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National review
Building American-Asian teamwork against China
New administrations that differ in partisan orientation from their predecessors are used to reorienting American foreign policy. George W. Bush, until September 11, 2001, planned to return America’s attention to the competition of the great powers, even sending Donald Rumsfeld, then the most prominent statesman of administration, in Moscow to negotiate with Putin. It marked a distinct break with Mr. Clinton’s liberal interventionism. Mr. Obama reversed virtually all of the major foreign policy choices of the previous eight years, immediately pursuing a “reset” with Russia, a withdrawal from Iraq, a grand tour of the Arab world, and soon after detente with Iran. Mr. Trump has withdrawn from the Paris climate accords and the Iran nuclear deal. He also made substantial changes to a four-decade American effort to make China a “stakeholder” in the international order. The variation in commitment to “anti-war” causes is even more striking at the partisan level. Democratic support for the anti-war movement practically evaporated in 2009 despite, let us not forget, multiple attempts to impeach Mr. Bush for his conduct of the war in Iraq. Republicans are also to blame: challenges to the constitutionality of Mr. Obama’s military actions in Syria and Iraq disappeared on January 20, 2017. If Mr. Biden’s recent strike in Syria demonstrates anything, it’s that politics have remained remarkably normal. Outside of marginal progressives – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her vanguard cohort – there will be no opposition from Democrats to executive military action. It is, however, encouraging to identify an emerging continuity between Mr Biden and his predecessor. The Biden administration appears determined to maintain “the Quad” – the Asian security forum that includes the United States, Japan, Australia and India. The Quad stems from efforts to coordinate relief efforts after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Although a formal security relationship seemed imminent in 2007, US, Indian and Australian policy changes buried the idea for nearly a decade. The Trump administration resurrected the Quad in November 2017 via ASEAN, building on joint U.S. naval exercises with the three potential members. The Quad’s climax came in October 2020, when its four members participated in Exercise MALABAR, traditionally an Indo-American bilateral affair. In addition, other American allies began to recognize the connection between the Indo-Pacific balance and their own interests. In February, France deployed a nuclear-powered attack submarine to the South China Sea and plans to deploy an amphibious assault ship and frigate for US-Japanese military exercises in May. Germany will deploy a frigate to the Indo-Pacific this fall. The Royal Navy Carrier Strike Group will deploy to the Indo-Pacific this year, marking the first deployment of British capital ships east of Suez in a generation. Mr Biden showed little interest in taking on China in his first few weeks in office, but he signaled his willingness to keep the Quad. In addition, there is talk of expanding the Quad by incorporating South Korea as a “Quad Plus” member. China, of course, has expressed its dissatisfaction with the Quad. Like a spoiled child refused sweets, he finds it inconceivable that three of the regional powers with the most to lose from Chinese expansionism deem it reasonable to coordinate with the great power most opposed to China’s hegemonic ambitions. China’s anger, however, points to a critical truth: the Quad is not a framework for political coordination, intended to diplomatically support a “free and open Indo-Pacific”. It is the beginning of a formal alliance, intended to contain the Chinese aggression and to preserve the interests of the American allies. This alliance, if it were formalized, would be long overdue. China has been a clear threat to the interests of virtually all Indo-Pacific political entities since at least the early 2010s, when it began building and militarizing islands in the southern and eastern seas of China. China. Since then, it has consolidated its internal control in Hong Kong and East Turkestan by shifting from a phased approach to the naked use of force, staging a coup in Hong Kong and carrying out genocide in East Turkestan. . He has stepped up his pressure on India, causing three border incidents since 2017. And with Xi Jinping’s rise to supreme leadership, he has led the largest accumulation of high-powered conventional weapons since before World War II. Given China’s goals, expanding the Quad to other regional partners would strengthen US interests and Indo-Pacific stability by increasing the credibility of deterrence. China outclasses any Indo-Pacific adversary, even Japan with its sophisticated Western-style technology and India with its enormous conventional ground forces. No nation wants a long war – at least no nation with an eye on its political survival. But China is in a particularly vulnerable position. It still depends on foreign petrochemical imports and essential raw materials for its industries. And if any part of China supports the Party’s goal of “national rejuvenation” – that is, weltmacht at all costs – it is likely that most of its citizens, with the memory of Maoist madness still engraved in their minds, tolerate Party rule in exchange for economic and social stability. A long war would destroy both advantages, exposing the true nature of the party-state. An alliance that links the great powers of the Pacific directly to the United States and to each other would eliminate the possibility that China could conduct a fait accompli against an isolated political system. Adding formal military cooperation to this partnership would further enhance deterrence by allowing small regional players to maximize their capabilities while supporting the US combat fleet. South Korea is now torn between China and the United States. Its strong economic ties with the PRC have enabled its elites to portray North Korea as the only threat to its existence, leaving its people blind to the risks that a China-dominated Pacific would pose to any liberal policy. But South Korea will not be China’s direct target. The industrial and technological capacity of the ROK makes it more valuable as a partner or subject than as a won prize, especially if the chimera of reunification can be captured. Its affiliation with the Quad would be a diplomatic and strategic triumph: China would be deprived of a potential neutral partner, and its military capabilities could be joined to those of Japan in the Pacific Northwest. Taiwan, however, is much more important. The state party is obsessed with it. Taiwan’s geographic location allows it to disrupt any transfer of force between the Northeast and Southwest Pacific, preventing the PLA from concentrating its fighting power. It is the essential link in the “First Island Chain”, which extends from the Aleutians to Japan to the Philippines and prevents China from unhindered access to the central Pacific. Its existence proves that the Chinese people do not need to compromise their freedom for their security. Today’s Taiwan has emerged from the same political cataclysm as its Communist counterpart. But it has successfully moved from a military dictatorship, filled with the standard traps of despotism – secret police, control of political expression, and extreme state involvement in economic planning – to a multi-party capitalist democracy that guarantees individual rights. and policies and provides its citizens with a standard of living equivalent to that of any Western European or North American. So China’s obsession with Taiwan. The PLA’s increased poll of Taiwanese airspace is a prelude to escalation, just as the Party’s soft maneuvers in East Turkestan and Hong Kong preceded the use of force. Bringing Taiwan into the Quad, as an Observer, Quad Plus Affiliate State, or a full member, would link the ROC to China’s other regional adversaries. China would no longer need to calculate whether the United States would get involved in a Taiwanese contingency. Instead, Japan, Australia, and India would be able to exert political pressure, with the assurance of the United States participating in any escalation. Moreover, a non-Taiwanese flashpoint – for example, in the South China Sea or along the Sino-Indian border – could now lead to a broader conflict in the Pacific. This is where a central question arises. Is the Quad simply a politico-security forum for the powers engaged in a “free and open Indo-Pacific”? No threat to freedom and the opening of the Pacific exists apart from China. But interpreting the Quad as a purely diplomatic / political tool, rather than an explicit alliance designed to counter Chinese aggression, effectively negates its potential benefits. It would be as if the United States insisted in 1955 that NATO was a political forum made up of like-minded liberal regimes with no common interest, instead of being the backbone of a containment strategy. Soviet. Seth Cropsey is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and director of its Center for American Seapower. He served as a naval officer and as assistant undersecretary of the navy. Harry Halem is a research assistant at the Hudson Institute and a graduate student at the London School of Economics.
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