Pence speech on China signals it’s time to bolster strike capability

US Vice-President Mike Pence’s blistering speech at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC, last week announcing an openly confrontational relationship with China and accusing Beijing of unbridled aggression cannot be underestimated. The US has vast experience in dealing with China and Pence’s words were not some spur-of-the-moment thought bubble. Rather, the pressures have been building for some time.

Pence sets out a new approach, saying the days of ignoring Chinese actions or abetting them are over. In response to China wanting to push the US out of the Western Pacific, the US intends to extend its “military dominance in every domain”.

The US Navy “will continue to fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows and our national interests demand. We will not be intimidated; we will not stand down.”

Pence accused Beijing of pursuing a “comprehensive and co-ordinated campaign to undermine support for the President”. He claimed China was meddling in US democracy by seeking to influence next month’s midterm elections and the environment leading into the 2020 presidential elections to get rid of Donald Trump.

Respected American historian Walter Russell Mead summed it up in a now-famous sentence: Did Cold War II break out last week while no one was watching? He rated the speech as the biggest shift in US-China relationship since Henry Kissinger’s 1971 visit to Beijing and likened it to Ronald Reagan’s speech in 1983 identifying the Soviet Union as the “evil empire”.

This more confrontational policy is likely to be broadly popular in terms of US domestic politics. Mead observes the foreign policy establishment may oppose Trump’s tactics, but it generally accepts the need for a stronger stance against China. He says business and investors may underestimate the Trump administration’s determination to challenge China.

Predictably, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, after a frosty meeting last week with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, proclaimed that US actions had undermined mutual trust and “cast a shadow over China-US relations”, and that the tensions could hurt negotiations on the Korean peninsula. In a blunt response, Pompeo said the US had great concerns about China’s actions and the two countries had a “fundamental disagreement”.

So, where does it leave Australia and our national security?

First, it needs to be acknowledged that the US is at last doing something positive to challenge Chinese hegemony in our part of the world. Of course, we need to be alert to the gaps between promise and delivery, but Trump is not wavering in his hostility to China with his trade war. And Pence asserts that the US is intent on confronting China’s military aggression and “reckless harassment” in the South China Sea.

Second, we face the prospect for the first time since World War II of a major power — with which we do not share fundamental values — capable of threatening us with high-intensity conflict. China’s projection of military power already is aimed at restricting Australia’s maritime operations. Southeast Asia is becoming a focus of increasing Chinese coercion and could become a Chinese sphere of influence. And we soon may face a similar situation in the South Pacific. We need to build up our strike capabilities to deny any adversary from operating against us in our maritime approaches.

Third, we must review our relationship with Beijing and determine its limits. We have become too economically dependent on China. We need to diversify our trade, investment, tourism and international student businesses to reduce vulnerability to economic blackmail.

Fourth, we need to focus our foreign and defence policies much more on our own region of primary strategic concern, which includes Southeast Asia, the eastern Indian Ocean and the South Pacific. We should get out of Afghanistan and the Middle East, and reassert our foreign policy and defence presence here as China moves increasingly to challenge our strategic space.

Fifth, the US and Australia should identify what aspects of Chinese strategic behaviour we find unacceptable. This will require greater willingness to signal to China where its behaviour will be resisted. Continuing passivity on the part of the US and its allies will only give China the initiative to be more aggressive. The US will no longer accept that passivity. So where does Australia stand?

Sixth, we should not be party to the appeasement of Beijing by those who argue that the US needs to make strategic space for China. Recognising that China is a rising power is one thing, but what else does it have in mind? The sacrifice of Taiwan’s democracy to invasion by China? Or do they want to have us kowtow to Beijing and acknowledge its right to dominate the South China Sea and determine who can use it?

Finally, we must recognise we are dealing with a China that wants to be acknowledged as the natural hegemon of Asia and see an end to the US alliance system in the region. China needs to understand if it succeeds in ending the US alliance system in Asia, that may well encourage former allies to consider acquiring nuclear weapons. Is that what Beijing wants?

So, there are encouraging signs that the US finally intends to challenge China’s reckless aggression in the South China Sea and elsewhere. Australia should be joining the US, Britain and France in asserting freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea.

Paul Dibb is emeritus professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University. He is a former deputy secretary of defence and director of the Defence Intelligence Organisation.