Photo source: AsianAffairs.in
Europe’s navies are returning to Asia in a move that could either inflame or help keep tensions under control. Britain and France have deployed warships to the contested South China Sea and announced that more are on their way.
For the West it is a natural culmination of Donald Trump’s trade war, the European Union redefinition of China as a systemic rival and the necessary reaction to Beijing’s open violation of the rules-based order by building military bases in international waters.
But for Beijing this scenario conjures up the 19th century spectre of foreign gunboats invading its shores that led to its Century of Humiliation. […]
Thanks for bringing this article to my attention. Fascinating read.
This point is a good summation of how the game is being redefined as new pieces come to the board: “The projection of British and French military power into this theatre changes the narrative that Beijing had hoped to write, namely that the South China Sea was a dispute of Asian values pitted against Western ones, whereby China represented modern, forward-looking Asia against the outdated, fading and flawed West.”
and this: “Europe’s return signals the failure of Asia to create its own internal defence structures. More decades might have allowed time for the Indo-Pacific’s institutions to strengthen and mature, but China’s rapid advancement has brought an urgency that Western powers insist needs addressing.”
I remember studying the Opium Wars in university, as well as working through futurist projections on how the region’s power balance might work out. With so many variables injected into the mix, precarious uncertainty might be the best possible scenario for some time.