Yesterday the Pentagon flew two unarmed B-52 bombers across disputed the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands, violating new airspace rules that China announced just this weekend:
China on Saturday unveiled an “East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone” (ADIZ) which requires aircraft flying over the Senkaku – which China calls the Diaoyu – to inform Beijing in advance or risk “defensive measures.” Tokyo reacted angrily to the move, which was aimed at changing the status quo over the islands. The Pentagon said the B-52 flights had been scheduled before the move, but the US refused to comply with the new Chinese zone. Paul Haenle, a former White House China director, says the US was sending “a message to the Chinese that you have taken a very provocative step at a bad time.”
So far the Chinese response to the American flights has been mild:
China’s defense ministry issued a terse statement (Chinese) today acknowledging the US aircraft incursion, which happened Nov. 25, but offering no rebuke. (The ministry said only that ”the Chinese side has the ability to effectively manage and control the relevant airspace.”) Today, two Japanese airlines also disregarded the Chinese flight restrictions.
Mike Yeo notes that the Chinese ADIZ “worryingly” overlaps with some Japanese space:
This could potentially result in interceptors on both sides encountering each other in the tense airspace near the Senkakus, and could lead to an East Asian version of the numerous “mock” dogfights between the Greek and Turkish Air Forces over the Aegean Sea in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Those dogfights resulted in the loss of several fighter jets and crew on both sides due to aggressive maneuvering, mid-air collisions and even actual shoot downs using live missiles.
Fallows sees the US in a tight spot:
The worsening Japan-China struggles are, for the United States, the opposite of the cynical view of the 1980s Iran-Iraq war. Back then, as the wisecrack held, the US wished both sides could lose. This time, the US would prefer that both sides win – or, more precisely, that they not fight. A struggle between the two, especially over the contested tiny islands, puts the US in a lose-lose predicament. Public mood and government policy in each country is increasingly hostile to the other – but we’re deeply connected to both of them, plus we have a treaty obligation to defend Japan against attack. We want this fight to go away, without our being forced to take a side.
Why risk getting involved, plus angering the Chinese, by sending B-52s through the new ADIZ?
I think the Pentagon’s initial explanation is the right one – on the merits, and as a matter of public diplomacy. The United States is not taking sides in this Japan-China island dispute, but it is against either side unilaterally changing the status quo. Also, in continuing “routine training flights” – which is how the B-52 mission was described – it is underscoring the U.S. commitment to existing rules on access to international air space. It was mildly risky to send that flight, but it would have been riskier not to react at all.
Isaac Stone Fish describes the ADIZ as a “provocation” but concedes that it is, “in Chinese eyes at least, in line with international norms of airspace and transparency”:
The United States has a clearly defined ADIZ; the website of the US Federal Aviation Administration warns of “use of force” in the “case of non-compliance.” (Secretary of State John Kerry said in a Nov. 23 statement that the United States “does not apply its ADIZ procedures to foreign aircraft not intending to enter U.S. national airspace.”) On Nov. 25, Yang Yujun, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Defense, responded to a question about the U.S. government “concern” about China’s decision. “Since the 1950s the United States and more than 20 other countries,” including Japan, have set up ADIZs, he said. For the United States to oppose this is “utterly unreasonable.”
Since taking office in November 2012, Xi has instituted a number of policies that demonstrate a solidification of control of the Communist Party and a streamlining of China’s bureaucracy. But, in doing so he’s liberally borrowing from the US government’s institutional hierarchy and best practices, implementing a series of institutional changes that could be called American reform with Chinese characteristics. And for those concerned about a rising China challenging the United States, this is worrisome indeed.
Tai Ming Cheung sees the move as part of a broader Chinese military push:
China’s decision to establish an ADIZ over the East China Sea comes barely one year after Xi Jinping became chairman of the Central Military Commission (C.M.C.) at the 18th Communist Party Congress. The move is a major example of Xi’s emerging doctrine of “preparing for military struggle” that is the centerpiece for his plans to develop a battle-ready P.L.A. [People’s Liberation Army].
Mark Green has a similar view:
It is possible that the move was a nationalist play by Chinese President Xi Jinping to consolidate conservative control for economic reform measures after the Third Plenum. But it’s also possible – I would argue probable – that the ADIZ comes out of a playbook developed by China’s Central Military Commission under Xi’s supervision that anticipates and is readying for confrontation with Japan and other maritime states in the East and South China seas. The People’s Liberation Army’s new “Near Sea Doctrine” and Xi’s recent statement that the PLA must be ready to “fight and win wars” need to be looked at in a new and much more serious light. This is not a one-off, but part of a long-term Chinese strategic view toward the offshore island chains in the Pacific that must be recognized as a major challenge in Washington.
But Greg Torode and Adam Rode note that China’s military may not be able to handle the “intensified surveillance and interception” needed to enforce the rules:
Regional military analysts and diplomats said China’s network of air defense radars, surveillance planes and fighter jets would be stretched by extensive patrols across its Air Defense Identification Zone, roughly two-thirds the size of Britain. … While China could field an extensive array of surveillance capabilities, including ship-borne radar, there will still be gaps, added Christian Le Miere, an East Asia military specialist at the independent International Institute of Strategic Studies in London. “It is just not yet clear how they are going to enforce it,” he said. “It may be more a rhetorical position to serve a political end.”
Meanwhile, Jo Floto despairs that “it’s actually difficult to see just how there can be any resolution to the dispute at all”:
The issue of Chinese sovereignty over the islands has in many ways come to define the foreign policy of China’s new leader Xi Jinping – even though this crisis began before he took the top job. Portraying China as newly assertive and unafraid plays well here. Anti-Japanese sentiment in China is widespread. All of which makes it easy to see why Xi’s more muscular, and increasingly militarized stance towards Japan would be popular at home.
But it also leaves him with no room to back down with anything less than a full concession from Tokyo that the islands are indeed Chinese. Over in Tokyo, there is no mood in Shinzo Abe’s nationalist government to be seen to cower in the face of what’s being described as Chinese bullying. Two countries, two governments, one elected, the other not, but both giving themselves very little political room to move.
Demetri Sevastopulo notes that “the last time the US displayed its aerial might in a similar fashion was when it dispatched B-2 stealth bombers and B-52s to the Korean peninsula in March” in response to North Korean saber-rattling.
The Dish 