East China Sea dispute is ripe for US mediation

Sir, When Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declared at Davos that his country's conflict with China over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands shares similarities with the first world war ("End rift to war in the East China Sea", January 24), he was basically reaching out to potential third parties for assistance in arresting the dynamics of a potentially hot conflict that neither he nor his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping can control.
       A conflict resolution theory associated with American political scientist I. William Zartman may account for the timing of this bold challenge. Mr. Abe may have come to believe that Japan's territorial conflict with China is "ripe" for negotiation and mediation because it has developed into a "mutually hurting stalemate" where both parties realise they are in a potentially costly situation from which they cannot escape by traditional, power-based approaches, e.g., escalation. The parties may also feel that allowing the conflict to continue might lead to a catastrophic war through accident or miscalculation.
        By announcing this challenge at Davos, a high-profile global event, Mr. Abe may have wanted to maximize prospects for discovering a way out of the conflict satisfactory to both Japan and China. Through online "crowd-storming" of alternative solutions to the territorial dispute, for example, a large number of options could be generated. The most viable would be those that addressed domestic constituencies in both China and Japan calling for zero-sum reactions to one another, plus the positive visceral appeals to national identity, historical memory of victimhood, honour, prestige, and the like.
        Sadly, the Chinese leadership does not seem to share Mr. Abe's sense of public forboding. Indeed, one senior Chinese official at Davos is reported to have commented privately that China could successfully launch a "surgical" strike against the disputed islands. This, plus the dismissive rejection of Mr. Abe's historical analogy by China's foreign minister Wang Yi  at Davos ("Sino-Japan relations 'very bad', January 25/26), implies that Mr. Abe's plea for help may not amount to much.
        Nevertheless, the "world" now knows that, for the Japanese at least, there is a problem with China in the East China Sea that bears a striking resemblance to the outbreak of the Great War whose centenniary is being commemorated this year -- a problem with which the parties need help that perhaps only the US can provide.
       The challenge for President Obama,  therefore, is to ensure that his "pivot" toward Asia does more than simply "contain" China. Mr. Obama must make bold, "outside-the-box"recommendations to both parties, especially China, that neither can refuse!