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November 28, 2013
The disputed islands in the East China Sea, which Japan calls the Senkakus and China knows as the Diaoyutai, are the site of increasing tension between China and Japan.
China's decision to extend its "air defence identification zone" (ADIZ) over this group of uninhabited islands means that if the United States or another country's military flies inside the area without seeking permission first, China could respond with military force. Many countries, including the United States, have the same kind of zone around their borders. China's move essentially puts any non-commercial flight through that area on equal footing with a flight over its own airspace.
Behind Japan stands the US, so China's decisoion is a challenge to the US hegemony in the Asia Pacific region. China has become both markedly stronger and notably more assertive in this region and America under Obama countered with the strategic pivot to Asia which has meant the U.S. military is encircling China with a chain of air bases and military ports. The US now has a regional military power that poses a traditional, symmetric challenge to its dominance.
China is pushing back against Obama's strategic pivot to Asia, whilst Japan, under its conservative government of Shinzo Abe, is becoming increasingly nationalistic.
Australia, under an Abbott Government, sides with Japan and the US, which flew two B-52 bombers on an unannounced flight into the disputed zone to counter China's desire to flex its muscles in its own backyard. Australia says that China's unilateral action to impose an air-defence zone in the East China Sea was provocative.
The military hawks amongst the US Republicans, and those in the Pentagon and elsewhere in Washington, secretly fear that, if nothing is done to contain it, China will within decades be dominant in the Pacific, the overlord of Asia, and perhaps later in the century the -- to steal a phrase -- “sole superpower” of planet Earth.
For them the risk of confrontation increases as both China and Japan place renewed emphasis on military strength and national assertiveness whilst the US continues to implement its policy of the “containment” of China in the Pacific. As the military hawks see it, the situation is black and white: either America provides the necessary role of being the true guarantor of stability in East Asia or the region will again be dominated by belligerence and intimidation.
Shouldn't Australia be acting to help defuse the belligerent and ultra-nationalistic pronouncements now holding sway and trying to get the leaders of China, Japan, and the United States, to begin talking with one another about practical steps to resolve the disputes? Shouldn't Australia be acting to ensure that these minor disputes in the Pacific don't get out of hand?
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Julie Bishop has jumped in with both feet, thereby exacerbating tensions in the region.
Though Australia did not take sides in the territorial disputes says Bishop, it had an interest in ensuring stability and peace was maintained in the region. Stability implies the status quo.
So if Australia is opposed to any coercive or unilateral actions to change the status quo in the East China Sea, then that is a defence of US hegemony, which is strengthened when Bishop criticises China's actions.
Therefore China cannot challenge US hegemony in the Asia Pacific region.