Troubled waters

Asia’s Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End to a Stable Pacific. By Robert Kaplan. Random House; 225 pages; $26 and £20. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk

ASIA has enjoyed comparative stability in the chaotic years since the cold war. But the rise of China is now challenging that, as American dominance of the western Pacific fades. Comparisons of Asia to the Europe of 1914 are part of a bigger question about whether China just wants to be a benign regional hegemon, or if it has expansionist aims.

At the heart of the debate are the islands of the East and South China Seas, where China’s behaviour seems to indicate its broader intentions. At first glance, it does not look good. China has increasingly emphasised its sovereignty over all islands within a “nine-dash line” stretching over the whole South China Sea. Its military budget grew this year by 12%. It has moved its main submarine base to Hainan island on the sea’s northern edge, and it is beefing up its maritime enforcement agencies.

In “Asia’s Cauldron” Robert Kaplan says the Pacific will become unstable, but he does not think this must lead to war. Mr Kaplan, who has found a niche writing books that are a cross between journalism and policy prescription, is sanguine about China’s ambitions, claiming the region’s rising power, “however truculent, is no Imperial Japan”. He argues that comparisons to 1914 are overblown. The South China Sea is undoubtedly the Mitteleuropa of the 21st century, he says, but there is one big difference. “Europe is a landscape; East Asia a seascape”, and the oceans will act as a barrier against aggression.

He suggests the better comparison is to America’s 19th-century approach to the Caribbean. China is seeking an Asian version of the Monroe Doctrine, by which America took over from European nations as the supreme power in the western hemisphere. If China wants that role in the East, asks Mr Kaplan, why should it not have it? “American officials…must be prepared to allow, in some measure, for a rising Chinese navy to assume its rightful position, as the representative of the region’s largest indigenous power.”

Mr Kaplan’s fascinating book is a welcome challenge to the pessimists who see only trouble in China’s rise and the hawks who view it as malign. He says that China’s power will grow whether America likes it or not, and that accommodating its rise, up to a point, is not capitulation. One reason he is sanguine is the absence of a great ideological struggle. It is all about power, he says, in a world “void of moral struggles”. Many will point to the brutality of the Leninist Chinese party-state, but Mr Kaplan insists that the Communist Party will not necessarily bully abroad because it bullies at home.

The author takes a pragmatic view of the politics of China’s neighbours. He admires enlightened authoritarians such as the former leaders of Singapore and Malaysia, Lee Kuan Yew and Mahathir Mohamad. Again, he is to be praised for sticking to an unpopular viewpoint that should not be dismissed without discussion by Westerners. But he sometimes gets distracted by his obsession with geography, and the book also suffers from largely ignoring the East China Sea and the relationship with Japan, which could be much more important.

Though Mr Kaplan is trying to assuage fears, he admits that a more complicated Asia awaits, “a nervous world, crowded with warships and oil tankers”. He may be too optimistic about China and enlightened authoritarianism, and China will not for a long time, if ever, replace America as the safeguarder of the global commons. Pax Sinica is still far beyond the horizon.