Sure A Not

On June 3, naval vessels from the United States and Canada conducted a joint military exercise in the South China Sea. A Chinese warship, LY 132, overtook the US guided-missile destroyer USS Chung-Hoon and sped across its path. The US Indo-Pacific Command released a statement saying that the Chinese ship “executed maneuvers in an unsafe manner.”

The spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Wang Wenbin, responded that the United States “made provocations first and China responded,” and that the “actions taken by the Chinese military are completely justified, lawful, safe, and professional.”

This incident is one of many in these waters, where the United States conducts what it calls freedom-of-navigation exercises. These FON actions are given legitimacy by Article 87(1)(a) of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Laws of the Sea.

China is a signatory to that convention, but the United States has refused to ratify it. US warships use the FON argument without legal rights or any United Nations Security Council authorization. The US Freedom of Navigation Program was set up in 1979, before the UNCLOS and separate from it.

Hours after this encounter in the South China Sea, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. That forum, which has taken place annually at the Shangri-La Hotel since 2002, brings together military chiefs from around Asia with guests from countries such as the United States.

At a press gaggle, Austin was asked about the recent incident. He called on the Chinese government “to rein in that kind of conduct because I think accidents can happen that could cause things to spiral out of control.”

That the incident took place because a US and Canadian military exercise was conducted adjacent to Chinese territorial waters did not evoke any comment from Austin. He emphasized the role of the United States to ensure that any country can “sail the seas and fly the skies in international space.”

Austin’s pretense of innocence was challenged by his Chinese counterpart, Defense Minister Li Shangfu. “Why did all these incidents happen in areas near China,” Li asked, “not in areas near other countries?”

He added: “The best way to prevent this from happening is that military vessels and aircraft not come close to our waters and airspace.… Watch out for your own territorial waters and airspace, then there will not be any problems.”

Li contested the idea that the US Navy and Air Force are merely conducting FON exercises. “They are not here for innocent passage,” he said. “They are here for provocation.”

Tighten the net

When Austin was not talking to the press, he was busy in Singapore strengthening US military alliances whose purpose is to tighten the net around China. He held two important meetings, the first a US-Japan-Australia trilateral meeting and the second a meeting that included their counterpart from the Philippines.

After the trilateral meeting, the ministers released a sharp statement that used words (“destabilizing” and “coercive”) that raised the temperature against China. Bringing in the Philippines to this dialogue, the US egged on new military cooperation among Canberra, Manila, and Tokyo.

This builds on the Japan-Philippines military agreement signed in Tokyo in February, which has Japan pledging funds to the Philippines and the latter allowing the Japanese military to conduct drills in its islands and waters.

It also draws on the Australia-Japan military alliance signed in October 2022, which – while it does not mention China – is focused on the “free and open Indo-Pacific,” a US military phrase that is often used in the context of the FON exercises in and near Chinese waters.

Over the course of the past two decades, the United States has built a series of military alliances against China. The earliest of these alliances is the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, set up in 2008 and then revived after a renewed interest from India, in November 2017. The four powers in the Quad are Australia, India, Japan and the United States.

In 2018, the US military renamed its Pacific Command (set up in 1947) to Indo-Pacific Command and developed an Indo-Pacific Strategy, whose main focus was on China. One of the reasons to rename the process was to draw India into the structure being built by the United States, emphasizing the India-China tensions around the Line of Actual Control.

The document shows how the US has attempted to inflame all conflicts in the region – some small, others large – and put itself forward as the defender of all Asian powers against the “bullying of neighbors.”

Finding solutions to these disagreements is not on the agenda. The emphasis of the Indo-Pacific Strategy is for the US to force China to subordinate itself to a new global alliance against it.

Mutual respect

During the press gaggle in Singapore, Austin suggested that the Chinese government “should be interested in freedom of navigation as well because without that, I mean, it would affect them.” China is a major commercial power, he said, and “if there are no laws, if there are no rules, things will break down for them very quickly as well.”

Chinese Defense Minister Li was very clear that his government was open to dialogue with the United States, and he worried as well about the “breakdown” of communications between the major powers. However, Li put forward an important precondition for the dialogue. “Mutual respect,” he said, “should be the foundation of our communications.”

Up to now, there is little evidence – even less in Singapore despite Austin’s jovial attitude – of respect from the United States for the sovereignty of China. The language from Washington gets more and more acrid, even when it pretends to be sweet.

This article was produced by Globetrotter, which provided it to Asia Times.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism and (with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of US Power.

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So he’s back. Again. Turkey’s longest-serving leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, now has another five years to lead his country. The question is, lead it to where?

Historians will one day grapple with what “Erdoganism” is – and what it has meant for Turkey – but, living through it, it is clear Erdogan has the politician’s gift for pivoting positions.

The days of “zero problems with neighbors” or the aspiration, post-Arab Spring, to support the revolutionary fervor has vanished. One of these days, Erdogan may even take a trip to Damascus.

What, then, might the next half-decade hold for Turkey? Might he – as hoped by many of those European politicians Erdogan has irritated – lead the country back to some sort of orthodoxy, a political and economic “rational path”?

Start with economics, which is where the term orthodox is used – or rather, as it applies to Erdogan’s economic views, “unorthodox.”

Erdogan has long been a supporter of the view that lowering interest rates leads to a lowering of inflation – the exact opposite of what is usually called orthodox economics. (It’s the reason economies like the US and the UK, struggling with inflation increasing prices, have repeatedly raised, rather than lowered, interest rates.)

Immediately after the election, Turkey watchers were pleased to see Mehmet Simsek, a former finance minister until 2015, when Erdogan started his unorthodox economic experiments, return as finance minister.

Simsek said in his first comments last week that Turkey would return to “rational ground.” So far, so pleasing for the outside world. True, Erdogan also said in his first speech after being sworn in that “inflation will fall” – but that was just far enough away from his claim, pre-election, that he would keep cutting interest rates to give investors hope. There was that pivot again.

Refugee crisis

What, then, of Turkey’s foreign policy? One thing that won’t change is the Syrian refugee crisis, which, with Erdogan still in charge, will splutter along at roughly the same tempo, perhaps speeded up slightly if he can get Damascus to play along.

What won’t happen, as his opponent Kemal Kilicdaroglu had pledged during the campaign, is the mass deportation of millions of Syrians. That, at least to European leaders fearful of another wave of migration, counts as “rational.”

Nor will there be any attempt to claim – or reclaim, depending on one’s historical perspective – a leadership role in the wider Middle East. Revolutionary fervor has left the capitals of the Middle East, replaced by a yearning for quiet economic cooperation and an end to the region’s wars. Erdogan, already keen to court Riyadh, will be back in the capitals of the Arab Gulf region before the end of the year.

When it comes to relations with the West, things get trickier, and much depends on what an “orthodox” foreign-policy approach means.

Sweden’s bid to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is a good example. When Finland and Sweden first requested to join the alliance just over a year ago, almost all members accepted. Turkey was the rare holdout, using it as an opportunity to negotiate with Stockholm over what Ankara considers a lenient stance on Kurdish militant groups.

The same happened with the Ukraine conflict, of which the Swedish accession was a consequence. Again, NATO expected that Turkey would follow the West’s lead and line up against Russia. Instead, Turkey took a more independent approach, refraining from imposing sanctions on Russia while supplying its powerful military drones to Ukraine.

In some ways that approach paid off, since Turkey negotiated a grain deal with Russia that allowed Ukraine to export wheat, corn and barley, providing Kiev with a lifeline during the war. But that diplomatic victory doesn’t compare with standing by its NATO allies.

Independent foreign policy

That independence, or at least the search for it, is the nearest thing to Erdoganism in foreign policy.

That’s what the talk about a resurgence of Ottoman tendencies has often obscured. Modern Turkey, as it gears up for its second century post-independence, is not an imperial country in search of an empire. But nor is it merely another European or Asian country.

Under Erdogan, Turkey aspires to be an independent country, able to remain a pivotal part of NATO but keep relations with Russia; able to seek European Union membership while expanding its influence in the Middle East.

If an “orthodox” foreign policy simply means following what is decided in the major capitals of Europe and the US, then Turkey will certainly not follow it.

That independence, of course, cuts two ways. What Erdogan calls freedom to act, others call unpredictability. Where he seeks ad hoc deals, others seek stable alliances.

That, as the country and its neighbors prepare for five more years of Erdogan as president, is the only constant. Turkey, seen from abroad, may on occasion take the rational path – but the only orthodoxy in Ankara is independence.

This article was provided by Syndication Bureau, which holds copyright.

Faisal Al Yafai is currently writing a book on the Middle East and is a frequent commentator on international TV news networks. He has worked for news outlets such as The Guardian and the BBC, and reported on the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa. Follow him on Twitter @FaisalAlYafai.

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