Washington’s increasing interest in winning over the Asia-Pacific shows the vitality of the region in the fast picking up of Cold War-II. What will be the role of Indo-Pacific countries in the emerging geopolitical scenario? And what will be the cost and consequences of the US desire to strategically control the region? These questions are being centrally focused at White House and Pentagon.
“In the coming year, the United States and its allies will face an increasingly complex and interconnected global security environment marked by the growing specter of great power competition and conflict, while collective, transnational threats to all nations and actors compete for our attention and finite resources.” This statement comes from the U.S. intelligence community’s 2022 Annual Threat Assessment Report. Two of the threats the intelligence community is most concerned about in terms of “renewed threat of nation-state aggression” are in the Asia Pacific region: China and North Korea.
“China increasingly is a near-peer competitor, challenging the United States in multiple arenas – especially economically, militarily, and technologically – and it is pushing to change global norms and potentially threatening its neighbors.” Quoting the report, the Policy Circle analyzes that from friction with Taiwan and aggression in the South China Sea, to the Belt and Road Initiative and China’s relationship with Russia, the report details China’s attempts to “secure what it views as its sovereign territory and regional preeminence and pursue global influence.” Intelligence experts predict China will likely double the size of its nuclear stockpile over the next ten years.
Meanwhile, “North Korea will expand its [weapons of mass destruction] capabilities while being a disruptive player on the regional and world stages.” The report details the threat to the US, particularly from illicit activities including cyber theft, and to regional allies South Korea and Japan in the form of a “diverse strategic and tactical ballistic missile force.”
International peace, security, and economic interests are thoroughly intertwined in Asia, and countries’ actions can send ripples throughout the region and around the world. The US and its allies are putting billions of dollars in the region to win it over as their stronghold. But it is likely to deliver nothing positive but another devastation. The stable countries have been ruined in the past as well on the conflicting pretexts such as terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. Actually, it is the clash of two political and economic philosophies, communist and capitalist. After Arab states, now the expanding communist economies are the real threats to the main pillars of capitalism.
After engaging Russia with Ukraine, the US and NATO certainly dent Russia’s pace of economic spread. Meanwhile, the war has destroyed about one-fourth of the world’s staple food basket. The same case is being built up in Asia-Pacific. But the White House’s influence in the Asia-Pacific region has clearly fallen on hard times. Most of the countries in the region are reluctant to buy the narrative after having seen the cost and consequences of the Arab Spring and lately the situation in Ukraine.
The United States’ ability to pursue its foreign policy discourse in Southeast Asia, aimed at countering the People’s Republic of China and strategically containing the Russian Federation, is increasingly narrowing.
Attempts by the Joe Biden administration to win over as many countries in the Asia-Pacific Region as possible to its side and use them as a tool in the fight against Beijing and Moscow seems to be failing. The results of the first-ever joint summit of the United States and Pacific Island countries on September 28-29, 2022, in Washington D.C., in which the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau refused to follow the White House platform, attested to it.
The Oceania countries were not ready to take a pro-American stance, citing insufficient US financial support for the region, especially when compared to Washington’s economic and military aid aimed at maintaining the war in Ukraine. Also, among the “stroppy” states, according to the Americans, were the Solomon Islands, which said that concluding new ties with Washington could undermine their close and valuable ties with Beijing. The Southeast Asian countries too are reluctant in following the new US stance of curtailing China’s economic spread while they are already struggling for post-Covid economic stability.
In the prevailing scenario, winning over the Asia-Pacific Region will be a quite expensive bid for the US and its allies. Most important will be the reaction of China and North Korea. Will they fight back to the US proxy countries or directly target the installations in the US and Europe? What would be the role of likeminded states? Would it lead to a new world war of two blocs? The cost seems very heavy.
