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US Navy sailors ride in a rigid-hull inflatable from the USS Wayne E. Meyer during a drill as part of an Asean-US maritime exercise on September 5 in the Gulf of Thailand. The Pentagon has been sharply stepping up its efforts to counter China's growing military power. Photo: Handout via AFP
Opinion
Emanuele Scimia
Emanuele Scimia

The US wants expanded partnerships in the Pacific to contain China’s rise – but do its allies agree?

  • China’s economic clout in the Pacific is clearly growing, as its recent poaching of Taiwan allies has demonstrated. The US has expanded military activity to counter this, but it’s not certain it can sustain the necessary partnerships
Emanuele Scimia
Emanuele Scimia
Why you can trust SCMP

Chinese advances in the South Pacific are firmly in the sights of the United States. And it could not be otherwise, as the Pacific island nations are an essential component of the US strategy to tackle China’s growing military clout. 

Beijing looks increasingly at ease in the region. At the third China-Pacific Island Countries Economic Development Cooperation Forum, in Samoa last week, Chinese Vice-Premier Hu Chunhua presided over the signing of a programme of eight measures to contribute to the social and economic advancement of the region. Hu also emphasised Beijing’s interest in working with Pacific Island nations as part of the Belt and Road Initiative.

In the narrative of the American security establishment, the belt and road scheme is nothing less than a geostrategic tool to erode US military supremacy in Asia and beyond.

Clearly, great power competition between the US and China is taking shape from the China seas to the South Pacific, with Washington and Beijing jockeying for influence in small, but strategically important, countries beyond the first island chain, which stretches from southern Japan to Borneo, including Taiwan and the Philippines.
China is actually gaining ground on the US in this battle for hearts and minds, as Beijing’s recent poaching of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies Kiribati and the Solomon Islands has shown – there is even speculation that the Chinese might use an island in the latter as a naval base.

To counter China’s ambitions to become the paramount power in western Asia and the South Pacific, the US military is betting big on its expeditionary capabilities and a “dynamic” and “adaptive” basing of maritime and air forces.

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As General Charles Brown Jnr, commander of the US Pacific Air Forces, said at an event in mid-September, the US military aims to “generate combat power from a number of locations to create dilemmas for an adversary”.

In the Pentagon’s calculus, such a distribution of forces throughout East Asia and the South Pacific should prevent the possibility of larger US bases becoming “sitting ducks” for advanced Chinese missiles.

This US Navy photo obtained on October 7 shows the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, the amphibious assault ship USS Boxer and ships from the Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group and the Boxer Amphibious Ready Group in formation while conducting security and stability operations in the South China Sea. Photo: Handout via AFP

The Washington-based Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments has suggested adopting an “inside-out” strategy, designed to engage China through dispersed forward outposts within the first island chain – so, within range of Chinese missiles – and with the support of air and naval forces from further afield, including territories in the South Pacific.

In essence, the US is considering using anti-access weapons systems and assets along the first island chain to combat China’s anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) strategy. US efforts seek to make it more difficult for the People’s Liberation Army to target American assets while US forces maintain their lethal capacities, as scattered as they may be.

China’s powerful navy has a challenge on its hands

In addition, the US could try to reinforce its land-based missile defences in the Asia-Pacific, on top of its withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia in August.

So Washington is seeking a more distributed presence of land, maritime and air forces in Japan, the Philippines, Australia and Papua New Guinea (including its autonomous region of Bougainville, if it becomes independent), and to support troops and platforms that are deployable in the South Pacific.

Philippine, US and Japanese military officers link arms at the Subic Bay International Airport in the Philippines on October 9 during the opening ceremony of the Kamandag 2019 exercise to promote multinational military cooperation. Photo: EPA-EFE

But such plans depend on strong relationships with allies and partners in the vast region. To support a free and open Indo-Pacific, the US has increased exchanges with allied and partner militaries in an effort to improve cooperation.

For instance, an expeditionary strike group team held training exercises with their Malaysian, Bruneian and Philippine counterparts on October 2-17, practising a style of warfare that the US military “hasn’t utilised in a long time”, according to a US official.

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Forward refuelling operations are also key to the success of the Pentagon’s strategy in the Pacific Rim. In April, the US Air Force conducted drills that saw forces concentrated at Andersen Air Force base in Guam disperse to Tinian and Saipan (both part of the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands), the Federated States of Micronesia and Palau.

The Northern Mariana Islands is a US territory, while the Republic of Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia and the Republic of the Marshall Islands are linked to the US through compacts of free association that allow Washington to handle their national defence in exchange for financial help.

The US is now working hard to maintain a continued presence in, and permanent access to, the South Pacific, which could be threatened should China’s economic incentives and increasing diplomatic strength prompt countries in the region to align more with the Chinese agenda.

This would prove particularly useful should Chinese lending prove unsustainable for South Pacific countries, as Australia’s Lowy Institute warned in a report released last Monday.
There is also US President Donald Trump’s shocking abandonment of Kurdish allies in Syria to consider – this could make America’s friends in East Asia and the South Pacific think twice about transforming their territories into springboards for military operations or a missile blitz against China.

Emanuele Scimia is an independent journalist and foreign affairs analyst

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