By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers
The US And Chinese Hegemony
By the end of U.S.
President Barack Obama’s second term, the United States faced a clear choice
regarding its future role in Asia. As China grew more powerful—and assertive in
its territorial claims—Washington could double down on costly efforts to try to
maintain U.S. military primacy in the region. Or it could acknowledge that
China will inevitably play a growing military role there and use its finite
resources to balance Chinese power, seeking to prevent Chinese regional hegemony without sustaining its
own.
Obama’s successors,
Donald Trump and Joe Biden, both opted for the first approach. They have
focused on achieving “overmatch” against China, as Mark Milley, then the
chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, put it in early 2023—retaining
military preeminence as an overarching goal of U.S. Indo-Pacific policy.
Biden’s strategy for achieving this goal has differed from that of his
predecessors. Recognizing that the price of maintaining U.S. military
dominance in the region was fast becoming politically and practically
unsustainable, the Biden team sought to build a coalition of allies and
partners to defray some of the costs. In the last three years, for example, the
administration successfully gained access to additional military
bases in the Philippines, established new trilateral intelligence-sharing
mechanisms with South Korea and Japan, and forged the AUKUS agreement with Australia and the United
Kingdom to provide the Australian Navy nuclear-powered submarines.
But despite some
successes, Biden’s overall progress toward building the needed coalition has
been slow. The United States still lacks military access to critical parts
of Asia, a strong U.S.-led security architecture, and enough well-armed allies
and partners to sustain U.S. preeminence. Worse, there is no clear way to
address these weaknesses. Asia’s maritime geography reduces the threat that
countries in the region perceive China poses, fundamentally undermining Biden’s
coalition-building project.
The Biden
administration’s limited gains reflect an underlying reality that many in
Washington would rather not face: U.S. military supremacy in Asia cannot
be sustained over the long term. Rather than maintain an ill-fated
pursuit of primacy, the United States should adopt a strategy that
prioritizes balancing, not exceeding, Chinese power.
Washington needs to focus more narrowly on safeguarding access to strategic
locations—for example, the industrial centers of Japan and India—and key
waterways.
Washington could also
try to shift some of its security burdens by helping allies and
partners to strengthen their self-defense capabilities. Finally, Washington
needs to learn to better navigate the region’s many multilateral institutions
to advance U.S. interests and influence instead of organizing engagement solely
around U.S.-centered partnerships.
Critics of balancing
may argue that such an approach would embolden China and stoke fears of
abandonment among U.S. allies. But they are wrong: if Washington does not
change its approach, it risks finding itself overstretched, lacking the
military posture to credibly back its extensive commitments and deter China. A
balancing approach would be more sustainable and less risky because it works
with the region’s unique geography, not against it.
Power Struggle
To achieve its vision
of regional primacy through coalition building, the Biden administration has
invested heavily in strengthening the United States’ relationships with
countries across Asia. The United States has elevated its relationship with
Vietnam to a “comprehensive strategic partnership,” for instance, and inked new
defense cooperation and co-production agreements with India. But Biden’s
coalition-building efforts still fall far short of what would be required to
prop up U.S. military dominance.
From the beginning,
Biden’s administration made it clear that a coalition would have to accomplish
three things: diversify the United States’ access to bases, airfields, and
ports across the region so that the U.S. military can rapidly project power in
the event of a crisis, create a network of alliances and partnerships that
reinforces U.S. interests and values, and boost allied and partner countries’
military capabilities. A primary challenge the United States faces in the
Indo-Pacific is China’s large arsenal of missiles. U.S. forces concentrated at
large bases in Japan, Guam, and South Korea are particularly vulnerable to
Chinese strikes, and the Pentagon hopes to distribute personnel and assets more
widely to numerous small bases and outposts across the region to improve their
chances of survival.
U.S. efforts to
establish this distributed posture have yielded some achievements. The Biden
team secured expanded permissions for U.S. forces to use additional bases
in Australia and the Philippines, as well as Papua New
Guinea, pending the approval of the latter country’s parliament. However,
these expanded permissions do not provide much in the way of additional crisis
or wartime access. The Philippines and Papua New
Guinea have both signaled that they will not permit the United States to
use bases on their territories to stockpile weapons or conduct offensive
military operations in a war against China, especially over Taiwan. This
additional access does not address Washington’s most critical needs or expand
U.S. access to the most strategically important countries in Southeast Asia:
Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. As a result, in the event of a
contingency—and with South Korea also likely to restrict U.S. military
access—the United States would still have to rely on vulnerable runways in
Japan and Guam or operate long-range bombers from Australia.
Biden has sought to
bolster U.S. regional dominance by shifting its military strategy from a
traditional “hub-and-spoke” approach—in which the United States is the center
of military operations—to a "latticework” model that links allies and
partners more comprehensively. The Pentagon has increasingly
emphasized trilateral military exercises, including joint air and naval drills
with Australia and Japan and coast guard training with Japan and the
Philippines. But here, too, Biden’s administration has met with frustrations.
Few countries in the region are willing to fully commit to a U.S.-led security
architecture that requires them to choose between the United States
and China. The United States insists that it does not seek to build a regional
security bloc, but many in the region, including U.S. allies, have resisted
what they view as Washington’s attempts to do just that.
Friends Without Benefits
Biden’s
coalition-building project also still lacks the institutional mechanisms it
would need to effectively synchronize actions between its allies and partners
during a contingency. The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue—a security forum
comprising Australia, India, Japan, and the United States—is supposed to deepen
maritime cooperation, among other initiatives. However, it does not afford
participating countries the common intelligence picture they would need to
coordinate in a crisis because information-sharing arrangements remain
bilateral. Similarly, Washington counts on Tokyo to provide direct military
support during a regional war, but no combined
U.S.-Japanese command exists to effectively coordinate the two
countries’ operations.
The United States’
efforts to build up its allies’ military capabilities have a mixed record. In
the last few years, some countries in Asia have begun to spend more on defense.
But they remain a long way from being able to share the region’s current defense
burden with the United States, much less the higher demands a conflict would
impose. The United States would need its Asian allies and partners to spend
many times more than what they currently do to achieve anything close to true
burden-sharing.
Consider Japan and
Australia: both countries have announced plans to increase defense
spending. Japan intends to raise its defense spending 65 percent
over the next five years to better defend itself against China, a project that
includes the purchase of 400 U.S.-made Tomahawk cruise missiles. Australia
also means to increase its defense spending from about 2 percent of GDP to 2.3
percent over the next ten years and is prioritizing funding for power
projection; it plans to buy U.S.-produced long-range strike missiles and
nuclear-powered submarines.
But there is less to
these plans than meets the eye. Japan lacks the intelligence and targeting
capabilities needed to use Tomahawk missiles effectively, either for
self-defense defense to contribute to U.S. operations. Even once it acquires
these capabilities, it is unclear whether the modest number of missiles it is
buying will contribute meaningfully to regional deterrence. The aging of
Japan’s population has driven a shortage of personnel trained to operate its
ships and aircraft. Australia’s military is facing a similar lack of trained
military personnel, as well as civilian experts it will need to operate and
maintain the submarines it buys.
Few other Asian
militaries currently contribute much in the way of capabilities that would
enable greater burden-sharing with the United States. Some in Washington have
high expectations for South Korea, but Seoul has not made the investments in
hard infrastructure, air defense, and transport that would allow it to
contribute to regional operations. Similarly, despite U.S. pressure, Taiwan has
taken only tentative steps toward adding the defensive capabilities it would
need to withstand a Chinese attack, such as mobile air defense, sea mines, and
cheap drones, among others. In the end, the United States continues to carry
the bulk of the defense burden in the Indo-Pacific.
If You Can't Beat Them, Balance Them
The Biden
administration’s limited progress should raise questions about whether the
United States can or should even try to sustain primacy in Asia. Some U.S.
leaders hope that as China’s military threat grows, the coalition required to
defend U.S. preeminence will eventually emerge, organically sustaining the
United States’ dominance indefinitely. This optimism is unwarranted. The
region’s maritime geography conspires against Biden’s coalition-building
aspirations—and, ultimately, its goal to maintain regional primacy.
The vast Pacific and
Indian Oceans create powerful defensive barriers that encourage free-riding and
complacency among geographically dispersed states. China’s regional neighbors
are certainly wary of Beijing’s aggression. However, countries such as Indonesia
and Malaysia tend not to see Beijing as an existential threat. And the maritime
nature of the Indo-Pacific theater itself undermines the credibility of U.S.
deterrence. The air and naval forces most relevant to the region are highly
mobile—easy to deploy and easy to withdraw. This mobility makes potential
allies fear abandonment and reduces the benefits—like U.S. investments in land
bases—that they can anticipate from joining a U.S.-led coalition. Many Asian
states already harbor understandable skepticism about the durability of U.S.
guarantees to the region, given how halfhearted some of Washington’s efforts to
“pivot” to Asia have been—and given how extensive the United States’ military
commitments are in Europe and the Middle East.
The United States
can, however, choose a different approach—and it should. A smarter, more
sustainable U.S. strategy would focus on balancing China’s power, not
overmatching it. A balancing strategy would still require the United States to
build a friendly coalition in Asia, but it would be a different kind of
coalition. In a balancing approach, the sheer quantity of U.S. allies and
partners and available access locations become less important. More important
is the quality and strategic value of the United States coalition members and
access points.
The United States
should focus foremost on keeping the region’s major centers of industrial
power—most notably India, Japan, and South Korea—out of Beijing’s grip by
helping them develop their self-defense capabilities and better supporting
their attempts to reduce their economic dependence on China. Washington must
also commit more energy to safeguarding the region’s key waterways,
specifically the Strait of Malacca and parts of the South and East China Seas,
enlisting the help of India, Japan, the Philippines, and Singapore. While the
United States should maintain its regional treaty commitments and continue to
invest in strategically important partners, countries with fewer implications
for the balance of power should receive less U.S. attention. The United States
need not exceed every move China makes in the Pacific Islands or continental
Southeast Asia.
Mental Balance
A balancing approach
would prioritize shifting much of the United States’ defense burden to allies
and partners, requiring that they assume primary responsibility for their
security and putting the U.S. military in a supporting role. Washington should
encourage all of its allies in the region, but especially Japan and the
Philippines, to become harder to conquer by investing heavily in asymmetric and
self-defense capabilities. U.S. leaders must more urgently push Taiwan, too, to
quickly adopt a similar self-defense posture.
For many Asian
countries, meeting the challenge of modernizing their defense will not be easy
after decades of underinvestment and personnel shortages. But Washington can do
far more than it currently does to induce them to armor up. It can
attach conditions to the extensive U.S. military assistance and arms deals it
offers, pushing allies and partners away from buying expensive prestige items
like fighter jets and toward acquiring large amounts of relatively cheap and
mobile military assets such as uncrewed ships, aerial drones, naval mines,
anti-ship missiles, and air defenses. Washington can also use incentives like
co-production arrangements and technology sharing to encourage its allies to
invest in their defense industries. Most of all, Washington will need to make
clear to allies and partners that U.S. involvement has limits.
Emphasizing the
benefits that defense investments offer to a country’s economy as well as its
security can help the United States avoid damaging vital relationships.
Washington can also more consciously rely on the barrier afforded by the
region’s oceans by deploying fewer forward-based forces to the Asian theater.
Instead, the United States should bolster its ability to rapidly deploy
reinforcements by pre-positioning more equipment and ammunition (including what
the Navy calls “afloat forward staging bases”), improving the air and
missile defenses at its existing bases, and modernizing its logistics
infrastructure to coordinate a surging flow of troops. The United States has an
opportunity to let the region’s geography serve as its first line of defense,
helping its allies and partners help themselves while freeing up military
capacity for other regional security concerns.
Balancing would also
put valuable pressure on Washington itself. The United States needs to learn
how to navigate better the Indo-Pacific’s flexible regional alignments rather
than exclusively relying on U.S.-led alliances and partnerships such as AUKUS. Washington
must work to integrate itself more fully into political, economic, and security
networks that already exist, engaging more actively with ASEAN and
its many subgroups. The United States should also seek new opportunities to
support other regional multilateral organizations. For all their shortcomings,
these groups have become foreign-policy focal points for countries in Southeast
Asia, and the United States will need to be able to operate within and
alongside them to achieve its interests in the region.
One of the biggest
barriers to the adoption of a balancing approach is Washington’s mindset. The
idea that military dominance must be pursued in Asia is deeply ingrained in
U.S. foreign and defense policy. This presumption risks becoming even more
entrenched as leaders in both political parties fear slipping behind Beijing.
But a balancing approach constitutes neither appeasement nor defeatism. It is
perhaps the only fiscally sustainable way to protect U.S. interests in the
region for decades to come.
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