Asia-Pacific Regional Security Assessment 2020

Key Developments and Trends

The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS)

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000209846
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Asian History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Asia-Pacific Regional Security Assessment provides insight into key regional strategic, geopolitical, economic, military and security topics.

Among the topics explored are:

• the deteriorating USChina relationship and great-power competition;
• US alliances and security partnerships;
• the collapse of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty;
• diplomatic gridlock on the Korean Peninsula;
• Japan's role in Indo-Pacific security;
• the breakdown in Japan–South Korea relations;
• Indonesian policy towards the South China Sea;
• Australia's defence and security outlook;
• the European security role in Asia.

Authors include leading regional analysts and academics Douglas Barrie, William Choong, Aaron Connelly, Andrew Davies, Michael Elleman, Bonnie S. Glaser, Euan Graham, Christopher W. Hughes, Meia Nouwens, Brendan Taylor and William Tow.

CHAPTER ONE

THE DETERIORATING US–CHINA RELATIONSHIP AND THE INDO-PACIFIC

BONNIE S. GLASER

Bonnie S. Glaser is Senior Adviser for Asia and Director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The deterioration in United States–China relations did not begin with the election of Donald Trump, but it has deepened and accelerated during his presidency. Hopes that ties between Washington and Beijing would remain relatively stable after the April 2017 Mar-a-Lago summit were dashed later that year when the Trump administration released its National Security Strategy (NSS), which labelled China, alongside Russia, a ‘rival’ and ‘revisionist power’ seeking to ‘shape a world antithetical to US values and interests’.¹ Following on its heels, the 2018 National Defense Strategy branded China a ‘strategic competitor’ and charged that it was ‘leveraging military modernisation, influence operations, and predatory economics to coerce neighboring countries to reorder the Indo-Pacific region to their advantage’.² In December 2019, US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper declared that China is the top strategic concern for the Pentagon, ahead of Russia.³

Unlike prior downturns in US–China relations, which were part of cycles of progress, stalemate and crisis, the current decline is driven by factors that are structural and deeply rooted.⁴ Strategic competition is now the dominant feature of the bilateral relationship and is likely to remain the primary animating force for years to come. Beijing’s goal of national rejuvenation includes realising the unification of Taiwan with mainland China, and making the country into a global leader at least on par with the United States in terms of comprehensive national power, international influence and innovative capacity.⁵ The US is determined to block Chinese efforts to use market-distorting policies aimed at overtaking the US in many next-generation technologies, and to prevent China from dominating Asia and undermining the rules-based order.

Spiralling tensions between the US and China have led many observers to fear the onset of a new cold war or, even worse, a collision between American and Chinese military assets that escalates out of control. Reactions from Indo-Pacific countries to intensifying US–China rivalry have been mixed, but most are ambivalent: they quietly applaud the Trump administration’s tougher approach and hope it will succeed in persuading China to modify its assertive and coercive policies, but they do not want to be forced to take sides between Washington and Beijing, and seek to avert a US–China military confrontation.

TRUMP’S INDO-PACIFIC STRATEGY AND CHINA

The US pushback against perceived Chinese challenges has been manifested in both domestic and foreign policies. At home, the Trump administration has tightened rules on foreign investment in industries like telecommunications to thwart Chinese efforts to gain access to sensitive technology. It has also barred federal agencies and contractors from using telecommunications equipment made by Chinese companies such as Huawei and ZTE. To counter Chinese Communist Party (CCP) influence efforts, the US Department of Defense (DoD) has prohibited funding to US universities that host Confucius Institutes, which teach Chinese language and culture but are widely seen as conduits of Chinese propaganda and are partly backed by Chinese money.

A central element of the Trump administration’s rejoinder to China in foreign policy is the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) strategy. In the first mention of FOIP by a Trump administration official, then-secretary of state Rex Tillerson called out China in October 2017, a month before the NSS was released, in a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC. He accused Beijing of subverting the sovereignty of neighbouring countries, taking provocative actions in the South China Sea, using ‘predatory economics’ in financing Belt and Road projects, and challenging the rules-based order.⁶

When President Trump formally launched the FOIP strategy at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Da Nang, Vietnam on 10 November 2017, he highlighted China’s unfair trade practices but absolved the Chinese of wrongdoing, instead blaming his predecessors for allowing China to take advantage of the United States.⁷ His administration’s NSS, issued one month later, however, charged that China ‘seeks to displace the United States in the Indo-Pacific region, expand the reaches of its state-driven economic model, and reorder the region in its favor’.⁸

At the first Indo-Pacific Business Forum on 30 July 2018, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made only oblique references to China, insisting that the US FOIP vision is inclusive but reaffirming Washington’s commitment to help regional countries ‘keep their people free from coercion or great power domination’ and ‘compete fairly in the international marketplace’.⁹

Major reports by the US departments of Defense and State on the US Free and Open Indo-Pacific strategy

In the autumn of 2018, however, the US sharply ramped up criticism of Chinese policies. At the Hudson Institute, US Vice President Mike Pence delivered the harshest speech on China to date, accusing Beijing of seeking to push the United States out of the Western Pacific, control 90% of the world’s most advanced industries, meddle in American politics and use debt diplomacy to expand its influence around the world. In contrast to China’s push to dominate the region, Pence pledged that the US vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific would be based on shared values and a ‘spirit of respect built on partnership’.¹⁰

Table 1.1: Speeches by senior US officials with a focus on China in 2019

Speaker	Speech	Date	Location
Assistant Secretary of State Kimberly Breier	Remarks: Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Kimberly Breier	26 Apr	Washington DC, US
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo	Looking North: Sharpening America’s Arctic Focus	6 May	Rovaniemi, Finland
Deputy Assistant Attorney General Roger Alford	Deputy Assistant Attorney General Roger Alford Delivers Remarks at the 2019 China Competition Policy Forum	7 May	Hainan, China
Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt-Gen. Robert P. Ashley, Jr.	Russian and Chinese Nuclear Modernization Trends	29 May	Washington DC, US
Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick M. Shanahan	Acting Secretary Shanahan’s Remarks at the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue 2019	1 Jun	Singapore
Assistant Secretary of Defense Randall G. Schriver	Keynote Address at Asia Policy Assembly 2019	18 Jun	Washington DC, US
Assistant Secretary of Defense Randall G. Schriver	Remarks on The Department of Defense’s Indo-Pacific Strategy	26 Jun	Washington DC, US
Assistant Secretary of State Marie Royce	The United States Welcomes Chinese Students	30 Jul	Washington DC, US
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo	The US in Asia: Economic Engagement for Good	2 Aug	Bangkok, Thailand
Secretary of Defense Mark Esper	As Prepared Remarks by Secretary Esper at the Royal United Services Institute in London	6 Sep	London, UK
Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Ashley Ford	Bureaucracy and Counterstrategy: Meeting the China Challenge	11 Sep	Virginia, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Common Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter One The Deteriorating US–China Relationship and the Indo-Pacific
• Chapter Two The End of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty: Implications for Asia
• Chapter Three The United States’ Regional Alliances and Partnerships
• Chapter Four Diplomacy and North Korea
• Chapter Five Japan and Indo-Pacific Security
• Chapter Six The Breakdown in Japan–South Korea Relations
• Chapter Seven Indonesia and the South China Sea under Jokowi
• Chapter Eight Australia’s Security and Defence Outlook
• Chapter Nine Europe and Regional Security
• Index