Why the Hunstman-for-President speculation badly misses the point

The complete lack of interest in eastern Asia within MSM was exposed (again) with the recent flare-up in speculation that John Hunstman, current American Ambassador to the Chinese Communist regime, refused to rule out running for President in 2012. The State neatly summarizes the reaction, which completely focuses on Hunstman's Republican bona fides and how (or if) he could manage to run against his current boss (for more on Hunstman himself, see the Los Angeles Times). Even Jay Cost of the Weekly Standard was stuck on the domestic political implications.

No one, to date, has even bothered to ask why Hunstman would consider leaving in the first place. He is, after all, Ambassador to the CCP regime. If this were an Ambassador to a European nation considering a run against the president who appointed him, or a Middle Eastern nation, speculation would almost certainly focus on policy differences. In fact, given the Obama Administration's recent policies on the CCP, this may be the most important (if unrecognized) reason.

Lest we forget, Hunstman signed up for the job expecting (as nearly everyone else did) that he would be the point man for continued "engagement" with the ChiComs. Instead, Hunstman has watched Secretary of State Hillary Clinton publicly rebuke the CCP for trying to claim the South China Sea and the Senkakus for itself (Duncan Currie: National Review Online - The Corner). Then the president engaged in a post-election tour of Asia that included all of Zhongnanhai's major rivals expect Vietnam, but not Hunstman's posting itself.

Finally, there was the reaction to the recent antics from Stalinist North Korea, in which the early inaction (disappointing for those of us looking to send a message to the CCP) was followed by . . . more inaction (a pleasant surprise for those of us expecting concessions to Beijing and Pyongyang).

So what does a marginalized ambassador who is watching the Administration for which he works move toward a policy unseen in 20 years - and a policy the ambassador himself opposes to boot?

Drop broad hints that you could turn from appointee to rival is a good way to get attention. It worked wonders for opponents of American military action in Iraq.

Unfortunately for Hunstman (and fortunately for the rest of us, if only in this case), American MSM still hasn't paid enough attention to Obama's Asia policy. The combination of domestic politics and traditional attention bias toward Europe or the Middle East has blinded nearly everyone to the fact that the policy Hunstman was appointed to promote and the policy into which the Administration has stumbled are quite different.

So, I think we can expect more heartburn from Hunstman, until the media begin to notice what the Administration is actually doing in eastern Asia (our allies there already know, and are deeply grateful). In the meantime, it must be enormously painful for the CCP to discover that everything it has tried, from provocations by its Korean colony to rumblings from its American friends, has failed to change Washington slow-but-steadying drift toward anti-Communism.

The Obama Administration continues to be far weaker than it should on human rights in the CCP, but in the purely geopolitical realm, its policy in eastern Asia continues to be an improvement over its three most recent predecessors. It would be nice for someone other than the CCP itself or the American Ambassador there to notice.

Cross-posted to Bearing Drift

Will Japan re-energize Obama on the CCP?

The Obama Administration's reaction to Stalinist North Korea's attack on the democratic South was traditional, conventional, and weak. Once again, the Chinese Communist Party was able to position itself as the supposedly reasonable regional power trying to get a handle on their crazy ally - even though it has to this day refused to criticize Kim Jong-il and his crew. That said, Zhongnanhai has been unable to get policy concessions out of the president yet, and what Japan is about to do with its National Defense Policy Guidelines may get the White House to snap of out its post-attack stupor.

According to the Financial Times (UK), Japan's military will release the aforementioned guidelines later this month, and they will call for a major shift in military policy.

Officials and analysts say the keenly awaited National Defence Policy Guidelines will signal a historic refocusing of Japan's army and other forces toward securing the line of small islands in the southern Nansei chain that stretches from Japan’s main islands toward Taiwan and are seen as threatened by China's rapidly growing military power.

Among the islands in the Nansei chain are Okinawa and the Senkakus, the latter of which are claimed by the Communists (they call them the Diaoyus).

The implications of this are numerous, and none are good for the CCP.

Within Japan, it means a maturing of the Democratic Party of Japan - recently elected to power on a platform that included cozying up to the Communists. According to an analyst quoted by the FT, a recent incident with a fishing boat from mainland China woke up the DPJ and the military top brass about the threat from the CCP. The long-governing Liberal Democratic Party had moved in an anti-Communist direction under Junichirio Koizumi (the last LDP leader to win an election - in 2005). Now the DPJ is joining its rival.

Regionally, the CCP may find itself repeating recent history - and not in a good way for the Communists. Last year, Zhongnanhai tried to take advantage of apparent American weakness by declaring the entire South China Sea for itself. Several American allies, including Indonesia, cried foul - and much to everyone's surprise, America joined them. Just weeks ago, President Obama himself called for India to be made a permanent member of the Security Council. Now, Japan will be heavily reinforcing an island chain that at present includes a large (and locally controversial) American military base.

If Okinawa is now a regional front-line island, the US military may not be so unwelcome. Or more likely, a strong Japanese military presence may allow the US to pull out of Okinawa entirely, thus replacing an unpopular foreign power with a strong domestic military presence dedicated to defending the homeland, while the Pentagon can score an unexpected boon to reallocate or contribution to overall deficit reduction.

I sincerely doubt the CCP was hoping for that.

In any event, Obama, whatever one thinks of him, is clearly the most multilateral president America has had in a long time. As I noted earlier, this has led to a focus on our more well-known allies in Europe - most of whom are wheezing social democracies increasingly unwilling to defend themselves from regional and global threats.

However, in Asia, America's allies are more practical - and the CCP threat is more pressing and immediate. As such, Obama's instincts have lead him to be tougher on Zhongnanhai then previous Administration's in the South China Sea. Unfortunately, the refusal to accept the reality of the CCP-North Korea alliance (i.e., that it's a tool Zhongnanhai uses to pry democratic nations apart) afflicts Seoul and Tokyo as much as it does Washington. However, the Communists have no such deflection at the ready where the Nansei-Sankakus are concerned.

If Japan really does shift its military posture (the report has not yet been released) and Washington stands with Japan as it did with Indonesia, the Obama Administration's unnamed-containment policy may be back on track.

Cross-posted to the right-wing liberal

Is Beijing Using North Korea again?

Apparently out of the blue, Stalinist regime in northern Korea shelled Yeonpeyong Island in the democratic part of the country (a.k.a. South Korea). The rest of world is trying to come to terms with the shock. There are at least two death as of 8AM EST. The White House "strongly condemned" (MSN India) the attack, but hasn't had much time to react beyond posturing.

Analysts are fishing for explanations, but the most popular one is that this has something to do with the power struggle within the regime. As Iain Martin put it, shelling a South Korean island is "what passes for a campaign ad in North Korean politics."

I'm not so sure, or to be more precise, I don't think that's the only reason. As much as people would like to think the regime in charge of northern Korea is a lone wolf unable to control or even understand, that regime is wholly dependent on the Chinese Communist Party for its survival. Moreover, the CCP prefers its allies and satellites take full blame or credit for their antics, as it turns Beijing into the "good police state" and enable them to extract more concessions from the democratic world (this is why the ChiComs' closest ally in the Middle East is the Iranian mullahcracy, but I digress).

In fact, there's almost no way a move like this wouldn't get green-lighted by the CCP; keep in mind, the Communists have even gone so far as to make a historical claim to northern Korea as Chinese territory, in part to make it clear who's boss and in part to lay the groundwork for a possible annexation if the Stalinist regime becomes more trouble than its worth.

So, this begs the question: why did the CCP let this happen? For that, we have to look at the last year in eastern Asia.

Amidst the European bailouts, the bizzare "reset" with Russia, the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the numerous domestic issues the decided the November elections, little attention has been paid to the western Pacific. However, events there have been dramatic, and dramatically unexpected.

It began when the CCP tried to declare the South China Sea as its own lake. As expected, numerous nations in Southeast Asia cried foul. Not so expectedly, the United States - led by the American apologist President and the Secretary of State whose husband was arguably the Communists' best friend in the White House - responded, essentially, "No."

One can only imagine the shock in Zhongnanhai from that.

Perhaps the Communists believed that this was mere posturing for the voters. That notion disappeared with the President's post-election tour of Asia (India, Indonesia, South Korea, and Japan). It could have been called the China Containment Tour. Now we're hearing elected officials inside and outside the Administration slanging the CCP for their deliberately devalued currency, and while the criticisms stem from economic confusion rather than geopolitical clarity, that's a distinction without a difference to Hu Jintao et al.

In short, the Chinese Communist regime has watched, likely in subdued horror, as Barack Obama's government moved - haltingly, and with some stumbles, but unmistakably - towards the most anti-Communist Asia policy in twenty years. It has been, almost literally, Nixon-goes-to-China in reverse.

So, now the CCP - and the rest of us - will see if the Administration's newfound and quasi-accidental policy will come with newfound resolve. It won't be as easy as it sounds initially. In Southeast Asia, the President's backbone was widely applauded, especially in Indonesia (in an even more painful irony for the CCP, Obama's time there may be driving his policy in the region). Japan, by contrast, has a center-left government with a more accomodationist policy towards Beijing (although South Korea does not).

This is a critical moment. If Obama follows precedent, i.e., comes hat-in-hand to the CCP to enlist its help in "controlling" Kim Jong-il and his would-be successors, then things will come back to normal in East Asia (and that's not good). However, if the President follows his instincts from Southeast Asia, it could dramatically alter the global balance - and in America's favor.

Nixon's fervent anti-Communist history made him practically the only American politician who could reach out to the CCP. Conversely, Obama's left-wing history may make him the best-equipped American leader to take the CCP on. I believe the ChiComs condoned this incident in the hope to prevent the above from happening. Time will tell if they were right; if not, the Chinese people may get a surprising boost in their fight to take their country back from the Communist regime that enslaves them.

Cross-posted to the right-wing liberal