ON FEBRUARY 7, 1845, Congressman John D. Cummins rose in the House of Representatives to add his voice to those clamoring for U.S. possession of the Oregon Territory, then occupied jointly by the United States and Britain. He declared that these opulent Northwest lands were “the master key of the commerce of the universe.” Put that territory under U.S. jurisdiction, he argued, and soon the country would witness “an industrious, thriving, American population” and “flourishing towns and embryo cities” facing west upon the Pacific within four thousand miles of vast Asian markets. Contemplate, he added, ribbons of railroad track across America, connecting New York, Boston and Philadelphia to those burgeoning West Coast cities and ports.
Furthermore, he said, the
“inevitable eternal laws of trade” would make America the necessary passageway
for “the whole eastern commerce of Europe.” European goods, traversing the
American continent, could get to Asia in little more than seven weeks, whereas
the traditional sea routes generally required seven months. “The commerce of
the world would thus be revolutionized,” said Cummins. “Great Britain must lose
her commercial supremacy in the Pacific; and the portion of its commerce which
forced its destination there must pay tribute to us.”
Cummins’s speech reflected a
fundamental reality about America: its quest for expansion and national
grandeur was pretty much irrepressible. There were, as always, the naysayers
and critics. Henry Clay argued for confining American settlement to lands east
of the Rocky Mountains and postponing occupation of Oregon for some forty
years. But most Americans recoiled at such a cramped view, and Clay’s similarly
blinkered opposition to the annexation of Texas probably cost him the
presidency in 1844. If America was a country of vast designs, as Emerson said,
then its westward push, known then and now as Manifest Destiny, was never
destined to stop at the Pacific.
This history is worth
pondering in the aftermath of China’s declaration last November that its
so-called air defense identification zone now encompassed most of the East
China Sea. U.S. secretary of defense Chuck Hagel promptly called the action “a
destabilizing attempt to alter the [region’s] status quo.” And Paul Haenle,
director of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy at Beijing’s
Tsinghua University, warned that the move could set China on a collision course
with Japan over disputed islands in the area. China’s provocation, he said,
renders “the already dangerous area surrounding the islands even more ripe for
an inadvertent collision.” Such a collision almost inevitably would draw in
America, given its defense treaty with Japan.
It wasn’t surprising that
commentators and analysts would see China’s action, and the tensions it could
unleash, as a harbinger of growing hostility between China and the United
States over which country will dominate East Asia. Many see the situation as a
classic confrontation of the kind that ensues when a rising power challenges an
established power—as when, for example, Rome challenged Carthage, Britain
challenged Spain, America challenged a reduced Spain and Wilhelmine Germany
challenged Great Britain for preeminence. As the BBC’s Jonny Dymond put it,
“For seven decades the US has been the dominant military power in the region.
China has given Washington notice that change is afoot. Peaceful management of
that change is one of the great strategic challenges of the 21st Century.”
Dymond has a point. But it
doesn’t capture the extent to which America has considered its Pacific
dominance to be a national birthright almost from the time it first conceived
of itself as a potential transcontinental nation. Cummins’s prophecy, in other
words, was widely shared.
CONSIDER AMERICA’S attitude
toward Hawaii. Even before California entered the Union in 1848, President John
Tyler declared that no foreign power except the United States should control
Hawaii—what might be called the Tyler Doctrine. These strategically positioned
islands, in effect, belonged to America’s sphere of influence. Presidents James
Polk and Zachary Taylor affirmed this doctrine. Then, even as the country
struggled with the explosive issue of slavery, President Franklin Pierce’s
secretary of state, William Marcy, negotiated an annexation treaty with
Hawaii’s King Kamehameha III, which was aborted only by the king’s untimely
death.
After the Civil War,
American officials renewed their interest in gaining dominance over Hawaii. An
1876 effort to craft a reciprocal trade agreement hit a snag in the U.S. Senate
until negotiators inserted a provision that Hawaii could not lease or grant any
“port, harbor, or territory” to a third-party nation.
Two decades later America’s
interest intensified with some big naval developments—the advent of coal-fueled
steam power, armored ships and long-range guns with explosive shells. Hawaii,
possessing the only protected harbor in the North Pacific, suddenly became a
“Pacific Gibraltar,” as historian William Michael Morgan put it in his book of that
title. If the United States could dominate Hawaii, which was the only feasible
staging area for an Asian attack on America, it could greatly enhance its
security; without it, menacing raids and challenges would be a constant threat.
Conversely, with Hawaii, America could project power and influence far into
Asia; without it, U.S. power projection would be infinitely more difficult.
Alfred Thayer Mahan’s
famous book, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783,laid
out the lineaments of America’s embryonic naval strategy. It was largely a
historical treatise, but to enhance the book’s sales potential Mahan added a
section on the strategic challenges and opportunities of the United States as
seen through the prism of sea power. America, he wrote, could produce vast
surpluses of goods. It should pursue three goals: moving beyond its traditional
focus on domestic markets and protective tariffs by promoting overseas trade;
developing a capacity to protect sea lanes and trade routes; and creating a
robust navy capable of projecting power into strategic areas of the world.
Few books have captured the
American consciousness as powerfully as Mahan’s volume, which was heralded as a
blueprint for the country’s future. Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed it “by far
the most interesting book on naval history which has been produced on either
side of the water for many a long year.” Overseas it was a sensation. Germany’s
Kaiser Wilhelm ordered that a copy be conspicuously displayed on every ship in
his growing navy.
Mahan’s book, though not
precisely a new strategic vision for America, brought coherence and power to
strategic impulses and ambitions that had been percolating within the American
polity for generations. But the timing was propitious because a few years
later, when America found itself at war with Spain over the destabilization of
Cuba under Spanish rule, the country was ready to exploit the war and seize
strategic territories according to Mahan’s formula. America was succumbing to
the imperial temptation.
Of course, opposition
voices, including Mark Twain’s, decried the new expansionism and warned of its
consequences. Many of these arguments were salient and prescient. But the
country wanted empire and Washington ignored the adjurations of the
anti-imperialists. A half century later, when it crushed Japan and its
sparkling navy, the United States emerged as the unchallenged regional hegemon.
SINCE THEN, Americans have,
by and large, credited themselves with handling the responsibilities of their
country’s Pacific dominance with moderation and wisdom, serving as a
stabilizing influence, and protecting the commercial and geopolitical interests
of less powerful nations in a more or less disinterested and fair-minded
manner. It’s a valid appraisal when placed in the perspective of history.
But China sees it
differently. It views the region’s international system as the baleful creation
of an outside force whose legitimacy as an Asian power is questionable and
whose presence thwarts its own national self-realization. Thus, we are likely
to see further challenges similar to China’s declaration of its air defense
identification zone. Indeed, Beijing has signaled that further declarations are
coming. Ultimately, it seems, China wants to push America back—back to Hawaii.
For America, the
geopolitical stakes in this face-off are big. But the psychological stakes are
possibly even bigger. That’s because the country’s position in the Pacific is
wrapped up in its national identity, in its destiny concept going back far
beyond the mere seven decades of its regional dominance following World War II.
It goes back to America’s first stirrings of ambition when Jefferson’s
Louisiana Purchase, Tyler’s annexation of Texas and Polk’s westward push to the
Pacific helped to forge a budding superpower. Thus, it isn’t accurate to say
that, without its role in the Pacific, America would be the same country, only
one shorn of a Pacific role. It would be an entirely different country, bereft
of a central element of its national consciousness going back at least to the
1840s.
But, if America’s Pacific
position is indeed intrinsic to its identity, Washington hasn’t conducted
itself in recent years as if it comprehends the challenge. Quite the contrary.
It has squandered blood and treasure, and sapped its economic strength, with
civilizational wars in the lands of Islam, where the definitional and strategic
imperatives are much less salient. It has otherwise undermined its economic
fortitude by piling on public debt, much of it in the hands of China, and
failing to generate significant economic growth. It has failed in its effort to
transfer its focus from the Middle East to Asia.
That’s not the way to
protect America’s Pacific interests. A pertinent object lesson can be found in
Spain back in 1898, facing war with that upstart nation on the American
continent. Like many countries on the wane, Spain remained oblivious to its own
internal decay. But it received a jolt of reality when it learned that the U.S.
Congress, anticipating conflict, had appropriated $50 million for national
defense, to be spent at the discretion of President William McKinley. Spain had
no such capacity to draw on financial reserves; any war it got into would have
to be paid for with borrowed funds.
Within a few months, Spain’s entire Pacific fleet had been
destroyed, and it was kicked out of Asia (as well as the Caribbean). Might it
happen to America? Not if the Obama administration and its successors follow a
carefully calibrated policy in which America shows some empathy to legitimate
Chinese security concerns, while also demonstrating that it will not simply
wink at bellicose actions. Both countries have more to lose from confrontation
rather than cooperation. Areas of cooperation should include proposing clearer
rules of the game. A détente also needs to be encouraged between China and its
neighbors. Japan’s nationalist grandstanding has unnecessarily exacerbated
tensions between Tokyo and Beijing. America should support its allies in South
Korea, Japan and Taiwan, but it should also discourage reckless behavior that
could drag Washington into an unnecessary regional conflict. It won’t be an
easy course to navigate, but skillful navigation can put Sino-American
relations onto a safer course without sacrificing important U.S. interests.
This will require more than rhetoric about a pivot to Asia; it will demand
actual pivoting. If America wants to preserve the dreams of its heritage, it
will have to pursue an Asia-first strategy.
Robert W. Merry is the political editor of The National Interest and an author of books on
American history and foreign policy.
