With the conflict over the Senkaku-Diaoyu Islands between Japan and China coming to the forefront in the discussion over the U.S. pivot to China, the Trans-Pacific Partnership now seems more like a military containment policy than a trade deal.
From its inception the Trans-Pacific Partnership has been marketed as a trade deal that would increase American exports, resulting in more and better paying jobs for everyone. President Obama has even gone so far as to call it "the most progressive trade deal in history", although most within his own party would seriously disagree with him. But with increasing tensions between Japan and China over a strategically located group of uninhabited islands resulting in a flare up last week, it is becoming more clear each day that the embattled trade deal has significant foreign policy and military implications. Last Tuesday on May 26th, as Japan was conducting what they called a routine reconnaissance mission over the Senkaku-Diaoyu Islands, China scrambled two fighter jets to intercept and enforce their air defense identification zone. The Japanese aircraft included an OP-3C built by Lockheed Martin which is typically used for the magnetic detection of submarines and includes attack capabilities such as air to surface missiles and depth charges, as well as an YS-11EB electronic intelligence aircraft. While the interaction remained non-violent China called on Japan to end all surveillance operations around the islands "...otherwise all the consequences that might be caused will be borne by the Japanese side" The islands are important due to their proximity to vital shipping lanes that lead into the Pacific and Indian Oceans, because of potential oil and natural gas reserves that lay underneath, and what seems to be increasing military strategic importance. Both nations have competing historical and territorial claims but the major disagreement stems from the 1951 Treaty of San Francisco (aka Treaty of Peace with Japan) between Japan and Allied Nations. The treaty included Japan's renouncement of ownership of Taiwan and its surrounding islands, including those part of the current dispute. The Senkaku-Diaoyu Islands reverted to U.S. trusteeship thereafter, and were subsequently returned to Japan in 1971 without objection by China. China argues that the islands have been theirs since antiquity, and should have been returned instead of being given to the U.S. The U.S. responded to China scrambling fighter jets by coming to Japan's side, and publicly committing to backing Japan in a war with China over the islands. It also highlighted the fact that China is not part of, and has never been invited to join, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. In fact, upon closer scrutiny TPP seems to act more like a precursor to an economic blockade of China, if there were to ever be a maritime dispute between any of the TPP members and China, than a trade deal meant to decrease unemployment in the United States. China relies on imports from the Middle East and Africa for energy and other raw materials, making the western trade route through the East and South China Sea's and into the Indian Ocean a primary national security interest. TPP effectively unites all nations on this western route from China to their current trade partners, into an alliance and establishes a direct economic defense strategy. It also begins an attempted reversal of the erosion of American influence in Asia. And erode it has, especially since the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan ended in an unofficial defeat. The decrease in American influence and power was made even more apparent upon the withdrawal of hundreds of thousands of troops from the region, and in the recent dramatic rise to power of ISIS. And while the Islamic State continues to gain territory and increase in size, conquering major cities in Syria and Iraq, the U.S. has been developing a strategy to focus on its number one potential threat to hegemony, China.
Keeping commercial shipping channels open and increasing traffic within the territory defined by the Trans-Pacific Partnership develops and will maintain a significant U.S. presence in Indo-Pacific waters that currently doesn't exist. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter clarifies Obama's intentions for TPP when he says that the U.S. "will remain the principal security power in the Asia-Pacific for decades to come." To do this the U.S. Navy will implement its "Freedom of Navigation" justification outlined in A Cooperative Strategy of 21st Century Seapower, a report issued in 2007 detailing the upcoming build up in the Pacific. It is under the pretense of enforcing freedom of navigation that the TPP may come into play as the real foreign policy wedge it was meant to be. The TPP will create an international divide between China and surrounding nations by allowing the blocking of key shipping lanes. It becomes more clear why Obama is so adamant about passing a badly flawed trade agreement, event one that divides his own party, puts workers and the environment at risk, and hands more power to corporations that they already have -- thats because it isn't really about trade at all.