Hagel's comments appeared in the prepared remarks of a speech given Thursday to a gathering of Asian defense ministers at a Brunei resort overlooking the South China Sea, where several ASEAN members have overlapping claims with China.
The Pentagon chief said actions at sea "to advance territorial claims" are not effective, and "increase the risk of confrontation, undermine regional stability and dim the prospects for diplomacy."
Several ASEAN nations have accused China and its rapidly advancing military of using increasingly aggressive tactics in defending its claims to the energy-rich, strategic area.
The U.S. has said it does not take sides in the disputes, but has strengthened military cooperation with several nations there, most notably Vietnam and the Philippines.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the ASEAN meeting Thursday that the South China Sea is "stable," and that there should be no concern about freedom of navigation in the area, an issue that has been repeatedly raised by Washington.
The territorial disputes were expected to top the agenda at the two-day ASEAN Defense Ministers' Meeting-Plus, which also brought together top defense officials from Japan, South Korea and other regional powers.
Analysts did not expect a breakthrough on the maritime standoffs, as China has been reluctant to even discuss the issue at such meetings. It instead prefers to deal with each rival claimant separately, a position that gives it a much greater advantage.
A Thursday editorial in the Global Times, China's Communist Party's official mouthpiece, said the ASEAN meeting is not the appropriate place to resolve maritime disputes.
ASEAN foreign ministers have been pushing for China to work towards signing a binding Code of Conduct to help prevent conflict in the territorial disputes. China has shown little interest in doing so, but recently promised to discuss the matter with ASEAN later in the year.
Brunei, the Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam and Malaysia are embroiled in territorial disputes with China over several resource-rich islands in the South China Sea. Japan and China are engaged in a separate dispute in the East China Sea.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations consists of Singapore, Brunei, Cambodia, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Burma, and Laos.
The ADMM-Plus will help lay the groundwork for October's East Asian Summit, which will be attended by world leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama.
August 29, 2013
Lessons from the Sudetenlandby Benjamin Netanyahu |
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History teaches us that man learns nothing from history. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Their Strategic Barrier
Czechoslovakia was strategically placed in the heart of Europe, and its conquest was central to Hitler's plans for overrunning Europe. Though small, Czechoslovakia could field over 800,000 men (one of the strongest armies in Europe), and it had a highly efficient arms industry.
To complicate matters from Hitler's point of view, it possessed a formidable physical barrier to his designs in the shape of the Sudeten mountains, which bordered Germany and guarded the access to the Czech heartland and the capital city of Prague only miles away.
A system of fortifications and fortresses had been built in the mountains over many years, making passage by force a very costly proposition, perhaps even impossible. We now know from the Nuremberg trials and other sources that Hitler's generals were utterly opposed to an assault on the Czech fortifications.
Worse from Hitler's point of view, the Western powers had promised at Versailles to guarantee the Czech border against any aggressive attack. France, which in 1938 could field one hundred divisions (an army 50% larger than Germany's), had agreed in writing to come to the Czech's defense, and Britain and Russia were committed to joining in if France did so.
Propaganda vs. Reality
Since an outright military victory seemed impossible, Hitler embarked on an unprecedented campaign to politically force the Czechs to give up the land, and with it any hope of being able to defend their capital or their country.
The inhabitants of the Sudetenland, Hitler said, were predominantly German, and these three million Sudeten Germans deserved-what else?-the right of self-determination and a destiny separate from the other seven million inhabitants of Czechoslovakia; this despite the fact that the country was a democracy and that the Sudeten Germans enjoyed economic prosperity and full civil rights.
To buttress his claim, Hitler organized and funded the creation of a new Sudeten political leadership that would do his bidding, which was, in the words of Sudeten leader Konrad Henlein, to "demand so much that we can never be satisfied."2
William Shirer, who was a reporter in Europe at the time, succinctly summarized it:
Thus the plight of the German minority in Czechoslovakia was merely a pretext ... for cooking up a stew in a land he coveted, undermining it, confusing and misleading its friends and concealing his real purpose ... to destroy the Czechoslovak state and grab its territories .... The leaders of France and Great Britain did not grasp this. All through the spring and summer, indeed almost to the end, Prime Minister Chamberlain and Premier Daladier apparently sincerely believed, along with most of the rest of the world, that all Hitler wanted was justice for his kinsfolk in Czechoslovakia.3
In addition, Hitler backed the establishment of a Sudeten liberation movement called the Sudeten Free Corps, and he instigated a series of well-planned and violent uprisings that the Czechs were compelled to quell by force.4 Hitler's propaganda chief, Goebbels, orchestrated a fearful propaganda campaign of fabricated "Czech terror" and oppression of the Sudeten Germans.
The Czech refusal to allow the Sudeten territories to return to their "rightful" German owners, Hitler prattled, was proof that the Czechs were the intransigent obstacle to peace. For what choice would Germany have but to come to the assistance of its oppressed brethren living under intolerable Czech occupation?
Moreover, the Germans reversed causality, claiming that the Czechs were trying to precipitate a European crisis in order to prevent the breakup of their state, that the choice between war and peace in Europe was in Czech hands, and even that "this petty segment of Europe is harassing the human race."5
But there was a simple way to simultaneously avoid war and achieve justice, Hitler said. The Western powers-meaning Britain and France-could force the Czechs to do what was necessary for the sake of peace: Czechoslovakia had to relinquish the "occupied territories."
The Fickle West
And it worked. With astonishing speed, the governments and opinion-makers of the West adopted Hitler's point of view. Throughout 1937 and 1938, mounting pressure was exerted on Czechoslovakia by the leading Western powers "to go to the utmost limit" to meet Sudeten demands.6 Czech leader Edvard Benes was reviled as intransigent.
The Western press published articles lamenting Czech shortsightedness and its total disregard for the cause of peace in Europe, as well as the injustice of not allowing the Sudetenland to be "returned" to Germany (despite the fact that it had never been part of Germany).
The British envoy who was dispatched to investigate the situation even went so far as to demand that Czechoslovakia "so remodel her foreign relations as to give assurances to her neighbors that she will in no circumstances attack them or enter into any aggressive action against them."7
Land For Peace
On September 18, 1938, under the gun of Hitler's September 28 deadline, a meeting was held between the British Cabinet and the French prime minister and foreign minister, in which it was determined that democratic Czechoslovakia must accede to Hitler's demands.
Despite the fact that the West had promised in writing at Versailles to go to war to defend Czechoslovakia's borders, it agreed that the Czechs must give up the Sudetenland for "the maintenance of peace and the safety of Czechoslovakia's vital interests."
In return, the Czechs would receive from Britain and France "an international guarantee of the new boundaries... against unprovoked aggression."8
If the Czechs did not accept the plan and thereby save the peace of Europe, they were informed by the leaders of the free world, they would be left to fight Hitler alone. In Neville Chamberlain's immortal words: "It is up to the Czechs now."9
But in fact it was not even left to the Czechs. Chamberlain realized that if the Czechs were to fight, France and Britain might be forced to fight too. As the Czechs and Germans mobilized, Chamberlain became increasingly hysterical about averting war by buying off Hitler with the Czech defensive wall. He shuttled repeatedly to Germany to try to arrange the pay-off. Finally, minutes before his September 28 deadline, Hitler "agreed" to Chamberlain's proposal for an international peace conference to bring peace to Central Europe.
At Munich, Britain and France pleaded with Hitler for 11 hours to "compromise" and take the Sudetenland peacefully. In the end Hitler agreed.
Having grasped the fact that his supposed democratic allies had allowed themselves to become tools in Hitler's hand, Prime Minister Benes announced Czechoslovakia's capitulation to the demands of the totalitarians. "We have been basely betrayed," he said.10
The Western leaders returned in triumph to London and Paris. In government, in parliament, and in the press, Chamberlain and Daladier were praised, cheered, and thanked for having traded land for peace. "My friends," said Chamberlain, "I believe it is peace in our time."
For when they shall say, 'Peace and safety'; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. -
1 Thessalonians 5:3
Phase Two
On September 30, the Czech army began its withdrawal from the Sudetenland - from the strategic passes, the mountain fortresses, and the major industrial facilities that would have been the backbone of Czechoslovakia's effort to defend itself. But this was only Phase One of Hitler's plan.
The German annexation of the Sudetenland was followed by a renewed list of demands on the Czechs. The Nazis continued to invent incidents of violence and oppression against the ethnic German minority in what was left of the Czech state.
Less than six months later, on March 15, 1939, the Nazi war machine rolled through the rest of Czechoslovakia. Shorn of their defenses in the Sudeten mountains, the Czechs were now powerless to resist. Phase Two had been implemented.
The Western powers again did nothing. Once more, all their assurance proved worthless.
http://www.khouse.org/articles/1997/11/
NOTE: An interesting coincidence -
Chuck Hagel in the first article and the quote by Georg Hegel in the second article.
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