WHEN I wrote this article, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit just ended, and China’s Premier Xi Jin Ping, United States’ President Joe Biden, Philippines’ President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and several leaders had their photo-ops.
The media reported that the leaders spoke about how they all wanted to deescalate tensions in the region.
My question is, how would that look?
Would the Chinese Navy give up and start allowing resupply missions to Sierra Madre?
Do we abandon Sierra Madre?
Do we pretend that this year’s naval brinksmanship never happened?
I find these hard to believe.
It could mean the continuation of the status quo, with no new attempts at escalation, plus a few empty gestures in the background and all parties eye each other with suspicion. This scenario is more plausible, but also not likely to happen.
Another scenario is that that de-escalation means something very different to Xi and Biden. It’s possible that Xi actually deescalate tensions with Taiwan or some other region, while continuing or even escalating the situation in our backyard.
It could also mean the winding down of trade restrictions and the reversal of economic decoupling (or vice versa) but keeping the military situation as it currently is, though given the current economic indicators in both the US and China I doubt that would happen.
Or, we look at the more likely scenario: That everyone was just being polite in that summit, including our President, and the tensions will remain as they are.
Maybe Biden (and Marcos) and Xi really do want peace. Maybe they really do want to tone things down, but currently, our interests do not align.
China needs to secure its trade lanes. America doesn’t want to share its tech, and have allies whose territorial waters are standing in the way of China’s security goals.
The best course of action with regards to the results of the APEC meetings is to wait and see. This is the prudent option, but I wouldn’t hold my breath for any attempt at deescalation./PN
