China's Growing Navy: The Balance of Power in the South China Sea

The South China Sea might be misnamed. If you look at a map, the majority of the coastline surrounding this body of water belongs to several other nations, including the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Cambodia.

So while the South China Sea isn’t really very “Chinese” now, China would like to change that in the future.

The nations of the South China Sea have welcomed a United States military presence in the area, because they see it as a safeguard against Chinese aggression. But the U.S. may not be able to maintain its presence there much longer.

As of July 2015, the U.S. Navy had 273 ships. That number will be getting smaller. Old ships will be decommissioned and taken out of service.

New ships, however, take a long time to build. They need to be planned several years in advance. But Congress hasn’t authorized enough new construction to prevent the shrinkage of the total size of the U.S. Navy.

The Chinese, meanwhile, are continuing to build ships at a pace which more than offsets the rate at which they are retiring their old ships. The Chinese navy is growing. Robert Kaplan writes:

The U.S. Navy presently dominates the South China Sea. But that situation will change. The size of the U.S. Navy has come down from almost six hundred warships in the Reagan era, to the mid-three hundreds during the Clinton era, to under three hundred now. It might go lower still by the 2020s, because of the retirement of current classes of submarines and surface warships, cost overruns, and future budget cuts, the result in turn of massive fiscal deficits. Meanwhile, the Chinese navy, the world’s second most powerful naval service, is growing rather dramatically. Rather than purchase warships across the board, China is developing niche capacities in subsurface warfare and ballistic missile technology (the DF-­21 missile) designed to hit moving targets at sea, such as a U.S. aircraft carrier. If China expands its submarine fleet to 78 by 2020 as planned, it will be on par with the U.S. Navy’s undersea fleet in quantity. While the U.S. Navy’s submarine fleet is completely nuclear, it requires that feature to sail halfway around the world, in order to get to East Asia in the first place, even as China’s diesel-­electric submarines are supremely quiet and can hide better, therefore, in the congested littorals of East Asia. At some point, China is likely to, in effect, be able to deny the U.S. Navy unimpeded access to parts of the South China Sea.

The Chinese have demonstrated that they have little or no interest in protecting the sea-lanes in and around the South China Sea. These shipping routes are among the busiest in the world, and any piracy or other obstacles to trade through that region would economically impact most or all of the world.

Local differences between the nations of southeast Asia are growing, even as engagement from other parts of the world is generally receding - America’s “pivot toward Asia” might constitute an exception to this trend, but that remains to be seen. As Robert Kaplan writes:

Thus, as China’s navy gets stronger — ­its economy permitting — ­and China’s claim on the South China Sea — ­as demonstrated by its maps — ­contradict the claims of other littoral states, these other states will be forced to further develop their own naval capacities and to balance against China by relying increasingly on the U.S. Navy: a navy whose strength has probably peaked in relative terms, even as it must divert considerable resources to the Middle East. Worldwide multipolarity is already a feature of diplomacy and economics, but the South China Sea is poised to show us what multipolarity in a military sense actually looks like. Just as German soil constituted the military front line of the Cold War, the waters of the South China Sea may constitute the military front line of the coming decades.

Observers from other parts of the world often underestimate the power of racism among nations of east Asia. Racism as a cultural phenomenon takes very different forms in different parts of the world.

Among the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans, racism is unabashed and officially celebrated. Each of these groups considers itself to be simply better than the others. When these attitudes are augmented with battleships, submarines, and missiles, the danger becomes obvious:

There is nothing romantic about this new front line. Whereas World War II was a moral struggle against fascism, the Cold War a moral struggle against communism, the post-­Cold War a moral struggle against genocide in the Balkans, Africa, and the Levant, as well as a moral struggle against terrorism and in support of democracy, the South China Sea shows us a twenty-­first-­century world void of moral struggles, with all of their attendant fascination for humanists and intellectuals. Beyond the communist tyranny of North Korea, a Cold War relic, the whole of East Asia simply offers little for humanists. For there is no philosophical enemy to confront. The fact is that East Asia is all about trade and business. Even China, its suffering dissidents notwithstanding, simply does not measure up as an object of moral fury.

These factors - China’s territorial ambitions, its lack of concern for commerce in the South China Sea, mutual nationalistic racist distain between the nations of east Asia, increasing tensions between southeast Asian nations, and declining engagement from other parts of the world - send a clear signal that stability in that part of the world is endangered.

Textual Sources of Islam

Introductory remarks about Islam usually include the observation that the Qur’an - also spelled ‘Koran’ - is the foundational and definitive text for serious Muslims. While this statement is correct, it is perhaps incomplete.

Other sources for Islam include the Hadith and the Sunnah. These are somewhat amorphous collections, records of what Muhammad said, did, and taught. They also include what his followers, with his permission and approval, said and did.

Many of Islam’s central practices and beliefs are not found in the Qur’an, but are found in these other documents.

For example, not in the Qur’an is the command to pray five times daily, the command to avoid paintings and sculptures of living things, and the requirement of capital punishment for adulterers.

Also not in the Qur’an are the details of the ‘hajj’ pilgrimage: to walk seven times in a counterclockwise circle around the ‘kaaba’ building, and then to acknowledge the ‘black stone’ at the site. Nowhere in the Qur’an is the elevation of the ‘shahada’ to a credal status.

Some other core Islamic concepts, however, are found in the Qur’an, such as the right of men to have sex with any women whom they have obtained in combat. Men are told that they may have sex with their wives, and with those women “whom their right hands possess.”

To “possess with one’s right hand” is an idiom which includes valuables taken in battle. The Qur’an is divided into chapters called “Surah” and this expression is found in Surah 4, 8, 23, and 70.

A thorough understanding of Islam, then, includes the notion that alongside the Qur’an, there are other texts which are understood to be authoritative.

From Paris to Africa: Liberty Struggles to Survive

In January 2015, armed Muslims entered the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a French magazine, and began shooting. They killed eleven people, because they objected to a cartoon which the magazine had published.

As part of this same action, Islam had organized violence thousands of miles away, in Africa. News media carried reports like this:

More than 70 churches were destroyed and 10 people killed after a cartoon agitated Niger’s two largest cities. One week after Islamic terrorists killed 11 staff members of the French publication Charlie Hebdo, the magazine published a “survivor’s issue.”

While the magazine is not a particularly religious one - it is, in fact, probably somewhat anti-religious - it nonetheless stands for religious freedom, and thus makes, to a limited extent, common cause with Jesus followers around the globe.

Its cover featured a cartoon of Muhammad holding a Je suis Charlie (“I am Charlie”) sign. While the cartoon sparked protests across Africa and the Middle East, the deadliest were in Niger, which ranked worst in a Pew Forum poll of sub-Saharan African Muslims’ support for religious freedom for non-Muslims.

Only a few months later, Paris was again the location of Islamic hostility, as Muslims used bombs and rifles to kill over 100 people. These attacks, on Friday, November 13, 2015, revealed that Islam has no intentions of relaxing its efforts to execute those whom it considers to be ‘infidels.’

As Islamic aggression continues to expand globally, societies based on freedom will be tested, to see if they are willing and able to resist such attacks.

Religious Freedom: a Global Concern

The sincerity of any claim of support for religious liberty is seen in one’s effort to support the freedom to practice a religion which is not one’s own.

In 1998, the United States Congress created an “Office of International Religious Freedom” and a “Commission on International Religious Freedom” not to address the concerns of comfortable majority religions, but to speak on behalf of persecuted minority faiths.

In keeping with the principle of protecting minority interests, an important post has been filled by a representative of Judaism. Estimates calculate that, at most, 1.4% of the U.S. population is Jewish, making it one of the smallest groups in the nation. In March 2015, news media carried reports like this:

For the first time, a non-Christian became America’s ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom. Rabbi David Saperstein, confirmed in December, fills a position left vacant since October 2013.

The ambassador’s minority status carries both a practical and a symbolic value. Practically, he has experience as a member of a possibly marginalized non-majority group. Symbolically, he represents American habits of protecting minority groups.

Members of small and possibly endangered groups have, over many years, seen the United States as a place of safety for them.

His nomination was widely lauded by Christian advocates, including Russell Moore of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Chris Seiple of the Institute for Global Engagement, and US Rep. Frank Wolf. Wolf authored the International Religious Freedom Act that created the post.

The question of safety for religious minorities has gained attention in recent decades, as Islam has organized the persecution of Jesus followers in countries from Niger to Pakistan.

Because of this trend, religious liberty as a movement has gained attention in the last few years. Worldwide, more people have been killed for speaking about Jesus or for owning a copy of the New Testament than in previous decades.

After 34 years as one of Congress’s leading advocates for international religious freedom and human rights, Wolf retired in January. But he is hardly finished advocating, becoming the first to fill a newly endowed chair in religious freedom at Baylor University.

Whoever occupies the position “ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom,” she or he will have much work to do, as Islamic aggression continues to spread.

A Higher Level of Economic Science

The principles of economics were articulated primarily by Adam Smith, David Hume, and David Ricardo. They formulated the familiar statements about supply, demand, and price levels.

According to this type of ‘classical’ economics, prices rise when demand increases and supply remains steady, or when demand holds steady and supply decreases. Prices drop when supply increases against a steady demand, or when demand decreases against a constant supply.

These familiar axioms are intuitive, and they correspond to actual experience and data. This classical understanding is now the core of economic thought.

But there are some questions for which classical economic reasoning has no good answers.

One question is about the concept of value: food, which is necessary for life, and which everyone desires, often costs little; sapphires and pearls, which serve no practical purpose and meet no need, often cost much. Why?

The demand for food is large, universal, and steady; the demand for jewels is small, limited to a segment of the population, and can soften when competing demands expand. Yet the gems find a higher price than food. Why?

Classical economic understandings were correct as far as they went, but they did not go far enough to answer such questions. The science of economics would have to advance to a new level.

Carl Menger would discover the principles which allowed for new understandings of economic phenomena.

Born in 1840, Menger would do most of his work at the Universität Wien. He died in 1921.

Menger noticed that classical economic thought treated supply and demand as monolithic and irreducible forces, like magnetism or gravity. The original founders of classical economics - Smith, Hume, Ricardo - may have attempted to follow the paradigm of Newtonian physics or Cartesian philosophy, and tried to find a systematic solution based on a few axiomatic concepts.

Instead, Menger analyzed economic demand as being composed of many individual decisions. Different individuals will be purchasing the same product at the same time - but their choices are different.

Consumers may buy the same product, but for different reasons. The value which they place on the product will vary. ‘Value’ is a measure of the strength or intensity of demand - in common language, “how much” and “how bad” the customer wants the product.

Classical economics could not answer these questions: How does a person assign a value to an object? A person decides to pay a certain amount for the object, presumably because the object will fill, or help to fill, certain desires; how does a person make that decision? Why does a person decide to pay some specific amount? Joseph Salerno writes:

Menger brilliantly answered the question by restating it: “Which satisfaction would not be attained if the economizing individual did not have the given unit at his disposal - that is, if he were to have command of a total amount smaller by that one unit?” In light of Menger’s discussion of economizing, the obviously correct answer to this question is “only the least of all the satisfactions assured by the whole available quantity.” In other words, regardless of which particular physical unit of his supply was subtracted, the actor would economize by choosing to reallocate the remaining units so as to continue to satisfy his most important wants and to forego the satisfaction of only the least important want of those previously satisfied by the larger supply. It is, thus, always the least important satisfaction that is dependent on a unit of the actor's supply of a good and, that, therefore, determines the value of each and every unit of the supply. This value-determining satisfaction soon came to be known as the “marginal utility.”

Menger’s discovery was this: goods have values because they serve various purposes, and the importance of these various purposes differ. This is step toward answering the question about why gems are more expensive than food.

Menger argued that it is not the case that the value of goods derives from the value of the labor used to produce them. On the contrary: the value of labor derives from the value of the goods it produces.

Against the idea that financial transactions are always an exchange of equal values - like an algebra equation or a chemical equation - , Menger pointed out that people will give up what they value less in order to gain what they value more. It is this asymmetry which produces wealth: both sides gain from the transaction.

One sees here again the fascination which the founders of classical economics had with the advancements in natural science made by people like Newton and Boyle.

Carl Menger launched a new area of economic investigation, which kept many of the discoveries of ‘classical economics,’ but which also created possibilities for more advanced analyses.

Sentenced to Death for Thinking

In Pakistan, a woman named Asia Bibi was sentenced to death after allegations were made that she was “denigrating the Prophet Muhammad,” according to news media.

The allegations were reported to authorities five years after the ostensible incident, evidence was scant, and the narratives of the purported witnesses were weak and not too consistent.

Such scenarios are not uncommon where Islam prevails. Aged fifty, Asia Bibi is the mother of five, and was sent to

death row for allegedly denigrating the Prophet Muhammad during an argument with a Muslim colleague over a cup of water. Her lawyer argued that lower courts wrongly overlooked the five-day delay between the incident and the police report filed by a local imam, who wasn’t present at the argument.

Pakistan is exemplary of many Islamic republics, which routinely sentence people to death for ‘blasphemy’ - but the definition of that word is stretched very thin. Mere accusations often suffice for conviction. The possession of a New Testament book, or attendance at any non-Muslim religious gathering, can easily be interpreted as ‘blasphemous.’

Jews, Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, and others are executed, imprisoned, or beaten for the simple fact that they are not Muslims.

These people are, in effect, punished for thinking.

In the case of Asia Bibi, diplomatic pressure from Europe and North America may yet have an effect. The Pakistani supreme court may hear an appeal of her conviction. Perhaps she will be allowed to live.

Collaborating in the Ukrainian Genocide: Holodomor

In one of the more horrific aspects of Stalin’s mass murders, he discovered that the easiest way to kill millions of people was to simply starve them. Soviet soldiers set fire to fields and barns, slaughtered animals, and then left the area.

The farmers died by painful starvation.

One of the areas in which Stalin applied this technique was in the Ukraine. Some regions of that country expressed hesitation about the Soviet-Communist plan for collectivization.

Ievgen Vorobiov writes about Grigoriy Petrovskiy, a Ukrainian who actually aided Soviets in their mass murder. Far from protesting Stalin’s deadly communism, he carried out Stalin’s killing schemes:

Petrovskiy is notorious for having abetted the Soviet policy of Holodomor: forced requisition of food from Ukrainian peasants that resulted in mass starvation and the deaths of an estimated 3 to 5 million Ukrainians in 1932-1933. Even as a quarter of the Dnipropetrovsk region’s population was wiped out by the artificial famine, Petrovskiy proclaimed triumphantly in September 1933 that “the collective farm system has finally defeated all its enemies.”

Nearly a century after the fact, historians have discovered the full extent of the atrocities, details of which were kept partly secret until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Most Ukrainians (as well as at least 17 countries) recognize the Holodomor as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people.

The USSR had help, not only from the traitor Petrovskiy who turned against his own people, but also from an American: Walter Duranty.

A reporter for the New York Times, Duranty aided Stalin by suppressing details of the millions of deaths. Instead, Duranty reported that Stalin’s communist collectivist program was a success, and that the ordinary people were benefitting from it.

Why did Duranty lie? Why did he willing aid the century’s most prolific murderer? Either Duranty received payment from Stalin, or he was ideologically sympathetic to Stalin’s cause.