Why the South China Sea Matters

A disproportionately large percentage of the world’s shipping moves on massive vessels through the South China Sea. Every economy in the world is connected here: from India to Brazil, from Namibia to Norway. China is increasingly manifesting its ability militarily to dominate this body of water.

The Chinese navy is expanding, both in the number of its ships and in their technical sophistication. China’s civil engineers have created artificial islands in and around the South China Sea. These islands are now home to missile bases and artillery units.

The islands and even the subsurface coral reefs are the objects of competing and conflicting territorial claims. The nations surrounding this body of water include Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and China.

The Spratly Islands and the Paracel Islands are the major, and almost the only, islands in the South China Sea. Various shoals and reefs, which are either submerged a few feet below the surface, or which project themselves only a few feet above the surface, can serve as a foundation for man-made islands which help to make up for the scarcity of naturally occurring islands.

In 2014, Robert Kaplan wrote:

It is not only location and energy reserves that promise to give the South China Sea critical geostrategic importance, it is the territorial disputes surrounding these waters, home to more than two hundred small islands, rocks, and coral reefs, only about three dozen of which are permanently above water. Yet these specks of land, buffeted by typhoons, are valuable mainly because of the oil and natural gas that might lie nearby in the intricate, folded layers of rock beneath the sea. Brunei claims a southern reef of the Spratly Islands. Malaysia claims three islands in the Spratlys. The Philippines claims eight islands in the Spratlys and significant portions of the South China Sea. Vietnam, Taiwan, and China each claims much of the South China Sea, as well as all of the Spratly and Paracel island groups. In the middle of 2010 there was quite a stir when China was said to have called the South China Sea a “core interest.” It turns out that Chinese officials never quite said that: no matter. Chinese maps have been consistent. Beijing claims to own what it calls its “historic line”: that is, the heart of the entire South China Sea in a grand loop — ­the “cow’s tongue” as the loop is called — ­surrounding these island groups from China’s Hainan Island south 1,200 miles to near Singapore and Malaysia. The result is that all of these littoral states are more or less arrayed against China, and dependent upon the United States for diplomatic and military backing. For example, Vietnam and Malaysia are seeking to divide all of the seabed and subsoil resources of the southern part of the South China Sea between mainland Southeast Asia and the Malaysian part of the island of Borneo: this has elicited a furious diplomatic response from China. These conflicting claims are likely to become more acute as energy consumption in developing Asian countries is expected to double by 2030, with China accounting for half of that growth.

China’s presence in the South China Sea is both expansionist and xenophobic. China’s nativist tendencies express themselves by using this body of water as a barrier to prevent foreign influence.

While eager to develop international economic opportunities, China’s diplomacy retains much of its traditional isolationism.

The South China Sea connects in many different ways to a variety of China’s national ambitions. For this reason, the Chinese government is incorrigibly committed to dominating, militarily and economically, this body of water.

Among the keys to China’s foreign policy, the South China Sea ranks high. The question of Taiwan ranks high, as well. The Taiwan question and the South China Sea are closely linked. These are so important to the Chinese government that war cannot be ruled out. David Goldman writes:

Along with ensuring internal stability at all costs, China’s leaders are determined to make China impregnable from the outside. We hardly hear the term South China Sea these days, because that sea has become a Chinese lake. It has become a Chinese lake because the Chinese have made it clear they will go to war over it. There’s a Chinese proverb: “Kill the chicken for the instruction of the monkey.” China has an even greater concern over Taiwan.

Economic ambition is also a key to Chinese foreign policy. The immense amount of cargo going through the South China Sea - both raw materials and finished consumer goods - means that this waterway is not only a military desiderata but also an economic one.

Economic globalization does not reduce, and in some cases increases, the risk of war. Over the years, the risk of open military conflict in this region has increased, as Robert Kaplan noted:

“Paradoxically, if the postmodern age is dominated by globalization,” writes the British naval expert Geoffrey Till, then “everything that supports” globalization, such as trade routes and energy deposits, becomes fraught with competition. And when it comes to trade routes, 90 percent of all commercial goods that travel from one continent to another do so by sea. This heightened maritime awareness that is a product of globalization comes at a time when a host of relatively new and independent states in Southeast Asia, which only recently have had the wherewithal to flex their muscles at sea, are making territorial claims against each other that in the days of the British Empire were never an issue, because of the supremacy of the Crown globally and its emphasis on free trade and freedom of navigation. This muscle flexing takes the form of “routinized” close encounters between warships of different nations at sea, creating an embryonic risk of armed conflict.

The Chinese navy acquired decommissioned aircraft carriers from the Australian and Russian navies. After studying them, the Chinese have begun building their own aircraft carriers, and intend to strengthen their fleets.

Missiles of various types are also being developed by the Chinese military. The intent to control the South China Sea is clear from tactical and strategic documents; the Chinese make no effort to hide this.

In the twenty-first century, the world’s diplomatic, economic, and military history will be shaped in large part by what happens in the South China Sea.

A Good Time To Be Alive

The news, whether on the smartphone or on TV, seems full of violence and death. The constant talk of murders and Islamic terrorism could fuel a great deal of anxiety.

But we are now living in one of the safest times in world history.

If you lived in, e.g., the year 1018, the average person would have witnessed violent death in person. Now, the average person learns about it on news websites or on television - where it is usually not directly shown, but reported, along with images of what happened either immediately before or immediately afterward.

For a human being to stand 10 or 20 paces from soldiers who are battling with swords and clubs, to see heads and limbs cut off in a single blow, to see blood pouring out of a human body in a rush - this is a horrifying direct experience of human violence.

A thousand years ago, much of the human race personally witnessed such violence.

Now, millions of people will live their entire lives without seeing, firsthand, a knife or ax or gun being used in violence. Yet these same millions will see innumerable instances of such violence on video - whether fiction or news.

It is therefore difficult for some readers to grasp the truth that the current time is in fact one of the safest and most peaceful eras in human history. Surveying the years leading up to 2017, the historian Yuval Noah Harari wrote in that same year:

In most areas war became rarer than ever. Whereas in ancient agricultural societies human violence caused about 15 percent of all deaths, during the twentieth century violence caused only 5 percent of deaths, and in the early twenty-first century it is responsible for about 1 percent of global mortality. In 2012 about 56 million people died throughout the world; 620,000 of them died due to human violence (war killed 120,000 people, and crime killed another 500,000). In contrast, 800,000 committed suicide, and 1.5 million died of diabetes. Sugar is now more dangerous than gunpowder.

By these numbers, 1% of deaths are due to violence. Yet internet news and broadcast news feature nonstop coverage for days if some skirmish in some war kills 10 or 20 people.

News media devote far less time and energy to covering diabetes and obesity, which are killing many times more people, and are sometimes avoidable.

Yuval Noah Harari continues:

Whereas in 2010 obesity and related illnesses killed about 3 million people, terrorists killed a total of 7,697 people across the globe, most of them in developing countries. For the average American or European, Coca-Cola poses a far deadlier threat than al-Qaeda.

Given that human nature is what it is, it will not be possible to completely eliminate violence among human beings. But it has been reduced to record lows, making life on planet Earth better than it’s been in centuries.

But why is there widespread depression and anxiety if life is now so safe? Why such deep political division and passionate protest if violence has been virtually eliminated?

Because of social media use and recreational drug use; because of news media ginning up the public with skewed, bias, and otherwise distorted reporting, and beyond reporting, opining.

Given that the world is incorrigibly flawed and imperfect, certain phenomena will never be, and can never be, entirely eradicated: disease, death, and violence.

But human society can greatly reduce these things, and has in fact already done so. This world can never be perfect, but people can make it better than it is. They’ve already made it better than it was.

The Vatican, the Church, and Pius XII

Looking back at the Holocaust, many historians have investigated the resistance organized against the National Socialists (Nazis) by the Roman Catholic church. Although this effort saved the lives of many Jews, it has also been alleged that pope Pius XII did little to support the work.

The debate has filled many books. Some painted Pius XII as a hero who worked to undermine the Nazis and save Jews; other have depicted him as unmotivated and doing little to help the victims of the Holocaust. Which view is correct?

This brief blog post cannot hope to answer this question.

A complex situation can be disentangled by recalling that the Pope, the Vatican, and the Roman Catholic church are three distinct, if closely intertwined, entities.

The Curia is the bureaucracy which operates the Vatican. The Vatican is the complex of buildings and organizations serving as the leadership of the Roman Catholic church. The pope can influence, but not control, the Vatican.

Regarding efforts to thwart the Holocaust and save the lives of Jews (and other victims like Slavs), there are three questions: Could more have been done? Could something different have been done? Could something better have been done?

These questions need to be posed separately regarding the pope, regarding the church, and regarding the Vatican.

These same questions also need to be posed regarding the English, the Soviets, and the United States.

In each case, it will be found that something a bit more, or a bit better, could have been done - but not significantly more or significantly better.

The question, it is to be noted, is about what was possible.

The best response was not possible.

In the case of the Soviets, however, unlike the English, the Americans, and the Vatican, there were actions clearly designed to maximize the number of Jews murdered, e.g., when the Soviet army stopped outside Warsaw so that the Nazis could continue murdering Jews before the Soviets occupied Warsaw.

While some isolated individuals, like FDR, were unmoved by the plight of the Jews, such inertness cannot be attributed to, e.g., the U.S. government as a whole.

What must be dismissed is the notion that there was some widespread conspiracy to allow the Nazis to murder many Jews. Allied responses, when they were suboptimal, were usually so because of physical limitations.

The Holocaust remains one of the most horrific genocides and one of the most shocking human rights violations in history. There is a natural psychological tendency to respond by blaming someone - the English, the Americans, the Vatican - who should have been able to stop it or prevent it.

While the efforts of the Western Allies and of the Vatican, of the pope, and of the Roman Catholic church were imperfect, they were sincere, significant, and represented a major effort.

Norse Mythology: Human Sacrifice in Ancient Scandinavia

In the narrowest sense, ‘Scandinavia’ is Sweden and Norway. In a broader sense, the word also refers to Denmark and Iceland. Its widest usage includes parts of Finland, Germany, and Poland, as well as the Faroe Islands.

There is a difference between the geographical and the cultural use of the word.

As historian Hilda Roderick Ellis Davidson notes, paganism survived late in Scandinavia. After nearly all of Europe had given up the practices of human sacrifice, cannibalism, and the sale of women as property, the Norse were still engaging in such activities. Paganism was still widespread until the twelfth century.

Perhaps because heathen practices continued later in this region, they are more documented than in other areas. Saxony, e.g., discontinued pagan practices several centuries earlier, and few written records remain about their human sacrifices. Ellis Davidson writes:

In south Sweden can be seen hundreds of rock carvings from a still earlier time, recording rites and symbols; while at holy places like Thorsbjerg in north Germany or Skedemose on the island of Oland in the Baltic, offerings of men and animals, weapons, ornaments, ploughs and food were made over a period of centuries in the lakes and marshes, as careful excavation has now revealed.

Among the pantheon of Norse mythology, Odin was a chief or king among the deities, one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of the Norse idols. Germanic royalty sometimes claimed descent from him, and he appears in some of their genealogies.

Odin was therefore especially worshipped by aristocrats and military men. In the case of Odin, human sacrifice took the particular form of prisoners of war, as Ellis Davidson reports:

Odin was the ancestor of Scandinavian kings, and was worshipped by those who lived by their weapons and went out to plunder and conquer in many lands in the Viking Age; war captives and animals might be sacrificed to him and their bodies hung from trees.

Human sacrifice was a standard and essential feature of Nordic spirituality. As a general feature of pre-religious culture, mythology, including Norse mythology, included magic.

Magic is the attempt to manipulate natural events or human events. Sacrifice, of animals or humans, is done in an attempt to persuade some supernatural being to intervene on one’s behalf.

Moving from pre-religious societies to religious societies, attempts at magic recede, and there is more of an emphasis on forming a relationship with the deity rather than merely attempting to cajole the deity to act in one’s favor. By the 1200s, both human and animal sacrifice had become quite rare in Scandinavia.

From Dunkirk to North Africa: Britain Revitalizes the War Effort

In early 1940, the British military forces, which had come to western Europe in an effort to slow or stop the advance of the German army, were steadily retreating. Soon they were pinned down around Dunkirk, a town on France’s northern coast.

Inside the British government, some leaders wanted to meet the Nazis at a conference and negotiate a peace treaty. They would have let Hitler continue to control the German army and most of Europe.

Those who favored the idea of a peace conference feared that they’d lose a fight against Hitler. This fear was reasonable in light of the fact that the British military needed to be evacuated from Dunkirk to avoid be captured in its entirety.

But peace negotiations would imply and require at least a modicum of trust. Those opposed to a peace conference pointed out that Hitler was not to be trusted.

Inside the British government, there was a tension between those who wanted a peace conference and those who opposed the idea. Prime Minister Winston Churchill would break that tension, as historian Larry Arnn writes:

The day on which Churchill put an end to the idea of a peace conference was May 28, 1940. He walked into the cabinet room and made a stirring speech, which in the diary of Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton ended with these words: “If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.” This speech, which provoked a demonstration of enthusiasm that swept throughout the government, was not a product of any trend or great evolution of history. It spoke in defiance of those forces.

A bit more than a year later, in late 1941 and early 1942, Churchill was developing his strategy for the war. The air war raged over England, but the Germans had not invaded Britain, and the British military was rebounding from the debacle at Dunkirk.

The British were not yet ready for a direct confrontation in Europe with the German military. As historians Peter Maslowski and Allan Millett write,

Reverting to their traditional approach of defeating continental enemies, the British wanted to avoid a direct confrontation with a full-strength Wehrmacht in northern Europe until this confrontation carried no risk of a 1914-1918 stalemate. Instead they urged operations in the Mediterranean theater, where they were already engaged and where their scarce naval, air, and ground forces had some some ability to check the Germans and Italians. Churchill stressed that the Mediterranean theater offered many strategic opportunities, since the African littoral could be wrested from the Vichy French forces in Morocco and Algeria and the German-Italian army campaigning in the Libyan-Egyptian area against the British 8th Army. Churchill argued that a 1942 campaign in this area would divert German troops from Russia and strengthen the British war effort. What he did not say was that this campaign would be British-commanded (thus presumably using the greatest Allied expertise in generalship) and help restore the integrity of the British Empire, which Churchill desperately wanted to preserve.

Especially in the areas of North Africa, including Egypt, and the Near East, maintaining some sense of the British Empire was crucial to keeping the peace. This would become painfully clear after the war.

The French and British presence in the Near East had already become less decisive in the wake of WW1. The Europeans had paid too high a price, both in terms of lives and in terms of money, to continue to devote a high level of resources to keeping the region policed.

Although the Near East had been civilized millennia before Europe, the region’s civilizations had become notably less humane and less peaceful in recent centuries. The French and British presence in broad swaths of the area - much of which had formerly been Ottoman possessions - kept a lid on the periodic feuds and bloodbaths which erupted on a regular basis.

Churchill was, even in the grim days of early 1942, thinking ahead to a postwar era, and thinking of ways to maintain peace in that era. Sadly, the British Empire would continue fading, and more than half a century of violence in Near East, during the postwar decades, has shown that the absence of French and British occupational troops led to increased violence.

Human civilization paid a high price in order to defeat Hitler. While millions of Germans were freed from his cruel Nazi dictatorship, millions of people in the Near East were left exposed as major European powers could no longer afford to keep the peace there.

Global Climatic Instability: A Continuation of Ancient Trends

Variations in the Earth’s climate have caused researchers to look for the causes of such changes. Specifically, certain political groups have asserted that warming and cooling trends could be anthropogenic, and have sought evidence to support this view.

The notion propagated over social media is roughly this, that since the increased use of ‘fossil fuels’ (coal, oil, and natural gas) started in the late 1700s, emissions, specifically carbon dioxide have accumulated in the earth’s atmosphere and thereby initiated changes in the climate.

Long-term trends in the planet’s climate, however, predate large-scale industrialization.

A wide variety of techniques allow researchers to measure conditions prior to the advent of recorded readings from thermometers: core samples from ice or soil; tree-ring evaluation; written records quantifying the expansion and contraction of glaciers, and gauging snowfall and rainfall; and general agricultural and naturalistic records documenting which types of plant thrived in various locations.

From such measurements, it is possible to accurately reconstruct a climatic history of the Earth. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sets forth a history which includes a Roman Warm Period (ending around 400 A.D.), a Dark Ages Cold Period (ending around 950 A.D.), a Medieval Warm Period (ending around 1250 A.D.), and a Little Ice Age (ending around 1870 A.D.).

Naturally, these dates are not precise, but rather indicate a general and gradual change in a trend. Terminology varies somewhat, as the Medieval Warm Period is, e.g., also known as the Medieval Climate Optimum or the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA). The IPCC notes that

New warm-season temperature reconstructions covering the past 2 millennia show that warm European summer conditions were prevalent during 1st century, followed by cooler conditions from the 4th to the 7th century.

What seems, in the short-term context of a century or two, to be a warming trend, is in the larger context of several millennia merely the global climate emerging from end of the Little Ice Age.

A visual graph on a Cartesian plane of the Earth’s climatic temperature over time would look something like a sine wave, warming and cooling patterns following each other over the centuries. The IPCC writes that

Persistent warm conditions also occurred during the 8th–11th centuries, peaking throughout Europe during the 10th century. Prominent periods with cold summers occurred in the mid-15th and early 19th centuries.

This pattern extends backward in time long before the commencement of the large-scale use of fossil fuel. The planet has experienced centuries in which northern Europe and North America had temperatures warm enough to support subtropical plant life.

Conversely, there were centuries in which, e.g., large parts of northern and central Africa experience temperatures consistent with temperate zones. These extremes occurred at a time when the use of coal, oil, and gas was nearly unknown. The IPCC reports that

There is high confidence that northern Fennoscandia from 900 to 1100 was as warm as the mid-to-late 20th century.

The pattern which emerges, then, is a steady sinusoid pattern, with the planet’s climate alternating between warm periods and cool periods every few centuries. This general pattern seems to continue unaffected by any anthropogenic variables.

If the use of fossil fuels were capable of altering the earth’s climate, then other human activities of comparable size and scope should be also capable of producing changes in climate.

But other human actions, like the shockingly large number of atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs detonated during the era of frequent bomb tests, have had no long-term measurable effect on the climate. The explosion of over 2,000 nuclear weapons over a few years was not capable of altering the climate.

If the weapons-testing programs were not capable of producing long-term warming or cooling trends (they might have had temporary localized effects), then it’s much less likely that the comparatively smaller use of fossil fuel would generate any change in climate trends.

The reliability of the sinusoid as a best-fit pattern for global climate stands, even though individual data points are sometimes outliers which depart from the best-fit line, as the IPCC indicates:

The evidence also suggests warm conditions during the 1st century, but comparison with recent temperatures is restricted because long-term temperature trends from tree-ring data are uncertain.

It would be noteworthy, even surprising, if the planet weren’t in the midst of a warming or cooling trend. The ‘normal’ condition of the Earth’s climate is to be in constant change.

Going back several thousand years, the Earth’s climate has demonstrated a semi-regular pattern of alternating between several warm centuries and several cool centuries. In light of this historical record, the climate’s current behavior is within ranges established by this pattern.

Because temperature trends in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries are consistent with the tendencies observed in previous millennia, there might be no need to search for extraordinary or anthropogenic causes. The IPCC notes that the MCA, a millennium ago, was likely even warmer than the current twenty-first century climate:

In the European Alps region, tree-ring based summer temperature reconstructions show higher temperatures in the last decades than during any time in the MCA, while reconstructions based on lake sediments show as high, or slightly higher temperatures during parts of the MCA compared to most recent decades.

Likewise, the Roman Warm Period, beginning around 250 B.C., was perhaps warmer than the current climate:

The longest summer temperature reconstructions from parts of the Alps show several intervals during Roman and earlier times as warm (or warmer) than most of the 20th century.

In sum, the climate is ‘changing’ only in the sense that it has been continuously and predictably changing for at least the last two millennia. The climate is doing nothing extraordinary.

Observed and measured temperatures, and warming and cooling trends, do not correlate with the onset of industrialization and the widespread use of fossil fuels. The data do not suggest that any generalizations gathered from climatic observation are anthropogenic.

Chiang in Context: China in the Mid 1930s

As the leader of mainland China from 1928 to 1949, and the leader of Taiwan China from 1949 to 1975, Chiang Kai-shek experienced many ups and downs. Throughout his time in mainland China, he wrestled continuously against the communists, either in a state of outright war, or in an uneasy truce.

Mao, the leader of the communists, at times found it expedient to lavishly if insincerely praise Chiang. The communists would exploit times of ceasefire during the ongoing Chinese civil war to regroup and rebuild their strength, and then resume their attack.

The war inside mainland China lasted from 1927 to 1949, and so was largely coextensive with Chiang’s tenure as leader there.

Although the struggle was long, there were times at which things went well for the ‘Nationalists,’ as those who defended the Chinese against communism were called. Historian Jay Taylor writes about the year 1936:

Despite continuing civil wars, the depression, depredations by Japan, and preparation for a general war, the power and authority of the Chinese central government was greater than at any time since the Taiping Uprising. In the spring, displaying military, political, and covert action skills, Chiang had quickly put down another rebellion by the Guangxi Clique and the usual dissidents in Guangdong. The rebels had again charged Chiang with appeasement and dictatorship but essentially the rebellion reflected the ongoing power struggle between the warlords and the central government. In their own provinces, the warlords were more like dictators than Chiang Kai-shek was, and within two years their preferred national leader, Wang Jingwei — at the moment still in Europe — would defect to Japan. Chiang's generous treatment of the incorrigible southerners, even sending them three million central government yuan or fabi in emergency aid, was an act of enlightened self-interest, which is perhaps all one can expect of a national leader.

The Guangxi region has a long cultural history - predating and outlasting Chiang - of being fiercely independent, and not identifying with the rest of mainland China. Mao, then, was not the only headache which Chiang faced.

In the southernmost part of China, and bordering on Guangxi, was the Guangdong region, which likewise had a traditionally independent attitude. Therefore many of Chiang’s troubles came from the south.

Wang Jingwei was a competitor who wanted Chiang’s power, but Wang Jingwei would obtain significance only to the extent that he attached himself either to the communists or the Japanese. In 1932, Chiang and Wang Jingwei had reached a compromise in which Wang Jingwei assumed political leadership of the Nationalist party, while Chiang led the military and much of the government.

Although the communists would ultimately succeed in subjugating mainland China and ousting Chiang, his two decades of leadership were not an unmitigated tragedy. At many points, things seemed to be going well.