Despite all the partisanship and sales-pitching that was at the national conventions of the two major political parties, neither party seems to want to address the wholesale issues with America’s current diplomatic quandaries. While Donald Trump talks, however spasmodically, of restoring respect for American military might overseas, he often neglects to talk about why so many countries are wary of American efforts abroad. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, wants to project American power overseas to more and more regions.
The problem with both of these approaches is that they ignore the systematic underlying issues in favor of the emotionally charged. Yes, ISIS is an important threat to American national security, but even larger is the showdown going on in the South China Sea.
What is this showdown you speak of? Thank you for asking…
The South China Sea is full of little islands, atolls and reefs that are largely uninhabited. Many of those that rise above sea level are uninhabited because they are simply sunburnt fingers of sand incapable of sustaining mammal life of any type let alone human beings. Many of these islands are “claimed” as territory by multiple countries.
One island that has been in the news a lot is Fiery Cross Reef, which is claimed by Taiwan, Vietnam, Brunei (yes, that’s a country), the Philippines, Malaysia and of course China.
But only one of those governments has taken to building on this reef and that is China. “Building” is actually not an accurate term. It’s more like “creating” and then “weaponizing.” While Fiery Cross Reef had only a little room for a single building at first, it is now over 60 acres (thanks to dredging and shipping in sand) that includes hangars, a runway, a small harbor, and numerous weapons systems that would make some Russian naval vessels blush.
This is an obvious threat to freedom of navigation within the South China Sea, but it is also an ever-present threat to Palawan, the Philippine island province less than 200 miles away.
The Philippines are a long-time ally of the United States, and once again we have yet to address the threat from an up-and-coming nation aimed at one of our allies.
While the U.S. has started to increase patrols and cruises through the contested waters, Chinese aggression has gone relatively unchecked and what is behind it is a lack of balance in the region. If China is the only major military and economic power in Asia, it will continue to expand and dominate, especially while the U.S. continues to hog tie Japan with our Cold War concepts of American military dominance and Marshall Plan memories.
There is a natural “ally” of sorts in Asia that could weigh into the standoff, but even that government cannot get involved without risking the wrath of it’s citizens. That, of course, is India.
Why would India not want to be involved when they need to be able to pass ships through the South China Sea? Because standing up to China in defense of U.S. allies could mean working in concert with U.S. forces and the U.S. is allied with India’s No. 1 enemy: Pakistan.
See, Pakistan and India have had an ongoing conflict for most of recent memory over a region called Kashmir, a disputed territory located between the two nations. While Kashmir is relatively unimportant, neither country can back down because it will just mean that the militarized zone will move inward towards the rest of either country.
Oh, and did I mention that these two nations are nuclear powers, both armed with enough missiles to completely destroy each other?
Rather than the United States keeping its nose out of a potentially nuclear conflict, the U.S. allied with the repressive Islamist regime that is the Pakistani government in order to set up military bases from which operations in the Middle East can be launched.
So now we are beholden to the government of Pakistan, which regularly brutalizes its people and allows the Taliban to operate freely in some regions, for foreign aid and military support rather than India, which is liberalizing due (mainly) to trade with western powers like the United States.
India and Pakistan hate each other so much that politicians regularly get elected in both countries by promising to wipe the other off the map, and rather than backing the democratic India, we back the militarist and corrupt Pakistan which serves us no good other than to take off from, bomb stuff in the Middle East, and then get back before the Pakistani-funded Taliban can figure out what happened.
My point here is that the United States’ obsession with the Middle East is endangering areas all around the world as up-and-coming nations try to assert themselves in their own regions. What on earth does the Middle East have to offer us at this point anyway?
As an economy, we are growing less and less dependent on Middle Eastern oil as new technologies come out and new oil deposits are being discovered and opened up across the globe. Other than that, a trip to the beach will show you that we have no shortage of sand…
Now more than ever we have two choices, either we begin acting to empower our allies in different regions to act as counterbalances to the Russian and Chinese syndicates, or we begin ramping up our efforts to boldly command respect in various regions. One of these choices will ultimately bankrupt us, and the other means taking a more hands-off approach to geopolitics. For certain, however, the path we are on now that ignores allies’ pleas for help, dismisses aggressions as “growing pains,” and stifles our most valuable allies’ ability to defend themselves, is simply not an option.

Devon Minnema is a college student and small-businessman

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