US and China need more soft power, not military hardware, to resolve their differences

Embedded in my otherwise dogmatic pacifist DNA is honest respect for the military officer steeped in history and political science. Perhaps in part because my late father, who was an honourable US marine, was not, alas, so steeped. Steeping, one has to believe, is a prerequisite to understanding our complex world.

In writing for newspapers about Asia and China since 1996, informative exchanges would routinely arise with members of the US military, especially the razor-sharp heads of the Pacific Command at Pearl Harbour. Standouts in my mind included admirals Joseph Prueher, who was later to become ambassador to China (and help defuse the nasty 2001 Hainan Island incident); Dennis Blair, later President Barack Obama’s first director of National Intelligence (and famous as the first skipper of a destroyer to water ski in his ship’s wake); and Thomas Fargo, a charismatic submarine commander behind the character “Commander Bart Mancuso” (Scott Glenn) in the action film The Hunt for Red October.

US warships to visit Spratlys ‘twice a quarter’ in South China Sea but ‘pose no threat’

The current Pacific Command head is Harry Harris – the first Asian American to make admiral (this has got to be generally good for Asia). Born in Yokosuka (and raised in the US South), Harris is the navy’s highest-ranking Japanese American (this perhaps being less good for China). His fabulous education: the Naval Academy (of course), Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, Oxford University and even MIT.

This articulate and personable navy aviator not only saw his career zoom, but touched down in Washington at one point as a joint chiefs of staff speech writer. And it was his verbal dexterity that shone during a recent speech at a hotel in Los Angeles, courtesy of the Asia-alert LA World Affairs Council. The navy fly boy had previously caused a buzz (famous in Washington, infamous in Beijing) for this wise crack about the South China Sea: “[China is] creating a great wall of sand.”

In LA, though the admiral did not throw any sand in China’s face, his talk did plainly pivot on the assumption that the best response to China’s push in its own neighbourhood was to push China back, even though it’s China’s own neighbourhood. Noting China’s rejection of an arbitral tribunal’s South China Sea ruling, and – as a key factor in North Korea’s nuclear buildup – fingering Beijing’s tepidity in failing to stare Pyongyang down, Harris’ pitch was rather brutally binary “good guy, bad guy”. He was pushy on the need for more military hardware, sparing on the need for deft and aggressive diplomacy.

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Washington has been posting more and more ships to the Asia-Pacific but Harris cannot hide his glee at the new ones coming his way: “The lead ship, USS Zumwalt, is scheduled to be commissioned next month ... This region is getting a ship even the Klingons would fear. And the destroyer skipper’s name is Captain James Kirk. You just can’t make this stuff up. Jokes aside, this is serious business. If we have to fight tonight, I don’t want it to be a fair fight. If it’s a knife fight, I want to bring a gun. If it’s a gunfight, I want to bring in the artillery...”