NEAL
CONAN, HOST:
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is in Vietnam
this week in an effort to strengthen ties with government officials and
re-assert U.S. power in the Western Pacific. Vietnam and several of its neighbors
have turned to the U.S. to fend off the ambitions of China, especially China's
claim to the South China Sea. Oil tankers critical to the economies of Japan,
South Korea, Taiwan and China sail through those waters, and vast deposits of
oil and gas lie beneath them. Given our history in Vietnam, Hanoi's interest in
military cooperation with Washington may baffle many Americans, but Atlantic
national correspondent Robert D. Kaplan explains that things look different
from a Vietnamese perspective.
If
you've been following this story and have questions for Robert Kaplan, give us
a call: 800-989-8255. Email: talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation
at our website. That's at npr.org, click on TALK OF THE NATION. Robert D.
Kaplan's piece, "The Vietnam Solution" appears in this month's issue
of The Atlantic. He's chief geopolitical analyst for Stratfor Global
Intelligence and joins us now from that company's headquarters in Austin. Nice
to have you with us today.
ROBERT
KAPLAN: It's a pleasure to be here, Neal.
CONAN:
And you say you've heard from many Vietnamese that the South China Sea is a lot
more than just a territorial dispute.
KAPLAN:
Yes. For basically two millennia, the Vietnamese have faced off against China.
For the first millennia, the Chinese veritably occupied Vietnam. It was
basically a province of various Chinese dynasties. And in the last thousand
years there's been tension and conflict between Vietnam and China. The
Vietnamese always tell me, we only fought one war with you Americans, but we
fought dozens with China. And now that we've settled our land borders, the
South China Sea looms as blue national soil, as blue territorial soil. And
that's how the Chinese look at it too.
So the
Chinese-Vietnamese tension has progressed from being a land-bound tension as
exhibited in the 1979 war between Vietnam and China. Remember, the last war in
Vietnam was not the American War that we fought. It was the war between the
Chinese and the Vietnamese in 1979, four years after we - the helicopters left
the U.S. embassy in Saigon. But now the struggle has moved out to sea because,
Neal, as you said, there may be - there is dispute about this, but there may be
significant deposits of oil and natural gas beneath the seabed of the South
China Sea.
CONAN:
As you mentioned in the article, China and Vietnam - well, they share waters,
other waters, the Gulf of Tonkin, a place that many students of Vietnam War
history will remember. But nevertheless, they were able to settle their
disagreements there. They basically said let's go 50-50.
KAPLAN:
Yes. Basically, that's what they did, and this shows the other side of the
Vietnamese-Chinese relationship, which is that both countries are governed by
communist parties that are practicing capitalist policies. So they have that in
common. And the Gulf of Tonkin was a way for both communist parties to show
that we can deal with this without the Americans. We can, you know, split this
up 50-50. But the larger - the larger, you know, basin of the South China Sea,
that's up for dispute.
Remember,
it's not just Vietnam and China that are contesting waters in the South China
Sea. It's the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, et cetera, all - you know, each
with overlapping claims. The claims of one are not the claims of the other. And
I forgot to mention Taiwan, because every claim that China makes Taiwan claims
because Taiwan claims to be the real China, not the party in power in Beijing.
CONAN:
And China claims pretty much all of the South China Sea.
KAPLAN:
Yes. China claims most of the South China Sea. It has what is called a
nine-dash line that basically extends from the Chinese mainland south all the
way to the mainland of Malaysia - excuse me - and Indonesia and all the way up
around up through the Philippines. So the whole central portion of the sea is
claimed by China. Now, the other countries claim this is a ridiculous claim
that China is making, that it does not conform to the Law of the Sea Treaty.
The Law of the Sea is really about land not sea. It's like you get 200 miles
off your coast or your continental shelf outward. The Law of the Sea would not
give China this amount of water. China claims that the Law of the Sea only goes
back to the 1980s, whereas China's claim goes back centuries and it's historic.
CONAN:
So this involves nationalism, it involves historical disputes, and it involves
a great deal. But it's this context in which Vietnam and those other states
that you referred to have been turning more and more to the United States as a
balancing power.
KAPLAN:
Yes. Now, remember, Vietnam is the top dog in this rivalry against China
because the Philippines is a weak state with weak institutions. The Chinese
don't really respect it much. Brunei is tiny. Malaysia's claims are much more -
Malaysia has a much more balanced, even, you know, a friendly relationship with
China. It's Vietnam that really drives the Chinese crazy. Vietnam is the whole
western seaboard of the South China Sea. And the Vietnamese, they don't love
the Americans, but they can use the Americans as a balancing power, a lever
against China.
Therefore,
the Vietnamese are refurbishing the Cam Ranh Bay naval facility in order
officially to invite in the navies of the world to pay port visits. That's the
official line. The unofficial line is the Vietnamese would like to see more
U.S. warships in the region off Cam Ranh Bay. The Vietnamese have long ago
gotten over their dislike of the Americans, which - remember, as I write in my
piece, that the young Vietnamese diplomats that I met in Hanoi recently are
further removed from the Vietnam War, the American War as they call it, than
the American baby boomers, you know, in the 1960s or so were removed from World
War II.
CONAN:
And so in this context, the United States, well, it has no dog in the South
China Sea fight, no claim there itself. But Secretary Clinton, last year at a
meeting of the various interested states, said the United States supports a
negotiation that would involve all of the parties, which caused some Chinese generals
to gag on their soup.
KAPLAN:
Yes. Yeah, exactly. And the reason is the Chinese do not want all of the
parties cooperating on a joint strategy. In other words, have them all gang up
against China. China's strategy is to deal with each country bilaterally,
divide and conquer, and literally wait as the Chinese navy and air force get
stronger and stronger relative to the navies and air forces of Vietnam and the
other countries as each year passes. So that over 10 years or 20 years, China
becomes the dominant power in the region, and the Americans do not seem to be
willing to let that happen because the South China Sea is really where all this
- the great sea lines of communication of the world coalesce, you know, in
terms of bringing of oil, and natural gas, and energy and other resources from
the Middle East where the energy is to Northeast Asia, South Korea, Japan and
coastal China where the customers are.
CONAN:
And so in this context, Vietnam would have to be putting a great deal of trust
in, well, the United States, which has proven problematical in the past?
KAPLAN:
Yes. It proved problematic in the 1950s through 1970s, but it doesn't seemed
problematic today. The Vietnamese approach the United States from a real
pragmatic, real politic point of view. And keep this in mind, precisely because
the Vietnamese defeated the Americans in a war, the Vietnamese have no chips on
their shoulder, no axes to grind, no colonial or post-colonial grudges or hang
ups, and they can deal with the Americans as equals from a psychological point
of view. They don't have to make apologies to their neighbors for cozying up to
the Americans.
CONAN:
They are also, in some ways, mirror images of China. There's a lot of the
economic development that is rapidly happening in China. That's happening in
Vietnam, too, yet the same kind of contradictions that we see in China: No rule
of law, a Communist Party that has virtually abandoned communism and no
intellectual freedom. Well, those are mirrored in Vietnam as well.
KAPLAN:
Yes, that's absolutely true. Keep something else in mind. Vietnam can't help
its geography. It's got a long land border with China. It knows that the
Americans are half a world away, and the Vietnamese can only move so close to
the Americans without angering China too much. So it's a very delicate balance
that the Vietnamese have to play, and the Americans too. The
Vietnamese-American relationship cannot get so warm that it really (technical
difficulty) China, because then the Chinese would have all these arrows in
their quiver against the Vietnamese.
And the
last thing the Americans want is to have their equities with China, you know,
trade negotiations, currency negotiations, you name it, in danger because
America made the mistake of moving too close to Vietnam. Ironically, you know,
the thing that America has to watch out for today is not getting close to
Vietnam - we're already close in a de facto sense - but becoming too close so
that we really, you know, anger Beijing.
CONAN:
We're talking Robert D. Kaplan about his piece in The Atlantic, "The
Vietnam Solution." There's a link to it at our website. Go to npr.org,
click on TALK OF THE NATION. And you're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from
NPR News. In the world, as it exist today, mirror images - you say, the
Vietnamese are not concerned, really, about Arab Spring-type changes but more
about the example of Tiananmen Square, now 32 years ago.
KAPLAN:
Yes. That's right. Tiananmen Square was a time of economic ferment in China,
where it wasn't just students who was upset. It was various classes in Chinese
society. And the Vietnamese communist regime - remember, it still is a
communist regime, or at least an authoritarian one - is very up, you know, is
very nervous. Vietnam has a high degree of corruption, of nepotism, of
inflation. No, that's been coming down a little bit recently. So that - the
regime is nervous in Vietnam, and it has essentially the same challenge that
the regime in Beijing has.
Communism
is no longer a philosophical organizing principle of the government. Therefore,
the government has to buy or bribe the people to like the government by
delivering significant high economic growth rates each year. You know, the
government is only tolerated so long as it can succeed, and this is, you know, this
is an anxiety that Hanoi - the people in power in Hanoi share with the people
in power in Beijing.
CONAN:
Here's an email question from Andy: Please comment on the roles of Japan and
Korea. The Japanese, I wouldn't think, will sit idly by and watch China build a
blue-water navy.
KAPLAN:
Well, that, you know, we basically disparaged Japan in recent years, saying
it's got a stagnant economy, they've got a quasi-pacifistic outlook towards
their military. But Japan's so-called stagnant economy is still the largest -
third largest economy in the world. It has a very capable military. It's got
four times as many warships as the British Royal Navy, great niche capacities
and special forces and diesel-electric - the latest diesel-electric submarines.
And Japan's lifeline for energy is the South China Sea. So Japan is very
nervous about a China that is increasing its air and naval capabilities by
leaps and bounds.
CONAN:
Let's see if we'd get a caller in. This is Dave, Dave on the line with us from
Denver.
DAVE:
Thank you very much for taking the call. My question is where does SEATO, the
Southeast Asia Treaty Organization fit in the emerging calculus with regard to
the disposition of the South China Sea and its resources? And a follow-up is
could this issue, with regard to the South China Sea, prove a tipping point for
China making an earnest effort to retake Taiwan?
KAPLAN:
OK. On the first question, the issue is really ASEAN, the Association for
Southeast Asian Nations, and ASEAN is nowhere near being as strong as the
European Union with all of Europe's problems. But ASEAN has been - has becoming
more of a factor as each year goes along, and the Chinese would like to prevent
ASEAN from getting involved more deeply in South China Sea issues because
again, the Chinese don't want to deal with all of these littoral countries as a
group. It wants to deal with them separately in a divide-and-conquer strategy.
Taiwan
is sort of a cork in the bottle at the top of the South China Sea. It connects
the, you know, the conflict systems of the South China Sea with that of
Northeast Asia and the Korean Peninsula. Taiwan and China, you know, have
conflicting claims for of all the islands in the South China Sea. Remember,
Taiwan also adheres to the cow's tongue or the nine-dash line. The only
difference it has with Beijing is it claims that it's the real government of
all of China, not Beijing.
Interestingly,
I was just recently out to the Pratas Island in the South China Sea, which is
occupied by Taiwan, though mainland China claims it. And this will give you a
picture of what this is really all about. The Pratas Island is the largest
island in the South China Sea, but it's less than two miles long and only half
a mile wide including a lagoon.
It's
basically a runway a few inches above water with a few buildings clustered
around it. And this is what people are fighting over or, you know, or have a
rivalry over, these essentially runways in the middle of the ocean because near
these runway - these runways give Taiwan or anyone else power projection
capability.
And
because there maybe oil and natural gas around these regions, these claims
really get contentious. But I don't see that China will allow South China Sea
issues to make it more truculent in any - in terms of an invasion of Taiwan.
CONAN:
Robert Kaplan, thanks very much for your time. Tomorrow, Christopher Buckley
will be with us. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. Transcript provided
by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.
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