Senkaku Islands Dispute: The Risks from Political Brinkmanship

The US, Japan and China appears to be playing a dangerous geopolitical brinkmanship game.

From today’s headlines at the Inquirer.net

Days after China asserted greater military control over a swath of the East China Sea to bolster claims to a cluster of disputed islands, the US defied the move Tuesday as it flew two B-52 bombers through the area.

China, however, insisted Wednesday it has the capacity to enforce its controversial newly declared air zone over islands disputed with Japan, despite Beijing’s reluctance to intervene after American B-52 bombers flouted its rules.

The US said what it described as a training mission was not flown to respond to China’s latest military maneuver, yet the dramatic flights made clear that the US will not recognize the new territorial claims that Beijing laid out over the weekend.

There are several angles I see here

One these nations have been attempting to promote “nationalism” in order to justify government spending in their respective military industry, to “pump prime” their fragile economies.

If this is true then, then all these has been a smokescreen in favor of pushing the interests of the military industrial complex. (charts above from the Economist)

Second, since China’s central bank recently signaled that they may be scaling back on purchases of US treasuries (euphemism for financing of the US government which includes the military) because these “does not benefit any more from increases in its foreign-currency holdings”, the US taunting of China’s government at the disputed Senkaku islands could have been implicit threat on the Chinese to sustain such such financing arrangement or else…

As one would note, both Japan and China has been providing support to the US government by cushioning the impact of the bond vigilantes through record UST accumulations.

Based on the US Treasury’s TIC September data, Japan holdings of USTs has spiked to record levels while China’s drifts at record levels

So while we see these countries posture and debate on media, behind the scenes Japan and China appear as coordinating their support to the US government via the bond markets against the bond vigilantes.

So we have a strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Third, the three crisis prone governments have earnestly been trying to divert the public’s attention from the real issue.

As shown above (via the Zero Hedge) despite the so-called 7+% economic growth in China, the PBoC has been rapidly expanding her balance sheet faster than the US.

And with unfulfilled expectations for real economic growth, despite the huge ballooning of central bank assets, governments need schemes to distract the public. And geopolitical brinkmanship with major political economies looks like a convenient way to achieve this.

Of course, it could all be a combination of the above

And we understand that all wars have been financed by inflationism.  

The problem is when games transform into reality.