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FOREIGN POLICY
Trump Is Causing Conflict by Playing Peacemaker
The United States is creating problems in Asia by offering to
mediate Vietnam’s tensions with China.
By Bill Hayton
Just what did Donald Trump mean when he offered to “mediate” in the
dispute between Vietnam and China over the South China Sea? On Sunday,
during his official visit to Hanoi, U.S. President Trump told his
Vietnamese counterpart, “If I can help mediate or arbitrate, please let
me know … I’m a very good mediator and arbitrator.”
The comment set alarm bells ringing in Vietnam, where fears about
becoming the spurned partner in a G-2 relationship between the United
States and China come second only to concerns about the United States
supposedly plotting to overthrow Communist Party rule in Hanoi.
“Vietnam,” said Nguyen Thanh Trung, dean of the Faculty of International
Relations at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Ho Chi
Minh City, “would welcome [Trump’s] suggestion, but China prefers
bilateral mechanisms over the South China Sea issues.” Beijing has never
welcomed outside intervention in the disputes before, and Trung probably
was speaking for Vietnamese policymakers when he said that, “I assume
China will not endorse his initiative unless Trump’s offer favors
China’s claims in the South China Sea.”
On the face of it, the offer to “mediate” in
the South China Sea dispute is very strange. China does not
regard the United States as a neutral party amid the rival territorial
claims. As Wu Shicun, president of China’s National Institute for South
China Sea Studies told a conference in Haikou, China, on Nov. 9,
“Substantive issues such as disputes over territory and jurisdiction
over the sea have not been solved yet and are still facing the
intervention by major outside powers such as the United States and
Japan.” This is not the first time a senior American government official
has offered to mediate in the South China Sea dispute. Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton suggested the notion back in 2010. It came to
nothing.
But what may cause a few sleepless nights is
whether Trump and China have made their own deal.
Everyone is well aware that Trump’s current priority in Asia is the
denuclearization of North Korea. They wonder what price Beijing may have
extracted from Washington in order to increase the pressure on
Pyongyang. Would a little arm-twisting in Hanoi be the quid pro quo for
a little sanctions-tightening on the Yalu River?
The relatively low priority given to the South China Sea issue in the
two governments’ joint statement — it was point 13 of 14, below the
relocation of the American embassy in Hanoi — might suggest a dialing
down of its importance to the United States.
There’s no evidence that a grand deal is the plan, and there would be
plenty of Trump supporters in Washington fervently arguing against
tolerating any Chinese advances in the South China Sea.
Nonetheless, lurking in the minds of Southeast
Asian governments is the suspicion that U.S. strategy in the newly named
“Indo-Pacific” region could become a demonstration of the “Art of the
Deal” at their expense.
What would China want from such an arrangement? Ultimately, it seeks
international recognition of its claims to every scrap of land within
its unilateral U-shaped line claim, along with its “historic rights” to
all the natural resources enclosed by the line. In the meantime, until
it gets everything, Beijing might be prepared to generously accept some
halfway measures — such as acquiescence to its demands for “joint
development.” This is the formulation China uses to press the Southeast
Asian claimants to share the fish, oil, and natural gas that lie in what
are legally their own exclusive economic zones.
But other parts of Trump’s messaging were better news for the
Vietnamese. In his speech at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation
summit on Nov. 10, he offered this: “In America, like every nation that
has won and defended its sovereignty, we understand that we have nothing
so precious as our birthright, our treasured independence, and our
freedom.” Trump may not have realized it, but his speechwriter was
clearly echoing the words of another president, Vietnamese leader Ho Chi
Minh, on July 17, 1966: “Nothing is more precious than independence and
freedom”.
Trump then went on to link that sentiment to the story of the two Trung
sisters who, in the modern Vietnamese nationalist narrative, fought
against China 2,000 years ago. This, combined with a reference to
countries being “satellites to none,” sounded like American support for
Hanoi’s continued defiance of Beijing.
Just as important for Hanoi were the things
that Trump did not say. Apart from one brief mention of
“individual rights” (strangely coupled with “freedom of navigation and
overflight”), there was no mention of political or social reform. The
official joint statement gave only a single sentence nod towards
“protecting and promoting human rights”.
On his only trip to Vietnam as president in May 2016, former President
Barack Obama hosted a dinner for reformers and dissidents such as the
protest singer Do Nguyen Mai Khoi. This time around there was no such
hospitality. Instead, Mai Khoi and several other dissidents were
barricaded into their houses by plainclothes police and were later
evicted from Hanoi.
This indifference to questions of rights and governance is likely to be
the hallmark of Trump’s Indo-Pacific strategy. It will make diplomatic
relations with authoritarian governments much easier, even if it
disappoints a generation of younger citizens who, during the Obama
years, looked to the United States for support in their desire to expand
social and political freedoms.
The other major break with the previous administration will be over
trade. Trump made this crystal-clear in both Danang and Hanoi, where his
speeches called for “fair and reciprocal trade” and denounced the United
States’ chronic trade deficits with most Asian countries.
For the government in Hanoi, Vietnam’s $32 billion trade surplus with
the United States is critical for balancing its $34 billion trade
deficit with China. It has no incentive to give Trump what he really
wants — but it will offer a few sops. Hence the announcement of
nonbinding memoranda of understanding for several large deals with
American businesses and the re-announcement of a large aircraft engine
deal for Pratt & Whitney.
There is an overlap here between the issues of rights and trade. The
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) pushed by the Obama administration would
have made it easier for small and medium-sized businesses to export and
expand. The bilateral approach preferred by Trump will give advantages
to large corporations and state-owned enterprises. American
participation in TPP would have encouraged democratization in a way that
state-to-state bilateralism will not. Vietnam is one of the 11 countries
pushing ahead with TPP, but without U.S. participation some of the
liberalizing measures, such as allowing independent trade unions, will
be dropped.
The one clear area of continuity with the Obama administration is the
military. Talk of “pivot” and “rebalance” are long gone, but the
aspiration to deploy more forces into the seas of East and Southeast
Asia continues. In their joint statement, Trump and Vietnamese President
Tran Dai Quang looked forward to the first visit of a U.S. aircraft
carrier to Vietnam sometime in 2018. Vietnam will continue to welcome
American warships so long as Washington has the budget to build and
deploy them.
That will be quietly welcomed by most Southeast Asian governments,
exactly because it checks China. In conference after conference, Chinese
officials dismiss out-of-hand the idea that Southeast Asian states might
actually desire a robust presence from the United States to balance
China’s increasingly aggressive moves in the South China Sea. They
insist that if the United States withdrew, everything would be calm in
the region. Countries like Vietnam understand very well what that “calm”
would entail and are doing their best to make sure they do not end up as
“satellites” of anyone.
What this episode seems to demonstrate above
all is the difficulty of making foreign policy by the seat of one’s
pants. Such off-the-cuff comments have the capacity to upset and alarm
rather than reassure. American
diplomats will probably have to spend some time rolling back Trump’s
comments, just as they did when Secretary of State Rex Tillerson
told his Senate confirmation hearing that the United States would deny
China access to the seven artificial island bases it has built in the
South China Sea. There are signs that the new administration is
developing a coherent policy towards the Indo-Pacific, but it’s not
quite there yet |