The West’s pivot to Asia has heightened tensions in the Indo-Pacific. With the US and China vying for predominance and increasing their military presence, the region’s nations face a difficult balancing act to secure their interests.
FRANCE has 7,000 troops, 15 warships and 38 aircraft permanently stationed in the Asia-Pacific region, Rear Admiral Jean-Mathieu Rey recently revealed . Between late March and early June they were joined by the nuclear aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle, the nuclear attack submarine Émeraude, several more planes (including four Rafales and an A330 air-to-air refuelling aircraft), the Jeanne d’Arc amphibious battle group, the amphibious helicopter carrier Tonnerre, and the stealth frigate Surcouf, for joint exercises with the US, Australia, Japan and India.
France has shown off its military assets in the region before — in 2019 a French frigate sailed through the Taiwan Strait, causing a diplomatic row with China — but never on this scale. It’s clear that this deployment in the ‘Indo-Pacific axis’was intended to impress China. President Emmanuel Macron has on occasion denied this, but during a visit to Australia and the French overseas territory of New Caledonia in 2018 he warned that China was ‘building its hegemony step by step. It’s not a question of raising fears, but of facing up to reality ... If we fail to organise ourselves, it will soon be a hegemony that reduces our freedom, our opportunities’ (3).The very real US hegemony in the region doesn’t seem to bother him.
Geographical and historical ties havegiven way to military-diplomatic alliances: France has quietly — and without any public debate — gone from calling itself an ‘Indo-Pacific power’, emphasising that it has overseas territories here (New Caledonia, French Polynesia, Saint Pierre and Miquelon) to being a power in the US-led ‘Indo-Pacific axis’. The semantic shift is significant: in June 2019 the US Defense Department applauded the change, which places France on an equal footing with allies such as Japan, Australia and Singapore.
The term ‘Indo-Pacific’ was around for some time before becoming a US watchword. Captain Gurpreet S Khurana, executive director of the National Maritime Foundation, an Indian thinktank, claimed he had coined it in 2006, defining it as ‘the maritime space comprising the Indian Ocean and the western Pacific’.The concept was adopted by Japan’s prime minister Shinzo Abe and his successors, who were worried by China overtaking Japan economically and cosying up to the US, which was now its biggest customer. Above all they feared a Chinese-American partnership that would exclude their country. Japan saw itself as the US’s bridgehead in Asia and participated enthusiastically in joint naval exercises with the US, Indian, Australian and Singaporean navies in the Bay of Bengal in 2007 — a first for this normally war-averse country.
‘Arc of freedom’
But this ‘arc of freedom’, as Japan called the Indo-Pacific axis, gradually faded from the political landscape and was only revived ten years later by Donald Trump. He renamed the US Pacific Command (Pacom) — the authority in charge of US armed forces in the region — as the Indo-Pacific Command (Indopacom). He also resurrected the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD), an informal but overtly military alliance between Australia, the US, India and Japan. The 2019 US defence authorisation act set the tone by stating that a ‘principal priority for the United States’ was ‘to counter Chinese influence’.
This objective probably gratified the neoliberal and ultra-nationalist leaders of the alliance’s three Asia-Pacific members: Australia again had a Liberal-led coalition government after a brief Labour interlude; QUAD cheerleader Shinzo Abe was back in power in Japan; and Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi led India. In February 2020 Modi welcomed Trump to Delhi with unprecedented razzamatazz, though Trump and his team’s behaviour reduced the policy shift’s impact.
Joe Biden has followed the Trump line, though more coherently and with human rights to the fore. He sees China as a strategic rival, and the QUAD asthe key military and political weapon in his strategy. On 12 March, less than two months after taking office and before any bilateral meetings with regional leaders, he convened a video conference with his three fellow leaders in the alliance. The meeting, unprecedented at this level, ended with a joint statement. Its content was vague, but the four men pledged to ‘strive for a region that is inclusive, healthy, anchored by democratic values, and unconstrained by coercion’.
The US secretaries of state and defence, Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin, then made a follow-up tour of Asia, hoping to bring South Korea into a ‘QUAD+’ format that could also include other Asian countries, as well as European powers such as France, the UK and Germany. The idea, as Chung Kuyoun of Korea’s Kangwon National University explains, was to ‘multilateralise the US-led hub-and-spoke bilateral alliance system’ (8). Other experts talk of a possible geographical extension of NATO or the establishment of a kind of Asian NATO against the ‘Chinese dictatorship’.
This is not such a far-fetched idea. A US Congressional Research Service report published shortly before the NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels on 23-24 March set out key priorities that included ‘responding to potential security challenges posed by China and growing Chinese investment in Europe’ (9).Economic concerns were mentioned alongside military ones, all under the flag of freedom constantly brandished by NATO supporters.
Ally or adversary?
Yet Modi is hardly a role model when it comes to freedom: he has stripped Kashmir of its autonomy and placed it under military lockdown, imprisoning, torturing and sometimes assassinating political opponents; the new citizenship law discriminates against Muslims, and protests are harshly repressed. But the importance of human rights varies depending on whether you are the US’s ally or adversary.
Dennis Rumley of Australia’s Curtin University, co-author of The Rise and Return of the Indo-Pacific (10), told me that the Indo-Pacific concept has little to do with moral values and a lot to do with ‘the global transition currently in progress’. He believes we are seeing a ‘shift to a new bipolar world — [dominated by] the US and China. Many in the US and the Anglosphere fear this (literally!) and many in China demand it, and its implications for global decision-making. The interaction of these diametrically opposed perspectives leads to certain behaviours on both sides, including the actual and perceived existence/incidence of Chinese aggressive behaviour.’
The aggressive ‘wolf warrior diplomacy’ of some Chinese ambassadors,breaking with decades of restraint,doesn’t help. At a more fundamental level, China has abandoned the discretion of the 1980s and 90s. It is spending more on defence every year, rapidly modernising its navy, and loudly asserting its claims to islands in the East China Sea — the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands — and South China Sea — the Paracels and the Spratlys, where it has landfilled seven reefs to create foundations for dual civilian-military infrastructure. It has extended the powers of its coastguard with a new maritime law that took effect in February. The number of disputes with Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines, among other neighbours, is growing.
‘Regrettably, there are disputes over the rocks in the China Sea,’ said a former Chinese diplomat who had served in Europe, carefully following the official line that China has historical rights over the area. ‘We need bases in the China Sea to defend ourselves, not to attack our neighbours. Not so long ago, in 2014, a report by a US Navy commander... explained that China’s ports and trade routes were highly exposed and vulnerable to interdiction. It proposed laying mines all along our coastline to make it possible to impose a blockade if needed.’ It’s a plausible scenario, but fear is rarely a good counsellor. Even if the US’s allies can effectively block China’s access to the high seas, there is nothing to suggest that China will improve its security by pursuing a fait accompli policy that has already alienated some of its neighbours.
‘Taiwan can’t be a separate country’
Aggression seems no more effective when it comes to Taiwan. China regards the island as one of its provinces, under the One China principle accepted by the UN and almost every country in the world since the 1970s. The former diplomat told me, ‘Taiwan cannot be a separate country, but integration is not a matter of urgency’; Beijing’s view may be different. The number of incursions into Taiwanese airspace is rising exponentially: the Chinese air force has flown tens of thousands of sorties to harass Taiwan, andits planes often skirt or cross the unofficial line between Chinese and Taiwanese airspaces. But American planes do this too: in 2020, researcher Daniel Schaeffer counted over 2,000 such sorties by the US air force between January and June, and nearly one a day in June, July and August . The US has just installed a mobile radar system on Taiwan’s Penghu (Pescadores) Islands, less than 150km off the Chinese coast; it would be naïve to suppose that protecting Taiwan is its only concern.
The US is using China’s neighbours’ concern over its power-based strategy as an excuse to strengthen US military assets in the region; in March, Indopacom’s then commander Admiral Philip Davidson felt they were inadequate. The US plans to reviveits First Fleet, which operated in the region from 1946 to 1973 — a project launched by Navy Secretary Kenneth Braithwaite under the Trump administration and confirmed by Davidson in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee. Palau will host the new naval base; there are already hundreds of these scattered across the region, especially in Japan (where the US has 55,000 troops), South Korea (28,500), Hawaii (42,000) as well as Guam, Australia and New Zealand.
US defence spending reached $778bn in 2020, three times China’s (estimated at $252bn). China has the world’s second-largest defence budget, but its leaders are mindful of the fate of the Soviet Union, which embarked on an arms race with the US that endangered its very existence. They are not keen to go down the same route, and for the moment are spending ‘only’ 1.7% of GDP, compared with the US’s 3.7%, according to Sipri .
Despite the Pentagon’s protestations that it is underfunded, the US accounts for 39% of the world’s military spending and has significant superiority. As Asia expert Barthélémy Courmont points out, it also has the advantage of experience: ‘US forces are continually engaged in military operations, which is not the case for the Chinese’. The US is fighting wars around the world, but Chinais the one accused of belligerence.
The Indo-Pacific region is the United States’ new playground. Its extent has fluctuated over the years, from the western Pacific to the east coast of Africa, excluding the US under Barack Obama, then including it under Trump. Today, Rumley says, it is part of America’s ‘neighbourhood’, to be defended in the same way as its backyard under the Monroe doctrine — which China seems to be imitating. ‘Chinese behaviour in the South China Sea should be interpreted in part in relation to this position. After all, a Chinese presence in the Caribbean would not be tolerated by the US.’ Rumley disapproves of this great-power posturing, given the urgency of finding other approaches to international relations.
Japan a second-tier ally
This is especially urgent because the countries in the US’s Indo-Pacific do not all see things the same way. Robert Dujarric, director of the Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies in Tokyo, observes that while Australia may have resumed its role as the US’s sheriff, Japan is still a ‘second-tier ally’ and its ‘military command is not unified with that of the US’, unlike Australia’s. It ‘would be difficult for Japan to conduct military operations overseas, as there is still much opposition from the Japanese public.’
Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, like his mentor Abe, sees the Indo-Pacific as an opportunity to realise Japan’s dream of a US-Japan partnership overseeing regional affairs — and clipping China’s wings. Suga, who is struggling politically at home, boasts of being the first foreign leader received by Biden, and of being the US’s partner in seeking the ‘peaceful resolution of cross [Taiwan]-strait issues’, in the words of the joint statement issued on 17 April. No Japanese premier in 52 years had dared mention Taiwan, which Japan ruled with an iron fist from 1895 to 1945. The fact that he did so was concerning to its neighbours, especially South Korea; relations are still awkward because of Japan’s colonial occupation of the peninsula.
By contrast, Japan’s relations with India are set fair, and the two countries regularly conduct joint military exercises. According to Dujarric, ‘Tokyo’s ambition is to use India as a logistics platform, a new production backyard to replace China.’ For the moment, ‘decoupling’ is little more than a stated intention, and China is still Japan’s biggest trading partner.
China is building its hegemony step by step ... If we fail to organise ourselves, it will soon be a hegemony that reduces our freedom and our opportunitiesEmmanuel Macron
India hopes this Indo-Pacific strategy will give it a key regional role. On the economic front, Modi has launched a huge privatisation programme, seeking to attract foreign investors, and therefore welcomes Japan’s plan. But India’s infrastructure remains underdeveloped, which limits the potential benefits in the short term.
On the diplomatic front, Modi would like India to be recognised as a counterbalance to China, especially since last year’s incidents in Ladakh . Former Indian diplomat turned politician Shashi Tharoor, though opposed to Modi, explained, ‘[India] is home to over a billion individuals, has one of the largest standing armies in the world, and is a declared nuclear power. It is unsurprising that, as a leading power, New Delhi is intent on ensuring that it is an indispensable actor in shaping the future of the Asian Century ... a founder of the non-aligned movement during the cold war, [it] has historically been allergic to alliances and feels no desire to put all its strategic eggs in one basket.’
Even the most enthusiastic advocates of the Indo-Pacific — such as Indian expert on international relations Brahma Chellaney, who felt the QUAD had ‘gradually sharpened its edges in recent years in response to China’s aggressive expansionism’ — were disillusioned by an incident which they saw as an example of US arrogance: on 7 April a US navy guided missile destroyer taking part in Freedom of Navigation operations entered India’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ). Far from apologising, the US told India that EEZs are not recognised under international law, and that its maritime claims were ‘excessive’.
Chellaney points out that the US has made many unauthorised incursions into its allies’ waters and notes that ‘despite being the world’s most powerful democracy, the US still shares some key traits with its main competitor, China, the world’s largest and longest surviving autocracy ... The use of naval prowess to assert American maritime claims against a wide array of countries shows that, although the US is no longer the world’s only superpower, old habits persist. The jarring paradox is that while UNCLOS [UN Convention on the Law of the Sea] has 168 state parties, the outlier US has arrogated to itself the right to oversee and enforce its provisions by unilaterally interpreting them’.
This is why France should think twice before engaging in joint military exercises and pursuing ideological rapprochement with the US. The same goes for the EU, which wants to define a common Indo-Pacific strategy. Camilla Sørensen, associate professor at the Royal Danish Defence College, suggests both should question whether the EU is ready to ‘share Washington’s key objective, [namely] maintaining dominance in the Indo-Pacific region’and to recognise the ‘pertinence of the US’s confrontational approach to the challenges presented by China’. We already know the answer.
In India, doubts were raised by Biden’s decision to embargo exports of key vaccine ingredients, just as Covid-19 began to devastate the country. Though the embargo has now been (partially) lifted, Modi has used it to distract voters from his own share of the blame. An Indo-American alliance seems unlikely in these circumstances — even under the Indo-Pacific banner. For the moment, India is trying to escape the claws of the Chinese economic dragon — which is its biggest trading partner — while avoiding the clutches of the American eagle.
Many countries in the region, which want to cooperate economically with China and strategically with the US, face the same dilemma. Former Australian foreign minister (1988-96) Gareth Evans believes ‘Washington [needs] to see the region ... and its individual country dynamics for what they are, not what it would like them to be. That must begin with insight into America’s own relative place in the regional order. Its unipolar moment is over, and continued use of the “p” words — primacy, predominance, pre-eminence — helps relationships neither with adversaries nor allies’.
Global pivot towards China
Most countries accept the Indo-Pacific concept as a symptom of the world’s economic and strategic pivot towards Asia, but what they want from it varies. Vietnam, overshadowed by China, feels a close affinity with the US’s aims; South Korea is keen to end the conflict with North Korea, which would mean a smaller US military presence and closer links with China; Indonesia, seat of ASEAN, tries to remain equidistant from the two major powers, as does Singapore; the Philippines switches allegiance according to its interests and to China’s assaults on the China Sea reefs under its administration.
It is absurd to think in terms of military-ideological alliances like those formed during the cold war. Economic relations today are closely intertwined, and fluctuating strategic associations allow countries from the two ‘opposing’ camps to work together — the informal BRICS group (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (including China, Russia, India and Pakistan), or even the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, the world’s largest-ever free trade agreement, which includes the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries, South Korea, Japan and China — though the success of these associations depends on none of the countries involved feeling threatened.
A military commentator wrote in the Global Times (which normally follows the Chinese Communist Party line) last year, ‘China needs to further improve friendship with neighbouring countries in the Asia-Pacific ... [It] should also attach more importance to countries such as South Korea, New Zealand and ASEAN members’. This criticism in the form of a recommendation is rare — its author also calls for China’s armed forces to be strengthened.
Former Singaporean diplomat Kishore Mahbubani, believes it is absurd to think that China’s economic and technological power can be contained by military means. Those who believe it can are living in the wrong century. China is not Russia. The US is the world’s greatest power, but it no longer dominates the world. ‘It must learn to share.’ That’s a big ask.
Martine Bulard is a member of Le Monde diplomatique’s editorial team.
This article was originally published on Le Monde diplomatique .
Views in this article are author’s own and do not necessarily reflect CGS policy.