Theater, peace and war

The last few weeks I’ve been asked by students, relatives (elderly ones usually), and friends: “Do you think China will go to war?” I am sure I will continue to get that question in the months to come.

The anxieties over war come and go in cycles, and the latest escalation seems to be associated, ironically, with the decision last week by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, which ruled that it has jurisdiction to hear a case filed by the Philippine government claiming maritime territory in the West Philippine Sea.

The fears of war go this way: Now that the United Nations has issued that ruling, China will have no choice but to assert itself even more, through more military power, and even go to war to settle things once and for all.

This is a common problem that has intrigued many psychologists, especially Daniel Kahneman, who received a Nobel Prize for economics with his work on “fast thinking” and “slow thinking.” Humans have a strong tendency to respond quickly to a problem and presume that the quick reaction is a correct one, honed by years of experience and intuition. Yet, “fast thinking” is often flawed because it includes biases that cloud our perceptions. In this case, we presume immediately that China wants to go to war, and therefore will go to war.

“Slow thinking” should make us ask: But isn’t the international court decision favorable to the Philippines? The mere fact that the court has asserted it has jurisdiction over the case, and will hear the arguments, does frustrate China because it faces greater hurdles now with international opinion.

Beijing Opera

Does China care about international opinion? China doesn’t just care; it is obsessed—with both local and international public opinion. They have to answer to a huge domestic “audience,” one which asks all the time: “Does Japan want another war?” and “Does the United States want war?”

We have to understand politics as theater, and Chinese politics is theater on a grand scale. What we see being played out is Beijing Opera on a global stage. Each naval vessel, each island being occupied (or being created), is an important prop. The seas are generally quiet and the operatic scripts are played out, broadcast through Beijing, in a complicated script where each line declares something like: announcing a claim, denouncing other countries’ claim. The volume increases when China gets nervous, which should be occasions for us to smile.

We should smile, too, with an important event early this week, a 90-minute meeting in Seoul involving Chinese premier Li Keqiang, South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The first such summit was held in 2008, followed by annual meetings until 2011, when relations among the three countries soured, mainly due to the territorial disputes as well as to perceptions of Prime Minister Abe being “militaristic.”

Resumption of the talks this year should be seen as significant, yet there has been little coverage of that trilateral meeting because, I feel, mass media wants the saber-rattling. Good news is no news.

The trilateral meeting is important because it affirms what many observers, myself included, are feeling: Countries, China included, will not go to war if they appreciate the benefits of economic trade in peacetime conditions. The three countries know, from their own histories, that those who go to war pay most dearly in the end with the destruction of their economies.

The emphasis, too, of the Seoul meeting was on recognizing the past. The frosty relations among the three countries in the last year or so came about with Japanese Prime Minister Abe’s hard stand on not apologizing for Japanese atrocities in World War II, a very sore point for both China and South Korea. It seems Abe is softening up now.

We have to understand how Chinese political theater plays to different audiences. When China makes noise about maritime waters claimed by Japan, it is not just the claim to territoriality but also a way to attack Japan for its past, and to remind the world that China will not sit back and see a resurgence of Japanese militarism.

When the three countries sat down again, they were being practical, recognizing the importance of maintaining peace.   For the three countries, peace becomes even more imperative given the long shadow of one tiny but belligerent player in their midst: North Korea.

Watching the superpowers

That will not mean the political theater will turn quiet. East Asian political theater can be tedious, but it is important we learn to read the events if we are truly concerned about our interests. China has its political experts watching, monitoring political developments (and theater) of the Americans, Japanese, South and North Koreans. . . and countries like the Philippines. They read our newspapers, listen to our TV broadcasts and, I wouldn’t be surprised if they have started monitoring our social media.

It is not so much spying as social listening to determine the public mood.

American academicians are pretty good at this, too. For an example of good “intelligence” that does consider language, go to the site of The Diplomat and read a recent analysis by Yale Law School’s Graham Webster, where he looks at recent Chinese reactions to the US naval vessels in the disputed maritime areas. Webster argues that the Chinese are not using confrontational language at this point and are instead using ambiguities. Just one example: Instead of accusing the United States of violating territorial waters, China uses the words “abuse of navigational freedoms.”

We need to beef up our Department of Foreign Affairs for people who understand not just China but also Japan, South Korea and the United States, as well as the dynamics among these countries. Joseph Nye, former dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, observes that the “US and China are deeply entangled, and that state is largely a good thing.” He was referring to the two countries’ deep trade and financial ties, which could prove to be the main deterrent to the two countries going to war with each other.

We should understand, too, our Asean neighbors, Vietnam in particular, each with its own interests and historical contexts. Vietnam is like the mouse that roars, resentful of an erstwhile socialist Big Brother that supported them in the years of struggling against, and defeating the Americans in the Vietnam War. Their scripts are necessarily different from ours.

In fact, the question rises: Do we have a script other than fretting about China going to war? Are we ready to do our own theater and show we do care about our territorial waters? Can we walk the talk and set the theater “stage” by replacing that one rusted ship patrolling the waters with a more credible show of our naval capabilities?

Wars break out when people stop talking to each other. Political theater is still a way of talking—certainly better than firing the guns.

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mtan@inquirer.com.ph