US can’t rely on military prowess to counter China in Asia, despite partnership with Japan, South Korea

Recognising that traditional, highly centralised military alliances like Nato might not be the best fit today, the US has turned to minilateral security arrangements
However, in countering China, Washington’s ‘integrated deterrence’ strategy has three weaknesses

Richard Heydarian

Published: 1:00am, 29 Aug 2023

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“Today, we declare openly that we are united in a common purpose to strengthen our shared region,” said US President Joe Biden, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in a joint statement at their Camp David meeting this month. “Ours is a partnership built not just for our people but for the entire Indo-Pacific.”

Accordingly, the three nations launched initiatives across areas ranging from enhanced intelligence sharing and joint military drills to the development of cutting-edge technologies and economic development programmes.

Biden praised the South Korean and Japanese leadership for their “political courage”, apparently a reference to their diplomatic feud over historical issues. By zeroing in on real and perceived threats from China and North Korea, however, the three nations also made it clear that their partnership is a product of shared anxieties.

At the heart of the burgeoning trilateral alliance is Washington’s “integrated deterrence” strategy, which aims to corral a network of regional allies and strategic partners to preserve a US-led order in the Indo-Pacific. But Washington still lacks a concrete and constructive strategy, namely a new trade and investment initiative in Asia. Moreover, its unilateral economic sanctions have largely backfired, only reinforcing China’s influence over a host of US allies across the region and beyond.

In the past decade, the American policy elite has begun to appreciate the enormity of China’s rise. Although the US is widely seen as the world’s leading military power, with the largest economy in nominal terms, the Asian powerhouse is just too influential to be “contained”.

Unlike the Soviet Union, China is an integral component of the global economy and has enough wealth and people to sustain formidable and sophisticated armed forces. China is rightfully seen as a “near peer” of the US and, thus, the emerging US-China competition can be characterised as a real cold war.

Meanwhile, there is also a growing recognition that traditional, highly centralised military alliances may not be optimal for the hybrid challenges of the 21st century. Accordingly, the US is embracing new, flexible, “minilateral” security arrangements with like-minded powers and key allies in vital regions.

The upshot is the emergence of new geopolitical blocs – the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), the Australia-UK-US trilateral alliance (Aukus), and the emerging Japan-Philippine-US trilateral alliance (Japhus).

The recent Camp David meeting is just latest iteration of ongoing efforts to establish new security alliances, which transcend top-down, heavily structured blocs such as Nato.

At Camp David, the US, South Korea and Japan reiterated their commitment to the complete denuclearisation of North Korea. However, China was clearly a central concern, with the joint statement highlighting “dangerous and aggressive behaviour” by China” and “strongly opposing any unilateral attempts to change the status quo in the waters of the Indo-Pacific”.

The China-based Global Times cast the Camp David summit as a reflection of the “US’ desire to build a ‘mini-Nato-style’ trilateral military alliance in Northeast Asia”. However, the US’ integrated deterrence strategy against China has three major weakness.

Why China sees the Camp David summit as start of de facto military alliance

First, even the US’ closest regional allies, such as Australia, want to avoid directly confronting China, including in the event of conflict over Taiwan.

In the Philippines, President Ferdinand Marcos Jnr has emphasised that he will oppose any attempt by the Pentagon to weaponise its Philippine-based facilities against China. Instead, Manila is far more interested in leveraging its defence cooperation with the US to enhance its own minimum deterrence and domain awareness across its long shores in the Western Pacific.

As for South Korea, it’s doubtful whether the current conservative administration can sustain its anti-China agenda. As Robert Kelly, professor of political science at Pusan National University, has said, growing security cooperation with Japan and the US is not a reflection of a “programmatic campaign” to alter Seoul’s strategic calculus, but instead a reflection of the whims of the unpopular incumbent, who is “just doing it on his own” which makes it “hugely reversible when he’s out of power in 2027”.

Protesters hold a regular Wednesday rally, the 1,600th of its kind, near the Japanese embassy in Seoul, South Korea, on June 14, calling for Japan to apologise to and compensate the victims of the Japanese army’s sexual slavery during World War II, euphemistically called “comfort women”. Photo: EPA-EFE

Second, the US’ regional strategy has been primarily punitive, unleashing a wave of sanctions against China’s critical sectors to dissuade imports and investment. The problem, however, is that the “decoupling” strategy has backfired.

Though it’s true that US imports from China decreased by 14 percentage points between 2017 and 2022, friendly nations as varied as Vietnam, Malaysia and Mexico are now more dependent on Chinese intermediate and raw material imports. In some cases, imports from Southeast Asian nations were found to be primarily repackaged Chinese-made products.

The failure of the US’ “friend-shoring” strategy brings us to the final, and most critical, US weakness. Almost a year after announcing the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, the Biden administration is yet to put a concrete policy forward. Just as Beijing tightens its economic influence over US-friendly nations in the Indo-Pacific, there is as yet no indication of a tangible free trade and investment deal for US partners.

Containers are loaded onto a ship at Saigon port in Ho Chi Minh City on May 3. As a result of US tariffs on Chinese imports, many goods are being rerouted through countries like Vietnam. Photo: AP

Even a relatively modest “digital free trade” deal ran into trouble. Key partners, such as Singapore, have warned of the disruptive impact of Washington’s sanctions-centric strategy against China.

With Biden himself skipping the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit this year, and his closest rival Donald Trump vowing to impose massive tariffs should he regain the White House next year, it’s unclear how the US aims to reassert its leadership in a sustainable and constructive manner. In Asia, military prowess alone won’t save American primacy.

Richard Heydarian is a Manila-based academic and author of Asia’s New Battlefield: US, China and the Struggle for Western Pacific, and the forthcoming Duterte’s Rise