US imbalance on Asia pivot

THE constant drumbeat of conflict in Ukraine and Gaza masks the sound of a much deeper drum.

FILE - In this file photo taken May 11, 2014, Vietnamese protest outside the Chinese Embassy in Hanoi, Vietnam against Beijing's deployment of an oil rig in the contested waters of the South China Sea. Nearly three decades after Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping famously instructed his diplomats to “be good at maintaining a low profile and never claim leadership,” a new generation of rulers has made it clear that they’re ready to shed the humility and show off their country’s rising military and political power. From Southeast Asian waters that may hold billions of barrels of oil to uninhabited islands in the East China Sea, China has stepped into, and some would say provoked, territorial disputes with neighbors including Japan, South Korea and the Philippines. (AP Photo/Chris Brummitt, File)

THE constant drumbeat of conflict in Ukraine and Gaza masks the sound of a much deeper drum that signals a much greater shift in global power.

It may be a case of the urgent being the enemy of the important. For the changing structures of power in Asia will shape the world much more profoundly than Gaza or Ukraine. All of which is why US President Barack Obama decided in 2011 to “pivot” to Asia, a policy change subsequently relabelled the rebalance.

“The rebalance, at its heart, is a set of policies that reflects the priorities the administration is placing on the Asia-Pacific,” says Danny Russel, US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific and the Obama administration’s chief official on Asia.

“This is reflected in the six visits Secretary of State John Kerry has made to Asia, the increase in the State Department’s Asia budget, the Department of Defence expanding naval resources in the region and the tremendous amount of time and mind share (for Asia), including of the President.

“I am one of the luckiest officials in Washington. I have a tremendous tailwind in terms of presidential interest. And there is a widespread and bipartisan conviction that America’s future in economic and security terms is bound up in the Asia-Pacific.”

What all this high policy really boils down to, though, is a security commitment, an alliance refurbishment and a trade deal.

How is it going? Two weeks of intensive talks in Hawaii, Los Angeles, Washington and New York, involving key players and commentators, offer a mixed picture. There’s no doubt the Obama administration wants an effective and invigorated Asia policy. But there are real questions over whether it has the resources and the commitment to bring it off.

The stakes for Australia, as the US’s closest ally in Asia, and as a radically underpopulated nation with vast resources and no other close military allies, are enormous.

One key element of Washington’s approach is to strengthen its alliances in the region. And so, Russel says, Washington is fully supportive of Japan’s decision to reinterpret its constitution so that it can engage in collective security.

“We are clear-eyed about what this is and what it isn’t,” says Russel. “It will allow Japan to exercise its collective self-defence rights in limited ways that would be helpful for the US alliance.”

Australia will be, in Russel’s view, “a direct beneficiary” of Japan’s enhanced willingness to engage in greater international defence co-operation. Although no one in the US administration will say so directly, the need for the US alliances to be beefed up is created by China’s belligerent behaviour during the past few years.

Russel, like all US officials, believes, or at least asserts, that the US and China can live together.

He rejects utterly the proposition that Washington asks its allies to make a choice between the US and China. “We have worked hard to create space for China,” he says. Indeed, there is a plethora of US-China strategic dialogues and the like. Beijing could not complain credibly of a lack of consultation from Washington.

But Russel adds: “The price of admission for that participation is, however, that like the US, China should accept that the rules apply to it as well.”

Russel is direct in his criticism of Beijing for its cyber industrial espionage and its aggressive behaviour over territorial disputes in the East and South China seas.

“No one from the US is for a moment suggesting China should not vigorously pursue its sovereign claims,” Russel says. Nor, he says, does the US take a position on the merits of those claims. But he says Beijing has defined those claims — with a vague, nine-dash line that encompasses almost all the South China Sea — in a way that “does not appear to have good foundations in inter­national law”.

Second, he says, Beijing’s assertiveness in pushing those claims, especially through incidents at sea and trade actions against fellow claimants such as Vietnam and The Philippines, is damaging: “In terms of the outsize claims China is making, it’s clearly the most destabilising actor.”

The Obama administration has other criticisms of Beijing’s behaviour, among them its trenchant and public hostility to Japan. “There’s no question but that vilifying Japan is a major component of Chinese propaganda,” Russel says. But he insists the US is asking no more of China than normal international behaviour and is not trying to stymie China’s growth and development.

“We categorically dispute claims that US alli­ances are inimical to China or aimed at China,” he says. “If that were true, China would not be the world’s second largest economy and would not have been at the ­RIMPAC (joint military) exercises.”

There are in Washington much tougher voices on China. At the Senate office building on Capitol Hill, Republican senator and former US presidential candidate John McCain believes the projection of weakness from the Obama administration has emboldened the Chinese, among others.

“It’s pretty clear that the Chinese view the last couple of hundred years as an aberration of history,” McCain tells me. “That means they feel they must assume the role of 21st-century leadership of Asia. That means access to markets and to energy, and asserting control over the South China Sea, which is in ­violation of everything the US and Australia and other nations have stood for, and that’s freedom of navigation. I do not know how far the Chinese will go. The latest incident with the Vietnamese is very concerning.

“The best way to discourage ­aberrant behaviour is to have a united coalition of nations dedicated to preserving freedom of navigation. That does not mean confrontation. The Chinese always interpret everything we do as confrontational, but when they sink a Vietnamese ship that’s just asserting their God-given rights.”

McCain’s larger criticisms of Obama in Asia focus on credibility. “What happens in the Middle East affects everything in the world,” McCain says, with a rising volume of conviction in his voice.

“Historians will view the President’s declaration that he was going to strike Syria and then reneged” as a tragic turning point.

McCain also declares the military dimension of the Asia pivot is being grossly retarded by Pentagon budget cuts.

“So far the (military) rebalance has not taken place,” he says, “for good reasons and for bad reasons.

“The Middle East and Ukraine are in a state of upheaval that requires our naval presence in the Black Sea. But also cutbacks to our military spending, demanded by sequestration, are hurting our ability to build ships; and if you can’t build ships, you can’t increase your naval strength.”

The Obama administration says it is fulfilling its commitment to base 60 per cent of its navy in Asia. But McCain contends that the automatic budget cuts under sequestration — a kind of emergency budget deal struck between congress and the administration — are making that meaningless.

“If the size (of the military) overall continues to shrink you will not see a significant increase of presence (in Asia),” he says. Under sequestration, he says, the US Army is compulsorily retiring army captains involved in combat in Afghanistan: “You can imagine the effect that has on ­morale.”

One point of agreement between McCain and the Obama ­administration is the need for greater emphasis on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in US policy.

The rebalance to Asia, Russel says, is also a rebalance within US policy towards Asia, to put a greater stress on Southeast Asia. The administration has made a big commitment to Southeast Asian architecture, he says, by which he means the series of regional meetings and institutions based on ASEAN.

Russel also rejects the idea that the US is an outside power in Asia. Instead, he argues, it is an integral part of the region, deeply involved in all its economic, security and political dynamics.

Indeed, nothing more surely annoys Washington’s Asia crowd than the notion that the region wants Chinese money and American security.

This is partly because the US remains a huge trade partner for Asia, and is a much bigger investor in most Asian economies than China is.

Washington’s chief economic initiative in Asia is the Trans-­Pacific Partnership. More than a year ago senior administration ­officials told me they planned to have the TPP wrapped up by the end of 2013. Now no one in the administration says much about it to American audi­ences, and no one is likely to until the mid-term congressional elections in November are out of the way.

The TPP involves strong trade liberalisation, but it has its weaknesses, among them that India, Indonesia and China are not part of it. But the TPP is designed to be open for future accession by ­nations willing to undertake the necessary liberalisation.

Later this year Obama will be involved in key regional meetings: the East Asia Summit, the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum and the Group of 20 leaders summit in Brisbane. Officials say these meetings will be the site of intense US activism on the TPP.

One senior administration ­official tells me: “This is an unprecedentedly ambitious trade agreement. Beginning with the President, the administration is working all-out to bring it to a ­successful conclusion.”

Other Washington insiders are more sceptical. Many analysts point out that the President rarely, if ever, talks about the importance of Asia or the pivot, much less the TPP, to domestic audiences. He speaks eloquently of Asia when he is in Asia. But he cannot build a consensus within the American nation on the importance of Asia if he won’t speak about Asia inside the US.

There is also the feeling that in Obama’s recent visit to Japan there was a disappointing lack of progress on the TPP. Some Japan insiders calculate that Tokyo won’t put its best offer forward while Obama declines to make any mention of the deal at home, is not making the case for the deal to the congress and is not seeking trade promotion authority, which would allow a straight yes-or-no congressional vote on the final deal.

Mike Green, a former Asia ­director at the National Security Council, thinks the US position in Asia has benefited from renewed and extended Japanese commitment. The same is true of ­Australia’s extended alliance commitment. To some extent Tokyo and Canberra are making up for a lack of a clear voice on Asia, or clear leadership, in the second Obama administration.

Despite Kerry’s visits to Asia he is clearly focused on the Middle East and Europe. Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel has become the administration’s chief cabinet voice in Asia.

Says Green: “There is strong support in Japan for a stronger ­alliance with the US because of Chinese bullying, and there is strong support in the US for a stronger alliance with Japan. But (Japan’s Prime Minister) Shinzo Abe and the Obama White House don’t click. There are differences over the TPP, climate change and other things.

“But Abe and (Tony) Abbott have both ­articulated democratic values as important to their regional diplomacy. Obama is a cool character anyway, but I hear that Abe and Abbott click very well. Part of it is they both have a clear concept of their strategy for the region. I think they both have difficulty understanding what Obama’s strategy is.”

There are larger forces at work hampering US effectiveness in Asia, not least the rise of noisy isolationist wings in both the Republican and Democratic parties.

But the US is drawn to Asia, not just by its values but overwhelmingly by its interests. It will always be a power in Asia — the question is, how big a power, and to precisely what effect.