On the 100^th anniversary of the outbreak of World War I, Europe is at peace. There are no major border disputes. The countries form a unified economic bloc instead of a patchwork of jostling alliances.

In the last 70 years, the only large-scale violence took place during the unraveling of Yugoslavia, which ended 15 years ago. In Sarajevo today, where World War I began with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and the residents endured a brutal siege in the 1990s, all is quiet on the Balkan front.China and Japan are on a collision course. If they don’t find a way to back down and save face, no amount of historical knowledge and mutual commerce will prevent an Asian march of folly.

Not so in Asia. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe recently compared the brewing conflict between his country and China to the Anglo-German relationship of 1914. In both cases, the two countries maintained economic relations even as they built up their respective militaries. The trade relationship between Britain and Germany didn’t prevent a catastrophic war from breaking out.

Japan and China have a long history of conflict. In the 13^th century, Mongol China attempted to invade Japan on two occasions and was defeated both times by the kamikaze or “divine winds” of two separate typhoons. In the late 16^th century, Japan invaded Korea with an eye toward conquering China but was ultimately forced to retreat.

In the modern era, the two countries went to war in 1894, and it took only nine months for Japan to come out on top, with Taiwan as the prize. It was the beginning of Japan’s ascent to empire. It would later annex Korea, expand its influence in China during World War I, seize Manchuria, and go on to capture China’s major cities in the lead-up to World War II.

Asian historians frequently cite the Chinese proverb that “two tigers cannot share a mountain” when discussing the quest for dominance by Japan and China over the last 1,000 years. For the most part, the two tigers have traded dominion over the region. In the last few years, however, a resurgent Japan and a still growing China have found themselves on the same mountain. Abe’s reference to 1914, despite his other pleas for peace and stability in the region, suggests that a serious clash is in the offing.

The Japanese prime minister expressed his greatest concern over Chinese military spending. Having increased its defence budget by double digits annually over the last two decades, China now spends more on its military than any country in the world except the United States (which still spends approximately four times more than China). Japan, meanwhile, is the fifth leading military spender. The Abe government recently announced a five-percent increase in the country’s military budget over the next five years.

The spark that might set off a replay of 1914 in Asia is the ongoing conflict over an island chain in the East China Sea called Senkaku in Japanese and Diaoyu in Chinese. The uninhabited islands are no bigger than seven square kilometres in total. Japan currently controls the territory and dates its sovereignty claim to its defeat of China in 1895. China, however, argues that the chain was part of its domain during the preceding history. Taiwan also asserts sovereignty over the islands.

The islands themselves are less important than the sea around them. Japan and China are primarily interested in the fishing grounds, the potential oil beneath the waves, and control over shipping routes. In 2008, the two countries negotiated a deal on joint exploration of oil around the islands but never implemented the agreement. Collisions have taken place at sea, notably in 2010 between a Chinese fishing boat and a Japanese patrol, and the Japanese government has threatened to shoot down Chinese drones that have approached the islands.

The historical allusion to 1914 is troubling in another regard. Europe, prior to World War I, had enjoyed nearly a century of muted rivalry as part of the Concert of Europe that regulated relations among empires in the wake of Napoleon’s defeat.

The dispute between China and Japan similarly takes place within a balance of power that has held in Northeast Asia, more or less, since the end of the Korean War. China and North Korea stand together as uneasy allies on one side – along with the occasional participation of Russia – and Japan, South Korea, and the United States form an alliance on the other.

World War I rapidly escalated because alliance obligations drew the major powers into a war that they might ordinarily have kept at arm’s length. The United States has an alliance obligation to stand with Japan in the event of a clash with China over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands.

Shinzo Abe has given every indication that he will not back down on this issue. He has cultivated the image of a proud nationalist. He has burnished this reputation at home and provoked his neighbors by visiting Yasukuni Shrine, where the souls of 14 Class A war criminals are enshrined. He has pledged to revise his country’s “peace constitution” and restore a true offensive capability to Japan’s Self-Defence Forces. He has pushed through a new law to establish a National Security Council and more strictly control domestic dissent.

This nationalism goes hand in hand – rather than in opposition to – U.S. security strategy. Although the Yasukuni visit and the harsher rhetoric toward China have displeased Washington, Abe has in other regards conducted an all-out charm offensive toward his U.S. ally. The military budget increase includes the purchase of 28 F-35 fighter jets and two Aegis-equipped destroyers. And a carefully calibrated promise of economic investment into Okinawa turned around the prefectural governor’s position on the construction of a new U.S. military base on the island, which has been a major sticking point in U.S.-Japanese relations.

There are many reasons why 1914 is not an apt analogy for the situation in Northeast Asia today. The region, unlike Europe of 100 years ago, is not unbalanced by empires in decline. The presence of nuclear weapons is both a deterrent to escalation and also a guarantee that all-out war would have immediate, global consequences. And the earlier experience of World War I ensures that no national leader can pretend that the next conflict will be the “war to end all wars.”

But wars are not rational affairs. China and Japan are on a collision course. If they don’t find a way to back down and save face, no amount of historical knowledge and mutual commerce will prevent an Asian march of folly.

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden hold a meeting with Combatant Commanders and Military Leadership in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Nov. 12, 2013. Credit: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Nov 29 2013 (IPS)

From the Middle East to the East China Sea, the last week’s events have offered a particularly vivid example of the much-heralded shift in foreign policy priorities under the administration of President Barack Obama.

Just four days ago, the U.S. and its P5+1 partners (U.S., Britain, France, Russia, and China plus Germany) announced a historic agreement with Iran on its nuclear programme, an accord that many analysts believe could pave the way for an eventual strategic rapprochement between Washington and Tehran.Obama is determined to minimise U.S. military commitments and resources in the Greater Middle East to free them up for use elsewhere.

Predictably, the accord came under sharp criticism from Washington’s closest Mideast allies, especially Israel and its hawkish supporters here, as the latest and most worrisome example of Obama’s “weakness” and “appeasement” in dealing with Washington’s deadliest foes.

Just two days later, the administration sent two B-52 bombers over disputed islands in the East China Sea to demonstrate its solidarity with its East Asian allies in defiance of Beijing’s declaration earlier in the week of a new “air defence identification zone” (ADIZ) over the area.

That show of force drew praise from, among others, the ultra-hawkish Wall Street Journal which two days before had led the chorus of criticism against the Iran deal.

In the meantime, Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, flew to Kabul to personally warn President Hamid Karzai that Washington was prepared to abandon Afghanistan to its fate after 2014 unless he signs a just-concluded long-term bilateral security agreement by Dec. 31 that would keep as many as 10,000 U.S. troops to train and advise the Afghan army and carry out missions against Al-Qaeda and its affiliates.

Taken together, the three events dramatised Washington’s eagerness to extricate itself militarily from more than a decade of war in the Greater Middle East and “pivot” its strategic focus and resources more toward the Asia/Pacific and its highly complex relationships with China and key U.S. allies there.

Because of Washington’s status as the world’s sole military superpower, such a shift necessarily reverberates strongly throughout the affected regions, forcing lesser powers to adjust their stance to protect their own interests under changing circumstances.

Those reverberations were most clearly audible in the Middle East, where Iran’s 1979 revolution reinforced pre-existing U.S. alliances with Israel and Saudi Arabia, in particular, and transformed Tehran from erstwhile strategic partner to the region’s Public Enemy Number One.

For the succeeding 34 years, Israel and the Sunni-led Gulf states enjoyed virtually unconditional U.S. support, even when their policies and actions actually undermined Washington interests – be it Israel’s settlements in the Occupied Territories or aggressive Saudi export of Wahabism – in the region. With Washington’s superpower status tipping the scales, the balance of power weighed heavily in their favour.

The accord struck between the P5+1 and Iran, however tentative, could alter that balance in fundamental ways, particularly if it develops into closer cooperation between Washington and Tehran on key issues extending from the eastern Mediterranean to the South Asian subcontinent.

For Saudi Arabia, whose government offered faint praise for the agreement but whose media has been filled with fear and trembling, the accord is particularly ominous.

“The Saudis are not merely concerned about Iran’s nuclear ambitions,” wrote Gregory Gause, a Saudi expert at the University of Vermont, in The New Yorker Tuesday. “They have a more profound fear: that geopolitical trends in the Middle East are aligning against them, threatening both their regional stature and their domestic security.

“The Saudis see an Iran that is dominant in Iraq and Lebanon, holding onto its ally in Syria, and now forging a new relationship with Washington – a rival, in short, without any obstacles to regional dominance,” according to Gause.

As for Israel, its military primacy – particularly if the interim accord blossoms into a comprehensive agreement that would effectively preclude Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon – is assured for the foreseeable future.

But it, too, could be negatively affected by any rapprochement between the U.S. and Iran, if for no other reason than the defusing of longstanding tensions over Tehran’s nuclear programme could refocus international attention on Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory.

Moreover, given its relatively well-educated population of 80 million, as well as its abundant oil and gas reserves, Iran “has far more power potential than any of the other states in the region,” noted Stephen Walt, a top international relations expert at HarvardUniversity, on his foreign-policy.com blog.

Israel and Saudi Arabia are “worried that a powerful Iran would over time exert greater influence in the region, in all the ways that major powers do,” he wrote. “From the perspective of Tel Aviv and Riyadh, the goal is to try to keep Iran in a box for as long as possible – isolated, friendless, and artificially weakened.”

U.S. rapprochement with Iran and Tehran’s integration into a revised regional security structure, on the other hand, could greatly benefit Washington’s own foreign policy objectives at both the regional and global level.

Regionally, not only would such moves eliminate the possibility of yet another U.S. war against a Muslim country. Properly handled – meaning in close consultation with Washington’s current allies – they could also help quell the broader Sunni-Shia conflict that has wrought disaster in Syria and increasingly threatens to destabilise the entire region.

Over the last year – and especially since it became clear that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had, with Tehran’s support, far more staying power than previously thought – the administration appears to have concluded that it actually needs Iran’s co-operation to stabilise the region (a conclusion seemingly shared by its ally, Turkey, which has moved quickly in recent weeks toward its own rapprochement with Iran).

Indeed, an intensification and spread of the Sunni-Shia conflict seriously threatens Obama’s strategy of extricating the U.S. from the region – or, more precisely, resuming the role of “off-shore balancer” that it played with considerable success from 1945 to 1990, according to Walt. As the civil war in Syria has shown, Iran, despite its isolation and weakened economy, remains influential enough to spoil those hopes.

But cooperation with Iran as part of a larger off-shore balancing strategy at the regional level is also critical to Obama’s larger strategy of implementing his Asian “pivot”. Its urgency was demonstrated by this week’s Chinese ADIZ declaration, the latest escalation of tensions between Beijing and its neighbours, most importantly an increasingly nationalistic Japan with which Washington has a mutual defence treaty.

Since the pivot – or “rebalancing” – was first announced by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton two years ago, its credibility has suffered from the perception, particularly among Asian analysts themselves, that Washington remained too preoccupied with the Greater Middle East – including Afghanistan, the pressure to intervene in Syria, and, above all, the threat of war with Iran – to be taken seriously.

But, taken in combination, September’s last-minute U.S.-Russian accord that effectively averted a U.S. strike against Syria, last week’s nuclear agreement with Iran, and Rice’s message to Karzai clearly convey the message Obama is indeed determined to minimise U.S. military commitments and resources in the region to free them up for use elsewhere.

In that context, Tuesday’s B-52 flights over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands appeared designed to highlight that impression.

Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at Lobelog.com.