Asia's Cauldron
Authors: Robert D. Kaplan
Copyright © 2014 by Robert D. Kaplan
Maps copyright © 2014 by David Lindroth Inc.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint and division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
R
ANDOM
H
OUSE
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OUSE
colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.
Chapter VI, “America's Colonial Burden,” contains material from an earlier title by Robert D. Kaplan,
Imperial Grunts
(New York: Random House, 2005).
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Kaplan, Robert D., author.
Asia's cauldron : the South China Sea and the end of a stable Pacific / Robert D. Kaplan.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-8129-9432-2
eBook ISBN 978-0-8129-9433-9
1. Pacific AreaâForeign relations. 2. Pacific AreaâPolitics and government. 3. South China Sea RegionâStrategic aspects. 4. South China SeaâInternational status. I. Title.
JZ1980.K37 2014
327.59âdc23 2013036100
Title-page photograph and border art: ©
iStockphoto.com
Jacket design: Will Brown
Jacket photographs: (top) Harald Sund/Getty Images; (bottom) Stewart Sutton/Getty Images
Web asset: Excerpted from
Asia's Cauldron
by Robert D. Kaplan, copyright © 2014 by Robert D. Kaplan. Published by Random House, an imprint and division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
v3.1
Whoever is able to write of the great number and infinity of islands there are from the straits of Kampar to Banda and from the straits of Singapore to the islands of Japan, which are beyond Chinaâand between this island and Banda, there must be an area of more than two or three thousand leagues roundâwhoever is able let him speak of it. And it is certain that many of the islands are worth speaking about, because many have gold, but it would be never ending and tedious. I will only speak of the few in this great abundance with which Malacca is in communication now, or was in the past, and I will touch on others in general terms, so that my project may be completed, and if my project does not carry sufficient weight, may I be forgiven.
THE SUMA ORIENTAL OF TOMÃ PIRES, AN ACCOUNT OF THE EAST, FROM THE RED SEA TO CHINA, WRITTEN IN MALACCA AND INDIA IN 1512â1515
For there is no question but a just fear of an imminent danger, though there be no blow given, is a lawful cause of war.
FRANCIS BACON,
“OF EMPIRE,” 1612
The Ruins of ChampaI walk along jungle trails in the heat-inflicted silence. Blackened, redbrick humps lie strangled in greenery against steep mountains devoured by rain clouds. I am in My Son, in central Vietnam, forty miles inland from the coast of the South China Sea. Flowers and grass grow out of every nonvertical surface of each monument where altars, lamps, and lingas used to be placed, swimming in incense and camphor. Half-destroyed statues that recall India deep in Southeast Asia are embraced by columns in the walls, blotched blue and white with lichen. There are headless gods and time-mottled dancing figures now ferociously explored by insects. The loose bricks are like missing teeth: the monuments so hacked and battered that what remains recall the abstract shapes of modernist sculpture. A lichen-coated linga, the phallic symbol of Shiva's manhood, stands alone and sentinel against the ages.
The size and abundance of Temple Groups B and C hold out the
promise of a Vietnamese Angkor Wat, but once I come upon the other temple groups I realize just how little is left of nine centuries of religious life here, stretching from late antiquity to the high Middle Ages. Group A is a mere low pile of rubble, testimony to American helicopter-borne destruction in a war of less relevance to Southeast Asia's future than are these ruins and what they represent.
The fiercest nationalisms are often begot by what, in Freudian terminology, is the narcissism of small differences. What rescues Vietnam from being a mere southern redoubt of Sinic culture is its Khmer and Indian heritage, which allows for a unique confection that is ever so similar and yet ever so different from the civilization of China. Invoking Champa, from the fourth through thirteenth centuries, is to expose the lie of Cold War area studies with which Washington remains enamored, which place Southeast Asia firmly in an East Asia and Pacific realm; while in fact this region is part of an organic continuum that is more properly labeled the Indo-Pacific, whose maritime heart is the South China Sea: for Champa represents a seafaring, piratical race. Squeezed between the Central Highlands and the sea, with numerous rivers and natural harbors at their disposal, with woods, spices, textiles, honey, wax, and metals to trade, the Chams were well placed to benefit from the commerce between the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific. The French had it right when they designated this region not Southeast Asia, but Indochina.