'US, allies not going to war vs. China'

MANILA, Philippines - The United States' policy of rebalancing to Asia and deepening its ties with regional allies including the Philippines is not designed to provoke an armed confrontation with China, an American analyst said at a forum on Monday.

Robbert Sutter, professor of International Affairs in George Washington University, said that China can neither afford to have a conflict with Washington despite its economic growth and unprecedented military expansion.

"We are not going to war," Sutter said in a forum in the University of the Philippines on Monday, addressing speculations that the Obama administration's foreign policy is an effort to contain China.

He said President Obama is "not interested" in confronting China, its largest trading partner, as the prospect is unpopular with the American public.

The US also sees that containing China is "not a viable fantasy" as it needs more than one million troops for the job. 

The challenge Washington takes up, however, is toggling between dissuading China from using force and coercion in the disputed waters and trying to build a relationship with the Asian giant.

"The bottom line here is quite clear--the US wants to engage with China. The US in in the middle of a balancing act, like all governments in Asia are doing," Sutter, who did work for the Central Intelligence Agency, said. 

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China, on the other hand, is "failing in its foreign policy" by trying to convince its neighbors it aims to rise peacefully while sowing distrust and suspicion through its unilateral actions in the waters, which is why China is unprepared to confront the Western power, Sutter said.

"China has a terrible legacy in Asia," Sutter argues, citing events such as the Tiananmen massacre and the more recent Scarborough Shoal and Senkaku Island standoffs that dented its reputation. "Are they influential? Yes. Do they have countries to count on? Are there countries 'bandwagoning' for China? I can find none."

He added that China has serious internal issues that threaten its stability and needs to sustain its economic growth to project legitimacy of the ruling communist party.

"[Chinese president] Xi Jinping doesn't want big problems with the US. This a government [that is] legitimate insofar as it produces good results. They have 100 to 200 mass demonstrations every year. They have a big gap between the rich and poor. China is using four times the amount of oil to grow its economy that the US does. This is hard to sustain," Sutter said.

For Sutter, these weaknesses that China is going lengths to cover will make its Asian policies including its claims in South China Sea to fail, though it seems to be succeeding in the interim.

"The People's Republic of China is the only government in the world of its size that has not admitted a mistake in foreign policy. They are never at fault ... As a result they cannot deal with these issues effectively." he said. "... This, I think, is a big constraining factor in China."

Sutter admitted that the US' global position is on a decline, but believes it remains to be the leader in Asia as it provides the most important factor in wielding influence.

"Is Asia stable? Not really. Because they say, [countries] don't like each other and don't trust each other. We get together to collaborate ... [but] it means that they have to get their stability somewhere else," Sutter said.

He said that the US is in the other side of the Pacific but is willing to achieve stability in Asia.

"Americans don't do this because they love Asia, but because it is in their interest to do so," he said.