by JOHN FEFFER
PHOTO/DFATD/MAECD/Flickr
It wasn’t long ago that certain pundits were predicting war in Asia.
Back in the spring, the conflict over the South China Sea was heating up as China sparred with Vietnam over an oil exploration rig and with the Philippines over disputed reefs. Japan and China, meanwhile, were butting heads over a string of uninhabited rocks in the ocean between them. South Korea and Japan, both U.S. allies, were refusing to talk to one another over a range of issues that stretched back into the past. And the United States was pushing its “Pacific pivot,” which Beijing translated into Chinese as “containment with American characteristics.”
The Pacific was anything but pacific. Everyone was preparing for war by jacking up their military spending. It looked as though Asia was heading toward its own version of 1914, which even Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe worried about publicly.
But the guns of August, at least this time around, failed to fire. And last week, at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Beijing, everyone was suddenly making nice. The leaders of Japan and China shook hands. China offered to build up the infrastructure of its neighbors through a huge new “Silk Road” initiative. Shinzo Abe and South Korean President Park Geun-Hye broke bread at dinner and promised to push forward bilateral talks. The United States and China agreed to notify each other of military exercises in the Asia-Pacific region.
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