point of no return . In May, Trump ordered the U.S. Navy to conduct a f reedom- o f- n avigation op eration in the disputed area, which Beijing claims in its entirety despite the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Vietnam and Taiwan also claiming parts of the disputed region. ¶ Earlier this month, the Trump administration sent an even scarier war message to Beijing to challenge its military buildup on the artificial islands in the South China Sea . A U.S. destroyer passed through the international flashpoint in the South China Sea, a move that prompted a furious response from Chinese President Xi Jinping, who warned his American counterpart of “negative factors” in U.S.-China relations. The Chinese Foreign Ministry lambasted the incident as a “serious political and military provocation.”¶ US vs China War Would Be ‘Disastrous For Both’¶ Just last week, Trump approved the Pentagon’s plan to challenge Chinese claims in the South China Sea, where Beijing has been actively building reefs into artificial islands capable of hosting military planes. Breitbart News’s Kristina Wong exclusively reported that the President approved the plan to check China over its ongoing

militarization of and actions in the South China Sea, a move that will most likely further stain U.S.-China relations.¶ The latest heated exchange of hostile gestures between Beijing and Washington cannot but make experts wonder: what would happen if the U.S. and China went to war ? That would be “disastrous for both sides – politically, economically, and militarily,” according to VICE citing senior vice president for political and security affairs at the National Bureau of Asian Research , Abraham Denmark .¶ While the two nations continue working together to prevent a potential nuclear threat from China’s neighbor – North Korea – it seems like an even bigger nuclear conflict is brewing between Washington and Beijing .¶ ‘Increased’ Possibility of Nuclear War¶ In ValueWalk’s recent comparison of the U.S., Chinese and Russian militaries, it was concluded that the outcome of any war involving the U.S. and China is quite impossible to predict, as there’s no telling what would be the scope and duration of the military confrontation and if nuclear weapons would be used.¶ It’s also unclear if Russia would join forces with its arguably one of the biggest allies – China. If it did, China’s chances of winning a war against Washington would considerably soar. After all, there are plenty of potential flashpoints in the relations between Washington and Beijing, notably Taiwan and the South China Sea. The U.S. has in its possession about 6,800 nuclear warheads – the world’s second largest nuclear arsenal after Russia – while China has only 270 nukes, according to recent estimations by the

Arms Control Association.¶ According to a report by the U nion o f C oncerned S cientists, published last year, the U.S. going to “nuclear war with China is not inevitable – but the possibility that it could occur has increased.” However, with Washington and Beijing not being able to find common ground on such a vital issue for China’s national and

security interests as the South China Sea, and with Trump ordering more actions that further strain U.S.-China relations, the risk of nuclear war between the world’s two biggest militaries could skyrocket .

Size of arsenals guarantees extinction Wittner 11 – Professor of History @ State University of New York-Albany

Lawrence S. Wittner, “Is a Nuclear War with China Possible?,” Huntington News, Monday, November 28, 2011 - 18:37 pg. http://www.huntingtonnews.net/14446

While nuclear weapons exist, there remains a danger that they will be used. After all, for centuries national conflicts have led to wars, with nations employing their deadliest weapons. The current deterioration of U.S. relations with China might end up providing us with yet another example of this phenomenon. The gathering tension between the United

States and China is clear enough. Disturbed by China’s growing economic and military strength, the U.S. government recently challenged China’s claims in the South China Sea, increased the U.S. military presence in Australia, and deepened U.S. military ties with other nations in the

Pacific region. According to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the United States was “asserting our own position as a Pacific power.” But need this lead to nuclear war? Not necessarily. And yet, there are signs that it could. After all, both the United States and China possess large numbers of nuclear weapons. The U.S . government threatened to attack

China with nuclear weapons during the Korean War and, later, during the conflict over the future of China’s offshore islands, Quemoy and Matsu. In the midst of the latter confrontation, President Dwight Eisenhower declared publicly, and chillingly, that U.S. nuclear weapons would “be used just exactly as you would use a bullet or anything else.” Of course, China didn’t have nuclear weapons then. Now

that it does, perhaps the behavior of national leaders will be more temperate. But the loose nuclear threats of U.S. and Soviet

government officials during the Cold War, when both nations had vast nuclear arsenals, should convince us that, even as the military ante is raised, nuclear saber-rattling persists. Some pundits argue that nuclear weapons prevent wars between nuclear-armed nations; and, admittedly, there haven’t been very many—at least not yet. But the Kargil War of 1999, between nuclear-armed India and nuclear-armed Pakistan, should convince us that such wars can occur. Indeed, in that case, the conflict almost slipped into a nuclear war. Pakistan’s foreign secretary threatened that, if the war escalated, his country felt free to use “any weapon” in its arsenal. During the conflict, Pakistan did move nuclear weapons toward its border, while India, it is claimed, readied its own nuclear missiles for an attack on Pakistan. At the least, though, don’t nuclear weapons deter a nuclear attack? Do they? Obviously, NATO leaders didn’t feel deterred, for, throughout the Cold War, NATO’s strategy was to respond to a Soviet conventional military attack on Western Europe by launching a Western

nuclear attack on the nuclear-ularmed Soviet Union. Furthermore, if U.S. government officials really believed that nuclear deterrence worked, they would not have resorted to championing “Star Wars” and its modern variant, national missile defense. Why are these vastly expensive—and probably unworkable—military defense systems needed if other nuclear powers are deterred from attacking by U.S. nuclear might? Of course, the bottom line for those Americans convinced that nuclear weapons safeguard them from a Chinese nuclear attack might be that the U.S. nuclear arsenal is far greater than its Chinese counterpart. Today, it is estimated that the U.S. government possesses over five thousand nuclear warheads, while the Chinese government has a total inventory of roughly three

hundred. Moreover, only about forty of these Chinese nuclear weapons can reach the United States. Surely the United

States would “win” any nuclear war with China. But what would that “victory” entail? A nuclear attack by China would immediately slaughter at least 10 million Americans in a great storm of blast and fire, while leaving many more dying

horribly of sickness and radiation poisoning. The Chinese death toll in a nuclear war would be far higher. Both nations would be reduced to smoldering, radioactive wastelands . Also, radioactive debris sent aloft by the nuclear

explosions would blot out the sun and bring on a “ nuclear winter ” around the globe— destroying ag riculture,

[and] creating worldwide famine , and generating chaos and destruction. Moreover, in another decade the extent of this

catastrophe would be far worse. The Chinese government is currently expanding its nuclear arsenal, and by the year 2020 it is expected to more than double its number of nuclear weapons that can hit the United States. The U.S. government, in turn, has plans to spend hundreds of billions of dollars “modernizing” its nuclear weapons and nuclear production facilities over the next decade. To avert the enormous disaster of a U.S.-China nuclear war, there are two obvious actions that can be taken. The first is to get rid of nuclear weapons, as the nuclear powers have agreed to do but thus far have resisted doing. The second, conducted while the nuclear disarmament process is occurring, is to improve U.S.-China relations. If the American and Chinese people are interested in ensuring their survival and that of the world, they should be working to encourage these policies.

Transition war/Thucydides TrapWar is likely – empirical case studies confirm the Thucydides’ trap results in conflict and Sino-US dynamics fit the conditions. Fabian ’19 [Christopher; January 2019; B.S. from the United States Air Force Academy, thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a M.S. from the University of North Dakota, approved by the Faculty Advisory Committee and in coordination with Dr. Michael Dodge, David Kugler, and Brian Urlacher; University of North Dakota Scholarly Commons, “A Neoclassical Realist’s Analysis Of Sino-U.S. Space Policy,” https://commons.und.edu/theses/2455/; DoA 8/22/2020]

After examining models of international conflict and incorporating them within a theoretical framework in order to set the foundation for this thesis methodology, structural dynamics underlying the Sino-U.S. space policy relationship must be examined . Because context is essential to any niche policy arena, the broader Sino-U.S. geostrategic balance is the primary structural dynamic affecting Sino-U.S. space policy. In Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? Grahm Allison coins the term Thucydides’s Trap to describe the friction caused by a state gaining comparative military , political, and economic power at the expense of an existing hegemon . He uses Thucydides examination of this dynamic in History of the Peloponnesian War as the basis of his research and examines 15 additional case studies in which a rising power has displaced a status quo power.38 By Allison’s own admission the use of words like destined or predetermined are misleading. However, he reveals that, “…in all cases we find heads of state confronting strategic dilemmas about rivals under conditions of uncertainty and chronic stress,”39 and in 12 of 16 cases examined the result has been war between the two states.40 Additional to the zero-sum hard power relationship strongly acting upon both actors to strengthen the security dilemma, Allison proposes that psychological factors can modify the relationship and serve to either dampen or exacerbate Thucydides’s Trap . Generally, a rising power’s recognized status in the international community lags behind that state’s self-perceived importance whereas the status quo power faces fear and anxiety in the face of potential decline .41 Management of these perceptions is essential to avoiding conflict . Allison makes the case that the contemporary Sino-U.S. relationship meets the conditions for Thucydides’s trap and analogizes it with the pre-WWI dynamic between Britain and Germany. He argues that the rapid expansion (or reemergence) of China’s economy is supporting a subsequent increase in military power and political influence in East Asia. This threatens to upset the status quo of American hegemony in the region .42 Allison examines China’s national motivations and internal decision making apparatus and proposes that the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) mandate is to return Chinese national prestige and recoup national sovereignty. This is supported primarily by a strong nationalist sentiment and continued economic reform. 43 The analysis is useful in that it examines the structural preconditions for conflict , but also conducts a layered neoclassical realist analysis by identifying accompanying psychological factors and suggesting a way forward to help soften the structural predilection for conflict . These actor-specific recommendations may be integrated into a competitive strategy approach to increase its efficacy.

Heg lowThe era of American exceptionalism is over--COVID hastened the great power transition from the US to China.Davis, Professor at the University of British Columbia, August 6, 2020 (Wade, Leadership Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk at the University of British Columbia, “The Unraveling of America”, Rolling Stone, https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/covid-19-end-of-american-era-wade-davis-1038206/, DoA 8/16/2020, DVOG)

In a dark season of pestilence, COVID has reduced to tatters the illusion of American exceptionalism. At the height of the crisis, with more than 2,000 dying each day, Americans found themselves members of a failed state, ruled by a dysfunctional and incompetent government largely responsible for death rates that added a tragic coda to America’s claim to supremacy in the world.

For the first time, the international community felt compelled to send disaster relief to Washington. For more than two centuries, reported the Irish Times, “the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the U.S. until now: pity.” As American doctors and nurses eagerly awaited emergency airlifts of basic supplies from China, the hinge of history opened to the Asian century.

No empire long endures, even if few anticipate their demise. Every kingdom is born to die. The 15th century belonged to the Portuguese, the 16th to Spain, 17th to the Dutch. France dominated the 18th and Britain the 19th. Bled white and left bankrupt by the Great War, the British maintained a pretense of domination as late as 1935, when the empire reached its greatest geographical extent. By then, of course, the torch had long passed into the hands of America.

In 1940, with Europe already ablaze, the United States had a smaller army than either Portugal or Bulgaria. Within four years, 18 million men and women would serve in uniform, with millions more working double shifts in mines and factories that made America, as President Roosevelt promised, the arsenal of democracy.

When the Japanese within six weeks of Pearl Harbor took control of 90 percent of the world’s rubber supply, the U.S. dropped the speed limit to 35 mph to protect tires, and then, in three years, invented from scratch a synthetic-rubber industry that allowed Allied armies to roll over the Nazis. At its peak, Henry Ford’s Willow Run Plant produced a B-24 Liberator every two hours, around the clock. Shipyards in Long Beach and Sausalito spat out Liberty ships at a rate of two a day for four years; the record was a ship built in four days, 15 hours and 29 minutes. A single American factory, Chrysler’s Detroit Arsenal, built more tanks than the whole of the Third Reich.

In the wake of the war, with Europe and Japan in ashes, the United States with but 6 percent of the world’s population accounted for half of the global economy, including the production of 93 percent of all automobiles. Such economic dominance birthed a vibrant middle class, a trade union movement that allowed a single breadwinner with limited education to own a home and a car, support a family, and send his kids to good schools. It was not by any means a perfect world but affluence allowed for a truce between capital and labor, a reciprocity of opportunity in a time of rapid growth and declining

income inequality, marked by high tax rates for the wealthy, who were by no means the only beneficiaries of a golden age of American capitalism.

But freedom and affluence came with a price. The United States, virtually a demilitarized nation on the eve of the Second World War, never stood down in the wake of victory. To this day, American troops are deployed in 150 countries. Since the 1970s, China has not once gone to war; the U.S. has not spent a day at peace. President Jimmy Carter recently noted that in its 242-year history, America has enjoyed only 16 years of peace, making it, as he wrote, “the most warlike nation in the history of the world.” Since 2001, the U.S. has spent over $6 trillion on military operations and war, money that might have been invested in the infrastructure of home. China, meanwhile, built its nation, pouring more cement every three years than America did in the entire 20th century.

US hegemonic decline is inevitable and China will rise to replace us.Cooley, Political Science Professor at Barnard, and Nexon, Government Professor at Georgetown, August 2020 ("How Hegemony Ends," Foreign Affairs, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2020-06-09/how-hegemony-ends, DoA 8/22/2020, DVOG)

But this time really is different. The very forces that made U.S. hegemony so durable before are today driving its dissolution. Three developments enabled the post–Cold War U.S.-led order. First, with the defeat of communism, the United States faced no major global ideological project that could rival its own. Second, with the disintegration of the Soviet Union and its accompanying infrastructure of institutions and partnerships, weaker states lacked significant alternatives to the United States and its Western allies when it came to securing military, economic, and political support. And third, transnational activists and movements were spreading liberal values and norms that bolstered the liberal order.

Today, those same dynamics have turned against the United States: a vicious cycle that erodes U.S. power has replaced the virtuous cycles that once reinforced it. With the rise of great powers such as China and Russia, autocratic and illiberal projects rival the U.S.-led liberal international system. Developing countries—and even many developed ones—can seek alternative patrons rather than remain dependent on Western largess and support. And illiberal, often right-wing transnational networks are pressing against the norms and pieties of the liberal international order that once seemed so implacable. In short, U.S. global leadership is not simply in retreat; it is unraveling. And the decline is not cyclical but permanent.

THE VANISHING UNIPOLAR MOMENT

It may seem strange to talk of permanent decline when the United States spends more on its military than its next seven rivals combined and maintains an unparalleled network of overseas military bases. Military power played an important role in creating and maintaining U.S. preeminence in the 1990s and early years of this century; no other country could extend credible security guarantees across the entire international system. But U.S. military dominance was less a function of defense budgets—in real terms, U.S. military spending decreased during the 1990s and only ballooned after the September 11 attacks—than of several other factors: the disappearance of the Soviet Union as a competitor, the

growing technological advantage enjoyed by the U.S. military, and the willingness of most of the world’s second-tier powers to rely on the United States rather than build up their own military forces. If the emergence of the United States as a unipolar power was mostly contingent on the dissolution of the Soviet Union, then the continuation of that unipolarity through the subsequent decade stemmed from the fact that Asian and European allies were content to subscribe to U.S. hegemony.

Talk of the unipolar moment obscures crucial features of world politics that formed the basis of U.S. dominance. The breakup of the Soviet Union finally closed the door on the only project of global ordering that could rival capitalism. Marxism-Leninism (and its offshoots) mostly disappeared as a source of ideological competition. Its associated transnational infrastructure—its institutions, practices, and networks, including the Warsaw Pact, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, and the Soviet Union itself—all imploded. Without Soviet support, most Moscow-affiliated countries, insurgent groups, and political movements decided it was better to either throw in the towel or get on the U.S. bandwagon. By the middle of the 1990s, there existed only one dominant framework for international norms and rules: the liberal international system of alliances and institutions anchored in Washington.

The United States and its allies—referred to in breezy shorthand as “the West”—together enjoyed a de facto patronage monopoly during the period of unipolarity. With some limited exceptions, they offered the only significant source of security, economic goods, and political support and legitimacy. Developing countries could no longer exert leverage over Washington by threatening to turn to Moscow or point to the risk of a communist takeover to shield themselves from having to make domestic reforms. The sweep of Western power and influence was so untrammeled that many policymakers came to believe in the permanent triumph of liberalism. Most governments saw no viable alternative.

With no other source of support, countries were more likely to adhere to the conditions of the Western aid they received. Autocrats faced severe international criticism and heavy demands from Western-controlled international organizations. Yes, democratic powers continued to protect certain autocratic states (such as oil-rich Saudi Arabia) from such demands for strategic and economic reasons. And leading democracies, including the United States, themselves violated international norms concerning human, civil, and political rights, most dramatically in the form of torture and extraordinary renditions during the so-called war on terror. But even these hypocritical exceptions reinforced the hegemony of the liberal order, because they sparked widespread condemnation that reaffirmed liberal principles and because U.S. officials continued to voice commitment to liberal norms.

Meanwhile, an expanding number of transnational networks—often dubbed “international civil society”—propped up the emerging architecture of the post–Cold War international order. These groups and individuals served as the foot soldiers of U.S. hegemony by spreading broadly liberal norms and practices. The collapse of centrally planned economies in the postcommunist world invited waves of Western consultants and contractors to help usher in market reforms—sometimes with disastrous consequences, as in Russia and Ukraine, where Western-backed shock therapy impoverished tens of millions while creating a class of wealthy oligarchs who turned former state assets into personal empires. International financial institutions, government regulators, central bankers, and economists worked to build an elite consensus in favor of free trade and the movement of capital across borders.

Civil society groups also sought to steer postcommunist and developing countries toward Western models of liberal democracy. Teams of Western experts advised governments on the design of new

constitutions, legal reforms, and multiparty systems. International observers, most of them from Western democracies, monitored elections in far-flung countries. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) advocating the expansion of human rights, gender equality, and environmental protections forged alliances with sympathetic states and media outlets. The work of transnational activists, scholarly communities, and social movements helped build an overarching liberal project of economic and political integration. Throughout the 1990s, these forces helped produce an illusion of an unassailable liberal order resting on durable U.S. global hegemony. That illusion is now in tatters.

THE GREAT-POWER COMEBACK

Today, other great powers offer rival conceptions of global order, often autocratic ones that appeal to many leaders of weaker states. The West no longer presides over a monopoly of patronage. New regional organizations and illiberal transnational networks contest U.S. influence. Long-term shifts in the global economy, particularly the rise of China, account for many of these developments. These changes have transformed the geopolitical landscape.

In April 1997, Chinese President Jiang Zemin and Russian President Boris Yeltsin pledged “to promote the multipolarization of the world and the establishment of a new international order.” For years, many Western scholars and policymakers downplayed or dismissed such challenges as wishful rhetoric. Beijing remained committed to the rules and norms of the U.S.-led order, they argued, pointing out that China continued to benefit from the current system. Even as Russia grew increasingly assertive in its condemnation of the United States in the first decade of this century and called for a more multipolar world, observers didn’t think that Moscow could muster support from any significant allies. Analysts in the West specifically doubted that Beijing and Moscow could overcome decades of mistrust and rivalry to cooperate against U.S. efforts to maintain and shape the international order.

Such skepticism made sense at the height of U.S. global hegemony in the 1990s and even remained plausible through much of the following decade. But the 1997 declaration now looks like a blueprint for how Beijing and Moscow have tried to reorder international politics in the last 20 years. China and Russia now directly contest liberal aspects of the international order from within that order’s institutions and forums; at the same time, they are building an alternative order through new institutions and venues in which they wield greater influence and can de-emphasize human rights and civil liberties.

At the United Nations, for example, the two countries routinely consult on votes and initiatives. As permanent members of the UN Security Council, they have coordinated their opposition to criticize Western interventions and calls for regime change; they have vetoed Western-sponsored proposals on Syria and efforts to impose sanctions on Venezuela and Yemen. In the UN General Assembly, between 2006 and 2018, China and Russia voted the same way 86 percent of the time, more frequently than during the 78 percent voting accord the two shared between 1991 and 2005. By contrast, since 2005, China and the United States have agreed only 21 percent of the time. Beijing and Moscow have also led UN initiatives to promote new norms, most notably in the arena of cyberspace, that privilege national sovereignty over individual rights, limit the doctrine of the responsibility to protect, and curtail the power of Western-sponsored human rights resolutions.

China and Russia have also been at the forefront of creating new international institutions and regional forums that exclude the United States and the West more broadly. Perhaps the most well

known of these is the BRICS grouping, which includes Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Since 2006, the group has presented itself as a dynamic setting for the discussion of matters of international order and global leadership, including building alternatives to Western-controlled institutions in the areas of Internet governance, international payment systems, and development assistance. In 2016, the BRICS countries created the New Development Bank, which is dedicated to financing infrastructure projects in the developing world.

China and Russia have each also pushed a plethora of new regional security organizations—including the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia, the Collective Security Treaty Organization, and the Quadrilateral Cooperation and Coordination Mechanism—and economic institutions, including the Chinese-run Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Russian-backed Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)—a security organization that promotes cooperation among security services and oversees biennial military exercises—was founded in 2001 at the initiative of both Beijing and Moscow. It added India and Pakistan as full members in 2017. The net result is the emergence of parallel structures of global governance that are dominated by authoritarian states and that compete with older, more liberal structures.

Critics often dismiss the BRICS, the EAEU, and the SCO as “talk shops” in which member states do little to actually resolve problems or otherwise engage in meaningful cooperation. But most other international institutions are no different. Even when they prove unable to solve collective problems, regional organizations allow their members to affirm common values and boost the stature of the powers that convene these forums. They generate denser diplomatic ties among their members, which, in turn, make it easier for those members to build military and political coalitions. In short, these organizations constitute a critical part of the infrastructure of international order, an infrastructure that was dominated by Western democracies after the end of the Cold War. Indeed, this new array of non-Western organizations has brought transnational governance mechanisms into regions such as Central Asia, which were previously disconnected from many institutions of global governance. Since 2001, most Central Asian states have joined the SCO, the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization, the EAEU, the AIIB, and the Chinese infrastructure investment project known as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

China and Russia are also now pushing into areas traditionally dominated by the United States and its allies; for example, China convenes the 17+1 group with states in central and eastern Europe and the China-CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) Forum in Latin America. These groupings provide states in these regions with new arenas for partnership and support while also challenging the cohesion of traditional Western blocs; just days before the 16+1 group expanded to include the EU member Greece in April 2020, the European Commission moved to designate China a “systemic rival” amid concerns that BRI deals in Europe were undercutting EU regulations and standards.

Beijing and Moscow appear to be successfully managing their alliance of convenience, defying predictions that they would be unable to tolerate each other’s international projects. This has even been the case in areas in which their divergent interests could lead to significant tensions. Russia vocally supports China’s BRI, despite its inroads into Central Asia, which Moscow still considers its backyard. In fact, since 2017, the Kremlin’s rhetoric has shifted from talking about a clearly demarcated Russian “sphere of influence” in Eurasia to embracing a “Greater Eurasia” in which Chinese-led investment and

integration dovetails with Russian efforts to shut out Western influence. Moscow followed a similar pattern when Beijing first proposed the formation of the AIIB in 2015. The Russian Ministry of Finance initially refused to back the bank, but the Kremlin changed course after seeing which way the wind was blowing; Russia formally joined the bank at the end of the year.

China has also proved willing to accommodate Russian concerns and sensitivities. China joined the other BRICS countries in abstaining from condemning Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, even though doing so clearly contravened China’s long-standing opposition to separatism and violations of territorial integrity. Moreover, the Trump administration’s trade war with China has given Beijing additional incentives to support Russian efforts to develop alternatives to the Western-controlled SWIFT international payment system and dollar-denominated trade so as to undermine the global reach of U.S. sanctions regimes.

US is declining, China will rise to replace usMonck, Head of communications at the World Economic Forum, 2018 (Adrian, “The Choice Facing a Declining United States”, The Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/08/americas-global-influence-is-declining/568708/, DoA 8/22/2020, DVOG)

In Nairobi National Park, a succession of concrete piers rises over the heads of rhinos and giraffes, part of a $13.8 billion rail project that will link Kenya’s capital with the Indian Ocean. It’s a project with the ambition and scale of global leadership, and the site safety posters are in the language of its engineers and builders: Chinese.

Four hundred miles further north, in one of Kenya’s city-sized refugee camps, there’s another sign of what global leadership used to look like: sacks of split peas, stamped USAID ; a handful of young, quiet Americans working on idealistic development projects. I saw both this month, but one already looks like a relic of the past. The baton of global leadership is being passed from the U.S. to China.

In Africa, the evidence is everywhere. China will put nearly $90 billion into the continent this year, the United States nothing close. China is betting big on economic partnerships and dependencies along its new Silk Road, christened “One Belt, One Road.” The U.S., meanwhile, spends many of its dollars on expensive wars, to the detriment of soft-power projects like USAID, or domestic welfare programs like Medicaid.

America’s global influence is certain to decline relatively in the years ahead; it is the inevitable consequence of the return of the Middle Kingdom. As that happens, the U.S. should be more deliberate about the policy choices it makes. It’s a lesson I’ve seen my own country—which was once an empire, too—learn the hard way. On the way down from global hegemony, Britain came around too slowly to investing in domestic welfare. The U.S. should apply those lessons sooner.

Advantage 2 EXT:

Interdependence Senkakus create a security paradox which makes war inevitable, despite economic ties.Brito, Chair and researcher within the Conflict, Security and Crime Student Research Committee at IAPSS, 2019 (Esther Brito, 7-17-2019, "The Sino-Japanese Security Paradox: Why Security Tensions Will Remain Despite Cooperation," Geopolitics, https://thegeopolitics.com/the-sino-japanese-security-paradox-why-security-tensions-will-remain-despite-cooperation/, DoA 8/19/2020, DVOG)

The Asia-Pacific region is the world’s most dynamic center of economic activity, and a growingly unrestrainable political behemoth. This economic and political significance is largely driven by its leading powers, Japan and China. The pattern of these countries interaction has come to set the structure and pace of Asia-Pacific regional cooperation . Nevertheless, bilateral relations between both powers have been tense despite economic interaction and the advance of globalization, and seem to give way to almost routine periods of security tensions.

The strained relationship between both nations has been the subject of much reflection. A paradox is present in the antagonism that has come to define China and Japan’s interaction, despite their increasing economic interdependence . This antagonism has manifested in the form of nationalist ideals within both nations, and the escalation of political disagreements into periodic crisis situations.

The Senkaku/Diaoyu islands confrontation is maybe the clearest example of deteriorating Sino-Japanese relations; having become a symbol of a wider geopolitical framework and unresolved historical tensions. Both Japanese and Chinese responses in this crisis have been perceived as diplomatic confrontation, and have become highly contentious nationalistic issues in domestic politics.

Many scholars have argued that, in the face of these increased security tensions, economic interdependence can soften state interaction and reduce conflict . However, as globalization has integrated Sino-Japanese operations further, nationalist backlash has arisen from both sides. Thus, it becomes important to consider the potential impact of nationalist ideology and interstate tensions in international economic relations.

The phenomenon of “ cold politics and hot economics ” is now a seemingly fixed feature of China and Japan’s political and economic relations. Nevertheless, these areas are not without overlap, and the economic relations between China and Japan have fluctuated according to political tensions, with bilateral trade figures now providing a “ barometric record of an unpredictable political climate ”; and incidents like the Japanese nationalization of the Senkaku Islands negatively affecting trade between both nations. This threatens the notion of Sino-Japanese economic complementarity as a means for peace, and reaffirms notions that politics still govern the nations bilateral relations, despite economic alignment. These conditions also explain why politicized historical events like Nanking still reverberate so heavily in current state interaction.

Strategic implications: bilateral political approaches

Tokyo has seen a decrease of its strategic space and area of influence as China has become more dominant, and in turn has sought to be more proactive and engaging in regional and global dynamics, fostering initiatives conducive to its national interests. In this manner, Japan’s strategic response to the rise of China has seen the nation shift paradigms, from a “friendship diplomacy” attempt to a mixed strategy approach combining realistic threat balancing and positive engagement with the Asian giant.

Japan’s strategic shift and security policy reform, especially its redefinition of its military capacities, are considered to be primarily a counterbalancing response to China . This reform is understood as an internal balancing measure, yet external initiatives have also been undertaken by Abe’s government; increasing security cohesion with the United States, and enhancing its security cooperation with other key allies such as Australia and India, as well as increasing its focus on other Asian nations as potential allies.

China’s diplomacy and foreign policy efforts have been “working systematically towards a realignment of the international order through establishing parallel structures to a wide range of international institutions”. This has entailed a more active role in regional organizations like ASEAN, and the establishment of Asian-led organisms such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Through this network of strategic organizations China seeks to target gaps within the current system of intergovernmental structures, and compete within their areas of operation; building both supplementary and complementary structures to shape and steer the regional sphere away from Western attempts at leadership. This conception capitalizes on China’s model of development, highlighting the giant’s local influence and identification with “shared Asian values”. Through this strategic approach, China leverages the comparative benefit it holds in forming regional partnerships as a result of Japan’s negative imperial heritage. In this manner, Beijing has opted for a strategic understanding of the region with Japan as a key control focus, recognizing its influence in the region’s security environment, and seeking to redefine the environment to suit its international rise.

Geopolitical significance

Stability or insecurity in the global order seems to have a ripple effect in regional dynamics. Thus, the US-Japan alliance and US-China market dependence may influence regional dynamics further. Sino-Japanese security dynamics are inevitably linked to the broader interactions of the four-power balance system in Asia , between the United States, the Russian Federation, China, and Japan. Regarding the effect smaller actors may hold upon this larger geopolitical context, there is much debate in the interpretation of secondary-state responses to changing regional dynamics and rising powers like China. Nevertheless, it increasingly seems that minor actors will often not seek to balance this rise, but accommodate it.

Another important geopolitical element is the trilateral institutional relation among China, Japan and South Korea, that has been developing over the last decade due to shared security concerns. At present, both China and Japan operate under a shared objective of maintaining peace and stability in the region; which has a relatively stabilizing effect in terms of the non-escalation of their bilateral tensions into regional strife, stabilize Sino-Japanese conflictual relations; or in turn, complicate them

However, both US influence and trilateralism seem insufficient to fully normalize Sino- Japanese political-diplomatic cooperation, or dissipate periodically rising tensions. The historical legacy Japan and China share has imbued a mutual sense of distrust and wariness between them. China remains cautious of Japanese security projection in the region, and Japan in turn remains threatened by the possibility of a revisionist China reasserting its historical prevalence in the Asia-Pacific . There is an ever-present emotional dimension to Sino-Japanese relations that transcends logical, economic, or political interest.

To this end, China and Japan must seek to construct a more cohesive understanding of their common history as a foundation for future foreign relations, and as a necessary condition to ease the strain between both nations in a transition period within world politics. Both nations must now face their history in tandem, and choose to either be defined by it in, or be take a softer approach to managing their increased competition in the world stage.

ECS conflict is the main obstacle to Sino-Japanese economic interdependence and peace.Beukel, Danish Institute for International Studies, 2011 (Erik, "China and Japan between economic interdependence and nationalist shadows of the past," DIIS, https://www.diis.dk/en/research/china-and-japan-between-economic-interdependence-and-nationalist-shadows-of-the-past, DoA 8/19/2020, DVOG)

Chinese Janus-like positions in the four crises have been successful. Chinese leaders’ ability to meet challenges with expedient ‘two-heads-facing-opposite-directions’ policies has been impressive, even if supported by good luck as the complicated nature of popular nationalism makes it difficult to predict the consequences (Zheng, 1999: 134). As concluded by Manicom and O’Neill (2009: 227), the Chinese leadership has shown considerable determination and dexterity in navigating away from potential confrontation with Japan. China’s and Japan’s deep economic interdependence means that both sides have compelling incentives to manage their relationship carefully; indeed, both countries have displayed a high degree of pragmatism in avoiding being influenced by their respective nationalistic constituencies in actual crises and, at the same time, averting any encroachment on their sovereignty claims. Yet, it has to be emphasised that Japanese governments have often been reluctant to curb nationalist groups’ aggressive activities either because they seem to share nationalist persuasions or because they cannot take strong measures against nationalists without violating basic civil rights. Activists and nationalists are also citizens with civil rights and so Japan’s government has a limited freedom of action. Here lies an obvious asymmetry between the two countries.

But for all the crisis management capability of Beijing and Tokyo, it has to be noted that a long-term solution to the conflict is difficult to envisage. Maybe the fragile attempts at functional cooperation in East China Sea matters hold a promise to a slow downgrading of sovereignty issues; that would be in accordance with functional integration theories that have been developed on the basis of European integration. The central problem is, of course, whether that theory is valid in Asia, or whether state-directed high politics is more important as hinted at in the last part of section 5.

Focusing on China’s policy, three trends should be noted. First, China’s increasing willingness and ability to deploy military forces in the East China Sea. Second, China’s growing capacity to exploit the resources in or close to the disputed area. Third, the increasingly prominent role of anti-Japanese grassroots organisations, based on the use of the Internet and personal mobile phones. The last point is especially important because it means that popular nationalism cannot be understood within a ‘state-over- society’ view of Chinese politics. The party-state is clearly losing its control over the innumerable cyber-nationalist manifestations – manifestations that often merge into criticism of the Chinese government for being soft on Japan. The authorities clearly intend to impose the government’s will and policy on the netizens, but public opinion on the net cannot be effectively silenced despite the persistence of state censorship (Liu, 2006: 148–9).

While the temptation to beat the anti-Japanese nationalist drum has become harder to resist, it has also become more dangerous as the party-state may lose control when it feels that it has to respond to increasingly popular and strident anti-Japanese groups (Chien-peng, 1998: 159 and 2007: 62). The central point is that fundamental goals of China as a country of strongly growing prosperity and the ‘reform and opening’ project may be lost if the party-state cannot control nationalist demands for more unilateral actions. To avoid that situation Chinese leaders are willing to apply all kinds of methods in combination with Janus-like policies. Of course, they do not and cannot know for sure the most effective methods when challenges appear, but they are predisposed to apply repressive measures to forbid any independent movements and clamp down on them if they become too nationalistic and/or independent. Outbursts of anti-Japanese indignation in the media and especially on the Internet in new crisis situations have given groups actively involved in online communities a role as pressure groups with a potential impact on Chinese foreign policy. The central point is that, given the lack of democratic and parliamentary mechanisms for influencing the decision-makers, the Internet is a useful outlet for nationalist groups to let off steam, notwithstanding that the authorities are often successful in attempts to restrain their communications ( Jakobson and Knox, 2010: 43–6). A specific feature of the domestic situation is that the PLA’s preference for firmness and strong anti-Japanese attitudes could play together with popular nationalism, ending up with squeezing civilian leaders into a confrontation with Japan, even though the PLA’s loyalty to the party-state is beyond doubt (Bush, 2010).

Considered overall, however, there seems to be no immediate reason why the authorities’ performance in the earlier China–Japan crises couldn’t be repeated, including the control of public protests and intellectuals, before any demand for extensive Chinese military action to counter the ‘ugly’ Japanese were to become too excessive. In such a situation both the basic interest in fruitful economic relations with Japan and the continuation of the long-term aspiration for the retrieval of the disputed territory by China can still be assured. Obviously, a long-term irredentist aspiration entails no fixed time limit and Janus-like positioning may continue indefinitely. But there are limits to the party-state’s freedom of action, limits that are becoming narrowed down, increasing the tensions of holding such Janusian positions.

The critical problem lies in the socioeconomic sphere in China. If a new crisis were to take place in a situation of major failure and collapse of the Chinese economy, especially if the failure is caused by corruption and economic mismanagement by party leaders, it would clearly be more difficult to stifle public protests before they become a threat to the party-state, especially if nationalist movements fuse various discontented groups under the banner of nationalism. However, even such a major crisis may not be enough to trigger such a wave, as the censorship system could be used in an attempt to curb a

broader dissemination of knowledge about the causes of China’s domestic problems. Therefore the second critical factor besides major economic failure caused by the incumbent leadership would be a breakdown of unity among leaders as happened in the spring of 1989. If factions within the CCP use nationalism to challenge and attack (persons in) the current leadership for not defending China’s core interests with sufficient vigour, a real threat may develop, and the party-state’s efforts to maintain legitimacy by stirring up nationalism may backfire.

This study of popular nationalism in China’s East China Sea policy will finish with an observation on the role of history in Asian and Western foreign policies. Kishore Mahbubani, Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore and an incisive observer of contrasts between Asian and Western diplomatic styles, has noted that China’s leaders can ‘switch off ’ the past (Mahbubani, 2010). This study demonstrates the limits to Mahbubani’s observation when it comes to Sino-Japanese relations. Even though China’s pragmatic leaders have displayed an impressive ability to implement Janus-like policies, they have not been able wholly to switch off the past in the way Mao and his diplomatic master, Chou Enlai, could. Otherwise expressed, the totalitarian Chinese system under Mao could switch off the past more easily than today’s leaders of a more democratic, but still authoritarian, political system. Here Max Weber’s famous observation: “It is not true that good can follow only good and evil only evil” – cited by Mahbubani (2010: 39) – is pertinent.

Senkakus drives wedge into Sino-Japan relations—overreaction by Japan or US triggers escalation. Japan Times, July 27, 2020 (Jesse Johnson, 7-27-2020, "China's 100-day push near Senkaku Islands comes at unsettling time for Sino-Japanese ties," Japan Times, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/07/27/national/china-japan-senkaku-islands/, DoA 8/22/2020, DVOG)

China has passed a new and unsettling milestone in the East China Sea, sending government vessels to waters near the Japan-administered Senkaku Islands for more than 100 straight days in what Tokyo has labeled a “relentless” campaign to take control of the disputed islets.

But more disconcerting for Tokyo than the milestone itself is the timing.

It comes at a precarious time for Sino-Japanese and Sino-U.S. ties. Washington is undergoing a radical shift in its policy toward Beijing, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo using a speech Thursday to evoke images of a new Cold War and stating that the U.S. “can never go back to the status quo” in its dealings with China.

Japan, meanwhile, is being forced to rethink how it will approach an increasingly belligerent China after years of work by the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to repair Tokyo’s relationship with Beijing.

There are few better examples that underscore Japan’s complicated relationship with China than the uninhabited but strategically positioned Senkakus, which are also claimed by China, which calls them Diaoyu, as well as Taiwan, which calls them Tiaoyutai.

While the Senkakus themselves may not hold much value, the surrounding waters are strategically significant in terms of sea lane control, fishing resources, untapped energy reserves and military imperatives.

Although the sovereignty row over the islands has long been a point of contention for Beijing, the issue was effectively put on the backburner for many years as economic ties with Japan were prioritized. In 2010, however, it burst into the mainstream public consciousness when a Chinese fishing trawler collided with Japan Coast Guard vessels near the Senkakus, resulting in a major diplomatic tussle.

But it was Japan’s effective nationalization of the islets in 2012 that truly set the stage for the full-throated attempt by Beijing over the last eight years to assert its claim to the islets while wearing down Japan.

According to Narushige Michishita, director of the Security and International Studies Program at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo, Beijing has been actively working to create “a new reality in which Chinese vessels maintain a fairly significant presence in the area so that maybe 10, 20 years later, China can claim it’s been controlling this area.”

U.S. and Japanese defense officials have even said that a scenario in the not-so-distant future where Beijing announces that it has “administrative control” over the Senkakus — citing its continued presence there — is far from unthinkable.

The day-in, day-out appearance of Chinese government ships may also prove to be the death rattle for improving the Sino-Japanese relationship.

“There is rising concern about the new records being set for China’s maritime presence around the Senkakus,” said Euan Graham, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank in Singapore. “I think this should counter any mistaken impression that the Abe administration has reset relations with China in more positive terms.”

China’s approach, an incremental strategy known colloquially as “salami-slicing,” was rebuked by the Japanese Defense Ministry in its annual defense white paper released on July 14.

Referring to the Senkakus, the document slammed China over its unyielding attempts to “unilaterally change the status quo” in the East China Sea all while Beijing touts the need for global cooperation amid the coronavirus pandemic.

“Despite protests by our country, Chinese official ships repeatedly intruded into our territorial waters around the Senkaku Islands,” the paper said — characterizing for the first time China’s actions around the islets as “relentless.”

A busy year

This year, in particular, has seen the Senkakus issue make headlines.

In May, China Coast Guard vessels attempted to chase a Japanese trawler from inside the waters, leading to a tense standoff with JCG ships. Earlier this month, Chinese government vessels spent a record 39 hours and 23 minutes in Japan’s territorial waters around the islets — the longest period since the islets’ effective nationalization. And last week, it emerged that China had taken the rare step

of complaining to Japan early this month about Japanese fishing boats allegedly “trespassing” in the waters .

Chinese vessels have also entered Japan’s territorial waters for a total of 11 days since April 14, triggering a string of stern diplomatic protests by Tokyo. Beijing has rejected these, claiming the islets as its “inherent territory since ancient times.” Japan, for its part, has refused to acknowledge that a question over the sovereignty of the isles ever existed.

According to Alexander Neill, an Asia-Pacific security analyst and consultant, China is seeking to achieve several aims beyond maintaining a sustained presence to demonstrate administrative control over the islands and waters. These include testing the readiness, reaction times and force posture of the Self-Defense Forces and JCG.

“Reacting to Chinese incursions is expensive and draining on Japan’s resources,” Neill said. “Meanwhile, China is steadily increasing the tonnage of its coast guard vessels, far outstripping that of the Japan Coast Guard.”

Since 2010, the CCG’s fleet of large patrol ships has more than doubled from approximately 60 to more than 130, according to the U.S. Defense Department’s 2019 annual report on Chinese military power, making it by far the largest coast guard force in the world “and increasing its capacity to conduct simultaneous, extended offshore operations in multiple disputed areas.”

The newer ships — including one known as “the beast” due to its 12,000-ton displacement and 76 mm rapid-fire guns, an armament typically mounted on naval destroyers or frigates — are substantially larger and more capable than the older ships.

Japan’s stance has typically been to respond in kind to Chinese maritime and air intrusions near the Senkakus, with the SDF being mobilized only if the situation exceeds the capacity of the JCG to respond.

For now, the SDF has mainly been dispatched to the airspace above the East China Sea.

According to the Defense Ministry, Air Self-Defense Force fighters were scrambled 947 times in fiscal 2019 — the third-largest number since 1958, when the SDF began scrambling against aircraft intruding into Japanese airspace. Nearly 71 percent of these were against Chinese aircraft.

The ASDF has also been flying daily patrols over the East China Sea from sunrise to sunset to monitor Chinese military aircraft in the area since last year, media reports citing government sources have said.

“The JSDF is gradually being overworked and overwhelmed,” said Grant Newsham, a retired U.S. Marine Corps colonel and researcher at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies. “Yes, it can go out and respond to Chinese air and sea incursions, but the Chinese are showing (up) in more numbers, in more places, and more often than ever. And the SDF simply doesn’t have the resources to match the Chinese.

“Play this out for a few more years and the mismatch will widen.”

South China Sea link

Much of the global focus, however, has not been on the East China Sea but rather a neighboring waterway that is more than just physically connected: the flash-point South China Sea, home to key shipping lanes crucial to the Japanese economy.

Some 42 percent of Japan’s maritime trade passed through the South China Sea in 2016, according to the China Power project at the Center for Strategic Studies think tank in Washington.

Beijing claims some 80 percent of the South China Sea under its “nine-dash line,” a vaguely delineated area based on maps from the 1940s, and has spent several years building fortified military bases on man-made islands there. Some of these islands are home to military-grade airfields and advanced weaponry, but all have been used to cement its claims.

Tokyo, Washington and others whose trade plies the routes have long feared effective Chinese control of the waterway would leave them open to coercion, or worse.

“Japan has always made a direct connection between the South China Sea and its economic security, via the sea lanes that carry Japan imports of strategic commodities, as well as its manufactured exports,” said IISS’s Graham, who has written a book on Japanese sea lane security.

Even with the push by Japan to repair ties with China, the Abe administration has remained vocal on the subject of the South China Sea. Tokyo has repeatedly urged Beijing to adhere to the rule of law and freedom of navigation, while also joining the U.S. and others for military exercises in and near the waterway, sending some of its biggest warships through the waters, much to the chagrin of China.

Newsham said that the Japanese views on both the South and East China seas “are interrelated.”

“But just based on geography alone, Chinese control of the South China Sea terrifies Tokyo. And it should,” he said, noting the huge percentage of energy and trade that flows through the waterway.

“Give the PRC (People’s Republic of China) the ability to choke that off — or even threaten to do so — and Japan then comes under all sorts of pressure to accommodate China in any number of areas,” Newsham said.

Tokyo also draws a more general connection between the South China Sea and Southeast Asia as a region to its own security.

Japan doesn’t want to see the region dominated by China, leading to its broader support for the “Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy,” the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the rule of law, Graham said.

These fears have echoed the broader U.S. stance.

Just two weeks ago, Washington took the extraordinary step of declaring Beijing’s claims in the waterway “completely unlawful.” In a separate speech this month, Pompeo decried Beijing’s “campaign of bullying” in the South China Sea and pledged that Washington would “not allow” China to treat the waters “as its maritime empire.” The following day, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Asian and Pacific Affairs David Stilwell asserted that the U.S. was “no longer going to say we are neutral on these maritime issues” and warned that “nothing is off the table.”

What’s next

Ultimately, according to Newsham, what is happening in the South China Sea could prove to be a bad omen for Tokyo.

“It’s fair to say that whatever happens in the South China Sea is a preview of what is in store in the East China Sea,” he said. “It’s not unthinkable things might happen simultaneously or even ‘first’ in the East China Sea.”

One particular area of great concern for Tokyo near the Senkakus is the so-called gray zone tactics employed by China that exert pressure on Japan but fall below the threshold of conflict.

Presently, China holds its naval assets at a further distance than its paramilitary and law enforcement assets. But if Tokyo responds to a law enforcement presence with MSDF assets “because it is unable to reciprocate, China can complain of assertive or disproportionate responses by Japan,” Neill said.

Japanese defense officials fear such a scenario could even open the door to stronger actions such as an occupation of the islands.

“Retaliation will simply give China another ‘provocation’ that Beijing needs to retaliate against,” said June Teufel Dreyer, a University of Miami professor and Asia expert.

This trepidation has left Japan effectively paralyzed in its response to the incursions around the Senkakus, she said.

“Scrambling jets, holding military drills, building missile sites on the (Nansei) Islands doesn’t scare the Chinese, since they know that the Japanese government fears escalation more than it fears allowing the Chinese to gradually take what they want,” Dreyer said.

“They won’t be invaded, they’ll be ‘osmosed.’”

Still, although Japan has retained an on-alert security posture over the Senkakus for years now, a response that goes beyond symmetrical could exacerbate tensions in favor of China, said Michishita.

“We are in a good position. We own those islands, unlike (the South Korean-controlled but Japanese-claimed) Takeshima Islands or the (Russian-controlled, Japanese-claimed) Northern Territories,” he said, referring to what the Koreans call Dokdo and a four islets Japan formerly held off Hokkaido.

Michishita said that because Japan continues to exercise administrative control over the Senkakus, “making a fuss is not in our interests.”

“Keeping things as quiet as possible is the way to go,” he added, saying that Japan had “learned a lesson” after China began sending scores of government vessels to the area in response to the 2012 nationalization.

“The lesson is, when we make a fuss … China is likely to exploit it and use it as an opportunity to further escalate the situation.”

Sino-Japan relations impacts

Sino-Japan relations key to solve every impact.Tuosheng, member of the Academic Committee of Huazhi Institute for Global Governance at Nanjing University, 2009 (Zhang, The Architecture of Security in the Asia-Pacific,"Chapter 10. Changes in China-Japan Relations and East Asian Security," No Publication, http://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p124751/html/ch10.html, DoA 8/22/2020, DVOG)

Continued improvement and development of China-Japan relations will have a positive influence on East Asian security. First of all, it facilitates cooperation on the Six-Party Talks. With the continuous escalation of the North Korean nuclear crisis in 2006, people were worried about greater difficulty in coordination between China on the one hand and the United States and Japan on the other due to poor China-Japan relations and the more intense situation on the Korean Peninsula once North Korea carried out its first nuclear test. However, major changes in China-Japan relations exerted a positive influence over the development of the North Korean nuclear issue. After North Korea’s nuclear test, the UNSC quickly adopted a resolution to impose sanctions on North Korea and the Six-Party Talks resumed shortly thereafter to register important progress. Admittedly, the positive developments on the North Korean nuclear issue had multiple causes, but improved China-Japan relations and strengthened cooperation between China, South Korea and Japan were certainly among them. Some people even believed that Japan sought to improve its relations with China partly out of its serious concern over the Korean Peninsula. This analysis makes sense. In the future, with China and Japan giving priority to the Six-Party Talks in their effort to develop regional and international cooperation, the positive effects of improved China-Japan relations will become more apparent.

Improved China-Japan relations have also helped to relax tensions over the East China Sea and to facilitate a peaceful resolution of the outstanding territorial and maritime disputes that are still widespread in East Asia. When state-to-state relations worsen, disputes over territory or maritime interests are not only difficult to resolve but may also trigger military conflict. In 2005, frictions over rival claims in the East China Sea developed to a dangerous level, with a marked increase in military surveillance by both China and Japan, more radical opinions in the confrontational national sentiments, and the appearance of the view that there would definitely be a war between China and Japan. Later, following negotiations, the two sides reached initial understandings on the common development of these disputed territories and the situation relaxed to some extent. Nonetheless, against the backdrop of a generally tense bilateral relationship, registering further progress will be very difficult and the risk of reversal is ever-present. Improvement in bilateral relations has created the necessary condition for common development of the East China Sea, allowing the two governments to gradually dispel disruptive nationalistic sentiments and find practical ways forward through sustained and serious dialogue and mutual compromise. After late 2006, the two sides increased their contact over the East China Sea issue. Their common understanding grew and they agreed to strive for a specific scheme of common development to be reported to leaders of the two countries in the fall of 2007. [19] If China and Japan are successful in jointly developing their claims in the East China Sea, they will not only create conditions for the two sides to resolve their maritime boundary dispute and the Diaoyutai Islands

dispute in the future, but also set a positive example for other countries in the region in relaxing tension and resolving disputes over territory or maritime interests.

Moreover, improved China-Japan relations are conducive to maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, which serves the interests of the Mainland, Taiwan and others in East Asia (including Japan), as well as those nations outside the region (such as the United States). However, the development of pro-independence forces in Taiwan constitutes a huge challenge to peace and stability in the region. In recent years, with the sustained stable development of China-US relations, their cooperation to prevent Taiwan-independence sentiments disrupting the status quo has increased and their friction over the Taiwan question has decreased. However, frictions between China and Japan over Taiwan have been on the rise due to the worsening relationship. Pro-Taiwan forces in Japan have gained influence, official contacts with Taiwan have increased, and Japan’s Taiwan policy has moved from one of ambiguity to more clarity. [ 20 ] This has been exploited by Taiwan’s independence forces. They even publicly called for the establishment of a quasi-military alliance with Japan against China. The worsening of China-Japan relations added complexity and risk to the situation in the Taiwan Strait. Any improvement and development in China-Japan relations may lead to increased cooperation between the two countries in maintaining peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, thus containing the expansion of the Taiwan independence force and leaving China, the United States and Japan more space in which to manoeuvre in the event that the pro-independence forces provoke a crisis. The May 2007 US-Japan Security Consultative Committee (2 plus 2) meeting did not again list the peace and stability of the Taiwan Strait among its common strategic objectives, giving a positive signal[21] and helping to restrict the capacity of the pro-independence forces to disrupt the status quo in the Taiwan Strait.

Further, improved China-Japan relations will facilitate the establishment and development of a regional multilateral security cooperation mechanism. At present, East Asian security mechanisms are mainly composed of two parts: the US-led bilateral military alliances; and the rapidly developing bilateral and multilateral security dialogues in which coordination and cooperation among major powers play an important role. As time passes, the role of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the APT, the EAS and the Six-Party Talks will increase and that of bilateral military alliances will gradually decrease. In this process, improvement and development of China-Japan relations and strengthened military relations and defence dialogue will not only facilitate the formation of a relatively stable and coordinated triangular relationship between China, the United States and Japan; it will also create the conditions necessary for dialogue between China and the US-Japan alliance. Continued development of China-Japan relations will inject vigour into, and lay down the foundation for, the development of multilateral security mechanisms in East Asia. History will prove that only once China and Japan achieve a genuine reconciliation, and are able to cooperate comprehensively, can East Asia establish an effective multilateral security cooperation mechanism.

Finally, the continued improvement and development of China-Japan relations will also greatly enhance their cooperation in the fields of non-traditional security, such as counter-terrorism, guarding against financial and energy crises, treatment of environmental pollution and ecological destruction, prevention and treatment of international infectious diseases, combating transnational crime, and supplying international humanitarian assistance. Since the end of the Cold War, an important trend in the international situation has been the rise of non-traditional security challenges. Strengthened cooperation in this regard will be a necessary choice for China, Japan and other East Asian countries.