04/29/14 – John Feffer – The Scott Horton Show

He's from Foreign Policy in Focus, that's at fpif.org, fpif.org, and they've got a great stable of writers over there, a little bit left-leaning, but very anti-imperialist and very well-informed, very good journalism on all the issues of the American empire and its interventions all around the world.
I highly recommend them to you, again, fpif.org.
Welcome back to the show.
John, how are you doing?
Great.
Thanks for having me back.
Very happy to have you here.
So, well, you know, I think I should probably just more or less give you a few components to this.
One is security, and the other is trade.
On the security side, the whole notion was that the United States wouldn't need to really commit as many forces to Iraq, Afghanistan, obviously we're withdrawing from those countries, shutting down those operations, we're closing bases in Europe, it was time to focus on Asia, and, of course, the rising power in Asia, China, and there was a tremendous amount of support for that coming from our Asian partners, Japan, South Korea, Philippines, all of them, all the governments there saying, hey, we're worried about China, please come over here and reassure us.
So that's the security side.
On the trade side, we were gearing up for this 12-nation TPP, or Trans-Pacific Partnership, a kind of major trade deal that was going to really facilitate U.S. corporations, for the most part, moving into the region, and adding an estimated something like, when he was actually in the region, when Obama was making this week-long trip to the four countries, he encountered some other difficulties.
He encountered, for instance, in Japan, a reluctance to simply say, hey, we're going to open up our markets, come on in, and sell us whatever food and pharmaceuticals you want.
So there was some reluctance there.
And even if the Japanese government had said, hey, we'll take whatever you want on this TPP, we'll sign on the dotted line, the president still- AF.org, and we were at the part where Obama failed to get the TPP trade deal approved by the Japanese, right?
Because he couldn't get the fast-track authority from the Congress, is that right?
Well, the two are not really connected in the sense that he wasn't able to get- He just failed in both senses, but not at the same time.
Exactly.
And so then he went on to Malaysia, and then what happened?
Well, first he had to go through South Korea, and that was a challenge in part because North Korea is, especially in the Philippines, where he was able to get a new kind of deal on basing for U.S. military, gives the U.S. military a little bit more flexibility in terms of rotating troops in and out.
So at the moment, as it says in the Philippine Constitution, you can't have actual U.S. bases in the Philippines any longer, not since the Philippines kicked out the United States back in 9192.
But basically, aside from owning the bases themselves, the U.S. military had to basically welcome the United States for basing and for maneuvers.
So this is a serious concern for the Chinese.
Well, a few things there, as far as the basing in the Philippines goes, I'm sorry, I'm so ignorant at this.
I used to know the name of the base there that they're re-opening.
Subic Bay.
Subic Bay.
Yeah, exactly.
That's the one.
And this is the same one again, right?
You're saying, you know, it won't be officially an American base, we'll just be literally taking China to court over the issue of islands in the South China Sea.
It is pursuing a kind of legal option in front of the International Court of Justice around the international law of the seas.
So this is the strategy from the Philippines.
But to add a kind of additional military dimension to that might really tip the balance in terms of the relationship between Beijing and Manila.
And you have to remember that there's an enormous Chinese population in the Philippines, ethnic Chinese population.
The ties go way back, in fact, the oldest Chinatown in the world is located in Manila.
China has poured in investments and they've done lots of soft power in terms of promoting Chinese culture in the Philippines.
And all of this basically has been endangered in part by this dispute that's taking place in the South China Sea.
And I don't think anybody really wants to see that escalate.
But unfortunately, with this new basing agreement, it's kind of certainly being perceived by China as an escalation.
Yeah, it kind of seems like bad strategy and bad politics from the point of view of the Filipinos, where they're making a bigger deal than they have to.
They're sort of cutting off or possibly at least cutting off possibilities for diplomacy by ratcheting up the tension.
And then also, meanwhile, if America gets into problems with China for whatever other issue, say disputes over rocks claimed by China and Japan, way over there, a whole different set of islands in dispute, then they could be pulled into that, too.
So I don't know.
Yeah, well, and Obama was careful when he was in Japan to say, OK, look, the Senkaku Daiyu Islands, the islands that are disputed between Japan and China, which Japan officially has administration over right now, but China stakes a claim over, says the United States will defend Japan if there's a conflict around these islands.
However, the United States refuses to take a position on who actually owns these islands.
So it's a kind of a careful position that the Obama administration has tried to maintain on this particular question.
And of course, the Obama administration...
Careful, huh?
That sounds kind of clumsy.
We'll help you.
We'll go to war.
Maybe, I don't know, I mean, war with China could be a really big war to defend islands that we're not even so sure you own.
That sounds like a strange promise to give the Japanese.
I mean, I could see the political incentives against saying, oh, yeah, when it comes to those islands, you're on your own, pal.
I mean, there's got to be a more diplomatic way to put it than that.
But yeah, I mean, at that level, it doesn't seem to make much sense.
On the other hand, Japan has been looking for the United States to provide this kind of security guarantee, which is a guarantee that's part of the U.S.-Japan alliance structure.
So if the Obama administration hadn't provided that, there would have been a significant falling out between Washington and Tokyo.
On the other hand, the United States didn't want to go so far as to anger China by saying, okay, we believe that these are actually Japanese islands.
It doesn't sound coherent at the level of logic, but unfortunately, geopolitics is often not logical.
At the same time, the Obama administration is not particularly enthusiastic about Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's nationalist turn in Japanese foreign policy, expressed in a number of different ways, on the history issue, on the visit to Yasukuni Shrine.
And it's tried to send signals to Abe, you know, hey, cool it, this is pissing off not only China, but it's pissing off South Korea, which is putatively in an alliance system with all of us.
And Abe basically has ignored the United States.
So this is complicating this pivot, when even the closest U.S. allies are not cooperating with the Obama administration, then it actually jeopardizes the entire edifice of this reorientation of U.S. foreign policy.
Well, but even if it was all working, what would be the mark of success anyway in containing China?
There's not an expansionist military power right now, at least, anyway.
So what's the point other than selling ships?
Right.
Or buying them.
The important thing to point out is that the Pacific pivot is actually a relatively modest endeavor.
It doesn't actually involve an enormous increase, or even a modest increase, in U.S. military presence in the region.
But the pivot has revolved around essentially is closing one particular base in Japan, namely the Tenma Marine Air Force Base in Okinawa, and shifting those Marines somewhere else.
Now, that has required negotiations with Australia to send several thousand U.S. Marines down to Darwin, an expanded Australian base there, potential of rotating Marines in and out of the Philippines, which is why there was this new basing agreement, upgrading of facilities in Guam and sending several thousand Marines there, and then finally, construction of a new Air Force base in Japan.
Now, that's been the real bone of contention for the last 15 years, because the folks in Okinawa don't want another military base there, especially a U.S. military base.
So the entire Pacific pivot, which is put forward as this enormous strategic rebalancing, when you boil it down, it's really just trying to close one base and figuring out where all those Marines are going to go.
Thanks, John.
I appreciate it.
I'm sorry we're out of time.
Let's do this again soon.
Absolutely.
Thank you much.
All right, everybody, that's the great John Pfeffer, Foreign Policy in Focus, fpif.org.
We'll be right back after this horrible Fox News.
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