A Warning to Heed

I put off my political blogging for a year but I couldn't stay away any longer. I became very discouraged to what was happening in this country and the world around us. I became despondent and further just numb to it all. It's easy to get a defeatist mindset when you see great injustice, great ignorance, and great violence-not just physical violence you see in the world by extremist groups or brutal dictators; but also the violent legislative assaults on freedoms, individual rights and liberty we see in more free democracies. I began to think writing, advocating, stirring discussion and educating were worthless endeavors. I missed the entire reason why I should keep writing. The mere fact that I have the freedom and a guaranteed right to be able to express freedom of thought through blogging or any type of writing venue should be put to use. This is a cherished freedom that so many people throughout the world do not have. One of the main superpowers who we have a very cold relationship with, China, is still a Communist dictatorship where freedom of thought, expression and especially what I'm doing here, blogging, is highly restricted and controlled. There is a constant geopolitical struggle with China in the Asian hemisphere. The struggle also deals with ideology. America stands for the free nation states of the West. China stands for the authoritarian states of the East. There is a place now where the struggle is at a fierce head. The place is the South China Sea. I chose this story about our old enemy, China, and the South China Sea as my first blog piece in a while. The reason is pretty simple. There is a warning to heed. There is a global race for resources and power. China sees this very valuable area of water as their's and their's alone. Any other countries' claim to areas of the South China Sea are being dismissed by China and China has been rapidly building artificial islands/military bases in the sea. The South China Sea is so stratigically important for resources and for shipping. There are vast oil reserves there and China are drunk on the oil there with there massive drilling activities. In the original article I began with, there is a warning. China has explicitly warned us militarily and said they are ready for a fight over their rapid and threatening expansion in the South China Sea.

The red line is China's claim in the map above. I don't want to focus on the warning that China has offered for what "may" happen if we interfere. I want to focus on the warning of what already "has" happened. China is there and has been growing without any constraint or action from the free world. They are entrenched and will continue their hostilities toward the free world and their global commerce. Hell, they are even threatening fellow authoritarian states like Vietnam. So, the warning we need to heed is that China is in a fixed, immovable (without force) position from their military expansion into the waters of the South China Sea. The name China is in it, so I guess that means it can be all theirs, right? Well, they are here to stay and not going away. So, this is in the lap of the free world to make a decision. We can respond with words such as "unprecedented move" or "illegal move." We could get certain think tanks involved to offer their analysis to counter China's arguments. But there requires more action. Remember we are in a very historical moment. The History books that will be written about this time will either show the free world shrink in power toward China and the authoritarian states; or they will show a pivotal moment where the free world makes a stand.

How do we approach this warning and geopolitical situation from a classical liberal perspective? War is something that we should avoid in most situations. History shows us where ill advised and unconstitutional warfare has cost us in human lives, standing in the world and financially. An interventionist strategy and democratizing of the world tends to lead to terrible unintended consequences. I believe with China there is a difference to what we've tried in the Middle East. There's no nation building or interventionism involved here. China poses a real threat to us and the free world. There is a fight for not only international commerce with shipping lanes and the race for resources, but also an ideological fight. Furthermore, China has explicitly threatened us militarily which must be responded to with a show of power of our own. This doesn't mean a preliminary military attack. I am also not saying that America is this powerless nation in the world. We in fact do have a lot of power in the world and one reason why is that we have great cooperative relationships with many states including some authoritarian states (except North Korea with some very good reasons). Many cooperative relationships are based on friendly actions by those nations we cooperate and trade with. China has no intentions of a friendly foreign policy. America has made some mistakes as well in the "friendly" department but that doesn't excuse China's actions nor excludes us from responding. We have an intertwined economy with China but that doesn't mean we should allow them to threaten us and make insane claims to areas of water as their complete own. America has the absolute right to respond to threats even if its from a country that we trade with. Not many Americans will care about this but we all should. It is a warning we should heed. We've had two World Wars that were not so far back. We also had the Cold War not too long ago and it seems we are yet involved in another Cold War. There are so many countries at odds and moving in threatening and defensive positions preparing for another world conflict. The Middle East, East Europe and Africa are grounds where world superpowers are preparing. Now we have the South China Sea where China is on the war path and with their bold explicit warnings they sound the beat of the war drums. Will we heed the warning?