China's simultaneous inside and outside game, by turns threatening the Philippines while also investing in it, points up the asymmetry in the competition between the U.S. and China in the Pacific Rim. China meshes military, political and economic domains as different strands of a single overriding strategy. The notion that "private" Chinese companies -- during a period when the Chinese navy is probing and pushing the Philippines over South China Sea rights -- would elect on their own to finance several dozen major mining projects in the country is as unlikely as, well... as the U.S. Government directing dozens of private (no air quotes) U.S. companies to invest billions of dollars in furtherance of American strategic interests.
Not one American dollar would be spent in support of such a venture, and not one Chinese yuan would be spent without it.
And so here we are: China challenges the Philippines' sovereignty and sea rights, with an intensity some predict makes military conflict only a matter of time. The Philippines then turns to the U.S., treaty-bound to fight alongside Filipino forces, now as in 1951. All the while, under the U.S. security umbrella, at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer, American forces protect the Philippines' right to surrender its natural resource wealth -- to the very same Chinese.
Is this what John F. Kennedy had in mind when he intoned that we would "pay any price, [and] bear any burden?" Does it fall to the U.S. to "support any friend" and "oppose any foe" when the friend has invited the foe to make an economic meal of its prime resources?
Will that decidedly undiplomatic question be on the docket for the 2-plus-2 talks? Not likely. But maybe it should be -- against the possibility that one day, perhaps all too soon, the U.S. will be pulled into a conflict to defend an ally who has already surrendered its economy to its enemy.
Such are the uncharted waters of the Pacific Pivot.
