New Power Game And Security Dilemma In East Asia – Analysis By Collins Chong Yew Keat
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s six-country Asia tour late July portrays a direct and strong message to both allies and foes that despite the distracting crises in West Asia and the Middle East and Ukraine, Washington’s power might and its commitment to the Indo Pacific and East Asia are here to stay.
Washington seeks a new regional architecture to counter China and North Korea, deter potential overtures by Russia, and consolidate its dual power presence approach through diplomacy and pure military deterrence. This six-day tour was Blinken’s 18th and longest trip to Asia, cementing the underlying message sent by the Biden administration that the pivot that started in 2014 under Obama is well maintained.
The visit to Laos, Vietnam, Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, and Mongolia marks the strategic intent towards interlocking network of relationships that includes formal and informal in consolidating the US presence and interests and in providing reassuring messages to allies, future potential allies and those who are wary of Beijing and Pyongyang’s increased power threats.
Laos is the host of the East Asia Summit and the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). Vietnam remains vital for the US, and Blinken is supposed to attend the state funeral for Nguyen Phu Trong, the leader of the ruling Communist Party. Hanoi remains as a swing state for Washington, where Hanoi’s strategic and smart hedging and non-affiliation has enabled the country to get the best of both China and the US.
Japan remains the most important ally, and is reflected in the new pathways of the defence alliance with the 2+2 engagement with both the defence and foreign ministers of both states.
The Philippines forms one of the outside forces that remains strategic as a complementing factor for Washington’s containment strategy, and forms part of the Squad.
Singapore remains a bastion of Washington’s Southeast Asia policy, with continuous military and capacity support for its defence and power postures in the region.
Mongolia emerges as the most strategic player in the overall China strategy, where it plays a dual role of dealing with both Moscow and Beijing and creates a new fallback option for Washington in complementing its current presence and strategies in East Asia, Central Asia and South Asia.
The Biden administration’s 2022 Indo-Pacific Strategy portrays a constant assuring tone that Washington is still capable of winning two major conflicts at once, and that the Indo Pacific still remains the cornerstone of global peace and stability in which the US is obligated to defend.
The various minilateral groupings, from the Quad to the Squad and the Camp David Pact of Tokyo-Seoul-Washington, are seen as complementing one another and are hoped by Washington to strengthen their synergy for a common cause of defending the rules-based order and peace.
This signals the overall intent of not only containing the threat of China, but in targeting any other power whether internally or externally that is seen to be challenging the status quo of a rules-based and normative order.
New Mutual Security Interdependence of Tokyo and Washington
The Quad’s strengthening of capacity and diversity of offerings beyond conventional hard power assurance and deterrence alone provides a much welcomed softener of its power postures, which will be easier for regional players to accept. Economic security and maritime security offered by the combined might of Quad members provide a new alternative option for the region.
However, effective hard power presence and command remain critical, and Washington did just that by recreating a new form of warfighting command in Japan, in overseeing all American forces in Japan and better synergising response time and force projection. As Defence Secretary Austin called it, it is indeed a historic shift. The new frontier in Japan-US military alliance with the new warfighting command and rejuvenation of its defence ties is the greatest transformation and improvement in 70 years of the history of the security alliance between the two.
The aim of the new headquarters is both to strengthen the defence of Japan, once a rear base for operations and to mirror Japan’s plans to create an American-style joint command in better connecting air, sea, land and other forces early next year.
Before this, the US Forces Japan (USFJ) was predominantly an administrative headquarter for units based in the country, where the real warfighting commander and the head of Indo-Pacific Command, is based in Hawaii, more than 7000km away.
The new headquarters and the formation of the war fighting command will create a more coordinated and faster response by the joint forces. In any conflict or war with China, communications with front-line forces in Japan and elsewhere in the western Pacific will most likely be heavily disrupted and targeted through a variety of mechanisms. These include cyber-attacks, sabotage or destruction of undersea cables or communications hacking in space to neutralise each other’s surveillance and communications satellites.
Thus the creation of a forward-deployed operational command, will take all the risks into consideration.
Japan provides a base for the U.S. to project military power in Asia, hosting 54,000 American troops, hundreds of U.S. aircraft and Washington’s only forward-deployed aircraft carrier strike group.
Japan’s wariness of both China and North Korea has reached a tipping point, seeing how the threat settings do not match with its own readiness and defence spending.
In 2022 Japan announced it would sharply increase defence spending by more than 60%, increase its GDP percentage of defence spending to 2% of GDP by 2027, and would finally acquire long-range missiles able to reach mainland China.
Tokyo would be able to launch the long-distance strikes only with intelligence and other support from America.
The new American headquarters and joint command are intended primarily to help protect Japan. But they serve as a key power changer in both defending Japan and in defending Taiwan and in winning a war with both China and North Korea, with the integration of the capacities of other support systems from the base in South Korea and power support from allies.
Japan’s increased defence diplomacy with the region with the Reciprocal Access Agreements (RAA), the Official Security Assistance (OSA) and others, seek to secure regional fallback support option and as insurance against the predominant reliance with the US. It also sees Taiwan’s security and future impact of any crisis across the Taiwan Strait as directly entangled with its own security.
The concept of extended deterrence, underlying U.S. commitment to use its nuclear forces to deter attacks on allies, is also discussed, although it remains a sensitive subject in Japan which has pushed for non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and is the only country to have suffered atomic bomb attacks.
Washington also intends to tap Japanese industry to help ease pressure on U.S. weapons makers who have been stretched by steep increasing demand generated by conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East.
Tokyo and Washington are pursuing various collaborations in this field, including advancing missile co-production efforts as well as facilitating ship and aircraft repair.
Both Tokyo and Washington also agreed to boost production of air-defence and long-range strike missiles which are limited as of now, and to increase deployments around Japan’s south-west islands close to Taiwan.
Increased Synergy of Tokyo-Seoul-Washington
The Camp David Pact sealed last year in consolidating the joint power support of Tokyo-Seoul-Washington also received a new boost with the overtures of both Blinken and Austin during the visit. In institutionalising the pact, it will make it more difficult to reverse, just months before the United States inaugurates its next president in January next year.
Over the past year, the three countries have held joint military drills for countering missile launches and hunting for submarines. All three also held air, sea and cyberspace drills this year, marking the first-of-its-kind trilateral multidomain exercise for the partners.
All these measures with Japan and South Korea, both bilaterally and in pacts, carry both substantive and symbolic significance.
Substantially, these measures will further bolster the weight and coordination of hard power projection and deterrence in a new depth. Symbolically, these send a direct and deterring message to Beijing, Pyongyang and Moscow that the existing and future presence of the US and its allies in the Indo Pacific remains ingrained, and that the close relationship among the axis of Tokyo-Seoul-Washington transcends beyond mere pledges and with China as the sole objective alone.
However, challenges remain.
Both Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol have grappled with scandals and low approval ratings at home, while uncertainties loom on the potential of a Trump return and the ramifications on the existing defence mechanisms in the region.
One of the benefits of a three-pronged defence synergy and partnership is that even if there is less enthusiasm or pulling factor for cooperation in one country, the other two could still provide the momentum and efforts.
Pyongyang’s increased bellicosity remains another common justifying threat factor for all three.
North Korea’s unyielding series of missile tests including a new multiple-warhead missile capability and the sheer speed of its weapons breakthroughs, have compelled the urgency of the three powers to seek greater cohesion and deterrence. Putin’s visit to Pyongyang with the signed treaty on mutual defence pledge, and with Kim labelling of Seoul as the principal enemy, with greater tit for tat moves in recent months, further pushed Seoul to consider other fallback measures in securing its security front other than Washington.
Options to create its own nuclear capacity as a deterrence against Pyongyang have also been floated, albeit with great wariness on the reactionary responses by both Washington and Pyongyang, and to a certain extent, Beijing.
China feels the jitters in Washington’s new power flexing and friendshoring efforts in having ever deeper alliance with its neighbours, and has accused Washington of militarising the escalating the tensions in the region with its power play.
For the axis of Seoul-Tokyo-Washington, the new ventures are justified by stating the evolving security environment and criticising Beijing’s provocative behaviours in the South and East China Seas, its joint military exercises with Russia and the rapid expansion of its nuclear arsenal.
The security architecture of the Indo Pacific remains highly volatile and evolving, but the predominant structure of power play and strategic power games is here to stay.
New Power Game And Security Dilemma In East Asia – Analysis By Collins Chong Yew Keat
Source: https://www.eurasiareview.com/14082024-new-power-game-and-security-dilemma-in-east-asia-analysis/