The Nine Dash Line is the greatest external threat to the United States since the War of 1812. Yes, much, much greater than WWII. The NDL threatens the livelihood of every American, something not even that war managed to do.
China’s concept is simple: occupy and militarize a distant ocean 38% the size of China itself to throttle our supply chains there, affecting employment and incomes in even the smallest of our communities to effect our elections and their policy outcomes. Pearl Harbor on steroids.
The Center of Everything (what the characters for “China” say) is used to telling its people what to do and expects us to get used to it too.
Why? Because The Center of Everything cannot endure a role other than what its name says that it is. It feels that it has too long been pushed aside by Western parvenus who must relearn their place in the natural order of things. The NDL is where they will relearn proper behavior.
The Center of Everything’s thinking is much like Kaiser Wilhelm’s a century ago as he plunged the world into a hundred years of conflict because he perceived a series of offenses to his honor culminating in Sarajevo. The Kaiser’s childishness gave us Hitler, Stalin, Mao and hundreds of millions of dead.
Much as the Kaiser spent years constructing offenses to his honor like the Agadir Incident, The Center of Everything is turning the NDL into a highly orchestrated set of Agadir Incidents. And, as with the Kaiser, The Center knows that there can be only one possible outcome. Which makes its leadership either astonishingly stupid or astonishingly ignorant, or both. Either way, we will pay.
Obama, to his credit got this. His “pivot to Asia” signified that the NDL is such a big problem for us that it is long past time for the Euros and the Middle East to look after themselves. Something that they can easily afford to do. And, since we no longer need to import oil, something that we can happily leave to them. Obama realized that, for Americans, the Middle East and all its turmoil counts for nothing. The NDL is destiny.
But, as always with him, Obama did not communicate this to anyone. He is no good at Rooseveltian fireside chats. He should have said clearly and publicly during the Libyan crisis that he was outsourcing the creation of a stable, democratic Libya to the Euros and that the protection of Europe’s soft underbelly in North Africa and the Middle East was now their responsibility.
Instead, he assumed that the Euros are as intelligent as he is and that they would “get” the logic of their situation. He said nothing until a recent interview in the Atlantic in which he let the Euros have it for their ineptitude. Too long after the fact to be of any interest to anyone but an historian.
Predictably, the NDL, which should be the ONLY issue in the 2016 election, is of no moment whatever. Go ahead. Do what Publius does: say “Nine Dash Line” to anyone you know. They will all look at you as if you have just left the conscious world.
So, as in the 1930s, Americans are heading into what will be their most important ever election completely oblivious to the biggest crisis in their history.
Meanwhile, the Center of Everything is becoming increasing unstable politically, economically and socially. Xi Jinping, who sees himself as the center of the Center, is proving more inept by the day and his power grabs ever more frantic. He is bound to lash out in a blame-the-foreigner frenzy. We are that foreigner.
The only question for us: Is this 1911 or 1914?
Follow Up
May 19, 2016
As Publius said, this will be big. Today, Jane Perlez penned a piece in the New York Times about how many in Vietnam want the U.S. to reopen Cam Rahn Bay to keep China in check. if this happens the scene will be set for the massive confrontation Publius expects.
Worse, as Idrees Ali and Megha Rajagopalan report in Reuters today, China's military is getting more and more unstable and less able to control itself.
July 12, 2016
Well it has happened. The NDL is no front and center in all U.S. foreign policy and military thinking. As Jane Perlez, who has been ahead of the curve on this for a long time, reports in the New York Times today, The Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague found against China. The implications for us are immediate and severe.
July 17, 2016
Great Piece by Geoff Dyer and Tom Mitchell in the Financial Times Big Read section today on just how close to 1914 we are with the NDL. Publius warns that The Center of Everything's ruling mechanisms are far too immature to avoid the coming crisis. Don Trump, whose inability to grasp simple essentials continues to astonish, will be caught out as this thing blows up in the next month or so.