The four-hour-long talks between Chinese ‘dictator’ (as the US President called him) Xi Jinping and Joe Biden on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in San Francisco on November 15 came after hectic diplomatic activities in this part of the world, which till late 19th century had relatively little strategic significance. The war in Ukraine, tension in Taiwan and nearby islands as well as the systematic obliteration of Gaza by Washington-backed Israel was very much in their minds. Yet the two most powerful leaders of the planet chose not to confront these issues in the manner they deserved.
A month earlier Russian President Vladimir Putin-Xi meeting took place in Beijing when the former made a trip to China on October 17-18—that is 10 days after the Hamas attack on South Israel.
The train journey to Vladivostok by North Korean President Kim Jong-Un and his September 13 meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin was another major development.
The origin of the present uneasiness in air and water in the entire region can be traced back to the 1890s when Japan attacked China in 1894-95 and the United States fought a naval battle with Spain to capture the Philippines in 1898. The process did not stop there. Japan invaded Russia in 1904-05 to be followed by the annexation of Korea which came directly under its rule in 1910.
Japan, which sided with the Allied powers in World War-I, had played a small but significant role against the German navy in the eastern theatre of War. It captured Manchuria in 1931 and a few years later a big chunk of China came under its control. The massacres and atrocities committed by occupying Japanese forces in China and Korea had few parallels in history. Tens of millions perished.
Attack on Pearl Harbour
The rising imperialistic ambition of Japan alarmed the United States which too was busy expanding its area of influence in the entire Pacific. The United States closed the Panama Canal for Japan and imposed a trade embargo on it. Tokyo retaliated by carrying out a massive air attack on Pearl Harbour on December 6-7, 1941 and in the process dragged the United States into World war-II.
Thus, it should be made clear that the imperialistic ambition of Japan and the United States preceded the Communist revolutions in Russia in 1917 and in China in 1949. The involvement of America and European colonial powers in the Pacific continued after World War II. The war in the Korean peninsula and Indo-China, especially Vietnam, are examples.
Why Pacific?
The big question is: Why did the United States choose to expand its influence in the Pacific and further towards Asia as early as 1898 with the snatching of the Philippines from European power, Spain? After all, there was no country in the Far East which was challenging or threatening it. The truth is that by the late 19th century the US had emerged as a big power. It had bought Alaska from Russia in 1867 and had gradually increased its clout in Central and South America. Along with the Philippines, it had captured Cuba from Spain in 1898.
The scene on the eastern side of the US was totally different. Apart from Cuba and tiny islands in the nearby Caribbean Sea, there was no scope for the US to flex its muscle in the Atlantic Ocean. As Europe, where White Americans had their ancestral roots, was on the other side of the North Atlantic Ocean, the US did not want to fight direct war with any country of this continent.
Incidentally, America got embroiled in two Europe-centric World Wars much later and adopted a neutral stance in the initial couple of years. In World War II it joined the battle in Europe only after Germany and Italy, soon after the Japanese strike on Pearl Harbour, declared war on it.
In the South Atlantic Ocean was Africa where the European colonial powers had an enormous presence. It was from West Africa that millions of Black slaves were forcibly transported and sold in the Americas by European colonizers. Thus, it was wise to look towards the Pacific and not the Atlantic.
Ironically, now the United States and Japan are accusing Russia, China and North Korea is creating war hysteria. No doubt Moscow, Beijing and Pyongyang have, for their respective reasons, ganged up against the two original creators of trouble in otherwise pacific waters of the entire region.
Changing equation
Today, the United States and Japan are close allies. At the same time, the US has befriended the same Communist Vietnam. But one cannot forget the fact that it had once vowed to bomb the latter to the Stone Age. Millions died in wars in Vietnam and the Korean Peninsula. President Barack Obama in 2016 and Joe Biden (both Democrats) just after the G-20 Summit in New Delhi made trips to Hanoi. Biden’s visit took place a couple of days before Kim Jon-Un’s talks with Putin in Vladivostok.
Make no mistake, Vietnam is not a democracy. But the US has no problem. After all, South Korea and Taiwan too had a dictatorship till the late 1980s. Washington continued to recognize the Republic of China or Taiwan and not mainland China till January 1979.
Obama and Biden had visited Vietnam in a bid to increase the US hold in South-East Asia. The truth is that it was the then Soviet Union and China (the latter in the initial years) which helped Vietnam in its war against France and the United States between 1945 and 1975.
In between Obama and Biden’s diplomatic forays came the high-profile talks between Republican President Donald Trump and his North Korean counterpart Kim on February 27-28, 2019. Curiously, Hanoi hosted this meeting eight months after the first one was held in Singapore in June 2018. It is another thing that the efforts did not yield any result.
China under Xi Jinping
The growing power of China under hawkish Xi Jinping has changed the entire equation in the region. It is true there is hardly any Chinese naval presence in the vicinity of the western coast of the US, but the increase in Chinese trade in the entire Latin America had alarmed Washington.
Besides, Beijing’s claim over several islands in the South China Sea had created a sense of insecurity in the countries of the region. This had given the US enough opportunity to increase its naval activities in Indo-China.
The fact is that notwithstanding the growing fear from Beijing, common people in South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines etc. do not want to antagonize China beyond a certain point. They cannot afford to go against China, which today, unlike in the past, has in Russia the best friend. They cannot change geography as China is their neighbour and a leading trading partner.
There is no dearth of peaceniks in Japan who have not forgotten Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The nuclear bombs were dropped when Tokyo had given enough signals to surrender. Within three weeks of the first nuclear test, President Harry Truman of the United States ordered the nuking of Japanese cities. This was simply because there was fear that Japan may surrender before the Soviet army as the war in Europe had ended in early May 1945. Japan ultimately submitted before the United States.
Lastly, there are many South Koreans, not to speak about North Koreans and Chinese, who have not forgiven the Japanese for the crimes committed by its occupying army. Not only that, there are innumerable Japanese who now concede that their forces had committed immense crimes during the hey-days of imperialism. Similar is the feeling of common Vietnamese against Americans.
Today Xi is in California and talking on equal terms with his US counterpart. In this part of America, there is a large Chinese population who arrived in the late 19th century to work in mines, rail and road construction projects cutting off forests and other back-breaking jobs.
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