We interrupt your regular schedule of shitposting, so that we may laugh at more American wishcasting diplomacy:
- an essay by Ely Ratner, former Assistant Secretary of Defense Indo-Pacific. Ely Ratner is a Jew, a career Dem staffer and a DoD/State Department/RAND Corp apparatchik.
What I find most repulsive about the current American diplomacy is that it is filled with wishful thinking and can not recognise the realities on the ground. The countries that Ratner named - Japan, Australia, and the Philippines - all have China as their biggest trading partner. The three countries are also covered by bilateral security agreements with the US. For Japan, the US-Japan Security Treaty; for Australia, the ANZUS Treaty; and the Philippines, the Mutual Defense Treaty (US-Philippines). Which begs the question - if all of those countries are already covered by the US guarantees, wouldn't that already achieve deterrence vis-a-vis China? The very fact that this security pact is being proposed shows that American deterrence is being diminished.
What incentives would there be for Australia and Japan to defend the Filipino claims on Second Thomas Shoal? Security pacts are the most potent when one does not challenge it. NATO still exist because Russia has not carried out a military operation on a NATO country. For this proposed security pact, however, things are quite different. China has had a history of testing security alliances; China invaded Vietnam in 1979, after Vietnam had signed a security treaty with the Soviet Union in 1978. Crucially, China successfully called the Soviet bluff. The Soviet Union chose not to militarily intervene in the brief Sino-Vietnam war of 1979.
If the proposed security pact does form, it will not be worth the paper it is written on. The moment the pact gets signed is the moment the Chinese Coast Guard formally demolish the Sierra Madre and detain the Filipino sailors. Would Australia and Japan dare confront China over the shoals in the South China Sea? If they will not, then what's the point?