Game of empires

IN 1493, at about the time people were discovering that the world is round, Pope Alexander VI drew a vertical line down the middle of the Atlantic Ocean that granted Spain dominion over the area to the west. The other side would later be considered as belonging to its archrival, Portugal. Thus, with the stroke of a pen continents were carved up for the spoils of competing empires.

Fast forward to 2009: In a variant of that papal decree, China, a rising superpower crudely marks a nine-dash line in the South China-West Philippine Sea and brashly declares that all islands, atolls and waters inside the line have belonged to her since ancient times. Because the arbitrary line crosses the maritime boundaries of countries like the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan and Malaysia, alarm bells ring in the affected states. The audacity of the move, at the heart of the vital sea lanes and choke points in the region, jolts Washington, compelling a US military “pivot to Asia.” What is happening? Has humanity retrogressed to those wicked, arrogant times when the might of papal edicts prevailed over morality and reason?

China’s increasingly aggressive actions in Philippine maritime waters must be seen in the context of great power rivalry and machinations. It is, first and foremost, a struggle for regional and global supremacy between a rising hegemon, China, and an older, world-weary colossus, the United States. However, unlike the tension-filled superpower battle of wills between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War that nearly brought humanity to a nuclear Armageddon, Sino-American rivalry is a unique “odd-couple” relationship defined largely by strategic accommodation and a good measure of trust (note America’s reliance on the manufacturing genius of China and the trillions of dollars in US bonds held by China). This is what adds to the complexity of the problem.

Suffice it to say that long before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, it was the plan of Washington and its key allies to make the world safer and more manageable by making their former enemies and the rest of the world increasingly embrace the capitalist system, and with it, western-style liberal democracy. It was a strategically brilliant move: By welcoming, enticing, pressuring and eventually entangling all players, large and small, in the friendly, symbiotic game of commerce and national development (under the auspices of trusted institutions such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and, later, Asian Development Bank) there would be global unity, stability and peace; eventually such interaction and deepening convergence of ideologies and economics would lead to a calm period in human evolution aptly described by political scientist Francis Fukuyama as “the end of history” (read: the triumph and universalization of western liberal democracy).

But alas, history would not be easily tamed. Despite the serious US commitment of blood and treasure, Iraq and Afghanistan would buck western liberal democracy and stick to their old despotic ways, and on the spontaneous front, the Arab Spring would quickly turn to sand.

In my Inquirer commentary, “China’s game plan” (Opinion, 1/25/14), I suggested an unorthodox way to gain an insight into the Chinese mindset through the highly popular national pastime of “go.” I pointed out that just as the western (military) mind is accurately reflected in the more direct and swift-resolution character of chess, go faithfully captures the calibrated, incremental dynamics and essence of Chinese thinking in the disputed maritime area: The object of go is to gain more pieces (territory) than your adversary, while the aim of chess is to go for the jugular and swift total victory. While chess is characterized by a single battlefield, revolving around the control of the center, go is a much slower and more deliberate buildup of forces over a multiple-battleground board. It is the perfect recipe for winning slowly, albeit unspectacularly—and with minimal risks.

From parlor games to reality, the similarity is uncanny. The seaward movements began with Beijing’s consolidation of control of disputed areas, such as the Paracel islands in 1974, Johnson Reef in 1988, Mischief Reef (west of Palawan) in 1995, and Scarborough Shoal (Panatag) west of Zambales. It is instructive that to date, Beijing has been careful not to venture into areas in the Philippines outside those gray areas, fearing a strong US military response pursuant to the US-Philippine Mutual Defense Pact (see, the big Chinese dragon does play go).

Meanwhile, the game of empires enters another arena of rivalry, as China seduces its neighbors and the West with its irresistible billions of dollars worth of “silk road” development and investment initiatives, through its Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank—a clear challenge to the World Bank-IMF-Asian Development Bank monopoly on development financing.

The Vietnamese have a saying that can apply to the current situation in Southeast Asia: “When elephants make war, the grass suffers; and when they make love, the grass also suffers.”

Narciso Reyes Jr. ([email protected]) is an international book author and former diplomat. He lived in Beijing in 1978-81, as bureau chief of the Philippine News Agency.