Hillary Clinton won't unite south-east Asia against China

[marmar]

Hillary Clinton won't unite south-east Asia against China
The US's bid to turn south-east Asian states into Lilliputians tackling China's Gulliver is simplistic and obscures other issues

Simon Tisdall
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 4 September 2012


Faltering US efforts to forge a united front with less powerful Asian countries in the face of an increasingly assertive China have resumed in earnest today with Hillary Clinton's visit to Indonesia, a leading light of the 10-member Association of South-East Asian nations (Asean) and the world's most populous majority Muslim country. But the US secretary of state's arrival in Jakarta was overshadowed by claims that the Obama administration is ignoring worsening political and human rights abuses in its haste to lock Indonesia and states such as Malaysia and Singapore into its 21st century Asia-Pacific strategic vision in which China is strong but constrained.

In Washington's favoured scenario, China becomes a sort of Gulliver-style giant held down and tied in place by feisty multitudes of tiny Lilliputians. What the state department may have forgotten is that, in Jonathan Swift's tale, Gulliver and his undersized captors reach an uneasy accommodation, then fall out violently. To the US dismay, the last Asean summit, held in Phnom Penh in July, ended in unprecedented confusion after member governments failed to agree a final communique. The Philippines and Vietnam, US allies, wanted to insert a reference to China's attempts to assert ownership over disputed, possibly oil-rich island territories in the South China Sea.

But others were less ready to beard the Beijing behemoth. Cambodia, which hosted the meeting and is heavily dependent on Chinese aid and investment, blocked the proposed text. Now attention is switching to the next Asean summit in Phnom Penh in November. During a meeting in the Cook Islands on Friday with leaders of South Pacific island nations, Clinton pledged to continue helping to maintain security in the region and to protect the flow of maritime commerce. She also called on China to "act in a fair and transparent way" in the Pacific, the Wall Street Journal reported. "We want them to play a positive role in navigation and maritime security issues," she said. "We want to see them contribute to sustainable development for the people of the Pacific, to protect the precious environment, including the ocean, and to pursue economic activity that will benefit the people."

Some progress has been made on an agreement between Asean and China on a "code of conduct" for managing territorial disputes before they become flashpoints. But Beijing continues to want to deal with such issues bilaterally, while the US believes the Asean countries will be more able to stand up for themselves if they act collectively in multilateral forums. "The most important thing is that we end up in a diplomatic process where these issues are addressed in a strong diplomatic conversation between a unified Asean and China rather than through any kind of coercion," a senior Clinton official said. US involvement (many in China prefer to call it meddling) has deepened since Barack Obama decided last year to switch attention and resources to the Asia-Pacific region as American commitments in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Europe ebbed. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/03/hillary-clinton-visit-south-east-asia-china