By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR
WASHINGTON: China is hurtling headlong towards a major conflict in the Pacific – but that course can change, one of America’s most creative strategists says.
Just four years ago, Beijing welcomed a delegation of 600 Japanese lawmakers and other influentials led by political kingmaker Ichiro Ozawa, and China-Japan relations were warming up so fast that some in Washington were getting worried, Edward Luttwak noted this morning.
Then China starting using ships, planes, and inflammatory diplomacy to assert its long-dormant claim to the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands, a running conflict whose latest escalation was Beijing’s declaration of an Air Defense Identification Zone (fondly known as the ADIZ to national security wonks) over the disputed waters. Beijing has picked fights with its neighbors in a long arc from India to South Korea over the last four years.
But China’s leaders can stop what they started and return to the course they were on in 2009. They managed to shift from aggressive to peaceful policies twice before, after they provoked Taiwan Straits crisis in 1994-1995 and after they invaded Vietnam in 1979, and they can do so again.
Read the full story at BreakingDefense