Provocations by Foreign Governments (Updated)

Given the outrage over Russia’s hacking of the DNC, I’m surprised at how muted the reaction has been to the incident of China’s seizing a U. S. drone. The New York Times reports:

BEIJING — Only a day before a small Chinese boat sidled up to a United States Navy research vessel in waters off the Philippines and audaciously seized an underwater drone from American sailors, the commander of United States military operations in the region told an audience in Australia that America had a winning military formula.

“Capability times resolve times signaling equals deterrence,” Adm. Harry B. Harris Jr. told a blue-chip crowd of diplomats and analysts at the prestigious Lowy Institute in Sydney, the leading city in America’s closest ally in the region.

In the eyes of America’s friends in Asia, the brazen maneuver to launch an operation against an American Navy vessel in international waters in the South China Sea about 50 miles from the Philippines, another close American ally, has raised questions about one of the admiral’s crucial words. It was also seen by some as a taunt to President-elect Donald J. Trump, who has challenged the One China policy on Taiwan and has vowed to deal forcefully with Beijing in trade and other issues.

“The weak link is the resolve, and the Chinese are testing that, as well as baiting Trump,” said Euan Graham, the director of international security at the Lowy Institute. “Capability, yes. Signaling, yes, with sending F-22 fighter jets to Australia. But the very muted response means the equation falls down on resolve.”

The administration has certainly not handled the situation as I would have, proof positive that you wouldn’t want me as president.

I can’t help but wonder if the action wasn’t China’s response to Donald Trump’s accepting the congratulatory phone call from Taiwan’s president.

Update

For more background on the incident see this piece by Gordon Chang at the Daily Beast:

The seizure is only the latest act in a course of belligerent conduct spanning this century. The most notorious incident involved the clipping of the wing of a U.S. Navy EP-3 over the South China Sea on April 1, 2001 by a reckless Chinese pilot. After the stricken American plane landed on the Chinese island of Hainan, Beijing imprisoned the crew for 11 days and stripped the plane of its sensitive electronic equipment. Chinese leaders, for no apparent reason, required the craft to be chopped up so that it could not be flown away.
In September 2002, China’s media claimed a Chinese fishing boat intentionally rammed the Bowditch in the Yellow Sea to disable its sonar. The incident—there may have been no ramming but there was dangerous harassment of the Bowditch—occurred in international water.
In March 2009, Chinese craft tried to sever the towed sonar array from the USNS Impeccable in international water in the South China Sea. The Victorious, Impeccable’s sister ship, was subject to extreme harassment in March and May 2009.

Mr. Chang is more belligerent about the incident than I am if anything.

Update 2

The editors of the Wall Street Journal echo the observation I made above about the incident:

Some think the theft is a response to Donald Trump’s decision to take a congratulatory call from Taiwan’s President. But the People’s Liberation Army has pulled these stunts before. In April 2001, a PLA pilot tried a dangerous intercept with a U.S. spy plane in international airspace. He misjudged the distance, losing his own life and causing the U.S. plane to make an emergency landing in China. Beijing released the crew and plane after a 10-day standoff.

but see it as part of China’s ongoing testing of American resolve:

China’s behavior shows its intention to intimidate its neighbors and establish hegemony in East Asia. In recent weeks the PLA air force has flown practice bombing missions, with fighter escorts, near the Japanese island of Okinawa and around Taiwan. The Japanese air force scrambled to intercept Chinese planes 571 times last year, up from 96 in 2010. Recently China has deployed military forces on disputed shoals in the South China Sea, contradicting President Xi Jinping’s promise to Mr. Obama.

China objects to U.S. Navy and Air Force transits near these shoals. The Obama Administration promised to carry out such missions regularly but then restricted the Pentagon to a handful. That sent a message that the U.S. can be intimidated from exercising its rights.

The incident in 2001 was transparently intended to test President Bush. I’m generally wary of the “resolve” argument as applied to foreign policy. I don’t think there is such a thing as abstracted resolve. There are, however, specific responses to specific developments. From my vantage point criticizing a lack of resolve relies on the fantasy that if we were only just determined enough, darn it, all of our foreign policy problems would evaporate, ultimately just another word for militarism.

My general impression is that for whatever reason the Chinese military does not particularly respect the United States or the U. S. military. We haven’t really given them any reason to do so. China’s foreign policy objectives clearly include asserting its imagined rightful place in the world and tweaking the U. S. is their way of puffing themselves up.