PERSPECTIVES
ment of 5,000 Navy personnel at Darwin in Australia and
the strengthening of American forces at Okinawa military
bases in Japan, located east of the East China Sea.
As China unilaterally declared the new Air Defense
Identification Zone (ADIZ) over parts of the East China
Sea, Beijing continued to engage in requesting the identification, location, and control of civil aircraft in its designated
zone. Within the “nine-dash-line” maritime region, China
has the disputed fishery-rich Scarborough shoal claimed
by the Philippines and the Haiyang Shiyou 981 oil rig (or
HD-981) near the Paracels—claimed partly by Vietnam.
In all of these assertive actions by the Chinese, the US and
its allies—including the old (the Philippines) and the new
(Vietnam)—do not have a straightforward geostrategy to
deter Beijing’s forceful and unilateral behavior.
History Repeats Itself
The Monroe Doctrine experience in the Caribbean
and Latin America reminds us of the influence of historic
links in geostrategies. Despite America’s self-assured foreign
policy in the nineteenth century, for example, a number of
Caribbean islands still continued to maintain close relations
with their colonial masters over the Atlantic, but the United
States never went to war with them. In recent years, the Chinese investment and commercial engagement in America’s
backyard have begun to accelerate as these island nations
and Latin American countries turn to Beijing for better
trade relations and long-term investment on infrastructure
development. In reality, the Monroe Doctrine has had mixed
results as economics triumphs over politics.
Beside territorial disputes and political tensions, China
is the largest trading partner with stakeholder countries in
the South China Sea—along with America, Africa, and elsewhere. For all nations, economic development and human
progress are the vital concerns; political freedoms follow
later—just as America’s experience of “the Hamiltonian
means to Jeffersonian ends” created greater freedoms for all
Americans. In Peaceful War: How the Chinese Dream and
American Destiny Created a Pacific New World Order, I
explain this narrative of the American experiment, in which
Jeffersonian equality for women, Native Americans, and
African Americans only materialized years later, after painful human struggles, but Hamiltonian strategies sustained
the financial and economic livelihood and development of
the United States.
For China, Deng Xiaoping’s economic reform and
trade liberalization must bring Hamiltonian economic progress—with a strong central government, a state-run banking
system, and a modernized naval force. President Xi Jinping
is now pursuing his Chinese Dream—a strategic variation
of the American Dream with Chinese characteristics—for
the growing Chinese middle-class.
Xi has unwillingly unleashed an organic process for Jeffersonian aspirations of freedom to thrive. He has allowed
the Chinese people to travel abroad (over 100 million last
year), Chinese students to study overseas (over 300,000 in the
United States alone), and over five million Chinese workers
to engage in infrastructure projects in Africa and elsewhere.
Freedom in media—especially in social media like microblogs—is greater than ever before. Yet, the Confucian union
will continue with the Communist Party.
Pacific World Order
An unprecedented transformation has silently taken
place in China. This evolution has been relatively peaceful.
America must reflect on its own historic footprints in the
Pacific, especially with the tragic legacies of the Philippines
and Vietnam. In all this, President Obama now realizes the
limit of American power (in Egypt, Syria, and Ukraine)
even with its unparalleled military superiority in the world.
Likewise, China will soon recognize the limitation of its
assertive dominance in the Pacific region and its economic
hegemony in the world.
With China’s so-called “Peaceful Rise,” there has
emerged a Pacific new world order, for which America’s Asia
“pivot” or rebalancing strategy constitutes a “leading behind”
plan. As Americans are weary of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan,
and elsewhere, the Obama administration’s priorities must
be focused more on the nation’s infrastructure development
and job creation. Congressional leaders understand that
America’s global military outreach has been exhausting, and
the primacy of American power has always come with the
strength of national endowments and innovations in policy.
As the United States expands its energy self-sufficiency
with new sources of gas and oil in North America, our
economic interests in the oil-rich Middle East and our traditional alliances in Europe have begun to change. Given
all this, Obama’s Asia “pivot” strategy is neither a pivot
nor a rebalance; it is about trade, investment, and finance
as epitomized by his Trans-Pacific Partnerships to make
international trade benefit its citizens and others. US Trade
Representative Michael Froman said that this trade pact “is
the cornerstone of the Obama administration’s economic
policy in the Asia Pacific” and “an ambitious, comprehensive and high-standard agreement” to be negotiated and
concluded by twelve countries. It is a Hamiltonian strategy
with corporate interests. This has exactly been the grand
strategy of post-Deng China, which Beijing has seemingly
emulated from the Hamiltonian America that advocated a
strong federal government, a powerful federal reserve bank,
and a robust military force.
American Traditions in Action
Obama continued to use Jeffersonian rhetoric like his
famous crossing of the “red-line” speech on Syria and played
the reluctant but vocal actor over the Russian annexation
of Crimea. With China, the ͥ