What are the broad, long-term implications of the Pentagon's recent announcement of reductions in US troop levels in South Korea from 37,000 to 24,500? Many commentators have rushed to speculate on North Korea's interpretation of this announcement. That interpretation may well affect the prospects of the Six Party Talks, convened to curtail Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions.
And the course of those talks is likely, in turn, to provide a template for security cooperation between Beijing, Washington and perhaps Tokyo on a whole range of Northeast Asian security matters in the years ahead. Cuts to US forces on the Korean Peninsula may then prove very significant for Northeast Asia. But they also have implications for the situation in Southeast Asia to which few observers have paid attention.
YUSHA
During their mid-1990s service in the Clinton administration, Harvard professors Joseph Nye and Ezra Vogel devoted considerable effort to dispelling doubts about Washington's commitment to Asia. One central feature of this "Nye Initiative" was pledging the continued presence of 100,000 US troops in the region. While some observers viewed this measure of US commitment as fundamentally arbitrary and unduly rigid, it has always had a certain appeal. Force levels are, after all, a tangible indicator, meaningful not only to security specialists but also -- perhaps more importantly -- to less expert but still concerned observers of Asian geopolitics among industry, government and the citizenry of the region's states. Today, there are two readings of the implications of Washington's decision to abandon this notional, quantitative measure of its commitment to Asia.
One reading suggests that the decision will have very little impact. Asia will soon adapt to this latest change in US deployments just as it adjusted to the closure of huge US facilities at Clark Air Base and Subic Bay Naval Station in the Philippines in the early 1990s. The Pentagon's changing capabilities, increased emphasis on mobility to project its power over long distances and reliance on periodic access to Asian host-government facilities rather than permanent installations are central to this argument.
They make reductions in force levels strategically meaningless, especially if those levels are gauged through the crude measure of troop numbers. Further, large investment in facilities and basing of additional units on Guam should dispel the idea that Washington's commitment to Asia is flagging. And, after all, the US is making far greater cuts to troop levels in Europe without any discernible alarm there. Why should Asia react differently?
A second reading of reductions in troop levels in Korea is less complacent. It stresses the possibility that Washington has, in recent decades, given insufficient attention to non-military aspects of its engagement with Asia -- to diplomacy, economic co-operation and multilateral structures outside the security realm. Under US President George W. Bush, this skew may have grown increasingly serious. As James Mann has noted in his excellent study of Bush's "war Cabinet," Rise of the Vulcans, many of the dominant figures in the making of US foreign policy today share world views shaped by early service in the Pentagon. Experience in international law and business or in academic life has had less influence on their understanding of the US' role in global affairs.
In Asia, this orientation has a series of unique consequences. It strengthens the impression that Washington's commitment to the region is primarily military. Any perceived reduction in the US' military presence thus seems to speak volumes about the seriousness of that commitment. The orientation also prompts comparison with the rising influence of Beijing, which seems in some parts of Asia more balanced between security and non-security dimensions. While the US has stationed the majority of its 100,000 soldiers in Northeast rather than Southeast Asia, these consequences are nevertheless directly relevant to the latter zone. But they play out differently in the various major states of Southeast Asia.
For Thailand, cuts in US force levels in Asia will reinforce prevailing sentiments that close security relations with the US are a relic of the Cold War and that forging a strong economic partnership with China is a wise bet. The US' other Southeast Asian treaty ally, the Philippines, finds itself in a different position. Poorly prepared to benefit from such a partnership with Beijing, Manila has used the "war on terror" to rebuild its military-to-military ties with Washington. Not least, the Armed Forces of Philippines look to those ties to alleviate budgetary woes. These woes have left the Philippine military utterly incapable of enforcing Philippine claims to islands in the South China Sea in the face of ongoing pressure from China.
In Singapore, the People's Action Party government is watching regional developments with its customary, unflinchingly pragmatic concern for the city-state's own long-term interests. Despite deepening US-Singapore security cooperation, the government's definition of those interests will remain decisive. In this context, recent Singapore media focus on the 10th anniversary of the country's investment in a large industrial park in Suzhou, China, and on its need for a cadre of citizens trained from a young age to interact with China merit attention and appreciation.
Indonesia's domestic politics occupy its elites. For the present, at least, they appear to lack anything approaching the engagement with Asian geopolitics that marked Jakarta during the Suharto years. Vietnam, on the contrary, has begun to take its first, tentative steps into the arena. While the process remains reversible, Hanoi's slowly growing contacts with the Pentagon may make it a key pillar of Washington's "places, not bases" approach to military facilities in Southeast Asia. If these contacts continue to develop, Vietnamese worries over the increasing might of China's People's Liberation Army will be the clear, driving factor. Malaysia is a tougher call. It is easy, but simplistic, to take Kuala Lumpur's recent objection to US patrols in the Straits of Malacca as one more sign of its chronically bad relations with Washington. Ironically, Malaysia's eschewing of a close security relationship with the US while enjoying substantial investment from US firms may mean that the reduction of forces in Korea barely registers there.
For all this variation across Southeast Asia, a single underlying dynamic is clear. The US has invested in a security-driven orientation whose centrality and relevance has begun to be called into question by a changing China. At present, it remains far too early to say which understanding of Washington's recent announcement of force reductions in Korea will prove most astute. Perhaps both the announcement and the concern that it has generated will soon be forgotten. Or perhaps, from the vantage of hindsight, observers will view these reductions as symbolic of the risks associated with Washington's security-dominated approach to a Southeast Asia that is ever more attentive to a richer and more ambitious China.
Michael Montesano is assistant professor in the Southeast Asian Studies Program at the National University of Singapore.
With escalating US-China competition and mutual distrust, the trend of supply chain “friend shoring” in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and the fragmentation of the world into rival geopolitical blocs, many analysts and policymakers worry the world is retreating into a new cold war — a world of trade bifurcation, protectionism and deglobalization. The world is in a new cold war, said Robin Niblett, former director of the London-based think tank Chatham House. Niblett said he sees the US and China slowly reaching a modus vivendi, but it might take time. The two great powers appear to be “reversing carefully
As China steps up a campaign to diplomatically isolate and squeeze Taiwan, it has become more imperative than ever that Taipei play a greater role internationally with the support of the democratic world. To help safeguard its autonomous status, Taiwan needs to go beyond bolstering its defenses with weapons like anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles. With the help of its international backers, it must also expand its diplomatic footprint globally. But are Taiwan’s foreign friends willing to translate their rhetoric into action by helping Taipei carve out more international space for itself? Beating back China’s effort to turn Taiwan into an international pariah
Typhoon Krathon made landfall in southwestern Taiwan last week, bringing strong winds, heavy rain and flooding, cutting power to more than 170,000 homes and water supply to more than 400,000 homes, and leading to more than 600 injuries and four deaths. Due to the typhoon, schools and offices across the nation were ordered to close for two to four days, stirring up familiar controversies over whether local governments’ decisions to call typhoon days were appropriate. The typhoon’s center made landfall in Kaohsiung’s Siaogang District (小港) at noon on Thursday, but it weakened into a tropical depression early on Friday, and its structure
Since the end of the Cold War, the US-China espionage battle has arguably become the largest on Earth. Spying on China is vital for the US, as China’s growing military and technological capabilities pose direct challenges to its interests, especially in defending Taiwan and maintaining security in the Indo-Pacific. Intelligence gathering helps the US counter Chinese aggression, stay ahead of threats and safeguard not only its own security, but also the stability of global trade routes. Unchecked Chinese expansion could destabilize the region and have far-reaching global consequences. In recent years, spying on China has become increasingly difficult for the US
RSS