Biden Looks to Contain
China—but Where’s the Asian NATO?
The United States needs a game plan for a continent
that’s home to two-thirds of the world’s population and its biggest rival.
BY JACK DETSCH
| MARCH 26, 2021, 4:36 PM
U.S. President Joe Biden and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken
participate in a virtual meeting with leaders of Quadrilateral Security
Dialogue countries at the White House on March 12. ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES
The Biden
administration has found a receptive ear in Asian capitals for pushing back
on China’s territorial expansion. It is getting increased buy-in for the
Quadrilateral Security Dialogue from Japan, as well as from long-wary partners
India and Australia, which recently began military exercises together again
after a long pause. And the new team is trying to make strides with Japan and
South Korea by burying the hatchet on negotiations over the cost of hosting
U.S. troops there.
But in the
rare moments that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of
Defense Lloyd Austin weren’t slammed with meetings, calls, and press
conferences in their first overseas visit last week, U.S. officials were
wrestling with a more far-reaching question: What should the American alliance
structure look like in a continent that houses nearly two-thirds of the world’s
population and America’s biggest strategic rival?
The Biden
administration, like the Trump administration before it, has tagged China as
its top geopolitical rival. But President Joe Biden and his team, unlike their
direct predecessors, want to contain any threat from China with the help of
allies and partners, rather than unilaterally. In the early days of the Cold
War, Washington helped shepherd a group of like-minded European countries to
counter the Soviet threat. In the confrontation with China, the United States
doesn’t have those same options. The question, essentially, is how to contain
China with a very different mix of partners.
What’s safe
to assume, U.S. officials said, is that the United States isn’t going to
assemble a NATO-like group to counter China. But, after World War II,
Washington did build a constellation of treaty alliances with Japan, South
Korea, Australia, the Philippines, and Thailand, which became the much-vaunted
hub-and-spoke model for U.S. security in Asia for more than half a century.
Today, the Biden administration hopes to turn to smaller groupings—bilateral,
trilateral, or even multilateral clusters of countries that can do something
similar.
“Look, for a
variety of reasons—history, geography, politics—Asia doesn’t have the type of
structured alliance like what we have in the trans-Atlantic alliance,” said a
senior defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We’re trying to
deliberately evolve from that hub-and-spoke model” to a series of overlapping
relationships, the official said.
That boils
down to small alliance pairings that can help build connective tissue between
militaries and shore up contested territory in the Asia-Pacific with more joint
military exercises, but short of an Asian NATO with a full-on equivalent of the
trans-Atlantic pact’s Article 5, which requires signatories to come to the
defense of allies under attack.
Right now,
the senior defense official said, the Biden administration is hoping to bolster
existing groupings like the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN) and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, known as the “Quad.” The
problem is that ASEAN mostly focuses on economics and steers well clear of
security issues, especially when it comes to the South China Sea, one of the
biggest points of friction between Washington and Beijing. And the Quad, while
revitalized with a video call among the heads of state and by Australia
rejoining the Malabar exercise with India and Japan after a long pause, is
focused squarely on security issues in the Indo-Pacific region.
But other
than Japan, which reiterated during the trip that it would cooperate closely with the United States
in the event of a Chinese clash with Taiwan, most nations in the region are
focused on protecting their own borders, and that’s by design, former U.S.
officials said.
“Basically
every state should be focused on its own defense. We’re already in huge trouble
with a central front such as the first island chain” from Japan through the
South China Sea, said Elbridge Colby, a principal at the Marathon Initiative
and a former deputy assistant secretary of defense during the Trump
administration. “From a military perspective, I don’t think we’re heading for
an Asian NATO.”
Another difference
comes in intelligence sharing. The United States, NATO allies, and key partners
collectively known as the “Five Eyes” routinely share information. There’s
nothing similar to the network all of Asia (though Australia is part of Five
Eyes). But officials stressed that Five Eyes is a mature relationship, among
English-speaking countries with longtime ties. Coalition information sharing in
Asia in any bloc, such as the Quad, requires the concurrence of each member
state, which can gum up basic exchanges. “Once you get outside [Five Eyes] it
becomes exponentially more difficult,” a second senior defense official said.
READ MORE
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Counter China’s Full-Court Press in Asia
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REPORT |
What the
United States is looking for, in the long term, is a communications system that
will allow it to exchange classified and confidential information with all
American allies and partners in the region, something that U.S. Indo-Pacific
Command has tried to champion in its latest budget submission. For now,
Washington has to talk pell-mell on different systems for nations like South
Korea, the Philippines, and India.
“Just
imagine working on Microsoft versus Apple here in the United States, that’s a
pain in the ass enough, but imagine everything is different,” a third senior
defense official said. “It’s the biggest hole in our swing right now.”
But the
multitude of differences in U.S. relationships in the region show up more
viscerally through tone and body language. It was visible in recent weeks even
among the closest U.S. allies in the region. In Tokyo, Blinken was greeted
warmly by Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga in a scene that resembled a
meeting of long-lost friends. In Seoul, the South Korean defense minister
appeared to challenge the top U.S. diplomat’s call for the “denuclearization of
North Korea” at a high-level press conference. Meanwhile, Japan and South
Korea’s long-running historical animus has limited ties beyond a 2019
intelligence-sharing pact.
The Biden
administration must also navigate different human rights standards across the
region, an issue the new White House has promised to emphasize in national
security policymaking.
Austin
raised concerns about treatment of India’s Muslim population with top officials
there. Thailand and the Philippines, which have repeatedly clashed with China
in territorial disputes over the South China Sea, are both beset by domestic
human rights challenges, and they were not part of the first overseas junket by
senior Biden administration officials.
Even though
officials have cautioned that U.S. multinational partnerships are likely to
proceed in baby steps in the wake of the trip, the Biden administration could
also use Asia’s lack of its own NATO to its advantage. While successive
administrations have leaned on NATO nations to spend more on defense, Asia’s
less formal alliance structure could allow U.S. allies to collaborate on
information sharing and military exercises in exchanges that aren’t necessarily
guided by Washington.
“That even
doesn’t mean that the United States has to be involved,” the first senior
defense official said. “If we can help partners to be able to be better
prepared to defend their own interests and be more secure in their own
sovereignty, then that’s to the good of everyone.”
Jack Detsch is Foreign Policy’s
Pentagon and national security reporter. Twitter: @JackDetsch
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