The US’ military maneuvers in the Taiwan Strait are symptomatic of its new approach to engagement with China in the region and beyond.
On Saturday last week, two US guided-missile destroyers transited the Taiwan Strait. Institute for National Policy Research executive director Kuo Yu-jen (郭育仁) on Monday said that the operation, far from being an isolated event, was part of the expansion of the US’ military presence in the region, meant to place checks on China’s bullying tactics and militarization of the South China Sea.
Taiwan is a relatively small regional player, but it has geopolitical value, and the US is committed to supporting it. From Taiwan’s point of view, a stronger stance by Washington to Beijing’s machinations is certainly welcome.
However, the maneuvers are part of a wider narrative.
As regional and global alliances and understandings are changing, China’s rise is now being approached not just in the Asian context, but in a wider geostrategic context that also includes the Indian Ocean and the Western and Central Pacific.
The US is pursuing what it calls a “free and open Indo-Pacific strategy.” This new strategy is a reformulation of former US president Barack Obama’s “pivot” to Asia. Obama was generally seen as taking a conciliatory approach to Beijing to ensure a good trading relationship with a rising China and to maintain peace in Asia.
With the escalating trade war with China, US President Donald Trump has clearly been taking a more confrontational, aggressive approach on trade, while US Secretary of Defense James Mattis has been following a policy of reining in Beijing’s ambitions of becoming a regional hegemon and a problematic global superpower.
Beijing’s activities in the South China Sea are a litmus test for how it is going to behave elsewhere when it secures a stronger foothold in other regions around the globe. So far, the test results have provided much cause for concern.
During a speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue regional defense forum in Singapore from Sunday to Tuesday last week, Mattis took a tough stance on China and noted Beijing’s militarization of artificial features in the South China Sea.
While Beijing is suspicious of the intentions of the US amid its shift to an Indo-Pacific strategy, China has done much to necessitate this widening of the focus beyond Asia.
In the past few years, Beijing has made major inroads into developing a global network of communication links and investments, including in Africa, India and the Middle East, with its “string of pearls” strategy — the development of maritime infrastructure connecting ports in the Indian Ocean to ensure the supply of oil from the Middle East — and its Belt and Road Initiative of regional connectivity.
The US is rightly concerned about China’s intentions with these infrastructure initiatives. The name change, announced on May 30, of the US Department of Defense’s Pacific Command — responsible for the US west coast to the Indian Ocean, from the Arctic to the Antarctic — to the US Indo-Pacific Command can be regarded as a reflection of Washington’s shift in focus toward checking China’s increasing naval strength in the South China Sea and beyond.
Given the shifting realities and balance of power in the Indo-Pacific region between the US and Japan and rising superpowers such as India and China, and to a lesser extent South Korea, Indonesia and Australia, a lowering of tensions and increased communication would be desirable.
Of those countries, there is only one that has provided cause for real concern and which the others believe needs to be reined in.
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
As former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) wrapped up his visit to the People’s Republic of China, he received his share of attention. Certainly, the trip must be seen within the full context of Ma’s life, that is, his eight-year presidency, the Sunflower movement and his failed Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, as well as his eight years as Taipei mayor with its posturing, accusations of money laundering, and ups and downs. Through all that, basic questions stand out: “What drives Ma? What is his end game?” Having observed and commented on Ma for decades, it is all ironically reminiscent of former US president Harry