Trump’s America and International Relations in the Indo-Pacific: Theoretical Analysis of Changes & Continuities (Contributions to International Relations) [1st ed. 2021] 3030759245, 9783030759247

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Contributions to International Relations

This book series offers an outlet for cutting-edge research on all areas of international relations. Contributions to International Relations (CIR) welcomes theoretically sound and empirically robust monographs, edited volumes and handbooks from various disciplines and approaches on topics such as IR-theory, international security studies, foreign policy, peace and conflict studies, international organization, global governance, international political economy, the history of international relations and related fields. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/16658

Tsuneo Akaha • Jingdong Yuan • Wei Liang Editors

Trump’s America and International Relations in the Indo-Pacific Theoretical Analysis of Changes & Continuities

Editors Tsuneo Akaha Graduate School of International Policy and Management (emeritus) Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey Monterey, CA, USA Wei Liang Graduate School of International Policy and Management Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey Monterey, CA, USA

Jingdong Yuan Centre for International Security Studies University of Sydney Sydney, NSW, Australia China and Asia Security Programme Stockholm International Peace Research Institute Solna

Contributions to International Relations ISBN 978-3-030-75924-7    ISBN 978-3-030-75925-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75925-4 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

Researchers’ academic pursuits are driven by their intellectual curiosity or normative concerns about a subject matter, or simply by inertia, that is, more or less as a habit of professional life. This collection of analyses has its genesis in the coincidence of intense concerns among four of the contributors, Akaha, Liang, Yuan, and Paradise, about the result of the 2016 US presidential election and its consequences not only for the United States but also for the Indo-Pacific countries on which their research activities were and continue to be focused. Concerned that the media in the USA was, understandably but disturbingly, focused on the politics and political consequences of the election within the country, to the neglect of potentially far-­ reaching implications for Asia, Akaha proposed, in the wake of the 2016 election, a collaborative research effort to start investigating those consequences and invited Liang, Yuan, and Paradise to join in the effort. The four of us were all equally troubled by what Trump’s America might bring to the countries across the Pacific, which were already being challenged by regional sources of instability and the possibility of armed conflicts over seemingly irreconcilable rows, over history issues, territorial disputes, and economic competition compounded by growing nationalism. In order to make the cooperative endeavor as thorough and as comprehensive as possible, we agreed to enlist the theoretical insights of the three main International Relations (IR) theories – Realism, Liberal Institutionalism, and Constructivism – and to expand the team to include the other contributors to this volume, Hirata, Lukin, Weber, and Joshi, for their expertise on Japan, Russia, Southeast Asia, and India. Our initial concern about the parochial focus of public attention in the USA waned somewhat as the Trump administration’s foreign policy offensives in the Indo-Pacific and beyond stimulated increasing media attention and academic discussion in the USA; nonetheless our concern was vindicated by the disturbing effects of those offensives, which we found were inconsistent, contradictory, and often counterproductive. The collection of analyses in this volume is by no means exhaustive and we are not in a position to declare that the end of the Trump administration is the end of Trumpism  – a unilateral pursuit of self-centered interests by the most powerful country in modern history, led by an authoritarian leader against the democratic v

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yearnings of his own people. The Indo-Pacific, as elsewhere in the world, can benefit from political leaders who are sensitive to and mindful of the consequences of their decisions far beyond their own country and can see that consistent and persistent diplomatic engagement with other members of the global community, both friends and foes, is in the interest not only of their own countries and friends but also of the entire international society. We are grateful to our colleagues for their contributions to this academic endeavor despite their other responsibilities, particularly in this time of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has disrupted all of our lives, both personal and professional. We also thank the anonymous reviewers of our initial proposal for this book for their valuable comments and for helping us deepen the analyses presented here. We acknowledge with thanks the helpful comments that numerous other colleagues offered on the earlier versions of the analyses in this volume when they were presented at various conferences and on other occasions. Finally, we thank our families for their moral support and patience without which we can hardly go where our intellectual curiosity and concern about the countries we study take us, even when that travel is driven by professional habit. Monterey, CA, USA Sydney, NSW, Australia Monterey, CA, USA

Tsuneo Akaha Jingdong Yuan Wei Liang

Introduction

Students of international politics, past and present, have shared a broad consensus that when the world undergoes a major change in the balance of power among great powers, with a rising power tipping the balance in its favor and potentially challenging the hitherto supreme (hegemonic) power, the other nations and their allies and friends, as well as their foes, make important adjustments to their policies toward each other (Gilpin, 1981; Organski, 1958; Organski & Kugler, 1980; Lemke, 2002, 2004; Lemke & Kugler, 1996). In this process of strategic adjustments by multiple powers, they – at least some of them – are prone to misunderstand or misperceive the intentions behind other powers’ adjustments (Jervis & Snyder, 1991). Since these adjustments encompass discernible but hard-to-measure shifts in priorities in resource commitment, including and particularly to military capabilities, the international powers are susceptible to miscalculate the changing capacities of their real and potential adversaries and even those of their current allies and friends. The uncertainties regarding the nations’ intentions and relative capabilities result in reactions based on “worst-case scenarios” and hence global instability. In short, the period of “power transition” is inherently unstable. A further point of general agreement among students of international politics, particularly those who emphasize the prominent role of national power and alliance in shaping the nature of international relations, is that strategic adjustments (or shifting of priorities) take a variety of forms. They include balancing against the rising power, bandwagoning (joining it), and hedging, or a combination of balancing and bandwagoning elements (Walt, 1987; Whiteneck, 2001; Wivel, 2008). In balancing, nations may build up their national capabilities, take steps to consolidate their existing alliance commitments, or realign their alliance commitments, e.g., seek changes in the respective alliance members’ burden for maintaining the effectiveness of the alliance, all designed to counter (contain or constrain) the burgeoning power. Some states may form a new cooperative relationship or expand an existing cooperative relationship with likeminded countries, short of elevating the relationship to a military alliance, e.g., the forging of a new regional consultative or cooperative framework. Some may go further and forge a new military alliance against the surging power. vii

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The power transition theory and balance-of-power theory and their variants have been applied to analyses of international politics in the Indo-Pacific region. They highlight the dramatic rise of China in the last two decades and the relative decline of US hegemonic power, and the potentially disruptive impact of the resulting change in the balance of power on the stability of the status quo in the region, as well as the strategic adjustments the neighboring countries have had to make as a consequence, including balancing against China (by re-enforcing their alliance or cooperation with the USA), hedging against increasingly unpredictable US alliance commitments, and initiating minilateral security arrangements with like-minded powers in the region. Regardless of what strategic adjustments they have made, nearly all regional powers have also devoted greater resources to defense to enhance their internal balancing capabilities to deter aggressive Chinese behaviors in the unlikely scenario of alliance abandonment by the US, which the regional powers perceive as ambivalent or unable to come to their assistance (e.g., Drifte, 2002; Kang, 2009; Lemke & Tammen, 2006; Levy, 2008; Ross & Tunsjø, 2017; Roy, 2005). Whether to balance against the rising power or to bandwagon with it, or to hedge by combining elements of both balancing and bandwagoning strategies is a daunting challenge for national leaders in times of uncertain power transition. Their decisions are, at least theoretically, influenced by a myriad of factors, including: domestic politics (how key domestic actors see their nation’s needs in the face of a shifting security environment and what steps they take to increase their relative influence in national policy formation); the nation’s economic performance and the quantity, quality, and type of resources that are available to its leaders as they contemplate priority change; and the history of the nation and of its relations with other key international actors, which affects the range of viable options for the nation. Also important is the nation’s collective identity in terms of the values broadly shared by its people – e.g., commitment to democratic principles, embracement of free-market capitalism or socialism, preference for state-led economic development or private-­sector-­driven development, commitment to a liberal international order or a hierarchical if not hegemonic order, commitment to peaceful settlement of international disputes, reliance on self-help or alliance for the nation’s security, or desire to uphold the status quo or challenge it. National identity may also be influenced by the population’s understanding of their country’s history, location, and its geographic characteristics – e.g., an Asian power or a Western power or a hybrid Asian-­ Western power, a maritime power, a continental power, a transcontinental power, or a peninsular power. It was against the background of the growing apprehension among the regional powers as to how to adjust to the increasingly uncertain regional environment in the Indo-Pacific that the Trump administration was born. Coming against most expectations that his rival Hillary Clinton would clinch the presidency in the 2016 election, the event startled national leaders around the world, including the leaders of the regional powers examined in this volume. The four years since Trump’s election have been characterized by a high degree of unpredictability about Washington’s policy toward the region, uncertainty about US international security commitments including the series of bilateral alliances in the Indo-Pacific, and disruption of

Introduction

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bilateral and multilateral frameworks that had provided a good deal of predictability to the US-centered international relations in the region. Clearly, not all changes that we have witnessed in the regional powers’ policies toward each other in the last four years have resulted from the emergence of the Trump administration and its subsequent policy actions and pronouncements. One of the most notable changes that was already underway in the foreign and security policies of the regional powers before the inauguration of the Trump administration is the strategic connection that Northeast Asian countries and Southeast Asian countries made between developments in the Asia-Pacific, which had been prominently featured in national policy discourse since the 1970s, and developments in South Asia-Indian Subcontinent in part as a result of the intensifying rivalry between China and India and in part due to the rising expectations and anxieties among ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) member countries that straddle the Pacific and South Asia-Indian Subcontinent related to China’s expansive ambitions stretching across the Pacific and the Indian Ocean and beyond, as articulated in Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative. These are long-term trends that will become even more important as we move forward in the twenty-first century, and this volume includes a chapter on India’s views and policies to cope with this reality. How did the regional powers respond to the unpredictability and uncertainty brought on by the inauguration of the Trump administration? What strategic adjustments if any did the regional countries make? What factors were at play in their policy decisions? Did they make those changes largely in response to the actions of the new administration in Washington, or did some of the adjustments precede the birth of the Trump administration? Were there conflicts between the changes already underway and the changes necessitated by the actions of Trump’s America, and if so, were the conflicts resolved? If so, how? If not, why? Finally, are the strategic adjustments of such a scale and nature that they will be difficult to undo? Or will they require little or no change because they are well aligned with the long-term goals and aspirations of the regional powers about their security and prosperity, Trump or no Trump? What do the regional actors’ strategic adjustments say about the relevance of the International Relations theories? What insights do these theories bring to our understanding of the changes now underway in the Indo-Pacific and the key actors within it? These are the questions that are addressed by the authors of the chapters in this book. In capturing the key factors informing the regional powers’ strategic adjustments, the authors will draw on insights from major theories of International Relations, namely (Neo-)Realism, Liberal Institutionalism, and Constructivism. The theories focus, respectively, on the role of national power and/or the distribution of power at the global and regional levels in shaping the nature of international relations and informing the national policymakers of the options available to them as they face their challenges, the role of international institutions (organizations and/or soft regimes including norms, principles, rules, and expectations around significant policy issues) in providing opportunities to and placing constraints on actors in the system, and the identity of key national powers in terms of their historically derived civilizational and cultural values and their geographic location and

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characteristics that inform the national leaders’ views of their own countries in relation to other international actors. A further point to be noted in this introduction is that nations’ strategic adjustments involve decisions by political leaders and policymakers acting on behalf of their nations, based on calculations of costs and benefits associated with the alternative courses of action related to the nations’ security and prosperity. That is, there is agency on the part of the national policymakers. On the other hand, balance of power in the international system is a structural feature of the system in which the nations are situated, and, as such, it is beyond the control of the policymakers acting as agents of their states. Even though the decisions they make may contribute to a change to the existing balance of power or to its maintenance (status quo), the system’s structure is beyond their control because it is a cumulative result of the strategic decisions they and their counterparts in other nations make or do not make, as well as myriad other changes happening to the key elements of national power in their own countries and in other countries, such as industrial production growth or contraction, population growth or decline, financial expansion or tightening, and enlargement or reduction in the availability of energy and other key resources. This volume is about the strategic adjustments that key regional powers make and the resulting changes and continuities in the structure of their relations. This means that analysts examining international relations in the Indo-Pacific, the focus of this collection, or any other region of the world, through a (Neo-)Realist lens may focus primarily on the decisions that national policymakers make or on the structural features of the system of international relations in which their nations are located. For example, Russia’s decision to enhance its strategic partnership with China in the face of the two countries’ deteriorating relations with the USA is made by key policymakers within the Kremlin but the structure of the strategic environment they face is not all of their own making, including the narrowing of options available to them in view of Moscow’s deteriorating relations with Washington as well as the widening window for strategic cooperation with Beijing. Similarly, Liberal Institutionalists may choose to focus their analysis on the decisions national policymakers make toward and within the international institutions of which their countries are a member. For example, to join or not to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and to lead the formation of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Transpacific Partnership (CPTPP) are alternatives that Japanese politicians and policymakers carefully consider by weighing the costs and benefits of their membership as well as other key international partners’ likely decisions as to their membership. Once the TPP and the CPTPP have been formed as treaty-based institutions, however, Japan has to operate according to the norms and rules of the organizations and discharge its responsibilities and seek its opportunities within those frameworks. Finally, a Constructivist analysis may emphasize the role of national policymakers and the values and identities they share with other relevant policymakers in their country or, in some cases, their counterparts in other countries, or the values and identities associated with the regional and global institutions and organizations in which the policymakers represent their nations. What we have just noted about Japan’s membership in the TPP and the CPTPP illustrates this point.

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The Neoclassical Realism’s emphasis on agency and attempt to “bring the state back in” (Rose, 1998) against an international structure of opportunities and challenges at any given time also highlight the enormous and indeed daunting tasks for policymakers to make strategic adjustments in a highly interdependent environment where the friend-foe line is increasingly blurred with competitive as well cooperative interactions states are engaged in. On top of the structural constraints imposed upon national leaders, the role of agency is further complicated by competing and conflicting domestic interests to define what “national interests” are and where they lie, whereupon strategic adjustments are to be guided (Krasner, 1978). This is particularly the case in the Indo-Pacific, as most nations are recognizing and preparing against the growing threats an assertive China poses while at the same time also looking for ways to preserve beneficial economic ties with the latter. In other words, in the Indo-Pacific, national strategies are no longer viable on a single spectrum from ally to adversary, but involve reconciliation of multiple, overlapping, and competing objectives, priorities, and policies (Ikenberry, 2015). The book offers theoretically informed analyses of notable strategic adjustments in China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Russia, India, and ASEAN countries as they dealt with the Trump administration’s “America First” policies in the region. The authors share their substantive knowledge of the countries they discuss and employ the insights offered by the above-noted IR theories, some of them focusing primarily on agency, i.e., the policy choices that national leaders make from among the range of alternatives available to them while others emphasize the opportunities and constraints emanating from the structural features of the relations among other key players in the Indo-Pacific. In Chap. 1, Liang and Paradise analyze the political economy of the ongoing trade war between Washington and Beijing and its strategic implications for great power rivalry in the twenty-first century. They posit that the trans-Pacific frictions that we saw during Trump’s presidency are likely to continue, despite occasional bilateral trade deals, well past Trump’s presidency, because they are manifestations of strategic shifts resulting from a major power transition underway in the region. Chapter 2 by Akaha and Hirata analyzes Japan’s response to Trump’s pursuit of US foreign policy, security, and economic interests through unilateralism and bilateralism, as opposed to multilateralism. The chapter explains the defensive and status-­ quo orientation of Japan’s response to Trump’s “America First” policies from an eclectic theoretical perspective combining elements of Neorealism, Liberal Institutionalism, and Constructivism. The chapter also identifies a number of adjustments Japan has made before and during the Trump administration and suggests that those adjustments are likely to continue and other adjustments made after Biden assumes power in Washington. In Chap. 3, Paradise analyzes, through a classical Realist-Multilateralist lens, what he describes as mounting stresses in the US-South Korea alliance. He postulates that the existing bilateral alliance is increasingly inadequate to address the ROK’s security concerns and that a new regional security architecture may be necessary to accommodate the changing security needs of South Korea, the USA, and other regional powers.

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Chapter 4 by Yuan reviews the evolution of the Australia-US alliance during the Obama and Trump administrations in Washington and Labor and Coalition governments in Canberra. It highlights Australia’s increasingly tasking imperative to strike a balance between growing economic ties with China and continuing need to rely on the USA for its security. In offering explanations for the reasons behind this task, the author draws on theoretical insights from Realism, Liberalism, and Constructivism, although he acknowledges the predominantly Realist perspective informing Australia’s approach to its core security and foreign policy agendas. In Chap. 5, Lukin takes a distinctly Realist perspective and places contemporary Russia-USA relations as part of the evolving triangular relations with China as the third and arguably the most consequential element shaping not only those relations but the overall character of the international politics of Asia-Pacific. He notes that relations between Moscow and Beijing have developed, during Trump’s four years in office, into a quasi-alliance, with a possibility, if not certainty, of developing further into a formal alliance. The author ends with speculations about the great power triangle during the Biden administration. Chapter 6 looks at India as an increasingly important partner for the USA as it pursues its strategic interests in the evolving Indo-Pacific region and asks what are the main issues that formed part of India-US foreign policy interactions during the Trump term, what continuity we see from the previous administrations, and what is the nature of the strategic partnership between the two countries, as evident in the various initiatives and projects the two countries undertook. The partnership between the two countries is complex. Weber, in Chap. 7, investigates how ASEAN member countries have responded to growing uncertainty regarding the USA’s role in the Indo-Pacific under the Trump administration as well as an increasingly assertive China. She observes that under these circumstances, ASEAN members are pursuing hybrid strategies (a combination of balancing and bandwagoning vis-à-vis China) and argues that Neoclassical Realism, not Neo-Realism, best describes their behavior. The analysis covers the Obama period and the Trump period and then speculates that a new US government may return to a more cooperative and multilateral approach in Washington to manage the regional issues affecting ASEAN countries and other regional powers. In the concluding chapter, Yuan, Akaha, and Liang summarize the main findings in the seven analytical chapters with respect to the series of questions posed in the Introduction, and draw the main implications and complications of the regional powers’ strategic adjustments, their explicit and implicit interests regarding regional institutions for addressing regional issues in the Indo-Pacific, and national and regional identities informing their strategic decisions. The authors then ask: Will the USA lead, co-lead, or fail to lead in political, security, and trade affairs in the Indo-­ Pacific, and what implications does the likely US policy shift under the new administration led by Joe Biden have for the regional powers as they review the strategic choices they have made under Trump and, if necessary, make further adjustments? Finally, will the Biden administration, with its return to a more predictable, consultative, and more multilaterally engaging diplomacy, restore confidence in its allies

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and partners for America’s leadership in the Indo-Pacific, and better management of power transition in the region?

Monterey, CA, USA Sydney, NSW, Australia

Tsuneo Akaha Jingdong Yuan

References Drifte, R. (2002). Japan’s security relations with China since 1989: From balancing to bandwagoning? London; New York: Routledge. Gilpin, R. (1981). War and change in world politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ikenberry, G. (2015). Between the eagle and the dragon: America, China, and the Middle State strategies in East Asia. Political Science Quarterly, 131(1), 9–43. Jervis, R., & Snyder, J. (Eds.). (1991). Dominoes and bandwagons: Strategic beliefs and great power competition in the Eurasian rimland. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kang, D. (2009). Between balancing and bandwagoning: South Korea’s response to China. Journal of East Asian Studies, 9, 1–28. Krasner, S. (1978). Defending the national interests: Raw materials investments and U.S. foreign policy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Lemke, D. (2002). Regions of war and peace. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lemke, D. (2004). Great powers in the post-Cold War world: A power transition perspective. In T. Paul, J. Wirtz, & M. Fortman (Eds.), Balance of power: Theory and practice in the 21st century (pp. 52–55). Stanford: Stanford University Press. Lemke, D., & Kugler, J. (1996). The evolution of the power transition perspective. In J. Kugler & D. Lemke (Eds.), Parity and war: Evaluations and extensions of the war ledger (pp. 3–34). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Lemke, D., & Tammen, R. (2006). Power transition theory and the rise of China. International Interactions, 29(4), 269–271. Levy, J. (2008). Power transition theory and the rise of China. In R. Ross & F. Zhu (Eds.), China’s ascent: Power, security, and the future of international politics (pp.  11–33). Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Organski, A. (1958). World politics. New York: Knopf. Organski, A., & Kugler, J. (1980). The war ledger. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rose, G. (1998). Neoclassical realism and theories of foreign policy. World Politics, 51(1), 144–172. Ross, S., & Tunsjø, Ø. (Eds.). (2017). Strategic adjustment and the rise of China: Power and politics in East Asia. Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press. Roy, D. (2005). Southeast Asia and China: Balancing or bandwagoning. Contemporary Southeast Asia, 27(2), 305–322. Walt, S. (1987). The origins of alliances. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Whiteneck, D. (2001). Long-term bandwagoning and short-term balancing: The lessons of coalition behavior from 1792 to 1815. Review of International Studies, 27, 151–168. Wivel, A. (2008). Balancing against threats or bandwagoning with power? Europe and the transatlantic relationship after the Cold War. Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 21(3), 289–305.

Contents

1 The Tragedy of US-China Relations: Conflict of Necessity or Conflict of Choice?������������������������������������������������������������������������������    1 Wei Liang and James F. Paradise 2 US Bilateralism Under Trump, Power Shift in East Asia, and Implications for Regional Security and Prosperity: A Theoretical Analysis of Japan’s Strategic Adjustment ��������������������   19 Tsuneo Akaha and Keiko Hirata 3 Changing Power Dynamics in Asia: Implications for the US-ROK Alliance������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   53 James F. Paradise 4 Australia-US Alliance Since the Pivot: Consolidation and Hedging in Response to China’s Rise ��������������������������������������������   77 Jingdong Yuan 5 The Russia-US-China Strategic Triangle in the Asia-Pacific ��������������   99 Artyom Lukin 6 US-India Ties During the Trump Years and Beyond: Continuity and Convergences������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  121 Sharad Joshi 7 Trump’s America in the Indo-Pacific: Southeast Asians Coping with Harsh Realities and Trying to Come Out Ahead��������������������������  153 Katja Weber Conclusion��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  171 References ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  195

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Chapter 1

The Tragedy of US-China Relations: Conflict of Necessity or Conflict of Choice? Wei Liang and James F. Paradise

1.1  Introduction In his book The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, John J. Mearsheimer argues that the United States should try to weaken the rise of China. Such a rise, he believes, is detrimental to the United States because China will attempt to become a regional hegemon possibly with its “own version of the Monroe doctrine” (Mearsheimer, 2001, p. 401). Doing this arises not because of the type of economic and political systems that China has—state capitalism, socialism with Chinese characteristics, political authoritarianism, or however one wants to describe them—but because becoming a regional hegemon is the best way for a state to ensure its status as a great power. One implication of this is that engaging China to make it wealthier is a wrong-headed policy because “China would not become a status quo power but an aggressive state” (Mearsheimer, 2001, p. 402) bent on dominating others in Asia. Another implication drawn from structural realism is that “China and the United States are destined to be adversaries as China’s power grows” (Mearsheimer, 2001, p. 4). More than a decade and a half after the publication of Mearsheimer’s book, another analysis appeared—the 2017 National Security Strategy of the United States of America produced by the White House occupied by President Donald J. Trump. Similar to Mearsheimer, the document argues that the United States needs to “rethink” its policies on dealing with countries that pose competitive threats— “policies based on the assumption that engagement with rivals and their inclusion in W. Liang (*) Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, Monterey, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] J. F. Paradise Asia Research Center, Yonsei University, Wonju, Gangwon-do, Republic of Korea

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 T. Akaha et al. (eds.), Trump’s America and International Relations in the Indo-Pacific, Contributions to International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75925-4_1

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W. Liang and J. F. Paradise

international institutions and global commerce would turn them into benign actors and trustworthy partners” (The White House, 2017, p. 3). Of the countries the document mentions as competitive rivals, one is China, which it says “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” (The White House, 2017, p. 25). Dissimilar to Mearsheimer, the document puts forward specific policies for dealing with China and other perceived competitive threats including Russia, Iran, North Korea, and jihadist terrorist groups. The policies advanced include strengthening military, nuclear force, cyberspace, and intelligence capabilities, utilizing diplomacy and statecraft, and working with allies and partners. One characteristic the two publications have in common at the theoretical level is that they are rooted in realist logics. Mearsheimer describes his theory as “offensive realism” which is the idea that states aim to maximize relative power as a means for survival in the international system rather than just maintain a balance of power. The National Security Strategy is wedded to an approach of “principled realism.” The approach “is realist because it acknowledges the central role of power in international politics, affirms that sovereign states are the best hope for a peaceful world, and clearly defines our national interests. It is principled because it is grounded in the knowledge that advancing American principles spreads peace and prosperity around the globe” (The White House, 2017, p. 55). Against this background, US-China relations have played out over the past few years. The long list of areas of bilateral tension has included: the outbreak of a trade war that has involved the imposition of new tariffs on many of each other’s products; bitter disagreements over China’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic; a US ban on the use of Huawei technology in its 5G networks; the closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston on an order from the US government because of “intellectual property” concerns and the closure of the US consulate in Chengdu on an order from Chinese authorities in a tit-for-tat move; the US ending of special treatment for Hong Kong with Beijing’s passage of a Hong Kong security law and the US imposition of sanctions on Chinese officials over the treatment of Uighurs. Also on the list are: efforts by the Trump administration to strengthen US-Taiwan relations; the issuance of stricter US visa regulations for Chinese journalists and the expulsion of several US journalists from China with a crack-down on Chinese state media in the United States; Trump’s clamp-down on Chinese-owned social media apps TikTok and WeChat in the United States because of cybersecurity concerns; and pressure by the US government on US universities to close Confucius Institutes on their campuses because of concerns about academic freedom and Chinese influence operations. What all this amounts to is a major deterioration in US-China relations since Trump became president in 2017 and the emergence of what some people describe as a new cold war, even with the signing of a “phase one” trade deal between the United States and China on January 15, 2020, one of the only positive developments between Washington and Beijing in recent years which many see as of limited importance in resolving fundamental economic problems. The purpose of this chapter is to analyze the worsening of US-China ties with an eye toward how they might play out in the future. The two main questions we ask

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are: What are the factors that have driven US-China relations to what one scholar has described as “their lowest point in 50 years” (Nye, 2020)? How might US-China relations evolve in a post-pandemic, post-Trump era? In answering the first question, we look at developments in the United States and China. With the United States, we want to know why a largely bipartisan consensus has formed to go tough on China. With China, we want to know how government policy makers and other thought leaders view the world and in what ways China may have contributed to the worsening of US-China relations. In answering the second question, we focus on “decoupling” (weakening of ties by design as occurred during the Trump years). Here, we want to know the extent to which decoupling has happened, the degree to which it may increase, and, if it does increase, how this might happen. We also look at the implications of decoupling for the rest of the world. Answering these questions is important for academic and practical reasons. On the academic side, it is important to understand whether the US engagement policy toward China in the years before Trump came to power really did fail and whether Mearsheimer’s “offensive realism” is an accurate description of the world and a good guide to policy. On the practical side, it is important to examine the effects of Trump’s ratcheting up of tensions on US purchasers of Chinese products, global supply chains, US-China investment flows, and activities in the academic and cultural realms. Already, reports have appeared on these topics with titles including “Trade war losses for the U.S. and China grow into the tens of billions of dollars” (Liesman, 2019) and “U.S.-China Investments Continue to Decline” (Ferek, 2019). The structure of the remainder of this chapter is as follows: initially, we consider literature on the impact of rising powers on world order, with particular attention to realist ideas and whether they need to be modified by other approaches from international relations theory; then, we examine developments in the United States primarily since Trump became president; next, we look at reactions in China, whether China itself views the world largely in realist terms and how China may have contributed to tensions with actions such as the construction of artificial islands in the South China Sea; after that, we delve into the decoupling issue in an attempt to gauge its significance; finally, we conclude. The overall argument of this chapter is that a clash between China—a rising power—and the United States—a dominant power—is not inevitable. Much depends on the choices that national leaders from both sides make, ideas about international relations, and the actions of non-state actors such as business organizations.

1.2  Destined for Conflict? Possibly the most talked about book in recent years dealing with the rise of China is Destined for War – Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? by Graham Allison (2018). The aim of the book, and an earlier article in The Atlantic (Allison, 2015), is to assess whether the United States will fight a war with China. That is possible because of the Thucydides Trap, “the natural, inevitable discombobulation

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that occurs when a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power” (Allison, 2018, p. xvi) whose name was inspired by Thucydides’s history of the Peloponnesian war in which rising Athens fought Sparta. In a study of 16 cases of the phenomenon over the past 500 years, the Harvard Thucydides’s Trap Project found in 12 of the cases the result was war. The four cases in which war did not occur were the rise of Spain in the late fifteenth century when Portugal was the ruling power, the rise of the United States in the early twentieth century when the United Kingdom was the ruling power, the rise of the Soviet Union in the 1940s–1980s when the United States was the ruling power, and the rise of Germany between the 1990s and the present when the UK and France were major powers in Europe. The trigger for conflicts has been the “rising power syndrome” and the “ruling power syndrome.” “The first highlights a rising state’s enhanced sense of itself, its interests, and its entitlement to recognition and respect. The second is essentially the mirror image of the first, the established power exhibiting an enlarged sense of fear and insecurity as it faces intimations of ‘decline’” (Allison, 2018, p. 44). One thing that Allison does not argue is that war between the United States and China is inevitable. On the contrary, he argues that the Thucydides Trap can be avoided because of certain phenomena. These include international organizations such as the United Nations which can help resolve conflicts, “thick economic interdependence,” which “raises the cost  – and thus lowers the likelihood  – of war” (Allison, 2018, p. 210), the existence of nuclear weapons, and the actions of statesmen to “distinguish needs and wants” (Allison, 2018, p.  198). Also important is what goes on within countries. As Allison writes, “nations with stronger economies, more competent governments, and unified national support have greater impact on the choices and actions of others” (Allison, 2018, p. 212), a reference to the idea that the national and the international are connected. Following from these considerations is the idea that power and structural features of the international system are not the only things that influence whether interstate conflict occurs. Other things matter as well, including the choices that decision-­ makers make and the impact those decisions have on what goes on in other countries. This is very different from what Mearsheimer believes, which is that the structure of the international system is what generates competition, international institutions are epiphenomenal with little independent effect on state behavior, social constructivist theories that emphasize discourse and the open-endedness of the world are doubtful, and that domestic considerations such as political leadership or ideology are of little importance in understanding great power behavior. In the end, what Mearsheimer’s “offensive realism” amounts to is a determinist theory that leaves states little freedom to make choices about whether they challenge the hegemonic power or pursue a new approach to international relations, as China claims to do. What we endorse is a hybrid theory whose elements include realist and liberal institutionalist considerations. On the topic of realism, we follow Jonathan Kirshner who embraces a classical version of the theory which is built on notions of power, politics, and the “unwritten” nature of the future (Kirshner, 2010). As Kirshner writes:

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The classical view holds that while they must, irretrievably, be alert to the condition of anarchy and sensitive to the balance of power, nevertheless states – especially great powers – enjoy considerable discretion with regard to the strategic choices that they can and will make, and that these choices are shaped by the context in which they are made, that is, by both domestic and international politics (Kirshner, 2010, p. 54)

On the topic of liberal institutionalism, we accept both liberal and institutionalist ideas that the nature of political regimes matters, economic interdependence, while not precluding war, lessens it, and that international institutions can have an effect on state behavior. Neoliberal institutionalism thrived during the period between 1990 and 2010 with an intensification of legalism and legalization of international institutions. In contrast to institutional-building during the Cold War, states chose to cooperate primarily based on economic interests instead of security considerations. As Robert Keohane reaffirms, institutions depend on the structure of power and interests and “declines in the coherence of international regimes reflect a greater divergence of interests, weighted by power” (Keohane, 2012). This provokes an interesting question for us to better understand the rise and fall of liberal dominance over time. At the same time, we recognize that China—and the United States—has a very instrumentalist view of international institutions which it uses to balance others both by tying them down as members or excluding them as Kai He (2008, 2009) has insightfully argued in presenting a theory which is itself hybrid in its combination of realist and institutionalist elements. The relationship between the United States and China has gone through periods of largely engagement and cooperation and surging conflict and competition. During the first two decades after the end of the Cold War, China worked hard to integrate itself into the global economy and the United States, as a benign hegemon, sponsored the change. What, then, are the factors that have brought the United States and China to the verge of a new Cold War or even plunged them into it? We address this question in the next three sections.

1.3  Anti-China Sentiment and Discourse in the United States Opinion on China in the United States is not uniform. On one side are people with hawkish views such as former US Vice President Mike Pence who, in a famous speech, lambasted China for its unfair trade practices, its domestic oppression, its foreign propaganda activities, and its “debt diplomacy.” As Pence put it, “Beijing is employing a whole-of-government approach, using political, economic, and military tools, as well as propaganda, to advance its influence and benefit its interests in the United States” (Pence, 2018). Among the unfair trade policies he mentioned were “tariffs, quotas, currency manipulation, forced technology transfer, intellectual property theft, and industrial subsidies” (Pence, 2018). On the other side are people with more moderate views, who, while they may be concerned with some of China’s economic practices and its policies on matters such as treatment of Uighurs in Xinjiang or threatening actions toward Taiwan, believed that the aggressive

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approach represented by the Trump administration was wrong and was likely to prove counterproductive or detrimental to the United States. In the opinion of Michael D. Swaine as expressed in a critique of the “Free and Open Indo Pacific” (FOIP) strategy as outlined in Trump-era documents, “FOIP is likely to have the opposite effect [of defending against a rising China], provoking Beijing, alarming other Asian nations, and driving the region toward a highly tense, zero-sum competition. By adopting an ideological and confrontational posture toward China, the Trump administration risked creating a pointless Cold War with Beijing. What Asia needed instead was a far more constructive regional approach grounded in a stable balance of power and in mutual compromise” (Swaine, 2018). In another critique of the hawkish approach toward China which touched on its “flawed presumptions” on matters such as Chinese authoritarianism and the importance of ideology, a group of high-powered thinkers argued that the United States “must coordinate with allies and partners not only to deter and compete with China when needed but also to incentivize Beijing to cooperate in addressing shared concerns” (Swaine et  al., 2020). Part of the competition element would involve strengthening the United States and creating “a bilateral trade, investment, and technology relationship with Beijing based on realistic expectations and reciprocity, not worst-case assumptions and speculations” (Swaine et al., 2020). Even with this diversity of opinion, however, there has been something of a coalescence of views in the United States on the need to take a hard line toward China as moderate views have been drowned out amidst what Chinese view as “anti-China hysteria.” As one Asian scholar and former diplomat lamented, “[I]t is truly shocking that when President Donald Trump suddenly launched a trade war against China in January 2018, no major American business voices tried to restrain him. Indeed, virtually no American voices tried to restrain Trump. Instead, Trump discovered (probably to his surprise) that he received broad and deep bipartisan support. Even leading Democrats supported him” (Mahbubani, 2020, pp. 29–30). As the trade war heated up, however, the situation became more nuanced (as perhaps it had always been), as interests affected by Trump’s tariffs spoke out and as some scholars tried to inject, in our view, a more balanced perspective into the debate over the rise of China which had started to take on dark tones reminiscent of the Cold War with the Soviet Union and even the McCarthyism that arose with it. Evidence that there has been a coalescing of opinion about China in the United States comes from a Pew Research Center survey. In the survey conducted June 16 to July 14, 2020, the percentage of Americans surveyed that had an unfavorable view of China reached a new historic high of 73 percent, up 7 percentage points from March of that year, and 26 points since 2018, while those with a favorable view of China amounted to 22 percent. Among the issues that concerned respondents were China’s handling of the COVID-19 outbreak which 64 percent viewed negatively, economic relations with China which 68 percent viewed as bad, and human rights issues facing China which 73 percent thought should be prioritized over economic relations. Other findings were that 46 percent of respondents felt it was important to get tougher with China, up from 35 percent over the past year, and 26 percent saw China as an enemy compared to 15 percent in 2012. Finally, the

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survey found that more Republicans held negative views on China than Democrats but that both groups were becoming increasingly critical (Silver et al., 2020). Indications also exist of the nuanced nature of American opinion on US-China relations. In an article published as the trade war was heating up, Paul Krugman wrote: Who wants a trade war? Not corporate interests – stocks fall whenever trade rhetoric heats up and rise when it cools down. Not farmers, hit hard by retaliatory foreign tariffs. Not working-class voters in the Rust Belt states that were crucial to Trump’s 2016 victory: a plurality of likely voters in those states say that tariffs hurt their families. Belligerence on trade, it turns out, is pretty much a one-man affair: it’s what Trump wants, and that’s about it (Krugman, 2020, pp. 371–372)

Qualified support for this argument comes from AmCham China which stated in a white paper that it “has consistently reaffirmed its opposition to tariffs as a method to resolve the trade dispute” (AmCham China, 2019, p. 4). What made the support qualified was that AmCham members had often pushed hard for the US government to take action to pry open the Chinese market more or to deal with the unfair trade practices they often accuse China of. Other organizations weighed in on the “phase one” trade deal between the United States and China or damaging effects of the bilateral trade war. In a letter to Trump, Americans for Free Trade (2019), a coalition of companies from many sectors of the US economy, including manufacturing, agriculture, technology, and energy, urged the president to conclude the phase one deal and to take measures to resolve trade disagreements between the United States and China. Another organization, Tariffs Hurt the Heartland (2020), publicized economic damage to the United States from trade war tariffs which it stated in October 2020 amounted to more than $68 billion. Under the presidency of Joe Biden, it is possible there will be an improvement in US sentiment toward China of only a limited sort. Although Biden is likely to seek more cooperation with China on issues such as the environment and public health, he is also likely to take a hard line on economic issues that reinforces the China threat narrative. As Biden put it in an article in Foreign Affairs, “The United States does need to get tough with China. If China has its way, it will keep robbing the United States and American companies of their technologies and intellectual property. It will also keep using subsidies to give its state-owned enterprises an unfair advantage  – and a leg up on dominating the technologies and industries of the future” (Biden, 2020). Actions by Beijing will also shape US sentiment on China, which is viewed increasingly as a more proactive or assertive power. Understanding how this assertiveness has arisen and the forms it has taken is another element in explaining the deterioration in US-China relations.

1.4  T  he Domestic Origins of China’s Increasing Assertiveness The priority of Chinese foreign policy before 2012 was to maintain a cooperative and constructive relationship with the United States. When the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review was released in 2006 during the George W.  Bush

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administration, it was the first QDR to highlight future threats of China as a potential great power competitor (McDevitt, 2007) despite the backdrop of close collaboration between the two countries in the fight against terrorism. Then, the official government language of China sought to avoid the use of the word “competition” when diplomats discussed bilateral disagreements, frictions, and tensions. At the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party begun on November 8, 2012, however, there was a shift in China’s foreign policy from “keeping a low profile” (韬光养晦) to “doing something significant and meaningful” (奋发有为) (Li & Zhang, 2015; Wang, 2014; Cui, 2015). In June 2018, Xi Jinping gave a speech at the Central Conference on Work Relating to Foreign Affairs and raised a new point that “the world is undergoing major changes unseen in a century and hence requires major development, reform, and adjustment.” Among those changes were a shift in the power balance, evolving global order, and technological advancement, all of which were seen bringing new opportunities to China (Zhu, 2019). One reason for China’s policy change in the view of Chinese scholars was a shift in the distribution of power between the United States and China. Since 2012, the year Xi Jinping became general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), China’s economic clout and political influence in Asia and beyond has become more visible with Xi’s proactive foreign policy and China having achieved milestones such as overtaking Japan to become the second largest economy in the world—in 2010—and consistently contributing to over 30 percent of global GDP growth. Another widely accepted explanation among Chinese scholars is that China’s new strategy is merely a response to an increasingly aggressive US approach toward China which began with Barack Obama’s pivot to Asia and rebalancing strategy, the US Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiation and empowering of allies and partners in the region, the Trump administration’s China bashing policy, including launching the trade war, and the bi-partisan consensus to contain China from rising. The Chinese government has successfully portrayed in the state-controlled media that the United States is denying or trying to prevent China from rising, which is at odds with Xi Jinping’s “China Dream” of national rejuvenation. The US initiation of the trade war and claims in US Trade Representative reports of China’s unfair trade practices have been seen by Chinese foreign affairs officials as attempts by the United States to “kick away the ladder of China’s development” (Beijing interviews, 2019). Chinese scholars believe that China’s actions are merely reactive to the US assertiveness. Yong Wang of Peking University called the Chinese action to create the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and other alternative China-­ sponsored regional institutions as “defensive offensive” (Wang, 2016) while other Chinese scholars argue that the US “being tough” is not just a policy change toward China, but a consistent reaction to any rising power that might have the potential to challenge its global dominance. According to Zongze Ruan, [O]nce a country’s GDP crosses 60 percent of the U.S.’, [the United States] will show no mercy to the challenger. It has nothing to do with ideologies, political systems or whether the rival is keeping a low profile or not…The U.S.’ attempt to start a trade war is not only for subverting China’s economy and trade, but also for squeezing its development space,

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and even undermining its rise. The U.S. is likely to trigger conflicts and resort to strategic blackmail in the future. Forced into the trade war, China cannot escape but has to fight hard (Ruan, 2018)

A third factor of importance is rising anti-Americanism in China. Even though playing tough against China was a policy shift which began during the Obama administration, the policy discourse of the Trump administration added a layer of mutual distrust and negativity in both the United States and China. For instance, in his State of the Union address in 2019, Trump accused China of “the theft of American jobs and wealth,” targeting US industries, and stealing US intellectual property (Trump, 2019). He also denounced China for spreading the new coronavirus with the epithet “China virus.” With these insults, more Chinese viewed the United States in harsher terms and believed that US bullying of China was symptomatic of growing American insecurity. A fourth explanation for China’s policy change has to do with domestic weaknesses of China such as slowing economic growth, income inequality, and uneven development. China’s development approach in recent decades can be described as “technologyless industrialization” (Li, 2015) in which cheap factors of production have been more important than human rights and the environment in the quest for rapid economic growth. Other problems have been worsening income inequality and uneven development between thriving coastal provinces and inland areas, and widespread corruption. With the existence of the largest middle class in the world with its growing demand for sustained and sustainable growth, Xi must change the longstanding policy held by his predecessors to provide necessary resilience to legitimize the Communist Party’s rule in the midst of economic slowdown and the lack of political reform. Facing surging factional politics within the CCP, Xi had no choice but to turn the nation’s attention from uneven development and a legitimacy crisis of the CCP to a united front against the “imperialist” United States. With the mixture of developments, a new environment began to emerge in China, none of whose features were propitious to US-China relations. Early on, Beijing became more confident—some would say arrogant and irrational—following the subprime crisis in the United States in 2007–2008 and the Euro crisis from around 2008 to 2012, both of which cast doubt on the legitimacy of the Washington Consensus and its validity to China (Deng Xiaoping Theory Study Center, 2008) and altered the relative balance of the relationship between the United States and Beijing. As one observer put it, “the U.S. was no longer a ‘teacher’ encouraging China to adopt market-based reforms, but found itself seeking China’s support to save the global economy” (Hass, 2020). In addition, China was able to recover from the crisis sooner than other major countries and became the growth engine for the global economy. Though Beijing has never formally endorsed and intentionally exported its own developmental model—the “Beijing Consensus”—many in China have become convinced that the Washington Consensus will not and should not be a universal solution to all countries and that China’s development model is suitable to China and many other developing countries.

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Also altering the environment was the retreat of the private sector and rising state intervention in Chinese economic policymaking. Back in 2012, private firms accounted for 70 percent of China’s output but the percentage has dropped since then (Lardy, 2014). The sharp policy U-turn became salient after Xi Jinping came into power in 2012. In his book The State Strikes Back, Nicolas Lardy detailed the series of changes that Xi introduced to bring back a statist approach (Lardy, 2019), which began to diminish the vital role of the market and private firms in China’s economy and was partly driven by the pursuit of the party’s tight control over the national economy and politics. The 2008 stimulus package provided a good opportunity to re-empower state-owned enterprises and the public sector which was also driven by a desire to achieve more sustainable growth by moving up the value chain of Chinese manufacturing in global production networks. In order to achieve this goal, ambitious industrial policies were carried out to promote ten strategic sectors identified by Chinese bureaucrats in the “Made in China 2025” initiative, including artificial intelligence, information technology, new energy, electrical vehicles, and semiconductors. The government provided billions of dollars in funds to promote these strategic industries that are crucial for China’s next phase of development. In 2017, total government subsidies reached an estimated 800  billion renminbi ($118 billion), accounting for four percent of total government spending and one percent of GDP (Greenberg, 2019). The core motivation of this drive was to reduce China’s dependence on key high-tech components of Western firms, which became especially relevant after the Trump administration cut the supply of semiconductors to ZTE and Huawei. Among Chinese scholars, there was the opinion that high dependence on foreign technology suppliers was “the Achilles’ heel” of China’s development (Chen & Li, 2020) and that the US-China competition was less about jobs or the trade deficit and more about technological leadership (Jin, 2019). Another area of significance is mutual perceptions of Americans and Chinese which have worsened since 2012. As noted earlier, Americans’ views of China have grown more negative in recent years and unfavorable opinions have soared since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. On the Chinese side, a similar worsening of perceptions has occurred as revealed in Pew surveys. By way of explanation, it would seem that the deterioration of bilateral relations directed by the US and Chinese governments have influenced the perception of citizens. When the two governments consider each other as competitors or strategic rivals, the citizens have begun to emphasize and internalize the perception that the two countries are divided on key values and norms and hence not trustworthy. China has been viewed in the eyes of Americans more as a defector and challenger, not just to US dominance in the world, but to the values and norms that have held the United States together. The United States has been viewed by Chinese as beset with problems such as crime and poverty, and feelings of inferiority held by them have gradually disappeared, reinforced by assertive “wolf warrior” diplomacy abroad and nationalist propaganda at home. Consequently, the mutual perceptions between Americans and Chinese serve more as a catalyst for strategic competition than a constraint on it (Chung, 2019). A further important feature of the new environment is Chinese military modernization. Today, China’s major territorial and sovereignty disputes remain

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unresolved, especially on Taiwan, the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands with Japan, border disputes with India, and the South China Sea. Prior to the Xi era, Chinese leaders followed the “low profile” principle to downplay the urgency to address these disputes and strategically distract popular nationalism away from these sensitive issues during most part of their leadership. In contrast to his predecessors, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, and Hu Jintao, who placed the importance of economic development and poverty alleviation over military expansion, Xi set the ambitious goal of building a “world-class” military by 2035. At the Nineteenth Party Congress of the Communist Party in October 2017, Xi outlined the party’s goal to “complete national defense and military modernization by 2035” (Xi as quoted by Fravel, 2020). Xi made a clear timeframe and benchmarks on what he means as “world-­ class military,” so it is no longer a vague and broad policy ambition (Fravel, 2020). This new military strategy should be viewed as an integral part of Xi’s “China Dream.” It aims to prepare China for a possible military conflict in the region of Asia-Pacific. Because of the strong US military presence in the region, it also hints that the Chinese military should be modernized to compete with the United States. As a senior official of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated, “We understand that there is still a big gap between the U.S. and China’s military capacity and it will take decades for us to catch up. But with the current tensions stirred by the U.S. in the region, we have to speed up our military build-up” (Beijing interview, 2019). A major goal of the Chinese military nowadays is to protect China’s overseas economic activities such as the establishment of a military base in Djibouti, Africa and securing access to ports in Greece and Sri Lanka. China’s 2019 Defense White Paper clearly stated that a key task of the PLA is to “safeguard China’s overseas interests,” which requires addressing “deficiencies in overseas operations” on matters such as offshore forces and overseas logistical facilities (The State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China, 2019). Each of these developments has contributed to increased tensions between the United States and China. In some ways, however, the developments of greater importance have been of a more purely international nature, including those related to economic activities. Here, there has been a feeling among many American elites that China’s new international economic initiatives have the potential to seriously challenge US interests in Asia and beyond. The result has been a new great power competition whose effects have only recently started to become more noticeable.

1.5  Actions of China on the International Economic Front China under Xi Jinping has increasingly looked outward toward greater Asia. This is partly because of China’s large trade and partly because of the necessity to secure resources and supplies to keep a very large economy growing for the foreseeable future. Economic growth is essential from China’s perspective to secure continuation of its newfound prosperity and the widest possible spread of this prosperity.

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Arising out of this thinking—and also based on a desire to bind countries together in a greater way under Chinese leadership—was the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Unveiled by Xi in a speech in Kazakhstan in 2013, the initiative has grown to include many countries as it seeks to develop greater transportation and communications connectivity. Among the factors immediately propelling it were a slowdown in economic growth in China and a desire to develop a “community of common destiny.” Additionally, the 2008 financial crisis made salient to Chinese leaders the problem of its excessive production capacity. Essential to the BRI was the export of Chinese products to Eurasian countries and the conclusion of many bilateral investment deals. Amid the ongoing US-China trade war and economic decoupling, such a diversification of markets was seen as essential to China’s economic prosperity. Another regional economic initiative China strongly supported was the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). Signed on November 15, 2020 after negotiations lasting over 8 years, its members include the countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. Many analysts see the agreement as a victory for China over the United States as it gives Beijing a greater role in regional economic governance at a time when American power in Asia is seen as declining in relative terms, in part because of the Trump administration’s decision not to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). International attention is now focused on whether the Biden administration will join the successor to the TPP  - the  Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). Absent such a decision, the United States may continue to get edged out of the economic rule-making process that Biden professes to want Washington to join. Much of the discussion of China’s new economic initiatives—which also involve the creation of the AIIB and the New Development Bank—has to do with whether they will supplement existing institutions that perform similar functions or compete with them. As the United States is not a member of the AIIB, the NDB, or the RCEP, there is fear among many in the United States that new China-supported institutions might carve out norms or rules that are detrimental to US interests. With the AIIB, China has pledged incremental change as it cooperates with other international institutions such as the Asian Development Bank. With RCEP, the main disadvantage for the United States is that as a non-member it will not get the economic benefits the new regional trade framework offers. With many developments occurring in China on both the domestic and foreign policy fronts, and with the United States having pursued an “America First” policy under Trump who initiated a trade war against China, relations between Washington and Beijing have become extremely frayed. One of the major manifestations of this has been a partial “decoupling” between the two sides in the economic and noneconomic spheres.

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1.6  Decoupling Among the questions about decoupling in US-China relations are: Where has it occurred? How far has it progressed? Why has it happened? What are its consequences? Can it be reversed? On the basic issue of where decoupling has happened, we can note, following Kevin Rudd, seven areas: international trade, foreign direct investment, technology, capital flows, currency markets, and a realm that includes education and research. In each of these areas, the amount of decoupling varies. According to Rudd, there is still a robust trade relationship between the United States and China despite the trade war. As Rudd puts it, “China’s national interest, for at least the decade ahead, is to de-escalate the trade war until such time as China’s dependency on the U.S. market is less critical” (Rudd, 2019). On the foreign direct investment front, there is “a different story where some level of decoupling of sorts has begun in Chinese investment flows to the U.S.” (Rudd, 2019) while in the technology area decoupling is seen as becoming “more acute” (Rudd, 2019). Other areas of analysis include capital markets, on which significant decoupling is seen as less likely, currency issues, which include moves by China to reduce its exposure to the US. dollar, and “talent where the early signs are not encouraging at all” (Rudd, 2019). Contributing to decoupling in areas where it has occurred have been activities by the United States such as Trump’s call for reshoring production and developing new supply chains independent of China and activities by China such as creating its own technology, reducing its dependence on US suppliers, and spearheading the establishment of new regional trade groups. Whether decoupling will continue in areas where it is occurring or spread to other areas will depend heavily on the domestic politics of China and the United States. On many occasions, the Chinese have decried the trade war as bad for both sides while some Americans have called for a lifting of Trump’s tariffs on China. Much will depend on the presidency of Joe Biden who may be constrained by labor unions who have supported him. Indications are that Biden will continue hardline policies toward China. In a trade policy agenda report of the president released only about a month and a half after Biden’s inauguration, one part states that “[t]he Biden Administration is committed to using all available tools to take on the range of China’s unfair trade practices that continue to harm U.S. workers and businesses” (United States Trade Representative, 2021, p. 4 in trade policy agenda section). Among those practices are “China’s tariffs and non-tariff barriers to restrict market access, government-­ sanctioned forced labor programs, overcapacity in numerous sectors, industrial policies utilizing unfair subsidies and favoring import substitution, and export subsidies (including through export financing)" (United States Trade Representative, 2021, p. 4 in trade policy agenda section). Other actions mentioned are “coercive technology transfers, illicit acquisition and infringement of American intellectual property, censorship and other restrictions on the internet and digital economy, and a failure to provide treatment to American firms in numerous sectors comparable to the treatment Chinese firms receive in those sectors in the United States” (United States Trade Representative, 2021, p. 4 in trade policy agenda section).

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Affecting US policy will be the actions of the American business community which has grown alarmed at the costs of decoupling in areas such as trade, investment, and people flows. As a report titled Understanding U.S.-China Decoupling: Macro Trends and Industry Impacts states, “It is clear…that a robust accounting of aggregate costs from a hard decoupling scenario would run to the hundreds of billions of dollars annually, and a full decoupling would be even more costly. Lost welfare gains from trade liberalization; shrinking export markets; written-off assets built up over the decades; and disrupted U.S. jobs, investments, and expectations predicated on trillions of dollars of annual trade and investment between the world’s two largest economies: these are the stakes” (U.S. Chamber of Commerce in partnership with Rhodium Group, 2021, p. 18). Writings in the Chinese press are critical of Biden for failing to reverse Trump-­ era policies on matters important to China and in some areas may even have gone beyond Trump. In an article dealing with the delisting of some Chinese companies on the New York Stock Exchange titled “Biden inaction allows Trump’s ‘decoupling’ to continue,” Wang Cong, Shen Weiduo, and Xiong Xinyi write: “While Biden has not taken measures to further ratchet up Trump’s crackdown on Chinese firms, his inaction also underscores his inability or unwillingness to remedy the severe damage to bilateral relations, even as Chinese officials, experts and U.S. businesses have called for healthy competition and cooperation rather than arbitrary decoupling” (Wang et al., 2021). Another piece dealing with efforts by the United States to create a supply chain that reduces Western country dependence on China states: “The new U.S. administration is trying to achieve what the former Trump administration had worked so hard but failed with some deceptive words” (Global Times, 2021). Preceding the editorial was an executive order signed by Biden on February 24, 2021 calling for a review of important US supply chains.

1.7  Conclusion US-China relations have seriously deteriorated over the past few years. Part of the reason for this is the Trump administration’s launch of a wide-ranging diplomatic, political, and economic attack on China that included the imposition of new tariffs on Chinese imports to the United States, a toughening of policies on major Chinese technology companies, and pressure on American universities to close Confucius Institutes. Another part of the explanation is that China has begun to act more proactively under Xi Jinping on matters such as artificial island building in the South China Sea and the creation of new international organizations. Our argument, however, is not one of equivalence. We believe that the proximate cause of the changed relationship has been an effort by the United States to thwart the rise of China, which it now sees as a major strategic threat. It has also tried to deny China the right to pursue its own path of economic development which involves a leading role for the state. Underlying these actions are theories of international relations and crossborder economic competition that see the rise of new powers as a threat to the

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established order, even to the point of causing war. On a deeper level, both countries are blameworthy for the deterioration in bilateral relations as they have done too little to seek and act on a convergence of interests. Another part of our argument is that the future of US-China relations is not preordained. It is possible that US-China relations will continue to remain problematic as China becomes increasingly powerful in the economic, technology, and military spheres. It is also possible that US-China relations will improve as new mindsets develop among American policymakers on matters such as global health security and technology cooperation, and as Chinese leaders exercise restraint on the foreign policy front and seek to placate US businesses. Much will depend on the actions of politicians, corporations, thought leaders, and the general public. Were the Biden administration to re-engage China on matters where interests overlap and to refrain from targeting or weakening China, bilateral relations could greatly improve. Were it to dwell on human rights issues, improvement may be more limited. Similarly, the choices that actors in China make on matters such as Hong Kong and Taiwan and industrial policy will also make a difference. Regardless of what choices are made, the US-China relationship will remain one of the most consequential in the world. It will not follow laws of international relations, about which we are skeptical, but it will be influenced by rising power/dominant power dynamics, which we can think of as the structural features grounding the relationship. As Ryan Hass at the Brookings Institution has put it, “Donald Trump and Xi Jinping are more symptoms than sources of the current downturn in bilateral relations. There are deeper structural forces at work on the relationship than the personalities or specific actions of the two leaders” (Hass, 2020). A similar view has been stated by Susan Shirk, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State during the Clinton administration, who views the current bilateral row as a result of “China’s overreach and the U.S. overreaction” (Shirk, 2019). With so much at stake for the world, including economic prosperity and peace and stability, it is essential that Washington and Beijing get the relationship right. That will require cooperation. What we end up with is a hybrid view for understanding the US-China-­ relationship. As Kirshner puts it, structure “informs importantly the environment in which all states act, but, in that context, all states, and especially great powers, enjoy considerable discretion with regard to how they will pursue their goals and what sacrifices they will make in the face of constraints. It is thus impossible to understand and anticipate the behavior of states by looking solely at structural variables and constraints” (Kirshner, 2010, p. 57).

References Allison, G. (2015). The Thucydides trap: Are the U.S. and China headed for war? The Atlantic, September 24. Allison, G. (2018). Destined for war: Can America and China escape Thucydides’s trap? Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

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AmCham China. (2019). 2019 American business in China white paper. Americans for Free Trade. (2019). Letter to Donald J. Trump. Biden, J. (2020). Why America must lead, Foreign Affairs, March/April. Chen, Z., & Li, B. (2020). To avoid dependency and the root cause of China-US trade war. International Politics and Economy, 3, 21–43. Chung, J. (2019). How America and China see each other: Charting national views and official perceptions. The Pacific Review, 32(2), 188–209. Cui, L. 崔磊 (2015). The current state, prospect and control over Sino-American competition ( 中美竞争的现状, 前景及管控). International Relations Studies国际关系研究, 2: 110–112. Deng Xiaoping Theory Study Center in Beijing. (2008). Responding to global financial crisis tells us the importance of socialism with Chinese characteristics (从应对世界金融危机看中国特 色社会主义的生命力), Guangming Daily, December 9. Ferek, K. (2019). U.S.-China investments continue to decline. The Wall Street Journal, August 1. Fravel, M. (2020). China’s “world-class military” ambitions: Origins and implications. The Washington Quarterly, 43(1), 85–99. Global Times. (2021). China-less supply chain US’ wishful thinking: Global Times editorial, March 3. https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202103/1217208.shtml (accessed March 13, 2021). Greenberg, G. (2019). Will 2019 see an end to made in China 2025? Financial Times, February 9. https://www.ft.com/content/c4e86ff8-­33a8-­11e9-­bb0c-­42459962a812. Hass, R. (2020). U.S.-China relations: The search for a new equilibrium. Brookings Institution Report, February. He, K. (2008). Institutional balancing and international relations theory: Economic interdependence and balance of power strategies in Southeast Asia. European Journal of International Relations, 14(3), 489–518. He, K. (2009). Institutional balancing in the Asia Pacific: Economic interdependence and China’s rise. Routledge. Jin, C. 金灿荣 (2019). The Fourth Industrial Revolution is mainly a competition between the U.S. and China, and China has a greater chance of winning (第四次工业革命主要是中美 之间的竞争, 且中国胜算更大). Guancha [观察者网], July 29. https://www.guancha.cn/ JinCanRong/2019_07_29_511347_s.shtml Keohane, R. (2012) Twenty years of liberal institutionalism. International Relations. June 8. Kirshner, J. (2010). The tragedy of offensive realism: Classical realism and the rise of China. European Journal of International Relations, 18(1), 53–75. Krugman, P. (2020). Arguing with zombies: Economics, politics, and the fight for a better future. W.W. Norton. Lardy, N. (2014). Markets over Mao: The rise of private business in China. Columbia University Press. Lardy, N. (2019). The state strikes back: The end of economic reform in China? Columbia University Press. Li, J. (2015). Why did China’s foreign policy change? (中国外交战略为何转变?) Financial Times, July 21. http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001063112?full=y. Li, W., & Zhang, Z. 李巍、张哲馨 (2015). New Sino-American relations in the era of strategic competition (战略竞争时代的新型中美关系). International Political Science (国际政治科 学), 1: 25-53. Liesman, S. (2019). Trade war losses for the U.S. and China grow into the tens of billions of dollars. CNBC, November 5. https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/05/trade-­losses-­for-­the-­us-­china-­ mount-­into-­tens-­of-­billions-­of-­dollars.html (accessed November 7, 2019). Mahbubani, K. (2020). Has China won? The Chinese challenge to American primacy. Public Affairs. McDevitt, M. (2007). The 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review and National Security Strategy: Is there an American strategic vision for East Asia? Issues and Studies, July. Mearsheimer, J. (2001). The tragedy of great power politics. W.W. Norton & Company.

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Nye, J. (2020). ‘Tough on China’ is not a strategy. Trump is scrapping tools that keep us safe and strong. USA Today, August 27. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/08/27/trump-­ tough-­china-but-abandons-soft-power-alliances-immigration-column/3432054001/ (accessed 9 September 2020). Pence, M. (2018). Remarks by Vice President Pence on the administration’s policy toward China. October 4. Ruan, Z. (2018). Is China still keeping a low profile? Global Times, May 16. https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1102600.shtml. Rudd, K. (2019). The great U.S.-China ‘decoupling dilemma.’ Robert F.  Ellsworth Memorial Lecture on November 4, 2019, at the University of California-San Diego. Shirk, S. (2019). Overreach and overreaction: The crisis in U.S.-China relations. Public lecture held at Upenn Center for the Study of Contemporary China, January 31. Silver, L., Devlin, K., & Huang, C. (2020). Americans fault China for its role in the spread of covid-19. Pew Research Center. July 30. Swaine, M. (2018). Creating an unstable Asia: The U.S. ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ strategy. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Swaine, M, Vogel, E., Heer, P., Roy, J., Odell, R., Mochizuki, M., Goldstein, A., and Miller, A. (2020). The overreach of the China hawks. Foreign Affairs. October 23. Tariffs Hurt the Heartland. (2020). New data shows trade war with China has cost Americans over $68 billion, including $7.9 billion in key battleground states. October 16. The State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China. (2019). China’s national defense in the new era. The White House. (2017). National security strategy of the United States of America. December. Trump, D. (2019). Remarks by President Trump in State of the Union Address. Washington, DC, February 6. U.S.  Chamber of Commerce in partnership with Rhodium Group (2021). Understanding U.S.China decoupling: Macro trends and industry impacts. U.S. Trade Representative. (2021). 2021 trade policy agenda and 2020 annual report. Wang, H. (王浩) (2014). New type of great power relations between China and the U.S. (中美新 型大国关系构建: 理论透视与历史比较). Contemporary Asia-Pacific (当代亚太), 5: 67–70. Wang, Y. (2016). Offensive for defensive: The belt and road initiative and China’s new grand strategy. The Pacific Review, 29(3), 455–463. Wang, C., Shen, W., & Xiong, X. (2021). Biden inaction allows Trump’s ‘decoupling’ to continue. Global Times, March 9. https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202103/1217882.shtml (accessed March 13, 2021). Zhu, F. (2019). A review of Chinese studies on ‘unseen change in a century’. People’s Forum (人 民论坛·学术前沿), 7, 6–12. Beijing Interviews (2019) . Interviews with Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials in China

Chapter 2

US Bilateralism Under Trump, Power Shift in East Asia, and Implications for Regional Security and Prosperity: A Theoretical Analysis of Japan’s Strategic Adjustment Tsuneo Akaha and Keiko Hirata

2.1  Introduction A state may make strategic adjustments as a result of changes in its view of its place in the world or the region (“structural location”), its relationship to world or regional regimes of norms and institutions of which it is a part (“institutional embeddedness”), as well as its “national identity” rooted in its civilizational and cultural values, historical experiences, and future aspirations. Therefore, in order to understand the reasons behind and possible consequences of a state’s strategic adjustments, we need to examine those three sets of factors. The analysis is aided by realist/neorealist, liberal-institutionalist, and constructivist theories developed in the fields of International Relations and Foreign Policy, as illustrated in this and other chapters of this volume. A rising power is bound to favorably view its role in the balance-of-power change and take steps to promote further change to enhance its structural location, advance its institutional role or its call for changes in international institutions to assert its national identity. A declining power and other powers, on the other hand, are likely to fear the negative consequences of the changing balance of power and take corrective measures, ranging from “hedging” to “balancing” against the burgeoning power, and such steps may include resistance to changes in the international regimes that have served their interests well. If they see their national interests more aligned with the rising power, they may bandwagon, i.e., seek closer cooperation with the latter rather than opposing it. Changes in national identities are less sweeping, more incremental, and more time-consuming as they reflect a culmination of historical, T. Akaha (*) Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, Monterey, California, United States K. Hirata Department of Political Science, California State University, Northridge, CA, USA

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 T. Akaha et al. (eds.), Trump’s America and International Relations in the Indo-Pacific, Contributions to International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75925-4_2

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contemporary, and future-oriented views of the nation, about who they have been, who they are, and who they will or wish to become. In this brief analysis, we will look at Japan’s strategic adjustments in response to (1) the sweeping changes manifest in the Trump Administration’s “America First” approach and (2) the longer-term changes in the balance of power in East Asia that predated and will likely continue after the Trump Administration.1 We will draw on neorealism, liberal institutionalism, and constructivism to examine the main factors at play in Japan’s strategic adjustments to the evolving US policy in the region and the changing regional balance of power. The three theories are instructive insofar as their assumptions point to the role, in Japanese views, of their structural location, institutional embeddedness, and national identity. Here are the central arguments and key assumptions of the three theories informing the present analysis. • Neorealism: Nations are seen as pursuing expansion and maintenance of national foundations/resources of power through self-help and alliance with like-minded partners and balancing against common adversaries, particularly those that are seen as rising in power relative to the collective power of the alliance. Power is essentially understood as residing in material and nonmaterial sources of influence to be exploited to the benefit of the nation(s) concerned. Nations use alliances and other forms of international alignment as instruments through which to pursue their national interests in competition with each other. Nations are likely to reduce their commitment to such cooperation or seek alternative alignment if the current framework for cooperation is seen as losing its effect on enhancing their security or on constraining the rising power. In terms of the issue of agency versus structures discussed in Introduction of this volume, we will apply neorealism by focusing primarily on the choices that national policymakers consciously make within the range of alternatives provided by the structure of the region’s international relations. Most important in this respect is the changing balance of power as understood by the national policymakers in Tokyo and Japan’s bilateral and multilateral relations that contribute to and result from the structure of international relations in the region. • Liberal Institutionalism: Nations contribute to the establishment, maintenance, and enhancement of the international institutions (i.e., international organizations and transnational coalitions) of which they are members to such an extent that they allow the institutions’ structures, processes, norms, and rules to reshape/ redefine their priorities and interests. The member nations coordinate and collaborate through the institutions not only with their allies and friends but also with their adversaries and rivals because they believe that institutionalized cooperation helps constrain all members’ behavior and reduce the cost of competition and ameliorate their conflict. In so doing, the members are willing to c­ ompromise

1  As the collection of essays in Ross and Tunsjø’s Strategic Adjustment and the Rise of China: Power and Politics in East Asia demonstrate, the rise of China and the relative decline of the United States have prompted other East Asian countries to make strategic adjustments, both domestically and externally (Ross & Tunsjø, 2017).

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on short-term interests in favor of longer-term benefits. Liberal institutionalism emphasizes the opportunities and constraints presented by the international institutions through which the member states interact with key partners over issues of importance to them. That is, international institutions are an important part of the structure of international relations which presents both opportunities and constraints to nations, and policymakers consider and respond to those opportunities and constraints in pursuit of national security and prosperity. • Constructivism: Nations are viewed as creating and recreating the collective identities and shared values of their members, and national policymakers act in ways that reflect and reinforce those identities and values. The foundations of their identities and values are rooted in their shared national history and cultures. Therefore, they are willing and able to cooperate with other nations with whom they have shared historical experiences and are bound by the same or similar political values. Such common bonds can be broken if and only if there is a major breach in their mutual trust because of profound changes in their internal life, e.g., a revolution, civil war, or major political upheaval. Long before the emergence of the Trump Administration, Japan had adopted an unmistakably neorealist orientation in its alliance with the United States for its security and foreign policy interests, demonstrated a liberal institutionalist commitment to multilateral global and regional structures in pursuing its trade and other economic interests, and established what a constructivist would describe as a hybrid Asian-and-Western civilizational profile, an Asia-Pacific power with deep ideational and institutional ties to the West (Akaha, 1998) and nationalist, regionalist, and globalist faces (Akaha, 1999). These three orientations essentially defined Japan’s approach toward international affairs at the turn of the century, but there was a degree of tension in each of these elements in the years preceding the Trump era. China’s burgeoning power and increasingly confrontational behavior in the East and South China Seas and North Korea’s continuing buildup of its arsenal of nuclear weapons and missile capabilities in the 1990s and 2000s raised questions inside Japan about the desirability of continued heavy reliance on its alliance with the United States and doubts about the Obama Administration’s commitment to Japan’s security and to the broader Asia-Pacific regional security. Against this backdrop, foreign and defense policymakers in Tokyo had begun to explore more actively than ever before the development of security and defense cooperation with other regional partners, including South Korea, ASEAN, Australia, Canada, and India. These efforts were described as an initiative to build “multilayered security cooperation with the international community” (Japan Ministry of Defense, 2010)—not to supplant the Japan-US alliance but to supplement it, as a hedge against the emergence of a China-dominant regional order. On the economic front, the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) failure to sustain the momentum of global trade liberalization through multilateral negotiations had prompted Japanese trade policymakers to seek a series of bilateral and minilateral free trade agreements in the region and beyond (Urata, 2009). Furthermore, Japan’s postwar transformation into a formidable economic giant had been supported and continued to be supported, even after

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the bursting of its economic bubble in the late 1980s to early 1990s, by its highly developed industrial, techno-scientific, and educational organizations and institutions at home, but Japanese intellectuals never stopped describing their nation’s civilizational character as a hybrid of Eastern and Western cultures with long historical ties with its Asian neighbors, some of them calling Japan neither Eastern nor Western and others calling on their nation to serve as a bridge between the Eastern and the Western civilizations (Kitaoka, 1999). Where was Japan’s economy on the eve of Trump’s election victory in 2016? Japan’s economic growth in the postwar decades relied on close trade and investment ties with the United States and other regional partners, particularly in Southeast Asia, while protecting its own domestic producers from the United States and other competitors. By the turn of the century, Japan had shed much of its character as a developmental state (Johnson, 1982) and mercantilist profile and become a global trading state (Rosecrance, 1986) and an advocate for trade liberalization domestically, regionally, and globally (Gilpin, 1990; Katada, 2020) although many of its nontariff trade and investment barriers remained. Looking more narrowly at Japan’s trade with the United States over the last decade, we observe that Japan’s goods exports to the United States had grown modestly but still significantly, from over $120.5 billion in 2010 to $143.6 billion in 2019 in nominal terms, not seasonally adjusted (United States Census Bureau, 2020). Japan’s goods imports from the United States had also grown during the same period, from $60.5 billion in 2010 to $74.4 billion in 2019. Bilateral merchandise trade balance fluctuated but remained favorable to Japan, its surplus changing from $60.1 billion in 2010 to $69.2 billion in 2019. The mounting trade imbalance between the two countries in the earlier years had resulted in US criticisms of Japan’s “free ride” on the US security commitment to Japan and Japan-bashing on the trade front, but Japan was able to deflect or defuse US criticisms through voluntary export restraints, government-promoted direct foreign investment (FDI) in the United States, and Japanese purchases of US treasury bonds. Bilateral cooperation in joint technology development, including in the defense and environmental sectors, as well as Japan’s gradually expanding security cooperation with the United States within and beyond the Asia-Pacific also contributed to the maintenance of generally stable bilateral relations across the Pacific. In summary, Japan was oriented to the three central features as noted above, and they worked in concert to characterize the country’s efforts to maintain its security, grow in economic prowess, and establish a nonthreatening presence in the Asia-­ Pacific region. Let us now see how Japan responded to the Trump-era US policy toward Japan and the region, first in the trade and economic sphere and then in the political-­ security field, and discuss how we may understand the significant changes and continuities in Japan’s policy from neorealist, liberal institutionalist, and constructivist perspectives.

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2.2  “America First”: Bilateralism Versus multilateralism The Trump Administration pursued its “America First” policy in several ways—all designed to reduce the US commitment, both materially and normatively, to the leadership roles it has played throughout the entire post-World War II decades. It withdrew from leading engagements in multilateral global institutions in favor of bilateral engagements. For example, it withdrew from the INF Treaty, from the Paris Climate Accord, from TPP, and from the Iran nuclear agreement. It also terminated NAFTA and replaced it with a newly negotiated USMCA. The United States also left WHO over what Washington claimed was its cuddling to Beijing regarding its concealment of the outbreak of novel coronavirus in Wuhan in the early months of 2020. As the outbreak turned into a global COVID-19 pandemic reminiscent of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, the Trump Administration continued to call the virus “Chinese virus,” defying WHO’s policy not to label an epidemic or pandemic after a nation or nationality and prevent possible recrimination against them. While pursuing an increasingly unilateralist foreign policy, the United States pressured its security and economic partners to increase their commitments to bilateral and multilateral institutions, including security alliances and economic diplomacy. It sought greater engagement with authoritarian regimes around the world over the objection of its traditional partners. In the East Asian context, President Trump held three summit meetings with the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, to no fruitful effect. The Singapore Summit on June 12, 2018 produced a joint statement, agreeing to security guarantees for North Korea, new peaceful relations, the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, recovery of US soldiers’ remains, and follow-up negotiations between high-level officials. This was followed by a summit in Hanoi on February 27–28, 2019, but it abruptly ended without an agreement or joint statement. After the summit, Trump said that North Korea demanded a complete end to UN sanctions, but North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho said North Korea demanded only a partial lifting of sanctions. He added the North Korea had offered to “permanently and completely” dismantle its primary nuclear facility in Yongbyon, and they were prepared to put in writing they would end all nuclear tests and long-range missile tests. The Trump Administration approached China with a highly orchestrated criticism of the latter’s “unfair trade practices” and a demand for a sweeping restructuring of bilateral trade. The United States instituted the first set of tariffs on Chinese imports in July 2018 and broadened tariffs in January 2020, and threatened additional tariffs, which prompted China’s retaliatory actions. By January 2020, the United States had imposed $550 billion in tariffs on Chinese products, and China had countered the US move by slapping $185 billion in tariffs on US goods. The two sides reached “a truce” on January 15, 2020 by signing “the Phase One Deal,” officially agreeing to rollback tariffs, expand trade purchases, and renew commitments on intellectual property, technology transfer, and currency practices (Wong & Koty, 2020).

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Toward Russia, the Trump Administration sent conflicting and contradictory signals. The administration seemed to be obsessed with the destruction of the Obama administration’s legacy by criticizing, for example, the latter’s tough stance against Moscow over Russian annexation of Crimea and support of the Assad regime in Syria. It was also reluctant to impose the Congressionally mandated sanctions against Russia. Trump refused to condemn the Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential race despite the US intelligence community’s finding confirming Moscow’s election interference, and instead publicly entertained the totally discredited Russian claim that it was Ukraine, not Russia that meddled in the US presidential race in 2016. Additionally, the White House adamantly denied Trump’s attempt to pressure the newly installed Ukrainian government to launch an investigation into the activities of the Bidens (Joe Biden, his prospective opponent in the 2020 presidential race, and his son Hunter), in a corrupt Ukrainian energy company on whose board Hunter Biden sat. Moreover, the Trump Administration decided to substantially cut down its troop presence in Syria, giving a greater role for Russia (and Turkey) in the ongoing war in Syria. Now, let us turn to a more detailed examination of Japan’s response to the “America First” thrust of US policy under Trump, with respect to the trade-related aspects first, and then the national security aspects of the bilateral relations.

2.3  J apan’s Response to the Trump Administration’s Trade Policy Offensive Trump, during his presidential campaign and after election, criticized China, Japan, and other major trading partners for currency manipulation and unfair trade barriers and insisted that his administration was going to negotiate bilaterally with these countries for what he called “fair and reciprocal trade” deals instead of relying on multilateral trade frameworks for removing the unfair trade barriers. He quickly weaponized tariffs and threats of tariffs on foreign imports as a lever designed to reduce bilateral trade imbalances. Japan responded against US criticisms on its trade practices and advocated for multilateral and minilateral approaches to trade liberalization. Japan initially resisted the US demand for bilateral trade talks but, after sustained pressure from Washington, reluctantly agreed in April 2017 to enter into a bilateral Economic Dialogue. Japan has since followed a two-track strategy, pushing for multilateral talks (for WTO reform) and minilateral talks under the rubric of Asia-­ Pacific and, more recently, Indo-Pacific cooperation while simultaneously engaging in bilateral talks with the United States. After the Trump Administration’s announcement of US withdrawal from TPP in January 2017, Tokyo assumed a leadership role in bringing TPP11 (without US participation) to a successful conclusion. The culminating agreement, the “Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Transpacific Partnership (CPTPP),”

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Table 2.1  US trade deficits with major trade partners, 2017 Country/region China EU Mexico Japan Canada South Korea Other

US bilateral deficit $419.2 billion $169.3 billion $81.5 billion $67.6 billion $19.8 billion $17.9 billion $103.4 billion

% of total US trade deficit 47.7% 19.3% 9.3% 7.7% 2.2% 2.0% 11.8%

Source: Japan Ministry of Finance, provided by Koh Nakamura (2019)

was signed in May 2018 by Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. CPTPP provides for elimination or reduction of tariffs, liberalization of services trade, investment rules, e-­commerce guidelines, intellectual property protections, labor and environmental standards, rules on transparency, restrictions on monopolies and state-owned enterprises, and streamlined regulations designed to make it easier for smaller businesses to trade across borders (Council on Foreign Relations, 2020). We can point to several key facts to explain Japan’s preference of multilateral trade talks over bilateral negotiations with the United States. First, Japan had been enjoying a favorable bilateral trade balance against the United States, with $135 billion in exports to the United States and $72 billion in imports in 2017. The export of motor vehicles and motor vehicle parts was the largest contributor to the trade imbalance (Japan Ministry of Finance, 2019).2 Second, Japan’s trade surplus vis-à-vis the United States had been visibly declining as a proportion of total US trade deficit over the years and its surplus of $67.6 billion in goods trade in 2017 accounted for 7.7% of the US global trade deficit, compared with China’s surplus of $419.2 billion, which represented 47.7% of the US world trade deficit. The EU and Mexico recorded higher surpluses vis-à-vis the United States (Table 2.1). Third, Japan had expanded its investment in the US economy, with its cumulative foreign direct investment (FDI) in 2017 amounting to $469 billion, second only to that of the UK ($541 billion) and ahead of Canada’s FDI ($453 billion) (Fig. 2.1). Fourth, Japanese businesses collectively were the second largest foreign employer in the United States, with 861,000 workers on their payrolls in 2016, second to British businesses (1,238,000 employees) and ahead of French firms (729,000 employees) (Fig. 2.2). Another reason for Japan’s preference of multilateralism over bilateralism vis-à-­ vis the United States is that in bilateral talks, Japan would have difficulty deflecting

 The data were provided by Koh Nakamura (2019).

2

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Billions of US$

600 500

United Kingdom

400

Japan

300

Canada

200

Luxembourg

100

Netherlands

0

Germany

Fig. 2.1  Cumulative FDI in the United States, 2002–2017. (Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis, provided by Koh Nakamura (2019)

Fig. 2.2  Employment by foreign MNCs in the United States, 2016 (In thousands). (Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis, provided by Koh Nakamura (2019)

1,400 1,200 1,000 800 600 400 200 0

1,238 861

729 692 679

475 471

263

US demands, particularly in the agriculture sector. In fact, Japan had already made important concessions on agricultural trade in the TPP negotiations and strongly resisted making further concessions to the United States for fear that additional concessions toward the United States would lead to TPP partners’ demands for even more compromises in the increasingly competitive agricultural trade in the region. The above reasons for Japan’s reluctance to engage in bilateral trade talks with the United States notwithstanding Japan did not want to alienate the United States, its sole alliance partner and, as noted above, conceded to entering into negotiations for a new bilateral trade agreement. In a September 2018 summit, Abe and Trump affirmed “the importance of a strong, stable, and mutually beneficial trade and economic relationship between the U.S. and Japan, recognizing that our economies together represent approximately 30 percent of global GDP. Trump reiterated the importance of reciprocal trade, as well as reducing the trade deficit with Japan and other countries. Abe emphasized the importance of free, fair, and rules-based trade” (U.S. White House, 2018). The leaders also reaffirmed “their determination to further expand trade and investment between the two countries in a mutually beneficial manner, including through further concrete steps, as well as to realize free, fair, and open development of the global economy” (U.S. White House, 2020).

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The two leaders further agreed that Japan and the United States would enter into negotiations, “following the completion of necessary domestic procedures, for a Japan-U.S. Trade Agreement on goods, as well as on other key areas including services, that can produce early achievements.” Japan and the United States also expressed willingness to conduct negotiations on “other trade and investment items.” The post-summit statement by the two leaders noted that “in conducting those negotiations, Japan and the U.S. would “respect positions of the other government” (U.S. White House, 2020). This meant, according to the same statement, “For Japan, with regard to agricultural, forestry, and fishery products, outcomes related to market access as reflected in Japan’s previous economic partnership agreements constitute the maximum level,” and for the United States, “market access outcomes in the motor vehicle sector will be designed to increase production and jobs in the U.S. in the motor vehicle industries” (U.S.  White House, 2020). This reflected Japan’s emphasis on and the US insistence on the former’s contribution to the expansion of employment in the United States, a point of political importance to Trump. The two leaders further pledged to “strengthen cooperation to better protect Japanese and American companies and workers from non-market-oriented policies and practices by third countries” and to “work closely together, through Japan-­U.S. as well as Japan-U.S.-EU cooperation, to promote discussions on WTO reform and e-commerce and to address unfair trading practices including intellectual property theft, forced technology transfer, trade-distorting industrial subsidies, distortions created by state-owned enterprises, and overcapacity” (U.S.  White House, 2020), a not so subtle reference to US complaints about China’s trade policy and practices. In November 2018, Japan and the United States agreed to expand bilateral cooperation to the strategically framed goal of forging a “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” (FOIP) by giving it an economic thrust. They issued a joint statement on “Advancing a Free and Open Indo-Pacific Through Energy, Infrastructure and Digital Connectivity Cooperation.” The two sides agreed to deepen and expand their partnership in the following areas: (1) senior-level coordination, including cooperation on projects in third countries; (2) energy sector cooperation within the Japan-US Strategic Energy Partnership (JUSEP), including investment in LNG supply and infrastructure development in the United States and in the Indo-Pacific and Africa, and cooperation in the nuclear energy sector; (3) sustainable financing in Indo-­ Pacific investment projects for quality infrastructure, increased connectivity, and sustainable economic growth; (4) private sector cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region in energy and fiber-optic submarine cable system projects; and (5) standards setting in infrastructure development in the Indo-Pacific (U.S.  Department of State, 2018). The bilateral trade talks led to the announcement on October 7, 2019 of a temporary agreement, which was highly publicized on the US side to showcase the “successful results” of the Trump Administration’s “America First” strategy and a visible deliverable on Trump’s election campaign promises. Trump touted the agreement by stating that it would “dramatically reduce U.S. trade deficit and boost economic

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growth.” He added, “This is a big turning point for farmers and dairy farm owners” (U.S. White House, 2019). The agreement included: no change to existing tariffs on rice imports to Japan, currently set at 341 Yen/kg; a gradual reduction of the tariffs on beef from the current rate of 38.5–9% by 2033; and elimination or reduction of tariffs on pork by 2027. Also included in the bilateral agreement was elimination of tariffs on cheese and other dairy products by 2033, on wines by 2025, and on oranges by 2023–2025 (NHK News online, 2019). Most importantly, at least from the Japanese perspective, the two sides agreed not to institute additional tariffs on automobiles and automobile parts, the sector that contributed the most to the trade imbalance between the two countries. The United States had threatened to invoke Article 232 of trade legislation to impose additional tariffs or establish quotas and also hinted at imposing additional 25% tariffs (about 10 times the current rates), but the Japanese side wanted to avoid the threatened tariffs and quotas and insisted that it would not accept concessions beyond what had been agreed to within the framework of TPP, that is, gradual removal of US tariffs on automobiles over 25  years and eventual elimination of tariffs on about 90% of auto parts. Given the wide gap between the two sides’ positions on this important issue, they decided to continue negotiation. The “mini deal” was scheduled to go into effect on January 1, 2020, with negotiations for a more comprehensive agreement to start within 4 months (Gaimusho, 2020). As a further indication of Japan’s concern about alienating the United States, while the bilateral Economic Dialogue was going on, Japan agreed to expand purchases of US military hardware, in part to help reduce bilateral trade imbalance. For example, Japan decided to purchase 105 F-35 stealth fighters, including 42 F-35Bs capable of vertical take-off and landing and deployable on an aircraft carrier. The decision was also a part of Japan’s effort to expand defense cooperation with the United States in response to China’s growing military presence in the region. In the same vein, Japan and the United States are cooperating in the deployment of a ballistic missile defense system (Aegis Ashore) in Japan, expansion of Japan’s international security role, including participation in collective self-defense made possible by a re-interpretation of Article 9 of its constitution, as well as expansion of bilateral cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region.

2.4  J apan’s Response to US Demand for Closer Defense Cooperation With respect to defense and security affairs, there is broad convergence of interests between Japan and the United States: • Maintaining strong US-Japan alliance • Enhancing Japan’s defense capabilities and expanding its international security role • Containing the North Korean threat

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• Improving Japan-ROK relations • Countering growing Chinese presence and influence in the region (Asia-Pacific; Indo-Pacific) The importance of the shared interests between the two countries is growing in view of the changing balance of power in the region and the resulting threat perception in Japan. According to recent annual white papers produced by Japan’s Ministry of Defense, China and North Korea are considered the main threats to the country’s national security. The 2019 Defense White Paper, while acknowledging North Korea’s nuclear and missile development as an imminent threat, for the first time identified China as an even greater security threat to the country (Japan Ministry of Defense, 2019). The rapid growth of Chinese military spending has been accompanied by its increasingly assertive behavior in Asia, especially in the East and South China Seas. Since the early 2010s, China has intensified its territorial claims over the Japan-administered Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands and has had frequent incursions near these islands. In addition, Beijing’s rapidly expanding island-building activities in the South China Sea have made Tokyo’s future access to the sea lanes in the region precarious (Storey, 2013; also see Midford, 2015). As Table 2.2 shows, China’s defense spending has substantially grown in the last two decades, while that of the United States and Japan has increased by markedly smaller amounts. According to SIPRI, at constant 2017 prices, China’s military expenditure in 2000 was $41,264 million, a mere 9.6% of the US military spending at $429,453 million, and even smaller than Japan’s spending ($44,307 million). By 2018, however, China’s military spending had grown by nearly 480%, to $239,223 million, which was 37.8% of the US military expenditure of $633,565 million (a 47.5% increase from 2000) and far above Japan’s $45,362 million defense spending (a 2.4% increase over the 2000 level). While the combined defense spending of the United States and Japan in 2018 (at $678,927 million) still far exceeded China’s spending, there was no question that the balance of power as measured in these terms had shifted in China’s favor over the last two decades. By comparison, Russia’s military expenditure also grew significantly (by more than 160%), from $24,335 million to $64,193 million during the same period. It should also be noted that as Table  2.3 shows, the burden of the growing defense spending on China’s economy had not changed thanks to the spectacular growth of the economy. Moreover, with China’s GDP projected to rival that of the United States by 2030 and beyond, China has plenty of room for further increasing its defense spending and expanding its military capabilities. Table 2.2  Military expenditure in US$ millions, at constant 2017 prices and exchange rates United States China Russia Japan

2000 429,453 41,264 24,335 44,307

2003 553,274 62,509 30,547 45,365

Source: SIPRI-MiliExp_1992–2018

2006 641,593 88,317 40,161 44,527

2009 763,872 131,063 50,396 44,341

2012 731,086 161,441 63,584 44,552

2015 616,483 204,202 77,023 45,627

2018 633,565 239,223 64,193 45,362

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Table 2.3  Military expenditure as % of GDP United States China Russia Japan

2000 2.9% 1.9% 3.3% 0.9%

2003 3.6% 2.1% 3.7% 1.0%

2006 3.8% 2.0% 3.2% 0.9%

2009 4.6% 2.1% 3.9% 1.0%

2012 4.2% 1.8% 3.7% 1.0%

2015 3.3% 1.9% 4.9% 1.0%

2018 3.2% 1.9% 3.9% 0.9%

Source: SIPRI-MiliExp_1992–2018

The Japanese government has worked toward strengthening the US-Japan alliance and enhancing Japan’s defense capabilities and interoperability with American troops. Some observers noted that Trump’s demand for Japan’s provision of more host-nation financial support might lead to contentious negotiations between the two states in 2021, when the current agreement expired (Chanlett-Avery et al., 2019; see below). However, the alliance remained firm, and the overall Japanese defense policy was not derailed by Trump’s “America First” policy. In recent years, Japan has been actively strengthening its deterrence capabilities and interoperability with US forces in a number of areas, particularly with regards to ballistic missile defense (BMD) and air and maritime defense. First, Japan has expanded its BMD capabilities by increasing the number of its primary BMD systems—ground-based Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) interceptor batteries and sea-based Aegis missile destroyers.3 Japan has been collaborating with the United States to upgrade Aegis technologies (known as the SM-3 Block IIA interceptor) since 2006 and conducting joint BMD training exercises (Hoff, 2015; Akimoto, 2018). Although in 2020 local opposition and rising costs led Japan to abruptly cancel the planned land installment of Aegis Ashore, a system that provides a high-altitude interceptor coverage of the country, Tokyo has since been exploring alternatives such as installing the interceptors on Japanese destroyers or on offshore structures called “megafloats,” or abandoning Aegis Ashore altogether but instead developing a controversial “enemy base strike” capability (Panda, 2020a; Basu, 2020; “Japan considers floating islands,”, 2020). Second, Japan has been steadily acquiring advanced weapons systems from the United States such as fifth-generation F-35 joint strike fighter jets to strengthen its air defense. In 2017, Japan deployed 10 F-35B stealth fighter jets (a variant of F-35 characterized with a short takeoff and vertical landing) for the first time. Then in December 2018, as noted earlier, Japan decided to purchase 105 F-35s from Lockeed Martin, in addition to the 42 F-35s that it had acquired a few years earlier. When the purchase becomes finalized, it will make Japan the second-largest operator of the F-35 after the United States (Insinna & Yao, 2020; Insinna, 2020). In addition, Japan 3  Japan decided to start BMD in 2003 and deployed both the PAC-3 and Aegis systems for the first time in 2007. The Aegis and PAC-3 systems together provide multilayered defense capabilities to shoot down target missiles. The Aegis system defends against short-, medium-, and intermediate-­ range ballistic missiles during their midcourse phase (ascent stage; upper-tier interception), while PAC-3 defends against short- and medium-range ballistic missiles in their terminal/descent stage (lower-tier interception) (Japan Ministry of Defense, 2019).

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announced in 2018 that it would convert its two largest submarine-intercepting warships, the Izumo and the Kaga, to be equipped with F-35B stealth fighter jets. This would make these ships functional aircraft carriers, the first ones since World War II, allowing Japan to operate fighter jets off its naval ships. The F-35Bs would add critical value to the ships, making it possible to intercept enemy warplanes and launch missiles at intruding enemy vessels (Bitzinger, 2019). Furthermore, Japan has been strengthening its early warning and surveillance capability in the air and the sea. In 2018, Japan procured nine E-2D Advanced Hawkeye (AHE or tactical airborne early warning) aircraft from Northrop Grumman, an American firm. The purchase was intended to foster closer cooperation between the Japanese military and the US Navy and Marine Corps (Gady, 2018). These actions are part of Japan’s broader efforts to strengthen its defense capacity and promote integration with US forces. The 2015 Guidelines for US-Japan Defense Cooperation emphasizes the importance of achieving seamless and robust joint operations (Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2015). Though Japan has been cooperating with the US military since the 1950s, the growing threat from Beijing and Pyongyang is pushing Tokyo to achieve greater integration and interoperability of the two countries’ forces.

2.5  Managing Trump Japanese leaders have been keenly aware of the importance of “managing Trump” (Hikotani, 2017, np) to ensure America’s commitment to the US-Japan alliance and US support for Japan’s stance on North Korea. Unlike other G-7 leaders who received personal attacks by Trump, such as Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau and German Chancellor Merkel, Abe largely avoided Trump’s ire and steadily worked with his administration toward strengthening bilateral security relations. Abe adopted a strategy of “flattery and cajoling” (Crowley, 2019, np) in dealing with Trump to establish personal friendship to secure continued US commitment to Japan’s defense. Abe had reportedly consulted with psychologists before his 2017 official meeting with Trump to learn how best to communicate and work with him (Hikotani, 2017). Since then, Abe “patiently tutored” Trump on security affairs while playing golf together for long hours (Green & Hornung, 2020, np). Abe went as far as to nominate Trump, at the behest of the White House, for a Nobel Prize in 2018 for opening talks with North Korea. Such an intense courtship of a US president is “absolutely unprecedented,” according to a White House official in the Trump Administration (quoted by Crowley, 2019, np). Japan also adopted a strategy of disengaging Trump from some important policy issues. Fearing that Trump would demand economic concessions from Tokyo for the maintenance of the bilateral alliance, Japanese officials attempted to separate economic and security matters and bypass the White House on both matters (Hikotani, 2017).

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These Japanese strategies largely worked and helped Japan even strengthen its security relations with the United States. However, the one area of bilateral security relations that Trump disrupted is Japan’s host nation support for US troops. Trump’s former security advisor, John Bolton (2020), revealed that Trump demanded that Japan pay $8 billion annually for its host-nation support starting in 2021, more than four times what Tokyo currently provided, and threatened to withdraw all US troops from Japan if that demand was not met. According to Bolton, Trump told him to use the pullout of US troops as leverage in negotiations on the renewal of host nation support (Bolton, 2020). The withdrawal of US troops might have been just a bluff, but such a threatening approach could have caused serious damage to the US-Japan alliance.

2.6  North Korea and Japan’s Concerns Another area of international security where Japan and the United States share interests is the Korean Peninsula. During the George W. Bush Administration, the United States insisted on complete, verifiable, irreversible denuclearization (CVID) in North Korea, and Japan joined in that demand. As long as Pyongyang rejected that demand, Washington and Tokyo were not ready for a resumption of the long-­ dormant Six-Party Talks and stuck to UN-adopted sanctions resolutions against North Korea over its nuclear weapons and missile development. Japan instituted sanctions against North Korea above and beyond those approved by the UN, over the North Korean abduction of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s. The Obama Administration also continued to criticize Pyongyang for its human rights violations and renewed its North Korea Human Rights Act of 2004 (passed during the George W.  Bush Administration) as well as supported the work of the UN Human Rights Council exposing human rights atrocities in the North. Tokyo joined the international call for condemnation of North Korea’s human rights record and brought the abduction issue to the attention of the global body as well. Uncertainty grew, however, when Trump assumed power. His initial use of combative language against North Korea suggested that his administration was going to take a harder line against Pyongyang than the Obama administration had. While Japan was concerned about Trump’s provocation of North Korea and the escalation of tensions on the Korean Peninsula (Soble, 2017), Tokyo achieved diplomatic success in November 2017 when Abe and Trump presented a unified front against North Korea at a US-Japan summit meeting. Both leaders agreed to place “maximum pressure” on Pyongyang (Campbell, 2017, np) and to urge China to increase its pressure on North Korea to denuclearize. The leaders also agreed that Japan would import US military hardware to strengthen its ballistic missile defense. Japan also announced it would impose additional sanctions, including freezing the assets of 35 North Korean entities and individuals in Japan (U.S. White House, 2017a, b; Neuman, 2017).

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But when Trump suddenly switched to “personal diplomacy” toward Pyongyang in 2018, Japanese leaders became concerned about the neglect of Japanese interests in the US-North Korea negotiation process (Chanlett-Avery et al., 2019).4 Trump held highly publicized summit meetings with Kim Jong-un, first in Singapore in June 20185 and second in Hanoi in February 2019. The first Trump-Kim summit resulted in a joint statement in which both sides agreed on the “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula” (U.S.  White House, 2017a, b, np). Of critical importance was the ambiguity of the agreement on denuclearization. The two parties made no commitment to the verification of weapons or the timeline of denuclearization. Nor did the joint statement mention CVID. The summit statement thus covered up the two sides’ differing goals. While Washington wanted complete denuclearization, Pyongyang wanted sanctions relief, security guarantees, and a recognition as a nuclear power as preconditions of denuclearization. Due to these unreconciled fundamental differences, the second summit in Hanoi fell apart, with both Trump and Kim leaving the summit earlier than scheduled (Sanger & Wong, 2019). The failure of the Hanoi summit was a relief to Japan. To Abe, “no deal was better than a bad deal” (Smith and McClean, 2019, p. 18). Abe had long lobbied Trump not to make any compromise on sanctions imposed by the United States on the North for its nuclear and missile development (Smith and McClean, 2019; Bolton, 2020). However, Trump’s continued show of affinity with Kim Jong-un and his failure to condemn North Korea’s missile tests worried Japanese officials. Abe repeatedly asked Trump to support Japan’s stance on North Korea, especially regarding Pyongyang’s short- and medium-range missile tests. But Trump did not seem to be concerned about these missiles as they could not reach the US mainland. Japan was worried that Trump would rush to make an agreement with North Korea to allow Pyongyang to maintain its short- and medium-range missiles that could reach Japan, in exchange for the North’s abandonment of long-range ballistic missiles that could reach the United States (Rich et al., 2019). Meanwhile, Abe adjusted Japan’s North Korea policy following Trump’s engagement approach to Pyongyang. Japan’s Diplomatic Bluebook stopped stating Japan’s need for placing maximum pressure on North Korea in 2019 (Hurst, 2019a). Also, Abe offered in 2019 to hold a bilateral summit with Kim without preconditions, a 4  Abe and Trump met at Mar-a-Lago, Florida in April 2018 before the first Trump-Kim summit took place. There were pre-summit jitters in Tokyo. Japan’s chief concern was what would happen to the “maximum pressure” strategy for the CVID on North Korea. Japan was also concerned about the implications of these summits for the issue of North Korea’s abduction of Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s. With little or no advance information shared by Washington and Seoul about their leaders’ impending summits with the North Korean leader, Tokyo was concerned that it was being left behind (Rich & Sanger, 2018). 5  In March 2018, Kim Jong-un stated that he was “ready to meet” with Trump, to which the US president responded that he too was ready to meet with the North Korean leader. Later in the same month, ROK President Moon Jae-in announced that he was going to meet Kim at the end of April 2018 (Noack & Lee, 2018).

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significant departure from his previous position that such a meeting would not be held unless North Korea made progress on the issue of the Japanese abductees (Hurst, 2019b). Japanese leaders tend to distrust an engagement approach and believe that Pyongyang needs to be constrained by sanctions and military deterrence (Fatton, 2019). Abe’s offer of a summit was an attempt to adjust to the new environment where the leaders of the United States, China, South Korea, and Russia had met with Kim, leaving the Japanese leader as the only one from the previous Six Party Talks member states who had not met with the North Korean leader (Hurst, 2019b). Yet North Korea rejected Abe’s offer to meet Kim (Isozaki, 2018). With Trump shifting from the hardliner camp (with Japan) to the engagement camp (with South Korea, China, and Russia) among the former Six-Party Talks members, Japan was placed “‘out of the loop’ on the North Korea problem” (Isozaki, 2018, np). Japan switched gears toward more engagement with the North to be in line with the United States. But Kim’s rejection of a summit with Abe left Japan with no option but to continue sanctions against Pyongyang and demand irreversible denuclearization and the return of the Japanese abductees. Over the longer term, the United States wants to see human rights improvement in North Korea, including over the issue of abduction of Japanese citizens. The United States would also like to see improvement in North-South relations at a pace and in a manner compatible with US strategic and political interests. The two most critical issues for the United States are, first, the possible impact on the US military presence in the South and elsewhere in the region and the burden-sharing with South Korea and Japan to meet other security challenges in the Asia-Pacific, and second, the prevention of a China-dominated regional order. What are the implications for Japan of US policy toward the Korean peninsula? Let us explore three possible scenarios, each with distinct implications for Japan. First, if North Korea ceased nuclear tests and limited missile tests, that would likely reduce tensions between the United States and the North Korea and also improve North-South Korea relations, even if Pyongyang continued to maintain its nuclear arsenal and short- and medium-range ballistic missiles. This scenario would in turn lead to calls for reduction of US military presence in South Korea and for a greater security role for Japan to counter China’s power and maintain broader regional security. Second, a continued US-DPRK stalemate over denuclearization and the North’s expansion of its nuclear arsenal and improvement of its missile technology would not necessarily arrest the North-South Korea engagement; and if indeed Pyongyang-Seoul diplomacy ensued, it would likely lead to closer China-DPRK-­ ROK cooperation. Under these circumstances, the United States would likely maintain its present level of military presence and demand stepped-up defense buildup in Japan and closer US-Japanese security cooperation. Third, if the US-DPRK stalemate continued and North-South Korea relations were also strained, the North Korea would likely seek closer relations with China. In response, the United States would maintain its military presence in the region and demand a substantial expansion of Japan’s defenses and security cooperation with the United States. Unfortunately, there is little or nothing that Japan can do to influence the

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denuclearization process on the Korean Peninsula or overall US-DPRK relations. Japan’s future actions are unlikely to change the course of denuclearization regardless which of these scenarios develops.

2.7  Japan’s Relations with South Korea In light of North Korea’s nuclear missile developments, it would be natural for Japan and South Korea, America’s two closest allies in Asia, to become close security partners. The United States has long urged both states to promote cooperation on security matters. Yet, these states have not developed close relations due to issues related to Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula before and during World War II and the ongoing territorial dispute over Takeshima/Dokdo. Japan and South Korea’s bilateral relations have even worsened since 2017, when progressive Moon Jae-in was elected as ROK’s new president (Sakaki & Nishida, 2018; Tamaki, 2019). During his campaign for the presidency, Moon called for the renegotiation of the 2015 Japan-ROK agreement that had led to the establishment of the Foundation for Reconciliation and Peace funded by Japan to pay for South Korea’s surviving comfort women and relatives of deceased comfort women. The agreement had been made by former President Park Geun-hye and Abe, with the backing of the Obama administration (Sakaki & Nishida, 2018). After assuming power, Moon argued that the agreement was flawed because it failed to meet the victims’ needs. In 2018, Moon decided to revoke the agreement. The liquidation of the foundation met strong protest from the Japanese government (Le, 2019). Japan-ROK relations further deteriorated in the same year when South Korea’s supreme court ordered Nippon Steel and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. to compensate Koreans who had been conscripted to work for them during the Japanese colonial occupation. The Japanese government immediately protested the ruling, arguing that the 1965 Japan-ROK Treaty on Basic Relations had settled all wartime matters between the two countries. Also, Japan removed South Korea from its white list of countries for preferential trade treatment and applied stricter rules to the export of Japanese chemicals critical for South Korean firms to produce semiconductors. South Korea retaliated by removing Japan from its own white list. Furthermore, Moon announced in 2019 that his government would terminate its military intelligence-sharing accord with Japan, the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA). GSOMIA had been concluded in 2016, with strong support from the Obama administration, to share intelligence on North Korea and other security issues between Tokyo and Seoul (Kuhn, 2019). While Trump did not show much interest in personally intervening in the Japan-­ ROK dispute (Rich et al., 2019; Bolton, 2020), senior officials in his administration succeeded in persuading South Korea to continue GSOMIA right before it was set to expire in November 2019. After Moon’s announcement of the cancelation of GSOMIA, the U.S. Department of Defense officials made their displeasure public.

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Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford said that the termination of GSOMIA would weaken the security of both South Korea and Japan and endanger US troops stationed in East Asia (Kuhn, 2019). Also, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Randall Schriver expressed his disapproval of Moon’s decision (Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2019a). Then two other senior officials in the Trump Administration—Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific David Stilwell and National Security Council Senior Director for Asia Matt Pottinger— successfully worked on dissolving the GSOMIA dispute (Panda, 2019). GSOMIA plays an important role in US-Japan-ROK trilateral relations by helping make intelligence sharing among the three countries fast and efficient. Its termination would affect US-Japan-ROK security cooperation on future talks on the denuclearization of North Korea (Stangarone, 2019). Furthermore, termination would hamper US efforts in pushing back against China’s assertive behavior in Asia. The Trump Administration stepped up its pressure against China and sought cooperation from US allies to assist its efforts (Kim, 2019). It is in the US interest that Japan and South Korea improve relations in the face of growing China-US rivalry. But Tokyo and Seoul have been unable to reset their relations. Japan and South Korea also have divergent perceptions of North Korea and China. Japan has largely maintained a hardline policy toward North Korea with the use of sanctions and military deterrence (Fatton, 2019). In contrast, South Korea under Moon has promoted engagement with North Korea, believing that lifting sanctions would be critical to building trust and persuading North Korea to denuclearize. The Moon administration has advocated for partial sanctions relief to restart inter-Korean joint projects such as the Kaesong Industrial Complex and the Kumgang Resort (Botto, 2020). Despite Moon’s efforts, however, inter-Korean economic cooperation has stalled due to the continuous enforcement of international sanctions on North Korea for its pursuit of nuclear weapons (Kerkhoff, 2019a, 2019b). As for their attitudes toward China, Japan and South Korea also diverge, though in more nuanced ways. Japan identifies China as a major threat to Japanese security (Japan Ministry of Defense, 2019, 2020). South Korea shares concerns about China’s increasing assertiveness in Asia as seen, for example, in Beijing’s economic retaliation against Seoul over the deployment in South Korea of a US-missile defense system, Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD). But Seoul also views Beijing as the key to reducing North Korea’s nuclear threat. Despite China’s coercive economic actions, therefore, Seoul has tried to mend relations with Beijing (Sohn, 2019; Bernal, 2020) and signed a bilateral FTA agreement in 2015 despite the stalled Japan-Korea-China trilateral negotiations. These diverging perceptions of North Korea and China deepen mistrust between Japan and South Korea (Botto, 2020).

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2.8  C  ountering Growing Chinese Presence and Influence in the Indo-Pacific 2.8.1  Japan and US Allies and Partners While Japan has failed to improve relations with South Korea, Tokyo has succeeded in expanding security partnerships with other states in the Indo-Pacific. For the past 15 years, Japan has adopted a “dual-track approach” of both enhancing its bilateral alliance with the United States and pursuing a more autonomous defense policy from the United States (Mulgan, 2008, p.  52). This dual approach has sought to diversify Japan’s security relationships and reduce the risk of overdependence on the United States. Japan’s pursuit of security partnerships is noteworthy, as from the 1950s through 1990s, Tokyo had forged cooperative external relations only through economic and diplomatic rather than through security partnerships. Japan has been particularly interested in strengthening security relations with Australia and India. During his first term as prime minister in 2007, Abe signed a Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation (JDSC) with Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard (Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2007). It was the first time that Japan had signed a security agreement with a third party outside the US-Japan security alliance. The JDSC included personnel exchanges, joint exercises, and joint training in traditional and nontraditional security areas such as disarmament and peace-keeping operations, maritime security, and humanitarian and disaster relief (Lee-Brown, 2018; Mulgan, 2008). Since then, Japan-Australia relations have continued to develop through a series of bilateral agreements, including an Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement in 2010, an Information Security Agreement in 2012, and a Transfer of Defense Equipment and Technology Agreement in 2014. In recent years, the two countries have conducted numerous joint exercises involving naval, air, and ground forces and held many ministerial meetings to enhance greater interoperability, greater intelligence sharing, and joint development and production of defense equipment (Hanada, 2019). According to Panda (2020b, np), Japan and Australia are now “closer than ever in domains including intelligence-sharing and continue to increase the interoperability of their forces.” The rapid convergence between the Japanese Self Defense Forces (JSDF) and Australian Defense Forces (ADF) reflects growing concerns shared by the two countries about a rising China and declining US power – as well as about the future of the rules-based international order in the Indo-Pacific. In addition, the growing bilateral cooperation indicates that these countries are committed to developing autonomous defense capabilities outside their US-centered security alliances (Panda, 2020b). Similarly, Japan reached out to India during Abe’s first term as prime minister in 2006–2007. Since then, Japan-India security cooperation has become institutionalized with a series of agreements and joint statements, including Defense Cooperation Agreement (2006), Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation between Japan and India (2008), Transfer of Defense Equipment and Technology Agreement (2015),

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and Security Measures for the Protection of Classified Military Information Agreement (2015; Hanada, 2019). Similar to Japan-Australia relations, Japan-India relations have been shaped by shared perceptions of the threat of China’s rise. India has become wary of the growing presence of the Chinese navy in the Indian Ocean, especially since 2014, when a Chinese nuclear attack submarine was detected there for the first time (Lee & Lee, 2016). Japan has also pursued security cooperation with Australia and India through trilateral arrangements: (1) the Australia-Japan-US Trilateral Strategic Dialogue (or TSD, 2002-); (2) the India-Japan-US Trilateral Dialogue (2011-); and (3) the Australia-India-Japan Trilateral Dialogue (2015-). These trilateral partnerships overlap with each other and with Japan’s bilateral and quadrilateral frameworks with the United States, Australia, and India (see below for discussion on the Quadrilateral Dialogue Partnership). The trilateral partnerships promote consensus on strategic issues and greater intelligence sharing and interoperability among the member states. Of particular importance is the India-Japan-US Trilateral Dialogue, which in 2015 saw Japan permanently join the annual US-India Malabar naval exercises (Lee-Brown, 2018; Eisentraut & Gaens, 2018). These partnerships have continued during the Trump presidency and helped Japan cooperate with Australia and India, both with and without the United States. In addition to Australia and India, Japan has reached out to Southeast Asian states such as the Philippines and Vietnam, both of which have had military confrontations with China in the South China Sea. Japan signed partnership agreements with the Philippines in 2011 (the Philippines-Japan Strategic Partnership) and Vietnam in 2014 (Extensive Strategic Partnership for Peace and Prosperity in Asia) and in 2018 (Joint Vision Statement on Defense Cooperation). Japan has held regular bilateral security meetings and joint naval exercises with these countries. Particular importance has been placed on their maritime capacity building. The areas of bilateral security cooperation have included the Japanese provision of patrol vessels and its transfer of defense equipment and technology (De Castro, 2017; Parameswaran, 2020). Japan’s ties with these countries have continued to grow during the Trump presidency, especially in maritime security (see Heydarian, 2019). In short, Japan has expanded security cooperation beyond the US-Japan security alliance. Japan has sought more autonomy from the United States by cultivating spoke-to-spoke relations with Australia, India, the Philippines, and Vietnam. Japan’s pursuit of defense autonomy has not been interrupted by the Trump Administration. On the contrary, the United States has encouraged Japan to work with other “spokes” in support of the US predominance in the Indo-Pacific. Abe served as a “regional strategic organizer” (Wyeth, 2019b, np), helping develop new security architecture in the Indo-Pacific. At the same time, Japan’s security cooperation with its partners has sought to deter China and support the US leadership in preserving the rule-­ based order in the Indo-Pacific region.

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2.8.2  Japan and Russia Outside the US orbit, Japan has used economic means to enhance its security. Russia is a case in point. Japan has reached out to Russia to improve Russo-Japan relations in the face of growing Chinese influence in Asia. Although Japan’s ultimate diplomatic goal with Russia is to conclude a peace treaty and solve the bilateral sovereignty dispute over the Northern Territories, the four islands occupied by the Soviet Union/Russia since 1945 (Brown, 2018), Japan’s interest in establishing positive relations with Russia is not limited to the territorial issue. Rather, Japan is wary of close Sino-Russian relations that could threaten Japan’s security. Japanese officials have feared that the imposition of G7 sanctions on Russia following its annexation of Crimea would make Russia so isolated and economically fragile that Moscow would pivot to Asia and learn toward China. As expected, the sanctions led Russia to seek security cooperation with China, as seen, for example, in Russian sales of an anti-missile air defense system and fighter jets to China, Russia-China joint air patrols from the Japan Sea to the East China Sea, and the signing of an agreement with China on bilateral military and technical cooperation (“Chinese, Russian warplanes enters Japan’s ADIZ,”, 2019; Pajon, 2017). In Japan’s strategic calculations, a positive Russia-Japan relationship would help prevent Russia and China from partnering together against Tokyo’s interests. The Obama administration had pressured Japan to curb Abe-Putin contacts following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, and Tokyo reluctantly imposed sanctions against Moscow (Filippov, 2016). However, Japan’s sanctions were limited and more symbolic than substantive. Notwithstanding these sanctions, Tokyo and Moscow continued bilateral efforts to expand economic cooperation, including on the disputed islands, and talks on the conclusion of a postwar peace treaty, albeit with no substantive progress on the territorial dispute. In contrast, the Trump Administration did not seek to isolate Putin, thus allowing Japan more freedom to engage with Russia. In the absence of US pressure not to engage with Putin, Abe attempted to personally cultivate close relations with the Russian president. The Abe-Putin summit of 2016 in Vladivostok brought about diplomatic and economic agreements, one of them allowing Japanese firms the opportunity to work with Russian firms in the energy sector and to help develop the islands and Japanese former island residents to return for visits (McMillan, 2017; Pajon, 2017). The territorial dispute over the Northern Territories/Southern Kuriles continued to prevent a breakthrough in Japan-Russia relations. Moscow seemed to harden its position in 2020 with the adoption of a constitutional revision banning territorial concessions. Another amendment to the Russian constitution allows Putin to extend his term in office to 2036, placing him in the driver’s seat as far as Russia’s policy toward Japan is concerned. On the other hand, Prime Minister Abe resigned in August 2020, citing health reasons, rendering Tokyo’s future approach to the territorial row uncertain. Will his successor, Yoshihide Suga, follow Abe’s seeming willingness to sign a peace treaty with Putin by compromising on the territorial dispute, that is, by demanding the return of only the Habomai islets and Shikotan Island but

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leaving the sovereignty over the other disputed larger islands indefinitely unresolved or perhaps even surrendering those larger islands altogether? Suga indicated in his first policy speech to the parliament on October 26, 2020 that he would inherit most of Abe’s foreign policy agenda, but his statement on relations with Russia was vague; it simply noted, “We must put an end to the Northern Territories issue, without leaving it to the next generation. I intend to develop the overall relationship between Japan and Russia, including the conclusion of a peace treaty, through candid discussions at the summit level” (Prime Minister of Japan and His Cabinet). Suga’s effort to pursue territorial reconciliation with Putin is more likely to fail than succeed, at least in the short term, in the face of the political climate in Russia that would not tolerate any territorial concessions to Japan (see Brown, 2020).

2.9  Preserving the Free and Open Indo-Pacific Ocean Japan’s most notable security achievements during the Trump era are the US adoption of the aforementioned concept of the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) and the revival of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, known as the Quad, which consists of the United States, Japan, Australia, and India. Abe deserves credit for conceptualizing the FOIP. He advocated the preservation of the US-led liberal international order based on the rule of law, freedom of navigation, and peaceful settlement of disputes in the Indo-Pacific region. From Abe’s perspective, the FOIP rested on a coalition of like-minded democratic states that had a stake in the maintenance of the liberal rules-based international order in the Indo-­ Pacific region (Abe, 2012). Japan officially unveiled its FOIP policy at the sixth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) in Nairobi in 2016 (Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2016). As noted earlier, the Trump Administration incorporated the FOIP into its official security policy soon after Japan’s adoption of the FOIP policy. Trump called for the FOIP for the first time in his speech at the APEC CEO summit in Vietnam in November 2017. Also, both the US National Security Strategy of 2017 and the US National Defense Strategy of 2018 highlighted the FOIP as the Trump Administration’s new strategy in the Indo-Pacific region, in response to China’s rise (U.S. White House, 2017a; U.S. Department of Defense, 2019). The US embrace of the FOIP indicated Japan’s successful effort to persuade the Trump Administration how the FOIP aligned with American strategic priorities in Asia. Although Japan and the United States are in broad agreement on the strategic importance of the FOIP, the two sides will need to coordinate their respective policies within this framework because, as some observers point out, there appear to be some differences in emphasis and priorities between them, for example, regarding the proper balance between the military and economic elements of the strategic framework and between deterrence against Beijing and engagement with Beijing in pursuing the regional framework (Swaine, 2018; “Name redacted,” 2018; Sahashi, 2019; Tamaki, 2020; Japan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2019).

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The Quad was originally established in summer 2007 as a consultation forum among Japan, the United States, Australia, and India.6 It temporarily expanded to military cooperation in the same year with Japan and Australia joining the US-India Malabar military exercises in the Bay of Bengal together with Singapore (“Name redacted,” 2018; Madan, 2017). However, the Quad was discontinued in 2008 largely due to China’s strong objection to its creation and to the subsequent unilateral withdrawal of Australia under a new administration led by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who did not want to antagonize China (Lee & Lee, 2016; Sahashi, 2019). Abe’s resignation from the premiership in 2007 also left the Quad without a strong advocate for its existence. After returning to power in late 2012, Abe pushed for the revival of the Quad, leading to its resurrection in November 2017 with support from new leaders: India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, President Trump, and Australia’s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Since its revival, the Quad has remained a consultation forum on traditional and nontraditional security issues such as terrorism and maritime security. At the same time, its primary focus has been the preservation of the FOIP (Eisentraut & Gaens, 2018; Arase, 2019). US defense documents (U.S. White House, 2017a; U.S. Department of Defense, 2019) and other officials’ speeches such as the one by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in 2018 (Pompeo, 2018) demonstrate that the United States sees the Quad as a mechanism to pursue the FOIP.  Accordingly, the Trump Administration has been actively engaged in Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPs) in the South China Sea to deter Chinese maritime actions there (“Name redacted,”, 2018). As of summer 2020, the United States is considering a bill (the National Defense Authorization Act) to allow Japan, Australia, and India to establish fighter jet training detachments in Guam to promote interoperability between the Quad’s air forces (Bhaumik, 2020). The Quad has been expanding its activities. One of the major developments since its restart in 2017 is Australia’s participation in the 2020 Malabar naval exercise involving India, the United States, and Japan. Malabar 2020 is the first joint exercise to include all the Quad states since 2007. As mentioned above, Australia had once participated in the 2007 Malabar exercise with the other Quad members. After the Quad was disbanded in 2008, US-India Malabar exercises continued without Japan or Australia. Then in 2015, Japan became a regular Malabar participant. Australia 6  The Quad was established after Abe received endorsement for his idea from Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, President Bush, and Australian Prime Minister John Howard. The first meeting was held on the sidelines of the ASEAN Regional Forum summit (“Name redacted,” 2018; Madan, 2017). The Quad is said to originate from the Tsunami Core Group consisting of Japan, the United States, Australia, and India to provide disaster relief in response to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami (“Name Redacted,” 2018; Hanada, 2019). But by the mid-2000s, the four states had been already working closely with each other in different sets of bilateral and trilateral groupings in security areas (e.g., the India-Japan Special Strategic and Global Partnership, the US-Japan Australia Trilateral Strategic Dialogue or TSD, the Australia-India defense exercise or AUSTINDEX). The Quad was built upon and expanded from the ongoing security cooperation of these states (Hanada, 2019; Wyeth, 2019a).

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also wanted to join Malabar, but at first New Delhi did not invite Canberra for fear of provoking Beijing. However, by 2020, India had a change of heart and extended the invitation. The expansion of Malabar indicates the shared concerns of the Quad members about the security of the Indo-Pacific, where China has become increasingly assertive (Panda, 2020c). With Australia’s participation in the Malabar exercise, the Quad is likely to enter a new phase of military cooperation in the coming years. The FOIP and the Quad are still in development. Their future will depend largely on the level of threat from China that the Quad members perceive.

2.10  Theoretical Perspectives The above review of Japan’s response to the Trump Administration’s erratic policies under the “America First” banner leads to the conclusion that the US policies did not fundamentally alter Japan’s three orientations, that is, neorealist security policy, neoliberal institutionalist engagement, and an Asian-Western hybridity in identity. Japan’s trade and economic interests vis-à-vis the United States did not require a shift in its neorealist calculations in security policy. Its commitment to the liberal institutionalist approach to international trade institutions, if anything, was even more vociferously articulated against the Trump Administration’s policies to undermine multilateral international institutions. Finally, Japan’s response to the Trump Administration’s policies did not show any notable change in the nation’s identity as a hybrid Asian-Western country with nationalist, regionalist, and globalist faces. Japan’s security activities are best explained from defensive realist perspectives. Japan has balanced both internally (increasing its defense capabilities) and externally (strengthening the US-Japan security alliance and cooperating with Australia and India in the security arena) against China’s growing power. The shifting balance of power in Asia has made Japan search for ways to balance China more intensely and hedge against uncertainties about Beijing’s intentions. At the same time, Japan’s actions are oriented toward deterrence, not offense (see Singh, 2015). However, Japan’s promotion of the liberal international order cannot be explained solely in terms of balance-of-power realism. Abe’s FOIP initiative encompassed legal and normative components that emphasized respect for the rule of law, freedom of navigation, and peaceful resolution of conflicts. While realists would emphasize the instrumental use of these institutional ideas by the United States and Japan to deter China from exerting military influence in the Indo-Pacific region, liberals would maintain that what matters most is the regulatory effects of these norms on state behavior, that these institutions regulate and encourage states to comply with the norms to access the region’s shipping lanes for energy supply and trade. From the liberal perspective, Japan, the United States, and other like-minded states stress these norms to safeguard access to maritime commons in the region and deter China from violating these norms. It should be added that Abe’s appeal to the norms such as the rule of law, freedom of navigation, and peaceful settlement of

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disputes—all of which go beyond traditional realist concerns for national security— contributed to the 2017 resurrection of the Quad, a multiparty network that facilitates interstate cooperation for the promotion of the FOIP and the preservation of the US-led liberal international order. The FOIP framework embraces not only security but also economic cooperation. Japan is simultaneously balancing power against China and safeguarding the liberal order from Beijing. For Tokyo, military power and the maintenance of the liberal order are inseparable. The international liberal order has been created and led by the United States and served Japan’s interests well, and the maintenance of the order requires the formation of a US-led coalition to deter China. With the uncertainty about the US commitment to regional security and to the maintenance of the liberal regional order that had grown prior to Trump’s presidency and which has been further exacerbated by the unpredictable policies of the Trump Administration, Japan made efforts to both shore up the US role in the region and to supplement it with strengthened partnerships with other powers in the region. Such efforts are likely to continue in the post-Abe era. Constructivism, defined in terms of a state’s value identity, has limited explanatory power for Japan’s behavior in the Indo-Pacific region when it comes to traditional national and regional security challenges. By emphasizing a shared democratic identity among the Quad members and using the rhetoric of liberalism, Abe calls for the Quad’s cooperation to preserve the existing rule-based international order. However, as Tamaki (2020) argues, Abe was not particularly keen on promoting democratic values or human rights. Abe’s neglect of human rights abuses by India’s Modi government in Kashmir in 2019 (Malhotra, 2019) or other countries’ egregious human rights violations in Asia attested to this point. The only notable exception was the prime minister’s insistence on progress on the abduction issue vis-à-vis North Korea, but Abe’s determination to resolve the issue reflected his political commitment to the abductees’ families and their supporters, which had helped boost his nationalist credentials, rather than his commitment to international human rights as such. Japan used words such as democracy (for example, as in the “Democratic Security Diamond”) and human rights for pragmatic purposes, to contrast the Quad states against an authoritarian China. As Mulgan (2008) argues, Abe’s reference to freedom, democracy, and respect to human rights was “a China exclusion mechanism” (p. 64). The Abe government’s citing of democracy and human rights as a basis of security alignment was not necessarily reflective of a pre-eminently idealist concern for human rights. Rather, it provided a convenient rationale for binding states together for a common strategic purpose (Mulgan, 2008, p. 64)

However, if we apply a broader definition of constructivism that incorporates a nation’s geostrategic identity—in this case, Japan as an Asian power of substantial material assets and interests—then the Abe government’s active diplomacy toward India, Australia, and the United States for the maintenance of the rules-based regional order makes sense in constructivist terms. Such an interpretation is supported by an appreciation of Japan’s trade and economic interdependence with Asia

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and Japan’s recognition of China’s unmistakable role in the region’s economic prosperity and some nontraditional security affairs. As noted above, in Tokyo’s conception of the Indo-Pacific, military power and the maintenance of the liberal order are inseparable.

2.11  Conclusion and Future Prospects We examined Japan’s response to the emergence of the Trump Administration in 2017 and the new government’s policy decisions and declarations relevant to Japan (and other countries in the region). We noted that Japan was initially alarmed by the new president’s penchant for unilateral and US-centric pronouncements but that through a number of actions, Japan largely succeeded in fending for its trade and economic stakes and maintaining its security interests. Let us summarize how Japan responded and what it meant for the nation’s interests as articulated by Prime Minister Abe and the policymaking system at his disposal. Abe was able to quickly cultivate personal rapport with Trump by appealing to the president’s narcissism and calmly handling his “bullying remarks” on Japan (Ignatius, 2020, np). The leaders’ close relationship allowed the prime minister to tutor his counterpart on international trade and the strategic significance of the US-Japan alliance in the Indo-Pacific region where both countries faced (and continue to face) a number of challenges, most prominently China’s growing power and its increasingly assertive behavior as well as the threat of North Korean nuclear and missile development. For the most part, Abe succeeded in dissuading Trump from pursuing policies based on his isolationist and nativist political instincts. As Michael Green, an Asia expert in the National Security Council of the George W.  Bush administration, comments, Abe “stopped bad stuff” that policy circles in the United States and Japan had thought Trump might do, for example, making concessions to Kim Jong-un (Center for Strategies and International Studies, 2019b, np). Abe and his trade minister were willing to give some limited concessions to the United States regarding bilateral trade imbalance, for example, on agricultural trade. However, these Japanese leaders stayed within the limits of their country’s commitment to other partners in TPP11, an important regional trade framework that Japan had successfully shepherded after Trump pulled the United States out. Tokyo also agreed to Washington’s demand for greater Japanese investment in US manufacturing, but this decision was actually not a concession since expanded investment in the United States was in Japan’s own interest. Meeting these American demands on a smaller scale, Japan was able to protect its most important trade interests vis-à-vis the United States, i.e., the automobile and auto parts exports. It was also in Tokyo’s own interest, as the Abe administration saw it, to move into closer defense cooperation with Washington through military hardware purchases from the United States and boost Japan’s defense capabilities both quantitatively and qualitatively in the face of a rising China. Furthermore, the Abe administration found it essential to expand bilateral cooperation to ensure continued US

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engagement in the region, despite Trump’s wishes to reduce its burden of military presence in Asia as well as Europe and the Middle East. Japan’s focus on the converging interests between Washington and Tokyo—to counter Beijing’s rising power and maintain the liberal international order—led Tokyo to play a prominent role in the construction of the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP), an ambitious strategic move that was embraced by Washington. Theoretically, our analysis established that Japan generally maintained a liberal institutionalist approach to international trade and economic engagement in order to pursue its broad economic interests in the region. We also highlighted Japan’s commitment to sustaining a liberal regional order, one of the long-standing goals of its foreign policy. We saw Japan maintain its neorealist security perspective that reflected the regional security challenges it faced, but that the nation took a defensive “hedging” approach designed to contain possible destabilizing consequences of the region’s changing balance of power. In this effort, Japan actively pursued diplomatic efforts to expand and elevate bilateral and minilateral defense cooperation with key regional partners in the Indo-Pacific region. These parallel efforts indirectly helped Japan keep the key elements of its identity based on history, value, and geography. In sum, nothing that the Trump Administration demanded from Japan and nothing that Japan did in response fundamentally affected modern Japan’s identity as a hybrid Asian-Western power or its commitment to a US-led liberal regional order based on the rule of law, freedom of navigation, and peaceful settlement of disputes in the Indo-Pacific region. Now that Suga replaced Abe as Japanese prime minister and Biden has become President, what are the near-term prospects for Japan-US relations? While it would be foolhardy to offer precise predictions, we can draw a broad outline of expectations each administration will likely have of the other, while keeping in mind that these expectations will be driven not only by US-Japan bilateral relations but certainly by domestic developments in both countries and relations with other key international partners, which are beyond the scope of this chapter. By reappointing Abe administration holdovers, such as Toshimitsu Motegi as foreign minister and Shigeru Kitamura as the head of the National Security Secretariat, Prime Minister Suga signaled continuity in Japan’s foreign and security policy. In his first policy speech after taking office, before the Parliament on October 28, 2020, Suga called the Japan-US alliance “the linchpin of Japan’s foreign policy and security” that “forms the foundation for peace, prosperity, and freedom of the Indo-Pacific region and the international community” (Prime Minister of Japan and His Cabinet, 2020). Suga will likely continue Abe’s policies by strengthening the bilateral alliance, boosting Japan’s own defense capabilities, expanding defense cooperation with the members of the Quad, and deepening bilateral and multilateral cooperation with like-minded states toward promotion of the FOIP—an increasingly important set of norms in the multilayered security order in the Indo-Pacific. Suga will also likely make efforts to stabilize and improve Japan’s relations with China while keeping a close watch on Beijing’s military activities in the East and South China Seas. At the same time, his administration will presumably attempt to

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restore stability to Japan-ROK relations by overcoming the history-based bilateral frictions that have hindered bilateral (Tokyo-Seoul) and trilateral (Tokyo-Seoul-­ Washington) defense cooperation, particularly vis-à-vis the North Korean threat. On the economic front, Japan will need to maintain its robust export and foreign investment activities to sustain its economic growth. US goods and investment markets will remain among the most important foreign markets for Japanese producers and investors. Chinese markets will also remain critically important for Japan’s economic growth, but China-Japan economic relations will be affected by the state of political relations between Tokyo and Beijing and the uncertain direction of Washington-Beijing relations. Unlike Trump, Biden will likely raise human rights and environmental issues with China, which could further complicate the already fractious US-China trade relations. Washington-Beijing disputes over intellectual property protection and cybersecurity are also likely to strain the bilateral relations. Japan’s economic performance will also be affected by the health of the global economy. Particularly concerning will be the devastating effects of the global COVID-19 pandemic on the national economies around the world, particularly in the United States and Europe. Whether Biden’s United States will join the CPTPP or not, this trade framework will be a key regional institution that will require and likely receive Tokyo’s active leadership. Japan will also reap benefits from the recently concluded agreement on the other major regional trade deal, RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership), which represents about 30 percent of the world’s population and 30 percent of global GDP (Lee, 2020). China is RCEP’s largest economy, and Beijing’s membership in this group will further strengthen its position as a formidable economic force in the region. In contrast, the United States is not a member of RCEP or CPTPP and is not expected to join either grouping in the foreseeable future, portending a further decline of its relative weight in the regional trade order (see Vu & Nguyen, 2020). While Biden’s America will initially focus on domestic issues, particularly on overcoming the COVID-19 crisis, its foreign policy will sharply contrast with Trump’s “America First” policy. Biden will aim to restore the credibility and influence of the United States as an engaged global leader, as affirmed in his March/ April 2020 Foreign Affairs article (Biden, 2020) and in his remarks at the State Department on February 4, 2021 (U.S. Department of State, 2021). In the Foreign Affairs article, however, Biden mentions Japan only once in reference to America’s need to fortify collective capabilities outside North America and Europe—through reinvestment in US allies (i.e., Japan, Australia, and South Korea) and deepening ties with US partners in the Indo-Pacific. In contrast, Biden refers to China thirteen times in the article, casting Beijing as an economic competitor, promising to “get tough” with Beijing on trade issues, “confronting” the country on human rights, yet holding out for cooperation with Beijing on issues such as climate change, nonproliferation, and global health and security (Biden, 2020). In the February 4 remarks at the State Department, Biden refers to China as “our most serious competitor” (U.S. Department of State, 2021). Clearly, China presents Biden with more consequential challenges than Japan does. Another country that will demand attention from Biden’s foreign policy and national security teams will be Russia, which Biden

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mentions six times in the Foreign Affairs article, in the context of America’s need to cooperate with its NATO allies to “counter Russian aggression,” extend the New START Treaty for nuclear arms reduction, pursue nonproliferation in Iran and North Korea, and regain leadership in global rule-making regarding digital technology (Biden, 2020; see also Sanger, 2020). In the February 4 statement, Biden declares, “American leadership must meet this new moment of advancing authoritarianism, including the growing ambitions of China to rival the United States and the determination of Russia to damage and disrupt our democracy” (U.S.  Department of State, 2021). In Abe’s Japan during the Trump years, we observed Tokyo’s status-quo foreign and security policy behavior. We did take note of some hedging moves during the Abe administration, including a leadership role in promoting a multilateral regional trade regime, efforts to strengthen defense partnerships with like-minded states in the Indo-Pacific region, and efforts to bolster Japan’s own defense capabilities. We also noted that these actions had started in response to developments that predated Trump’s America. If anything, the Trump’s America First policies pushed Japan further along the same trajectory. With Biden’s foreign policy expected to be more globally engaged, more multilateral in approach, and more consultative with US allies and partners, we anticipate an equally cooperative Japan under Suga. Biden’s choices for his foreign and defense policy teams, including Anthony Blinken as Secretary of State, Jake Sullivan as National Security Adviser, and Lloyd Austin as Secretary of Defense, promise closer consultations with Japan in meeting the two countries’ shared challenges in the Indo-Pacific (Johnson, 2020; Johnson & Sugiyama, 2021; Reynolds, 2021).

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Chapter 3

Changing Power Dynamics in Asia: Implications for the US-ROK Alliance James F. Paradise

3.1  Introduction The United States-South Korea alliance has been under tremendous stress in recent years. Things said about it are as follows: It “appears to be cracking” (Park, 2019); it “might fail its stress test” (Snyder, 2020); it needs “a new identity” (Kim, in interview with Hankyoreh, 2017); and it is “long overdue for readjustment and modernization” (Costello, 2017). Other phrases used to describe it include “unraveling” (Terry, 2020), “in deep trouble” (Armitage & Cha, 2019), and in danger of crumbling "from within” (Snyder, 2020). Two factors buffeting the relationship are trade policy tensions under the Trump administration and security-related friction. On the economic side, US President Donald Trump threatened to scrap the Korea-United States Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA) before renegotiating it in an environment of great pressure that resulted in Korean concessions in the automobile and steel sectors, the latter happening outside the KORUS FTA framework. On the security side, the United States and South Korea (formally the Republic of Korea or ROK) have had bitter negotiations on defense burden sharing that have been accompanied by stories of a possible scale-back of US troops on the Korean Peninsula. Straddling these realms are China-related issues on which the United States has sought cooperation, on matters such as use of Huawei technology and deployment of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system which have put Seoul in a difficult position in having to choose between its alliance partner – the United States – on whom it depends for security assistance, and its biggest trading partner, China.

J. F. Paradise (*) Asia Research Center, Yonsei University, Wonju, Gangwon-do, Republic of Korea e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 T. Akaha et al. (eds.), Trump’s America and International Relations in the Indo-Pacific, Contributions to International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75925-4_3

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Developments have been occurring against the backdrop of intensified great power competition, growing North Korean ballistic missile and nuclear capability, Trump’s “America First” and “Indo-Pacific” policies, and South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s “balanced diplomacy” and desire for more engagement with North Korea, which the United States wants to closely link to its denuclearization goal. The domestic politics of the United States and South Korea matter because, as a study (Kim & Heo, 2016) shows, when the American president has been conservative, which Trump is on many economic and social issues, and the South Korean president has been liberal, which Moon is, conflict has happened.1 Underlying Moon’s behavior is tremendous economic growth in South Korea over the decades and the existence of Korean nationalism, both the kind that has partly grown out of South Korea’s achievements and the kind that is related to a broader sense of Korean identity as expressed in the Panmunjom Declaration of April 27, 2018. The Declaration says that “South and North Korea affirmed the principle of determining the destiny of the Korean nation on their own accord.”2 Such factors have emboldened Moon to press his claims more vigorously in an alliance long characterized by its asymmetry in favor of the United States. As evidence of this, articles have been published with headlines such as “S[outh] Korea poised to push through inter-­ Korean cooperation  – regardless of the U.S. position” (Kang, 2020) and “Korea urged to design new foreign policy, security strategies” (Do, 2020). The purpose of this chapter is to evaluate the state of the US-South Korea alliance, to examine how it has changed in response to bilateral problems and new developments in the region and world, and to analyze whether a new security architecture might be developed, either as an add-on or as a substitute for the existing structure. The questions I ask are: What is the current value of the US-South Korea alliance? Why did it develop as it did under the Trump administration? What are the problems the alliance has faced and how has it dealt with them? How do US views of the alliance compare to South Korea’s views? What might a new security architecture look like? How will the alliance adapt to a rising China? To answer these questions, I adopt an eclectic perspective that is rooted in realist, institutionalist, and constructivist considerations. Realism is important because it acknowledges that power is important in international relations, both one’s own and that of others; institutionalism is important because it emphasizes that international organizations can promote cooperation and facilitate the solving of common problems; and constructivism is important because it embraces a flexible view of international relations, in which the “interests and identities of actors (states) are not a given, or preordained, but are shaped by their interactions with other actors”

1  Another view is that “More often than not, the most contentious disagreements between the two countries are heightened when progressives are in power in Seoul, no matter which political party is in power in Washington, D.C.” (Fuchs & Bard, 2019). 2  A careful analysis of South Korean nationalism in the Syngman Rhee period of 1948–1960, which may have relevance to the current period in at least some respects, can be found in Kim (2019).

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(Acharya, 2011, p. 2), and socialization in institutions can make a difference in how they act. The findings of this chapter are, first, that the value of the US-South Korea alliance has been greatly questioned in recent years, both in the United States, where Trump viewed it in transactional terms and demanded that Seoul pay more for US troops on its soil and in South Korea, where there have been calls for the progressive Moon presidency to develop a more independent foreign policy in what is generally a supportive environment; second, the purposes and geographic scope of the alliance have broadened over the years to make it more comprehensive; third, South Korea is being asked by Washington to do things which are not necessarily in its interest; and, fourth, the US “hub-and-spokes” system in Asia, of which the US-South Korea alliance is one part, is coming into conflict with a rising China. One implication of this is that the United States might want to consider the development of a multilateral economic and security organization for Northeast Asia whose members include China and Russia. That would mean that the United States is partnering with countries whose economic and political systems are very different from its own in an organization that also includes countries with common values. Such a development, however, may be the price the United States will have to pay for dealing more effectively with regional and global governance issues such as North Korean nuclear and ballistic missile tests and transboundary air pollution. The remainder of this chapter is divided into seven parts. The next section presents ideas for thinking about international relations. The section after that considers the debate over the value of the US-South Korea alliance. The following two sections look at problems in the alliance and how they have been dealt with through reform. The subsequent section considers the need for new security architecture for Asia. The penultimate section looks at the feasibility of architectural overhaul. The final section offers the main conclusions of the analysis.

3.2  Organizing Ideas One of the basic facts about the world is that states have different amounts of power. Some states have a lot of power, others a moderate amount, and still others a small amount. The first group of states is called great powers, the second group middle powers, and the third group lesser powers. Included in the first group are the United States, China, and possibly Russia, which may be a declining power in the view of some, but which still has a massive military and a great cultural legacy, and the European Union. Included in the second group are South Korea, which self-­identifies as a middle power, and possibly Japan, which has the third largest economy in the world but whose geopolitical influence is limited. Included in the third group is possibly North Korea, one of the poorest countries in the world which has a disproportionate influence on world affairs because of its military and cyber capability. Realism captures these differences and builds its theory around them in at least one version. In its classical version, one of the principal themes is that the realities of

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power have to be acknowledged and rising powers need to be accommodated (Kirshner, 2010). In the words of Hans Morgenthau in reference to US Cold War policy, “We must be strong enough to resist aggression and wise enough to accommodate foreign interests which do not impinge upon our own” (Morgenthau, as quoted by Kirshner, 2010, pp. 66). Acting in an accommodative fashion is not the same as appeasing a rival. As Graham Allison has put it, “Accommodation is not a bad word. Opponents seek to conflate it with appeasement. But the two are not synonymous in the realm of strategy. Accommodation is a serious effort to adapt to a new balance of power by adjusting relations with a serious competitor – in effect, making the best of unfavorable trends without resorting to military means” (Allison, 2018, pp. 221–222). A second fact about the world is that there are many multilateral organizations. In Asia, they include Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). On many facets, such as purpose, design, and membership, they differ, but a common thrust is to foster cooperation and to seek collective solutions to regional governance challenges. In some ways, multilateral organizations are arenas of conflict and are used by great powers as instruments to achieve their goals. In another way, however, multilateral organizations can enable states to do things collectively that they would not be able to do individually. In the words of Rosemary Foot, “At the root of this approach [to examining issues of organizational design, organizational purpose, and organizational boundaries] is agreement with those who argue that institutions matter, in part because they are the ‘self-conscious creation’ of political actors who want to advance both particular and joint interests” (Foot, 2011). A third fact about the world is that its social future is not determined. It could be a world of conflict, it could be a world of cooperation, or it could be a world of some combination of the two. Much of what will decide it are the decisions of individual states. These decisions are affected by constructivist considerations, including national identities, historical memories, norms, and socialization of states in multilateral organizations, as they interact with one another. Each of these lenses to international relations provides important insights into the nature of the world. Rather than being mutually exclusive, however, as is often assumed, they can be combined to supply a more powerful view of state behavior. As Peter J. Katzenstein and Rudra Sil write: The recognition of the existence of, and possible complementarities between, multiple research traditions holds forth the prospect of translating the analytic language and theoretical insights of each in the process of improving transparadigmatic knowledge on specific substantive problems. For example, seemingly incompatible strands of liberal, constructivist, and realist thought offer different insights in different languages that can be cautiously translated and productively combined in problem-focused research (Katzenstein & Sil, 2004, p. 4).

With this spirit in mind, I proceed to examine the US-South Korea alliance, starting with one of the most basic issues – its value.

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3.3  Value of the US-South Korea Alliance Arguments for and against the US-South Korea alliance have been made over the years. Arguments for the alliance are that it has deterred North Korean aggression on the Korean Peninsula and strengthened economic relations between the United States and South Korea. Specific benefits to the United States are said to include “the right to dispose United States land, air and sea forces in and about the territory of the Republic of Korea” as provided for in Article IV of the Mutual Defense Treaty Between the United States and the Republic of Korea signed on October 1, 1953, host country support in the form of cost-sharing for US forces in Korea, provision of land for US military bases, and intelligence cooperation, greater military strength from combined forces, and support for US activities beyond the Korean Peninsula as happened in many places including Vietnam and Iraq (Levin, 2004). Specific benefits to South Korea are said to include military protection, a reduced defense spending burden, enhanced economic relations with the United States, and development of indigenous military capability from access to US weapons systems and advanced defense technologies (Levin, 2004). Arguments against the alliance are that it is outdated, unnecessary for South Korea which can protect itself, expensive and dangerous for the United States which could get dragged into a war on the Korean Peninsula, and built on what are potentially diverging interests. As Doug Bandow, who makes these arguments, states, “The U.S.-ROK military alliance has lost its purpose. South Korea is not critical to America’s defense and America’s assistance is not – or at least should not be – critical to South Korea’s defense. Far from improving regional security, the current relationship makes it harder for both nations to protect their vital interests” (Bandow, 2010, p. 7). Flowing from these arguments are views about how to deal with US security commitments to South Korea – the engagement school and the retrenchment school, terms that were originally used in a Rand Corporation study about the economic effects of US security commitments overseas (Egel et  al., 2016) but which I use specifically to refer to the advisability of US forces in South Korea and the provision of other security guarantees by Washington. The engagement school favors a continuation of these policies on the grounds that US forces in Korea are still needed to deter potential North Korean aggression and can be used to project US power in Asia and beyond. The retrenchment school favors a reduction in US security commitments to Seoul on the grounds that South Korea is capable of defending itself and the United States is making itself vulnerable to a new range of threats from North Korea. Expressive of retrenchment school ideas are the headlines of articles by Bandow, one of its strongest members, such as “It’s Time for America to Cut South Korea Loose” (Bandow, 2017), “Leaving Korea Will Unburden U.S. Troops and Help South Korea Grow Up” (Bandow, 2016), “Why South Korea Must Chart an Independent Path on North Korea” (Bandow, 2020), “Perhaps It’s Time for South Korea to Go Nuclear” (Bandow, 2018), and “Trump Should Reassess America’s Commitment to South Korea” (Bandow, 2019).

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Categorizing official US and South Korean thinking in the Trump-Moon era is not easy. On many occasions, Trump complained about the high costs of US troops in South Korea and even pointed to the possibility of a reduction in their number. Yet, the Trump’s administration’s National Security Strategy of the United States of America released in 2017 mentioned the importance of allies and said in relation to South Korea: “U.S. allies are critical to responding to mutual threats, such as North Korea, and preserving our mutual interests in the Indo-Pacific region. Our alliance and friendship with South Korea, forged by the trials of history, is stronger than ever” (The White House, 2017, p. 46). Similar upbeat statements have been made by Moon Jae-in who has talked about the importance of the US-South Korea alliance which was “forged in blood in the fire of war” (Moon, as quoted by The Korea Times, 2017). Other statements by people close to the South Korean president, however, have a different emphasis. One statement by Moon Chung-in, a special advisor to President Moon for foreign affairs and national security, raised alarm for mentioning the need for South Korea to eventually “get rid of” the alliance, even though it was accompanied by another statement that expressed strong support for “the continued presence of American forces” in the ROK for the time being and was made in a private capacity (Moon, as quoted by Friedman, 2018). Another foreign policy advisor to President Moon pointed to the need for “South Korea taking charge of its own destiny” (Kim, as quoted by Hankyoreh, 2017). One conclusion to draw from the above analysis is that the US-South Korea alliance is not as ironclad as it is often made out to be. On many issues, there are conflicts between Washington and Seoul. Only by identifying them – as I do in the next section – can one understand how the alliance might be reformed or even replaced by a new structure other than a hub-and-spokes arrangement.

3.4  Issues of US-South Korea Conflict Disagreements between the United States and South Korea have happened on multiple issues over the years. In the 1970s, US President Jimmy Carter sought to make good on a campaign pledge to remove all American troops from South Korea to the alarm of Seoul and some in his own government before agreeing to a very limited scale-down. Tensions have also existed at the grassroots level. Perceived US support for authoritarian governments in Korea, including that of Chun Doo-hwan who was hosted by President Ronald Reagan at the White House in 1981, environmental pollution from US military bases in Korea, and crimes committed by some US servicemen are the most prominent of the issues that have helped to produce anti-American sentiment in South Korea. In the Trump-Moon area, conflicts have had a particularly sharp quality, with Trump expressing doubts about the utility of alliances and Moon having ambivalent feelings about the United States. Different than past eras when uncertainties have existed about how the US-South Korea alliance might evolve, people in the Trump-Moon era have wondered, at least arguably more intently than ever before, whether the alliance would even continue to exist.

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One of the big issues that has dominated headlines in recent years is defense burden sharing. The Trump administration had demanded a huge increase in funding from Seoul for the upkeep of US forces in South Korea in a negotiating environment punctuated by the furlough of Korean workers on US military bases and news stories of possible US troop reductions from the country. Arguments that Korea’s contributions have included provision of land for US bases, money for the construction of new facilities, tax breaks for US Forces Korea, and Korean purchases of US weapons were not enough to persuade Washington to strike a deal on a new Special Measures Agreement (SMA), last concluded in 2019 ahead of a US-North Korea summit in Vietnam. Impeding agreement was the United States’ desire that South Korea contribute to regional security costs not related to the Korean Peninsula, Trump’s transactional view of the world in which US interests are narrowly conceived, and a perception in Seoul that the United States was acting in a “unilateral and irrational” way (The Korea Times, 2020) because of its initial exorbitant demands that were only slowly pared back. From the US point of view, the problem was that some of the costs associated with the defense of Korea such as moving US troops in and out of the country were not paid for by Korea, which, according to one observer, were not part of the SMA framework and would require a new separate track to deal with (Hwang, 2020). A second source of conflict concerns inter-Korean relations. The policy of the United States as expressed by Trump’s State Department was that improvements in inter-Korean relations should not outpace progress in North Korea’s denuclearization (Yonhap, 2018). The approach of South Korea is that they “move at different speeds” (Hwang, 2018). This has meant, in practice, that Seoul has attempted to engage Pyongyang under Moon on matters including a joint railway project, reopening of the Kaesong Industrial Park, and resumption of tours to Mt. Kumgang. On occasions when the Moon government has moved ahead too fast for the United States, Washington has often expressed its displeasure by shutting off diplomatic contacts or issuing stern statements. On one occasion in 2018, for example, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo chastised South Korea for inter-Korean activities that “could undermine sanctions placed on the North for its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs” (Yonhap, 2018) and in 2019 a meeting between himself and his South Korean counterpart was delayed because of Moon’s overtures toward Pyongyang. Other responses have been of a subtler sort, such as occurred in 2020 when Moon gave a speech at the United Nations General Assembly in September calling for a declaration to end the Korean War and the US State Department merely said: “The United States and the Republic of Korea [ROK] coordinate closely on our efforts related to the DPRK, and we are committed to close coordination on our unified response to North Korea” (US State Department, as quoted by Kim, 2020). Much of this is reminiscent of other periods in which South Korea has had progressive presidents, such as in the 2000s when Roh Moo-hyun, who in some ways was supportive of a strong relationship with the United States on matters such as trade, clashed with the administration of George W. Bush on North Korea policy. Then, the issue was whether South Korea’s engagement policy of supplying large amounts of economic assistance to North Korea begun under Kim Dae-jung was the

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appropriate one at a time when Pyongyang was pursuing a nuclear weapons program. According to two scholars, “Bush did not trust Kim Jong-il, and believed regime change would be necessary to end the nuclear crisis. The Bush administration even considered a preemptive strike in addition to ongoing powerful sanctions to deal with North Korea, a position that was at odds with the views in the South Korean government [during the engagement policy period]” (Heo & Roehrig, 2018, pp. 112–113). A third source of conflict concerns a military intelligence-sharing agreement between South Korea and Japan. With a deterioration in relations between the two countries over wartime forced labor issues in recent years, a decision by Japan to take Korea off a preferential trade partner list, and a decision by South Korea to remove Japan from its own preferential trade partner list, Seoul said it would terminate a bilateral intelligence-sharing agreement with Japan called the General Security of Military Information Agreement. That was of concern to the United States because the agreement was seen as protecting US forces in South Korea, facilitating trilateral military cooperation, and promoting stability in Asia. After much pressure by the US State Department and the Pentagon, the South Korean government decided at the last moment it would maintain the agreement on a conditional basis. Getting there, however, had not been easy after initial US standoffishness on the issue and even suggestions by Moon Chung-in that China act as a mediator. Among the observations along the way was that the dispute between Tokyo and Seoul was “a sign of U.S. weakness” (Clemons, 2019) because Washington was not able to control its allies and that the initial decision might be viewed by historians “as the start of the unraveling of the U.S.-led defense and security structure in Northeast Asia” (Revere, as quoted by Oh, 2019a). One factor that may have influenced Seoul’s behavior in the early stages was a perception in South Korea that the United States was siding with Japan on many issues in its conflict with Seoul. A fourth source of conflict is bilateral trade relations. Early in the Trump administration, the United States imposed safeguard measures on imports of large residential washing machines and solar panels, which South Korean companies produced; Trump threatened to terminate the KORUS FTA, which he called a “horrible deal”; and Washington initiated new investigations on the national security implications of some imports based on Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. The safeguard measures on washing machines and solar panels were challenged by South Korea at the World Trade Organization, the threats to scrap the KORUS FTA were ended in favor of a renegotiation of it, and the Section 232 investigations resulted in presidential proclamations “imposing duties on U.S. imports of certain steel and aluminum products” (Congressional Research Service, 2020, p. 7), the former of which South Korea was able to avoid by agreeing “to an absolute annual quota for 54 separate subcategories of steel” (Congressional Research Service, 2020, p. 9). The Section 232 investigations were especially offensive to the Koreans because they meant, in effect, the United States was saying that South Korea, one of its closest allies in Asia, was a national security threat to it for some of the things it was doing. Conflict on the trade front has long existed between Washington and Seoul as

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South Korea has grown economically and its companies have become fierce competitors in industries in which US companies have been strong such as automobiles. In the Trump years, however, trade conflicts have played out amid a new set of ideas about the usefulness and winnability of trade wars, the importance of reducing the US trade deficit, and doubts about the benefits of free trade. As one author succinctly put it, “President Trump’s trade agenda has challenged more than seven decades of bipartisan policy commitment to seeking lower trade barriers at home and abroad through negotiated agreements” (Griswold, 2019). Part of that agenda involved revising the KORUS FTA, which Trump hailed as a “historic milestone in trade” (Trump, as quoted by King & Onchi, 2018), even though the changes – on matters such as Korean customs procedure and greater access to the Korean market for US automakers – were small. A fifth source of conflict concerns China. On many economic, political, military, technology, and security issues, South Korea is being asked to do things by the United States that put it at odds with Beijing. On membership in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), deployment of the US military’s THAAD system in South Korea, participation in Trump’s Indo-Pacific strategy, assistance in South China Sea security issues, boycotting of Huawei 5G technology, diversification of supply chains away from China, and speaking out on China’s new Hong Kong Security law, South Korea has faced the danger of antagonizing Beijing if it complies with Washington’s preferences. South Korea’s response under Moon Jae-in has been to practice “balanced diplomacy,” which in practice has meant carving out difficult compromises or adopting a position of strategic ambiguity. On the THAAD issue, for example, South Korea agreed to accept US military technology but slowed down some of its deployment with an environmental study and pledged not to make additional deployments, join a US missile defense system, or form a trilateral military alliance with the United States and Japan. On participation in the Indo-Pacific strategy, the Moon government was focused on developing a foreign policy of its own, which gave rise to alliance discussions about how to link its New Southern Policy unveiled in 2017 with Trump’s geopolitical vision. Few of South Korea’s actions were entirely satisfactory to the United States, which provided its alliance partner “extended deterrence,” and some actions, such as becoming a founding member of the AIIB in 2015 when Barack Obama was the US president, displeased it. For South Korea, it was necessary to hedge against the possibility that the United States would ask it to do things that were not in its interests, such as contain China, which is what the Trump administration policies in Asia amounted to. The consequence of these conflicts is that there has been an erosion of trust between the United States and South Korea. In the United States, there have been questions about the reliability of South Korea as an alliance partner as Seoul pursues a more independent foreign policy and exercises caution over the Trump administration’s geopolitical initiatives. As a former US State Department official said about Seoul’s initial decision to end the military intelligence-sharing agreement with Tokyo, “Washington’s confidence in Seoul has been shaken, and serious questions about the ROK’s reliability as an ally and security partner have now arisen” (Revere, in interview with Oh, 2019b). In South Korea, concerns have been raised

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about being entrapped in US foreign policy activities that are not in Korea’s interest, the credibility of the US commitment to defend Korea amid talk about US troop withdrawals, and trade protectionism against South Korean companies. On top of this, it does not appear that the personal chemistry between Trump and Moon was good, and Korean conservatives who have traditionally been strong supporters of the United States have criticized Trump for his money-oriented view of the alliance and his favorable comments of Kim Jong-un. Even though a public opinion poll conducted in December 2019 revealed that 92% of South Koreans surveyed supported the US-South Korea alliance (Yonhap, 2019), it is clear that the alliance is under strain. One response to conflict over the years has been to reform the alliance. With many changes having taken place in the world since the end of the Korean War, the United States and South Korea have had to make adjustments to the alliance to ensure its effectiveness and sustainability. Knowing what the adjustments have been, how they have fared, and what has triggered them, is the next step in understanding why the US-South Korea alliance needs to be replaced with more inclusive forms of cooperation on matters such as security, economic development, health, and protection of the environment.

3.5  Reform Within the Existing Structure As a first approximation to the state of reform in the US-South Korea alliance, it should be noted that there is widespread support among national security specialists and policymakers for updating the alliance to make it suitable for the realities of the twenty-first century. Among the publications that reflect this are as follows: “How to Create a Durable U.S.-South Korea Alliance” (Fuchs & Bard, 2019); “Strengthening the U.S.-ROK Alliance” (Snyder, 2009); “Transforming the U.S.South Korea Alliance” (Klingner, 2008); and “The U.S.-South Korea Alliance Should Be Reformed” (Goldstein, 2018). On the South Korean side as well, there are calls for making the alliance better. Several suggestions for improving the alliance are broadening the issues it deals with, increasing its economic robustness (which the KORUS FTA went a long way to doing), and shifting more defense responsibility to South Korea. Necessitating change in the alliance are major developments in the world in the nearly seven decades of the alliance’s existence. Included among them are the end of the Cold War; South Korea’s development of close economic relations with China, and interest in increasing business cooperation with Russia under the Moon Jae-in government; a decline in the “relative influence of the United States” in Asia (Cronin et al., 2013); a growth of intra-Asian security ties (Cronin et al., 2013); the rise of China; and efforts by countries in Asia to define the region on their own terms (Feigenbaum & Manning, 2009). Other changes have occurred in the United States and South Korea themselves, including Trump’s assault on traditional norms that

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have guided US foreign policy such as treating allies respectfully and South Korea’s desire for having more international policy autonomy. Reflecting these developments have been efforts to put the alliance on a revamped footing. Two big changes that have occurred are a redefinition of the purpose of the alliance and a broadening of its geographic scope. Other issues of importance concern the management of the alliance, including its command, how the alliance relates to other alliances in Asia that are part of the United States’ “hub-and-spokes” system, and strategies for responding to the rise of China. Each of these is so important that detailed examination is warranted. Purpose of the Alliance  The purpose of the alliance is “to ensure a peaceful, secure and prosperous future for the Korean Peninsula, the Asia-Pacific region, and the world” (The White House, 2009). In what might be considered the founding document of the alliance, the Mutual Defense Treaty Between the United States and the Republic of Korea talks about the commitment of the parties to cooperate on a range of issues having to do with defense security. As Article II states, “The Parties will consult together whenever, in the opinion of either of them, the political independence or security of either of the Parties is threatened by external armed attack. Separately and jointly, by self help and mutual aid, the Parties will maintain and develop appropriate means to deter armed attack and will take suitable measures in consultation and agreement to implement this Treaty and to further its purposes.” Over time, the economic component of the alliance, which in its early years had to do with US economic assistance to its alliance partner, became more important. By 2012, the year the KORUS FTA came into effect, US exports to South Korea amounted to $64.1 billion and its imports from South Korea came to $69.7 billion, both way above the very small levels of the 1950s (U.S.  Bureau of Economic Analysis, 2020; Heo & Roehrig, 2018). In recent years, the US and South Korean governments have referred to their alliance as a comprehensive strategic alliance. By this, what is meant is a modernized alliance for the twenty-first century whose components include cooperation across a wide range of areas including security, economics, politics, and culture, a basis in mutual trust and shared values of economic freedom and political democracy, a broad geographic focus, and engagement not only with traditional security issues pertaining to the Korean Peninsula but also with frontier issues in areas such as space, energy, and health security (The White House, 2009). As a Joint Vision statement of the United States and ROK governments in 2009 put it, “We aim to make low-carbon green growth into a new engine for sustainable economic prosperity and will closely cooperate in this regard. We will strengthen civil space cooperation, and work closely together on clean energy research and the peaceful uses of nuclear energy” (The White House, 2009). Geographic Scope of the Alliance  The geographic scope of the alliance has widened over the decades. Initially focused on the Korean Peninsula, the alliance has become more regional and global in scope in terms of the areas to which its activities apply. Analysts have argued that the alliance at its inception was not restricted to Korean affairs. There is strong support for this idea, in that the mutual defense

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treaty refers in a number of places to “the Pacific area,” which might be thought to include East Asia, the Asia-Pacific region, and the Korean Peninsula. As a practical matter, however, the alliance in its early days was preoccupied with potential North Korean aggression in the aftermath of the Korean War. One implication of a broadening of the alliance is that South Korea has been asked by the United States to participate in activities in faraway places such as Iraq and Afghanistan. A more recent episode concerns the Strait of Hormuz, in which the United States urged South Korea to participate in a naval coalition it was leading to protect against piracy. One of the dangers of an expansion of the geographic scope of the alliance – as in a broadening of the purpose of the alliance – is that South Korea’s interests will diverge from those of the United States. In the case of the Hormuz issue, which Seoul dealt with by agreeing to independently deploy a naval unit already in the region to the Strait of Hormuz, South Korea had a great interest in protecting its vessels in an area through which much of its oil imports flow. At the same time, the Korean government had to be attentive to its relations with Iran. Alliance Management  The United States and South Korea have been dealing with many alliance management issues over the years, including the number of US troops in Korea, the sharing of defense costs, weight and range limits on South Korean missiles, the return of some US military bases, and the transfer of wartime operational control, or OPCON, to South Korea of a structure called the Combined Forces Command. Originally sought by the Roh Moo-hyun government in 2007, the transfer has not happened because of Korean domestic politics, North Korean nuclear and missile tests, and a delay in satisfying conditions agreed upon by the United States and South Korea, in part because of the COVID-19 pandemic which has disrupted joint military exercises. The transfer is important to Seoul because it is seen as beneficial for Korean military sovereignty and giving the US-South Korea alliance more of a partnership quality. Under the current arrangement, the Combined Forces Command is led by an American as are the United Nations Command and US Forces Korea. Intra-Asia Alliance Relations  The US-South Korea alliance is usually seen as a relationship between two countries that exists to deal with common threats, no matter how much threat perceptions may sometimes diverge, facilitate economic interchange, and safeguard common values. It is possible, however, to also view the alliance as one part of a broader “hub-and-spokes” system that the United States created in Asia after World War II. The suggestion made (Cronin et al., 2013; Busse, 2016; Ratner, 2019) is that the alliances and partnerships that constitute the system should be more closely linked in a networking kind of arrangement. As a report by the Center for a New American Security put it in explaining the rationale for such an idea: The maturation of more networked security ties creates opportunities for the United States to help build partner capacity in ways that are different from, and potentially more efficient than, traditional bilateral security assistance and cooperation. In an era of constrained

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resources, U.S. policymakers should explore avenues for a greater division of labor in which capable and like-minded states can contribute more efficiently to their own security and to public goods, thereby maximizing limited resources (Cronin et al., 2013, pp. 30–31).

So far, there has been only limited progress in realizing this vision. One logical place to focus on for security issues in Northeast Asia is the relationship between the US-Korea alliance and the US-Japan alliance. With relations between Tokyo and Seoul strained in recent years, however, because of South Korea court rulings on forced labor issues dating back to World War II, it has been difficult for a more robust trilateral security arrangement to emerge. Another impediment to this has been the Moon Jae-in government’s pledge, made in the context of the THAAD dispute with China, that South Korea would not participate in a military alliance with Japan and the United States. Adjusting to the Rise of China  The US-South Korea alliance has long been seen by US policymakers as dealing with issues not limited to the Korean Peninsula (Work, 2020). It is therefore logical that the United States would seek to use the alliance to deal with issues related to the rise of China. In major US government reports published during the Trump years, there was not a lot of specific discussion linking the US-South Korea alliance with activities of China. What was said – in one report entitled United States Strategic Approach to the People’s Republic of China – is that one of the objectives of the US approach was “to improve the resiliency of our institutions, alliances, and partnerships to prevail against the challenges the PRC presents” (The White House, 2020, p. 1). Among the challenges China presents, according to the report, is “Beijing’s poor record of following through on economic reform commitments and its extensive use of state-driven protectionist policies and practices” (The White House, 2020, p. 2), different values on matters such as media freedom and individual rights, and security challenges, including ones pertaining to growing Chinese military power (The White House, 2020). In another report entitled Indo-Pacific Strategy Report published by the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD, 2019) in which China was described as a “revisionist power,” reference was made to the US-South Korea alliance in a section on “Modernizing Alliances.” Two issues discussed were the OPCON transfer, which some people in Korea think was being slowed down because of US concerns about China (Work, 2020), and DOD efforts to “revitalize the United Nations Command” (U.S.  Department of Defense, 2019, p.  24), which some people believed, rightly or wrongly, was a way for the United States to remain in control after the OPCON transfer. One source from which details did come about US-South Korea policy coordination on China was Abraham M. Denmark, a former US deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia, who proposed in another capacity that Seoul and Washington create an alliance mechanism to regularly discuss issues related to China. As Denmark put it, “The creation of this mechanism would not be an effort to convince one ally to align its views on China with the other, but rather to help inform both Seoul and Washington about how the other views China and the role it plays in the Indo-Pacific. As discussions mature, allies may identify opportunities for policy coordination, or even cooperation, on a variety of issues related to China” (Denmark, 2019).

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As the last issue suggests, there may be activities to modernize the alliance that do not lead to a reduction of cleavages between the United States and South Korea. On some issues, the alliance has gotten stronger, or potentially stronger, as the result of reforms. With the planned transfer of wartime operational control to South Korea, for example, there is likely to be a positive effect on trust as the ROK’s position in the alliance becomes more equal. Similarly, the return of US military bases to South Korea and the removal of some restrictions on South Korea’s military development are also likely to strengthen the alliance as they will satisfy both US and South Korean desires. On other issues, however, the modernization of the alliance has actually increased tensions. With a repurposing of the alliance toward containing China, for example, South Korea is being put in the uncomfortable position of having to satisfy both Beijing and Washington, which is extremely difficult. With the alliance becoming more global in scope, there is also the possibility of South Korea being pressured to do things not necessarily in its interest. Another problem with the alliance  – modernized or not  – is that its record of solving problems may not be as good as is sometimes thought. On the important issue of keeping peace on the Korean Peninsula, the alliance would seem to have made a major contribution. Yet, North Korea still remains a major threat to South Korea, and the North Korean military threat to the United States has only grown with Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile tests. On the economic side, the alliance may also have had a beneficial effect by creating a more predictable environment for bilateral trade and investment over the years. Yet, the revised KORUS FTA actually restricts trade in some areas, as have other agreements in years past. There is also the issue of whether the alliance is the best structure for dealing with problems that affect large numbers of countries such as transboundary air pollution. Because of its exclusionary nature, the US-South Korea alliance, even if better networked with other US alliances in Asia, omits key players whose cooperation is needed for dealing with governance problems in fields such as peace and security, macroeconomic policy, environmental protection, and public health. The main response to problems in the alliance over the years has been to attempt to strengthen it through various reforms, adjustments, and updates. Those actions have had a measure of success, in that they have contributed to the longevity of the alliance, which is not far from its 70th anniversary. At the same time, the alliance, as one part of the US hub-and-spokes system in Asia, has been under tremendous stress, most recently in the Trump-Moon era. That stress is not likely to prove fatal to the alliance, even though some accounts seem to suggest the alliance is in its last days. Still, there is growing reason to believe that the US-South Korea alliance may not be the best structure for dealing with emerging problems in Asia, including North Korea’s missile and nuclear tests and China’s activities in the East and South China Seas. This suggests that the time may have come to go beyond the US-South Korea alliance and the system of which it is a part, and to create a new security organization for Asia that better reflects the realities of the region and is more likely to deliver the public goods that are needed. Should a new approach not be taken, the future could be one of growing regional conflict.

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3.6  Creation of a New Security Organization In creating a new security organization, a number of questions need to be answered: What is its purpose? Who are its members? Will it have a narrow or broad scope in terms of the location of problems it deals with? How will it relate to the existing US alliance and partnership arrangements in Asia? What are the principles that animate it? The issue of members is very important. One has to decide whether the organization will include only members with common values or whether it will include a broader array of members, democratic and nondemocratic alike. Many people will strongly object to the United States being a member of a security organization that includes nondemocratic countries. Others will say it is unrealistic to think that the United States, in conjunction with democratic countries only, such as the non-US members of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (the Quad) – Australia, India, and Japan and maybe South Korea and others in the future – could solve major governance issues in Asia without the cooperation of China and Russia. The issue of how the new organization would relate to the “hub-and-spokes” system in Asia that would likely still exist for the foreseeable future also requires careful attention. Would the new organization supplement the US alliance system in Asia or would it eventually replace it? Envisioned here is an organization multilateral in design, more inclusive than the US hub-and-spokes system in terms of its members on the dimension of values, and not too big in size. The purpose of the organization would be to enhance the security of its members and resolve conflicts between them. By “security,” I am referring not simply to the absence of traditional military conflict or newer cyber-related threats; I am also talking about economic security, environmental security, and health security. The members of the organization would be stakeholders in a strong security environment. They would include great powers, middle powers, and small powers. Some would be democratic, some not. Initial members might be those that participated in the Six-Party Talks – China, Russia, the United States, Japan, South Korea, and North Korea. The focus of the organization would be Northeast Asia. A major issue it would deal with would be the militarization of the region as manifest in activities such as China’s military modernization, North Korea’s missile and nuclear tests, and the US deployment of its THAAD system in South Korea. It would also seek to facilitate economic integration with a possible long-term goal of creating a more formal economic structure. These activities would help fill the institutional lacuna in the region as implied by two writers who note: “One of the ironies of modern Asia is that Southeast Asians built most regional groups, even though the region’s economic, military, and diplomatic power resides overwhelmingly in Northeast Asia” (Feigenbaum & Manning, 2009, p. 5). The spirit of the organization would be that of a security community whose purpose is the welfare of all members. Ideally, it would foster cooperation, not conflict, strategic partnership, not strategic rivalry. The organization would likely coexist with other US alliances in Asia, including the US-South Korea alliance and the US-Japan alliance, for a period of time as the United States regards its “hub-and-spokes” system in Asia as a major

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strategic asset. Over time, however, the new organization might prove more effective in safeguarding US interests, in which case it could eclipse the traditional US-centered system. Already, ideas for creating new security architecture in Asia exist. Amitav Acharya has talked about “security pluralism” under which “national identities and competition remain, but are controlled by the interplay of interdependence, institutions, norms, and military equilibrium, and a shared imperative for avoiding a system collapse” (Acharya, 2016). William Tow talks about convergent security which he defines as “a managed transition from a regional security system based predominately on realist-oriented bilateral security arrangements to one based increasingly upon regional multilateral arrangements” (Tow, 2001, p. 9). Ok-Nim Chung talks about “functional multilateralism” which has to do with cooperation in areas where common interests exist and the creation of “issue-specific and functionally-oriented ad hoc mini-multilateral institutions” (Chung, 2000). Hugh White talks about “A Concert of Asia,” in which great powers in Asia agree to limit their ambitions and resolve problems through negotiation in the way that great powers did in the Concert of Europe in the nineteenth century (White, 2013).3 Similar ideas are put forth in The New Great Power Coalition, in which authors in separate chapters talk about bringing China and Russia into a new encompassing club with a broader geographical focus (Baum & Shevchenko, 2001; Larson & Shevchenko, 2001). It should be noted that ideas of great power governance are different from that of Acharya’s “security pluralism,” which “respects the autonomy and role of smaller nations” (Acharya, 2016) and is more inclusive in its multilateralism. Underlying the approach here are ideas drawn from different strands of international relations theory. One idea is that power cannot be ignored. As much as some people would like to believe that the United States has the same unequivocally dominant standing in Asia today that it had for much of the post-World War II period, this is not the case. Now, China is playing a larger role in tying the region together through its trade and investment activities and is asserting itself more proactively in regions such as the South China Sea with its construction – and militarization – of artificial islands. Other countries in Asia are also asserting themselves in new ways, including countries in Southeast Asia which created an ASEAN Economic Community and countries in Northeast Asia such as South Korea which is seeking to carve out a more independent foreign policy. Unless these facts are recognized, and made the basis for a more accommodative policy in instances where US vital interests are not threatened, conflict is likely to result. A second idea is that multilateralism matters. Unlike the multilateralism of the Quad, however, which is a group of like-minded countries that could one day turn into a NATO-like alliance, the multilateralism envisioned here is of the “thin” sort, in which countries of different 3  An excellent discussion of the Concert of Europe which touches on the topic of when it declined can be found in Kyle Lascurettes’ study for Rand Corporation entitled “The Concert of Europe and Great-Power Governance Today.” According to Lascurettes, “the principle most central to the system’s effectiveness – that of settling European political and territorial questions in concert – had clearly withered away by 1856” (Lascurettes, 2017, 17).

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values come together in an effort to solve common problems.4 A third idea is that of a security community, which Acharya defines as “groups of states which have developed a long-term habit of peaceful interaction and ruled out the use of force in settling disputes with other members of the group” (Acharya, 2014). Together, these ideas – that power needs to be accommodated, countries with different values need to be “brought in,” and a security community with shared norms can affect behavior – can form the basis for a new security organization in Northeast Asia. They also amount to what might be called a classical realist, liberal institutionalist, and constructivist synthesis. As appealing as the idea of a new security organization might be, the question is – could it happen? Only if a new organization is feasible, can we begin to start its construction.

3.7  Counterarguments One argument against the creation of a new multilateral security organization in Asia is that the United States would not support the idea. The US national security establishment is, for the most part, deeply committed to the US bilateral alliance system. That system was created after World War II because of what Victor D. Cha argues was a desire by the United States to control key countries in Asia, including South Korea, which could help in its fight against Soviet communism and its efforts to control “rogue allies” (Cha, 2016). For the United States to repudiate that system, either by abandoning it or by diminishing it, in favor of a multilateral framework would require major adjustments of the sort that a hegemonic state is not inclined to make. Even if the United States were to embrace a new multilateral organization, it would be difficult in the current political climate to bring China and Russia in, absent an unlikely sudden value convergence. On the face of it, this argument is plausible. It is true that the US national security establishment sees the US alliance system in Asia as a valuable structure for US power projection and the safeguarding of US values and interests. It is also true that the United States would not easily agree to share power with strategic rivals, which is what the organization envisioned here would ultimately require. On a deeper level, however, the argument has weaknesses. One is that the mutual defense treaty 4  One might be inclined to describe a new Northeast Asia security organization as “minilateralist” in nature. Such a description would be apt if the members of the organization were few in number and the issues it dealt with were limited, features that might not necessarily exist if the organization allowed entry to countries that did not participate in the Six-Party Talks and it was focused not only on traditional security threats but also on public health challenges, climate change, and facilitating economic cooperation. A different reason for not using the term “minilateralist” – which in some ways is appropriate – is that the aim of sketching a new security organization is to draw a contrast with the United States’ “hub-and-spokes” system in Asia, which is built on a number of bilateral alliances and partnerships. For this reason, the term “multilateralist” seems more illuminating.

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between the United States and South Korea mentions the possibility of the creation of “a more comprehensive and effective system of regional security in the Pacific area” (Mutual Defense Treaty Between the United States and the Republic of Korea, 1953). Although the treaty does not give details on what is meant by such a system, one could think it refers to multilateral security cooperation. A second weakness is that the United States has embraced multilateral security cooperation in the past or expressed support for it. Examples are the Six-Party Talks that dealt with North Korea-related nuclear issues, and Barack Obama’s national security strategy which carved out a role for “other twenty-first century centers of influence” (The White House, 2010, p. 11) which include China and Russia. A third weakness is that the United States already cooperates with China and Russia in many international and regional organizations and groups, including the United Nations Security Council, the World Trade Organization, the Shangri-La Dialogue, and the now dormant (some would argue, nonexistent) Six-Party Talks. A second argument against the creation of a new multilateral security organization in Asia is that China, the new regional heavyweight, would not support the idea. China, while it continually professes its support for multilateralism and even co-­ creates multilateral organizations such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the New Development Bank, often prefers to deal with controversial issues on a bilateral basis. Moreover, China is creating its own partnership network which is raising the question of whether it will coexist or conflict with the US alliance system (Zhou, 2017). Against this argument, there are several considerations of importance. One is that Beijing is highly critical of the US alliance system in Asia which it sees as reflective of a Cold War mentality and zero-sum thinking. As one critic puts it, the “U.S alliance system no longer conforms to the trend of the times which favors win-win cooperation and peaceful settlement of disputes while opposing power politics and zero sum mentality” (Wang, 2017). A second consideration is that Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for a new approach to Asian security which is “common, comprehensive, cooperative, and sustainable”(Xi, 2014). By “cooperative”, Xi, who does not specifically use the term “multilateral” in his unveiling of the approach, means “promoting the security of both individual countries and the region as a whole through dialogue and cooperation” (Xi, 2014). On the issue of multilateralism, one can note that China not only participated in the Six-Party Talks of more than a decade ago, but hosted them. None of this means that creating a new security organization in Asia will be easy. On the contrary, it will be difficult, and might be thought of as a long-term project. In a post-Trump era, however, it is possible that multilateralism, which has not been in vogue over the past few years in US foreign policy, could make a comeback at the same time Washington moves to repair its tattered bilateral alliances with some countries in Asia, such as South Korea. That will require a major commitment of diplomatic resources, a better appreciation of the power shifts in Asia, and a

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willingness to commit to classical realist principles if a normatively “thin” multilateralism is to gain a new respectability.5 A final issue concerns the relationship between the US bilateral system of alliances in Asia and multilateral frameworks. In some ways, the two systems, which already co-exist in Asia in what is said to have a “complex patchwork” of architectures including “U.S. bilaterals and minilaterals, ASEAN-based organizations, and China-based initiatives” (Cha, 2016, p.  214), might complement one another by bringing different countries together in different configurations with different institutional designs in a way that can harness the strengths of each. In another way, however, there is a friction between the bilateral US system as currently constituted with its focus on balancing China, and a multilateral framework, which, while by no means free of conflict, can foster a new sense of conflict resolution, defining China as a regional partner rather than a long-term adversary. That implies that a migration, however gradual, toward a new security architecture for Asia, may be the best path to take for an improved governance of Asia. On some issues, interests will converge, and mutually beneficial outcomes will be possible. On other issues, interests will diverge, and mutually beneficial outcomes will be difficult. What matters is that strategic rivalry give way to strategic cooperation, and that function, which is affected by capacity, be emphasized over form (Feigenbaum & Manning, 2009).

3.8  Conclusion The US-South Korea alliance has been mired in conflict in recent years. One of the main causes of this conflict is that the United States under Trump was trying to enlist South Korea in its foreign policy initiatives and South Korea, under Moon Jae-in, was seeking a more independent position and often reluctant to go along with what the United States wanted. Underlying the strategic divergences were structural changes related to South Korea’s growing economic power which generated a greater desire for autonomy amid still strong support for the alliance in the Korean national security community and demands in the United States for greater burden sharing by Seoul. The main response to conflicts over the years of which the Trump-Moon ones were the latest has been to call for strengthening the alliance, which has meant reforming it. Among the reforms that have occurred are ones related to alliance management on matters such as military base restructuring and giving the alliance a broader functional and geographical scope, which has generated the observation that “the alliance went global before it went regional” (Work, 2020). Other activities have been of a broader sort pertaining to the relationship of the alliance to other US 5  Discussions of the feasibility issue can be found in Cho (2020) and Swanström (2020), both of whom are supportive of multilateral security cooperation in Northeast Asia. An early call for building on the Six-Party Talks was made by Gilbert Rozman in a book chapter of 2008 entitled “Turning the Six-Party Talks into a Multilateral Security Framework For Northeast Asia.”

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alliances in Asia, especially the US-Japan alliance, among which networking has been promoted with mixed results. A different approach to dealing with alliance problems which this chapter has highlighted is the creation of a new multilateral security organization for Northeast Asia whose members would include major stakeholders in regional security including China and Russia. Rather than just ending or scaling back the US-South Korea alliance by removing US troops and having Korea defend itself as one prominent analyst (Bandow, 2016, 2017) recommends, it makes more sense for the United States to stay engaged in Northeast Asia by creating new organizational forms of greater potential effectiveness. Partnering or merely negotiating with countries with different values or autocratic leaders will be objectionable to many, but it is something the United States has done before, even with South Korea which was ruled in an authoritarian way for many years after World War II and it may be the price it has to pay for avoiding a new Cold War. Moreover, all major foreign policy choices have moral consequences. Were North Korea ever to attack South Korea again or to sell nuclear technology to rogue actors because of a failure to integrate it into a Northeast Asia economic and security community or were China to attack Taiwan in defense of its “core” interests because of a new US security doctrine, the consequences could be catastrophic. Better from the standpoint of regional security governance to have a new conflict resolution mechanism based on the realities of twenty-first century Asia. There is no guarantee it would work; at least it would relieve the pressure on South Korea, which is being put in a very difficult position by its US ally and its Chinese economic partner. Creating a new security organization will face obstacles under the presidency of Joe Biden. As a general approach to foreign policy, Biden has indicated he would attach great importance to working with traditional US allies. In a conversation with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, Biden and his Japanese counterpart “discussed the U.S.-Japan alliance and affirmed its importance as the cornerstone of peace and prosperity in a free and open Indo-Pacific” (The White House, 2021a) and in a conversation with Moon Jae-in of South Korea, Biden stressed “his commitment to strengthening the United States-ROK alliance, which is the linchpin for peace and prosperity in Northeast Asia” (The White House, 2021b). Out of this sensibility has come a new defense cost-sharing agreement between Washington and Seoul as the United States moves to repair its tattered alliances with countries around the world. At the same time, Biden – or members of his administration – has indicated support for cooperation with larger groupings of countries. Indications of this are Biden’s statement during the presidential election campaign that “the United States will organize and host a global Summit for Democracy to renew the spirit and shared purpose of the nations of the free world” (Biden, 2020) and a statement by US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan that the United States wants to “carry forward and build on [the Quad] format, that mechanism, which we see as a foundation upon which to build substantial American policy in the Indo-Pacific region” (Sullivan, as quoted by Kim & Lee, 2021). On the face of it, these statements seem to express strong support for multilateralism. They are, however, reflective of a particular type of multilateralism in which cooperation is preferred between countries with common values and like-mindedness.

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What all this amounts to is the importance of agency and structure. At the agency level, the policies of the Biden administration with its emphasis on repairing alliances, working with normatively similar countries, and getting tough with China will have an important influence on the prospects for new forms of security governance. At the structural level, the existence of the United States’ “hub-and-spokes” system in Asia will limit the amount of change that is possible because of path-­ dependent effects. Similar considerations apply to China which has a strong leader in the person of Xi Jinping who seeks to rejuvenate the country and is influenced by a changing balance of power in Asia that is resulting in – or causing – the creation of its own “hub-and-spokes” system around the Belt and Road Initiative. In some ways, South Korea is a natural candidate to support a new broad-based security organization in Asia because of its difficult position between the United States and China. It could also have a moderating effect on “anti-China” sentiment in the Quad were it ever to join it. Part of what effects the future will be the next president of South Korea who will be decided in an election scheduled for March 2022.

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The White House (2021b, Feb 3). Readout of Joseph R.  Biden, Jr. call with President Moon Jae-in of the Republic of Korea. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-­room/statements-­ releases/2021/02/03/readout-­of-­president-­joseph-­r-­biden-­jr-­call-­with-­president-­moon-­jae-­in-­ of-­the-­republic-­of-­korea/. Accessed 18 Feb 2021. Tow, W. T. (2001). Asia-Pacific relations: Seeking convergent security. Cambridge University Press. U.S.  Bureau of Economic Analysis. (2020). https://www.bea.gov/data/intl-­trade-­investment/ international-­trade-­goods-­and-­services. Accessed 11 Oct 2020. U.S. Department of Defense. (2019, June 1). Indo-Pacific strategy report. Wang, H. (2017, Jan 18). Abe trying to paper over the cracks in U.S.’ regional alliance system. China Daily.  https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2017-­01/18/content_27983736.htm. Accessed 24 June 2020. White, H. (2013). The China choice: Why we should share power. Oxford University Press. Work, C. (2020, Aug 26). The US-South Korea alliance and the China factor. The Diplomat. https:// thediplomat.com/2020/08/the-­us-­south-­korea-­alliance-­and-­the-­china-­factor/. Accessed 24 Oct 2020. Xi, J. (2014, May 21). New Asian security concept for progress in security cooperation. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China. Yonhap. (2018, Nov 21). Pompeo: Inter-Korean cooperation should not outpace NK denuclearization. The Korea Times. http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2020/02/103_259040.html. Accessed 21 Nov 2018. Yonhap. (2019, Dec 17). Majority of South Koreans support alliance with U.S., negative on defense cost demands: poll. The Korea Times. https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/ nation/2019/12/205_280418.html. Accessed 18 Dec 2020. Zhou, Y. (2017). China’s partnership network versus the U.S. alliance system. China Quarterly of International Strategic Studies, 3(1), 1–18.

Chapter 4

Australia-US Alliance Since the Pivot: Consolidation and Hedging in Response to China’s Rise Jingdong Yuan

4.1  Introduction Australia and the United States have maintained an alliance relationship for seven decades. Formed during the early years of the Cold War, the alliance (officially known as The Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty or ANZUS Treaty when it was signed in 1951) has endured major changes in international politics and regional geopolitical shifts and remained one of the key pillars for security and prosperity of the two democratic countries. With the rise of China in the twentyfirst century and, in particular, since the 2008–2009 global financial crisis and the ascendance of Xi Jinping as the Chinese leader in 2012–13, the alliance has been presented with new challenges and opportunities. For Washington, with the gradual drawdown of the two costly wars in the Middle East and growing recognition of an increasingly assertive Beijing in the Indo-Pacific region as its strategic competitor, it is essential for the United States to refocus its diplomatic attention to this vital and vibrant hub of global trade and economic growth and maintain its primacy. For Canberra, the challenges and opportunities abound, in that it has to balance its economic ties with China while hedging against and, when need be, opposing Chinese behaviors that undermine a rules-based international order. Given the limitation of its own resources for defense, its alliance with the United States has become more important. The past decade has witnessed growing convergence of interests between Australia and the United States, which in turn has led Canberra and Washington to strengthen the alliance to make it more adaptive to the changing geostrategic environment in the region. Australia has responded to the Obama administration’s “Pivot J. Yuan (*) University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 T. Akaha et al. (eds.), Trump’s America and International Relations in the Indo-Pacific, Contributions to International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75925-4_4

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to Asia” strategy by expanding areas of security cooperation and increasing military interoperability with the United States within the alliance framework. At the same time, Canberra has also been engaged in promoting minilateral security alignment with the like-minded powers in the region and has sought to enhance its own defense capabilities through significant budget increases. Although Australian and US interests are largely aligned, they are not identical; nor are their priorities and approaches to specific issues. This is particularly the case for Canberra, as it has to juggle between two of its most consequential partners— China for Australia’s economic bottom line and the United States for Australia’s security. This may explain why Australian governments over the past decade have sought to “ride the two horses” in meeting its economic and security interests, a task that is becoming increasingly difficult to manage (Switzer, 2018). This dilemma has been further amplified with the Trump presidency (if not the administration itself) that treated US alliances in Asia in transactional terms, belittled intra-alliance consultation, and pursued tactics that pose entrapment risks for its allies, Australia included. This chapter reviews the Australia-US alliance with regard to its major programs and developments, and discusses its significance in terms of the impacts on Australian foreign and security policy, US rebalancing and the alliance’s role, and the ramifications on regional security and Australia’s relationship with China. It argues that both the Labour and Coalition governments have placed significant premium on the alliance with Washington based on their shared values as democracies and Australia’s growing awareness of the China challenge and the vital role of the United States in maintaining a rules-based regional order, and will continue to keep the alliance on the top of Canberra’s agenda in the coming years. At the same time, there are differences between Labour and Coalition regarding how best to deal with the rise of China and the attendant geoeconomic and geostrategic challenges, and the extent to which Australia should embrace the Indo-Pacific as its geographic destiny and vital sources of economic prosperity. Canberra will also be concerned with Washington’s ability to sustain the rebalance to the region, will continue to deal with its own budgetary constraints given the weak economy, and, most importantly, will have to face the increasingly difficult but important foreign policy challenge of keeping a delicate balance between alliance solidarity and its economic bottom line.

4.2  The Australia-US Alliance in Perspective Alliances emerge when states are driven either by balancing or bandwagoning considerations. For small states or even middle powers, alliances provide them with external balancing options to either protect themselves from perceived or real threats to their security or to advance common interests shared by members of such arrangements (Walt, 1987). Alliance formation, maintenance and strengthening, and dissolution can be explained by international relations theories, just as the latter can

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shed light on our understanding of states’ foreign policies (Duffield, 2018). Realism (and neorealism for that matter) offers powerful explanations of both the international and regional structures and balances of power states are situated in, and how existing and changing structures at the systemic level affect states’ perspectives on threats and their decisions on means to protect and advance their vital national interests. Clearly power is a key consideration in such context, especially where states’ internal options are limited, hence alliances become essential (Morgenthau, 1948; Waltz, 1979). One of the perennial security concerns for Australia is the impossible challenge of defending a vast continent-size island with a small population base, and the sense of isolation and remoteness, a geographical reality that has never been lost on politicians and policymakers. Australia’s vulnerability to security threats due to its geographic location and its unique endowments—a continent-size territory thinly populated but with an extensive coastline and vast areas to defend—have historically influenced the country’s statecraft and diplomacy, the key of which has always been to seek “great and powerful friends” for its security (Gyngell, 2017). This explains the origins of the US-Australia alliance (ANZUS), which marks its 70th anniversary in 2021 (Watt, 1970). Indeed, the realist understanding of both Australia’s view of international politics (anarchy) and its surroundings (far from its great and powerful friends—the UK before the Second World War and the United States after) has informed Australian defense strategy as one firmly anchored in alliances, its occasional debates on “self-reliance” notwithstanding (Lockyer, 2017; Frühling, 2014). At the same time, constructivism captures the complexity of Australia’s identity both as a Western democracy rooted in history and culture with shared values, and as an Indo-­ Pacific nation given its geostrategic location, where economic well-being and prosperity depend on maintaining stable relations with its neighbors and, in recent years, in particular, China. Compared to the United States’ other bilateral alliances in Asia, ANZUS is perhaps less well defined with regard to obligations with little institutional structure. Indeed, it has been pointed out that “the defense of the allies was never a focal point” (Frühling, 2016, p. 14). Despite the extensive interactions at the political and diplomatic levels, and strong rhetoric in alliance solidarity and commitment, there is significant ambiguity in ANZUS in terms of clearly defined and specifically articulated provisions and commitments, institutional structures within the treaty framework, and organizational matters ranging from joint military activities, access to and use of facilities, and specified command-and-control arrangements (Frühling, 2018). Nonetheless, Australia has demonstrated its unswerving support for all major US foreign policy actions by dispatching troops to the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. In recent years, Australia has also been among the first to commit air power and Special Forces to fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in northern Iraq (Gill, 2015). In addition, Australia has provided for the establishment of joint intelligence gathering and surveillance facilities on its territories, and in return has been granted access to intelligence and advanced US weapons systems (Ruby, 2020).

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The US-Australia alliance has remained strong seven decades after the signing of the 1951 ANZUS Treaty (Dean et al., 2016). ANZUS’s lack of institutional structure has been compensated for with growing Australia-US cooperation in the bilateral alliance context in the areas of security consultation such as the 2+2 dialogue, military engagement, intelligence sharing, and joint operations and exercises. A major general in the Australian Army now rotates in serving as the Deputy Commanding General-North, US Army Pacific under the Indo-Pacific Command (Blaxland,  2016; Silvers, 2019; U.S.  Indo-Pacific Command, 2020 ). In recent years, US-Australian joint military exercises have intensified, driven by Washington’s determination to maintain its predominant position in the Indo-Pacific region. Australia’s participation is part of a division of labor in US-Japan-Australia security cooperation in response to growing Chinese assertiveness in the region. The strengthened US-Australia alliance helps Canberra to elevate its own position in the South Pacific, as well as giving Australia a greater voice in regional affairs. The alliance has placed greater focus on the South Pacific as China’s activities grow, with Australia devoting more resources to support security cooperation with the Pacific island states (Colton, 2018). Whereas realism explains Canberra’s strong commitment to its alliance with the United States for security reasons, as a middle power, it supports multilateralism and has sought to contribute to the development of international and regional institutions. Indeed, Australia has always maintained that middle powers can play a more prominently role in regional and global affairs (Cooper et  al., 1993). This liberal institutionalist interpretation captures and in turn is reflected in Australian foreign policy beyond alliance politics. With the Cold War drawing to an end in the late 1980s, and with Australia seriously looking toward Asia for its economic future and diplomatic priorities, the alliance experienced periodic drifts. The concern over Soviet southern incursions was receding, and the potential benefits for Australia from growing economic prosperity in Asia became obvious. Canberra was instrumental in initiating such regional economic institutions as the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC), which led to Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and subsequently its first informal leadership summit in Seattle in 1993. Australia was also instrumental (together with Canada) in introducing the concept of cooperative security in the early 1990s. Canberra has supported the development of regional security institutions such as the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) but also pursued and promoted its own concepts of regional security architecture (Evans & Grant, 1991). When Kevin Rudd became Prime Minister in 2007, he proposed the idea of an active and creative middle power diplomacy—to lead, not to follow, based in Asia but with a global vision (Rudd, 2007). This renewed interest in middle power diplomacy was driven by both internal needs and external environments. As a middle power, Australia’s foreign policy orientations, especially when the Australian Labour Party (ALP) is in power, can be better explained by liberal institutionalism, where preferences for institutions have been given serious consideration in Canberra’s formulation of policies, even as the perceptions of the external security environments may have remained predominantly realist in their assessments (Wilkins, 2017). It is, therefore, not surprising that Rudd was actively

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promoting a more multilateralist approach to managing the security challenges in the region as he was a hardcore realist in his assessment and indeed issued warnings of the serious threat a rising China was posing. The controversial 2009 Australia defense white paper clearly reflects this apparent contradiction (Tubilewicz, 2010). Given Australia’s growing interests in and ties with the region, especially in economic terms, such scenarios require more active diplomacy. However, because it is an important member of the US-led regional security architecture and has extensive economic interests (eight of its top ten trading partners are Asian countries), there is a palpable ambivalence in Canberra’s policy toward Asia. On the one hand, extensive economic ties with the region clearly encourage a policy of further integration. On the other hand, given its western culture, political system and ideology, and geostrategic interests, Australia remains a core member of the Euro-American system. The latter consideration has at times constrained Canberra’s ability to pursue the former (Beeson, 2011). This balancing act is to hedge against China’s rise but not openly declaring hostility toward China; nor blindly following and tying itself to US anti-China strategy, therefore providing some freedom of space and action; an emphasis on interests and pragmatism rather than ideologies and rigid lean-to-one-­ side approaches. This explains both Canberra’s motivation for pursuing an active and creative middle power diplomacy, and the fundamental constraints it faces given its alliance with the United States and the emerging powers in the region (White, 2010). Clearly, there is a gap between Australia’s aspirations and the reality. In this context, both realism and liberal institutionalism can explain Australia’s threat perception and, hence, the need for power and security anchored in the US-Australia alliance; at the same time, its middle power identity and its economic interests provide incentives to support the development of regional institutions and participate in economic integration. Identity and shared values run deep in Australia’s attachment to its alliance with the United States as well. The ALP government under Julia Gillard (2010–2013) had enthusiastically endorsed the Obama Administration’s Pivot or rebalancing to Asia policy, but also announced that Australia’s future lies with the Asian century (Australian Government, 2012). In her speech at the joint session of the US Congress in March 2011, Gillard praised the alliance, and assured Washington that “you have a true friend down under” (Kenny, 2011). It was no coincidence that President Obama announced the US pivot to Asia in his speech to the Australian Parliament 8 months later (White House, 2011). The 2013 Australian national security strategy makes this emphatic statement about the alliance: “The Australia-United States Alliance remains our most important security relationship [and] an important anchor for peace and security in our region. … [It] increases Australia’s ability to protect itself and its interests by providing for: regular dialogue; joint training exercises; intelligence-sharing; access to defense technology; scope for complementary diplomacy; and research and development cooperation” (Australian Government, 2013). The Liberal-National Party Coalition won the September 2013 general election in Australia and Tony Abbott became the new Prime Minister. After he won the election, Abbott famously said that Australian foreign policy would be “more Jakarta, less Geneva,” a clear statement about the importance of the region (Wesley, 2013),

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as if to demonstrate the country’s new identity as a member of an emerging Asia. However, for reasons of both internal security and growing external challenges, ranging from the controversy over “turning back the boats,” the crisis in Ukraine, to territorial disputes amidst China’s rising power made it crystal clear that Washington must remain engaged in the region to ensure security and stability. And hence the elevated salience of the alliance that Australia has with the United States. At the same time, Canberra also has reached out to form security partnerships with other regional powers such as Japan and India in what is characterized as the “network of forces” in support of the postwar, US-led order in the Indo-Pacific (Bisley, 2020). Indeed, the Abbott government not only continued with the bipartisan tradition of maintaining a strong Australia-US alliance but also undertook new initiatives to further strengthen the six-decade ties between the two countries. These included enhanced bilateral military and security cooperation, greater coordination of policies at multilateral forums in response to global and regional challenges, and active support of US rebalancing efforts, including the Washington-led regional free trade negotiation such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). In many areas, the deepening of the alliance was reflected in the bilateral force posture agreement, a strong voice from Canberra supporting Washington’s response to Putin’s aggressive posture toward Ukraine and the growing threats from terrorism in the Middle East, all of which received generally high endorsement from the public (Alliance 21, 2015). However, economic challenges at home also imposed significant financial constraints on the Abbott government, resulting in continued low-level defense spending and, most noticeably, Canberra’s decision to join the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which the Obama administration had pressured Australia to not join (Murray, 2015). While Canberra appeared to waver in its solidarity with the United States given the economic interests, including the Australia-China Free Trade Agreement signed during this period, it remained committed to the alliance and this was because the more it became dependent on China on trade and investment, the greater it felt the need to support and strengthen the alliance to both reassure the United States and to safeguard its own security interests (Reilly, 2012). Australia and the United States began close cooperation in developing ballistic missile defenses. For Australia, changing technologies, especially the proliferation of medium- to long-range ballistic missiles, were posing increasing threats to its security (Taylor, 2014; Gill, 2015, p. 108). Canberra was careful though in making it known that “Australia does not advocate the development of national ballistic missile defense systems that would potentially diminish the deterrent value of the strategic nuclear forces of major nuclear power” (Department of Defence Australia, 2013). Canberra was also enhancing intelligence cooperation with the United States. Despite the Snowdon incident and criticisms of indiscriminate data collection and infringement on privacy, and Canberra’s own spat with Jakarta, the Abbott government remained committed to enhancing cooperation on intelligence gathering among the so-called “five eyes” countries—the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia (Kelly, 2014).

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The Abbott government, despite the budgetary constraints, nonetheless made efforts to meet ADF procurement needs with major purchase commitments. One of the biggest purchase decisions the government made during Abbott’s tenure was for a total of 72 fifth-generation fighter aircraft, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) for the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), at a price tag of $12.4 billion. This was an additional 58 to the original order of 14 (Nicholson, 2014a). Other major procurements, both made and planned, included communication satellites, air-born early warning and control aircraft, Seahawk Romeo helicopters, attack aircraft, and battlefield airlift aircraft, among others. Indeed, Australia became and remained the no. 1 destination of US arms exports, accounting for 10% during the 2009–2013 period. Since 2004, 67% of all Australian arms purchases have come from the United States (East-West Center, 2015). Between 2013 and 2017, Australia spent A$10 billion on US weapons systems and military equipment through the U.S.  Department of Defence Foreign Military Sales (FMS) programs (Greene, 2017).

4.3  Alliance in the Era of US-China Strategic Rivalry While the Australia-US alliance remains the anchor for Australia’s security, Canberra is faced with multiple challenges and uncertainties. The Trump administration’s America First policy and the fact that maintaining US primacy in the region have become more costly given China’s growing power and Beijing’s determination to expand its influence if not dominance, blindly believing that alliance is the only means to secure Australian interests is becoming more tenuous. At the same time, Australia’s economic dependence on China also means that unconditionally following the United States for the sake of alliance solidarity at a time of growing US-China tension and potential military confrontation will incur significant costs. On annual trade between Australia and China, Canberra notes, China is Australia’s largest two-way trading partner in goods and services, accounting for 27.4 per cent of our trade with the world. Two-way trade reached a record $252 billion in 2019 (up 17.3 per cent year on year). Our exports to China grew by 23.4 per cent to reach the highest level ever ($169 billion), driven by demand for Australian iron ore, coal, and LNG. China remained our biggest services export market, particularly in education (over 212,000 students in 2019, a 3 per cent increase year on year) and tourism (over 1.4 million Chinese visitors in 2019) (DFAT, 2020a).

Australians are clearly conscious of the fact that today China is its most important trading partner. But the challenge is how to manage an increasingly critical economic relationship while maintaining and even strengthening a solid security alliance of seven decades. As a junior partner, there is perhaps limited scope for Canberra to maneuver just as the government must do its uttermost to advance both its economic and security interests (Kelly, 2013). As mentioned above, Canberra initially backed away from joining the newly launched AIIB because of heavy pressure from Washington, not out of national interests, which would dictate that Australia be part of this new institution. It was only in late March 2015, when the

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deadline for being a founding member was approaching and in the wake of many Western countries choosing to join, that the Abbott government changed its mind in the last minute. This should have been a straightforward decision in the first place, given Canberra’s avowed commitment to an Asian century, but the Obama administration’s strong opposition to the AIIB and Canberra’s internal deliberations on how to balance between solidarity with its ally and its economic interests complicated and delayed the final call to join the investment bank (Debell, 2014). From time to time, Canberra finds itself walking on a tight rope, trying at once to maintain an outstanding and most valuable military alliance with the United States, while keeping and repairing its bilateral ties with Beijing for economic reasons. Interestingly, this apparent dilemma in choices can in fact be explained in realist logic. If realism is all about power in an anarchic international system, power itself is not just an abstract concept; the economic foundation of power has long been recognized. And Asia increasingly presents challenges for middle-range and small states in the region. In power transition terms, the United States remains a dominant military and to some extent still a significant economic power; however, China is increasingly becoming a major force and center of gravity in the region’s economic activities (Ikenberry, 2016). This is where Australia finds itself. The past few years have already witnessed an increasingly strained bilateral relationship with diplomatic spats over a number of issues ranging from political interference to commercial disputes between Australia and China, and Canberra chose to side with the United States and protect its sovereignty, in spite of potential loss to its economy (Grigg & Smith, 2020). Under such circumstances, any further escalation of tensions between Beijing and Washington could only add to the already severe rupture in Australia-China relations. Indeed, from a realist perspective, one would expect Washington to use its military, economic, and diplomatic resources, and rally regional allies and partners, in a concerted effort to brunt if not contain the rise of China to maintain its primacy in the region. This process preceded the Trump administration, although Washington was still hoping that it could shape the regional strategic environment and, for that matter, Beijing’s intentions and behaviors, in line with the United States’ interests (Tellis et al., 2020; Denmark, 2020). The Trump administration adopted a very hawkish policy toward China, launching frontal assaults on multiple fronts—from trade, technology, to maritime rivalry in the Indo-Pacific. Discarding four decades of China policy supported by eight US administrations of both parties, Washington has termed China as a strategic rival determined to unseat the United States as the region’s predominant power. After assuming office, President Trump used punitive measures such as high tariffs on Chinese exports, bans on Chinese tech giants such as Huawei, and threats to decouple US-China economic ties altogether, as well as increase arms sales to Taiwan, strengthen military alliances and security partnerships in the region, and increase its own military activities (Goldstein, 2020; Friedberg, 2020; Davis & Wei, 2020). The Pentagon is sending a clear message to the Chinese that the United States is determined to maintain a free and open Indo-Pacific and will support its allies and friends.

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This strategy is clearly spelled out in the 2019 Pentagon Indo-Pacific Strategy Report (Department of Defence, 2019; Starr & Browne, 2020). The impending great power showdown between the world’s reigning superpower and a fast rising one has analysts ominously predicting a potential Thucydides’ Trap in US-China great-power rivalry. The South China Sea aside, the Taiwan Strait, the Korean Peninsula, the Senkaku-Diaoyu Islands, and the two island chains all present themselves as potential hot spots for US-China military confrontation (Morgan and Chan, 2018; Allison, 2017). Growing US-China tensions and the likelihood of a future military confrontation present America’s allies and friends in the region with serious dilemmas. On the one hand, they would prefer a strong and stable US military presence as security assurance and deterrence against China’s power play and intimidation; on the other hand, they worry about both Washington’s staying power and its unilateral actions not coordinated with its allies and partners. The latter are feeling uncomfortable for being made to choose between the United States and China (White, 2012; Stromseth, 2019). Canberra clearly has great stakes in how Sino-US relations will evolve. In the short to medium term, any serious disputes and major disruptions in the South China Sea can seriously affect Australia’s economic interests. But more seriously, as US-China tensions deepen and with any scenarios of military showdown, Australia will be called upon to support its American ally, directly or indirectly, especially where the US military plans and actually makes use of its assets in Australia-based depots, joint facilities, and bases, including those in the country’s northern territories and West Australia (WA), as these will be seen by China as an essential part of US military operations. This becomes especially imperative as China develops and deploys intermediate-range ballistic missiles such as DF-26s (4,000 km) that place Guam within range. Australian military bases and facilities thus offer US forces both a safe haven and staging ground to project its power to Western Pacific. This was the rationale behind the Obama administration announcement in late 2011 of US Marines rotational deployment up to 2500 troops to be based in Darwin. This was subsequently confirmed with the US Force Posture Initiative (USFPI), which also includes US Air Force and committed the two countries to spend A$2 billion on infrastructure (Earley, 2020). At a time when the Australia-US alliance is being strengthened due to perceived and real Chinese threats to their shared interests, the greater risk is that Australia may be entrapped in a military conflict not of its own making but then is obligated to support its alliance partner and, as a result, puts its own security in danger. This is the alliance security dilemma (Snyder, 1984). If history tells us anything, Canberra is aware that while the United States and Australia share many interests and both consider the alliance as a valuable means of security, the weight they place on the alliance varies, and their interests are not always perfectly aligned. Their conflicts with China also are different. For Australia, economic interests remain strong and vital, and clearly Canberra wants to maintain an environment where bilateral economic ties can continue, without being negatively affected by the deteriorating diplomatic ties. For Washington, conflicts with Beijing appear to be all-encompassing, covering economic as well as security elements of bilateral relations. And the United

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States under the Trump administration was more willing to resort to punitive measures against China. These divergent interests and preferences affect the Australia-US alliance with differences sometimes publicized in the open. Understandably, Washington considers it imperative that the alliance should act in solidarity with regard to China, a conviction that may not always be shared in Canberra when it comes to economic ties, given the latter’s extensive trade relationship with China (Edel & Lee, 2019; Curran, 2020a). That Australia has maintained a close alliance relationship with the United States in itself does not really concern Chinese analysts, many of whom readily point out why Canberra needs Washington for its own security. What is at issue, though, is the extent to which Australia not only follows US policy but also provides critical support to America’s military operations that pose direct threats to Chinese interests. Most important is the question of how deeply Australia will be involved in and facilitate the US military presence and redeployment in the region, and even form a part of the American defense posture and networks. Specifically, Australia can provide ideal strategic depth and safe havens for US military deployments, logistic support, communication, and control nodes, and an ideal outpost—and launch pad—to project US power into the Indo-Pacific region, including the South China Sea while remaining secure, beyond the reach of Chinese ballistic and cruise missiles. The various reports of plans to upgrade and expand airfields and naval facilities in northern and north-western Australia over the past few years only heighten such suspicions and concerns. For Beijing, if those reports are true, that will be a step too far (Scrafton, 2020; Yuan, 2014). Beijing has implicitly deployed wedge strategies—a combination of rewards and punitive measures—to undermine and weaken US-led alliances and the security partnerships in the region (Izumikawa, 2013). While the prevailing discussion and conventional wisdom in both western official documents and academic literature describe how China’s rise presents serious threats to the United States’ interests and the security of its allies, what is often missed out or downplayed is the fact that China faces what it views as potential encirclement of US alliances and emerging security arrangements Washington has fostered in recent years. This has motivated Beijing to use the wedge strategies to neutralize, weaken, and eventually break down US alliance systems in Asia (Huang, 2020; Chai, 2020). The logic of such strategies is informed by questioning the assumption when discussing US alliances in Asia that Washington’s allies are committed to standing up to China’s assertive behaviors in their defense of rules-based order in Asia. However, in reality, alliances are often burdened with entrapment and abandonment problems, for example, Washington’s concerns over being dragged into conflicts with China by its allies, while the latter worry the United States may not be completely committed to their defense, or equally as worrisome, further reinforced by the Trump administration’s unilateral policies and actions without consultation with its allies, but which could force them to make difficult and potentially costly choices (Buttigieg & Gordon, 2020).

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4.4  W  hither the Alliance? Past Lessons and Future Prospects In a recent study, Australian defense analysts explain why the US-Australian alliance remains a keystone of Canberra’s defense policy: “Nearing a spring 65 years of age, the alliance between Australia and the U.S., underpinned by the formal ANZUS Treaty of 1951, continues to be a central part of Australian defense and security thinking and an instrument of American policy in the Asia-Pacific” (Davies et al., 2014, p. 5). Another recent report notes: “The United States and Australia share historical ties from the 19th century. The two countries fought alongside each other in the First World War and have been formal allies since 1951. … Both are G-20 nations and share key values including strong democratic institutions, the rule of law, adherence to international norms, and openness to immigration” (East-West Center, 2015, p.  5). Clearly, this is an all-encompassing relationship with shared values, strong economic ties, and common security interests. Alliance therefore is critical to Australia’s security and it also offers other benefits to Canberra: access to intelligence, advanced weapons systems, and the opportunities to train and operate together with the world’s most powerful military. Since 1989, Australia has been designated as a “major non-NATO ally” by the US Congress and as a result it enjoys close cooperation in defense research and development with America and is given the same level of exemption from US Arms Export Control Act as other NATO member states. This enables Canberra to both be in possession of advanced platforms and enhance interoperability with the US forces. The US-Australia Defense Trade Cooperation Treaty allows Canberra greater access to advanced US defense systems and technologies and lately Australia has been chosen as the regional base to service F-35s (Nicholson, 2014b; Thayer, 2015). By and large, the US-Australian alliance has received bipartisan support over the past seven decades, whether the governments are headed by Coalition (Liberal and National Parties) or the Australian Labour Party (ALP). For the past ten years, from Kevin Rudd to Scott Morrison, Australian governments have normally endorsed the alliance policies of their predecessors, supported and even expanded areas of cooperation with the United States, from the rotation of Marine Corps personnel, enhanced aircraft and additional naval cooperation through Northern and West Australia, to missile defense and space cooperation. Canberra and Washington have recently signed an MOU on the relocation and establishment of a jointly operated US C-Band space surveillance radar at the Harold E. Holt Naval Communication Station in Western Australia and the future relocation of a highly advanced US Space Surveillance Telescope to Australia (Thayer, 2015). Australia and the United States reportedly will invest $2 billion in aircraft maintenance, support facilities, fuel storage, training, and ranges in the Northern Territories in support of US Marine and Air Force activities (Robson, 2019). While there is significant bipartisan support of the alliance, the alliance’s role in Australia’s overall foreign and security policy, and in particular with regard to such critical questions as middle power diplomacy, regional multilateral institutions and

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multilateralism in general, and dealing with China, Australia’s political parties tend to place different emphases and display divergent preferences. Indeed, liberal institutionalism provides some insight into key residual aspects of Australian foreign policy traditions. The Labour Party overall has tended to be more receptive to multilateralism, and to a better balance between alliance solidarity and active, middle power diplomacy (Cohen, 2020). On balance, Australia finds it beneficial to engage in multilateral or minilateral institutions such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Quad, and ASEAN-led arrangements and efforts from ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) to East Asia Summit (EAS). However, Canberra (and Coalition governments in particular) has always been careful in viewing multilateral institutions at best as parallel, rather than alternative, to its alliance with the United States as the pathways to security and prosperity. On China specifically, ALP governments have been more inclined to engagement than confrontation. For instance, former Prime Minister Paul Keating has been a consistent critic of the Coalition governments’ alliance policy, calling for Canberra to pursue a more independent and balanced foreign policy. Likewise, Senator Penny Wong, opposition shadow foreign minister, also advocates a careful and nuanced approach to managing Australia’s alliance relationship with the United States and dealing with the rise of China by engaging and promoting the region’s multilateral institutions, including those of which China is a member. It is hoped that through these institutions, cooperation could be facilitated, fostered, and expanded to both reduce tensions and deal with common problems (Karp, 2016; Wong, 2020). One critical issue for Australia is whether its alliance obligations would automatically involve it in any conflicts that also involve either the United States or Japan, with which China has disputes. The challenge is how to maintain alliance solidarity without raising unnecessary expectations, especially where Australian interests are not directly affected, and any involvement could harm its interests. For instance, Article IV of the ANZUS Treaty states: “Each Party recognizes that an armed attack in the Pacific Area on any of the Parties would be dangerous to its own peace and safety and declares that it would act to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional processes” (Bisley & Taylor, 2014, p. 22). There is an implicit rationale that the maintenance of the alliance requires Australian participation in US-led military operations and this is Washington’s expectation as well. Lost in this rationale, as critics would point out, are the potential costs that could incur as a consequence of Australia following the United States’ lead to military conflicts without carefully weighing the various options (O’Connor, 2014; Bisley & Taylor, 2014, pp. 25–26). The late Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser became one of the most vocal critics of the alliance. He argued that while in the past the alliance served Australian national interests, it no longer does. Instead, it has become a major threat to Australia’s security in the sense that it deprives Canberra of its ability to make independent foreign policy, and it can drag Australia into war not of its choosing. “We have effectively ceded to America the ability to decide when Australia goes to war” (Fraser, 2015, p.  19; Fraser  with  Roberts, 2014). He was concerned, for instance, that the Pine Gap, which used to be for surveillance primarily, now could

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be used by the United States to target Chinese nuclear arsenals in times of war. ANZUS for him was a mechanism for allied consultation; but as a great power and the senior partner in the alliance, Washington would pursue whatever it considered its national interests, and could well drag Australia into military conflicts, regardless of what Canberra might think its obligations are (Manne, 2014). Despite these issues and the quite tumultuous start of the Trump administration for Canberra’s taste, the Australian government decided that its security interests and, hence, the importance of the alliance were much more important considerations than the agony caused by Trump’s unpredictability and less than polished handling of alliance relationships. If anything, Canberra doubled down on further strengthening the alliance and deepening the relationship with its “great and powerful friend.” This was for Scott Morrison as much as for Malcolm Turnbull, notwithstanding the latter’s disastrous first telephone call with Trump (Probyn, 2020). This realist reckoning is easy to understand. The past 4 years where the Trump presidency wreaked much havoc with America’s alliances were also a period of growing Chinese assertiveness and coercion, posing serious threats to the regional order that Australia values, and increasingly also to its sovereignty and economic interests (Tow & Limaye, 2016; Taylor, 2016; Beeson & Bloomfield, 2019). The challenge for Canberra is that for the past decade, despite an economic slow-­ down, Chinese power has continued to grow at a time of relative US decline, and Beijing’s foreign policy has become ever more overt and assertive. The Trump administration’s pursuit of an America First policy and its disregard of alliances raised serious questions of the reliability of the alliance system in protecting Australian national interests given their differences in how best to manage the China challenge (Curran, 2020b). Prominent Australian defense analysts such as Hugh White have called for reassessments of the country’s vital interests, capacities, and the resource needs for its armed forces, defense posture, and equipment. In fact, it becomes increasingly untenable for Australia to continuously maintain that it “does have to choose between America and China.” Canberra’s ideal world where it can rely on China to get rich and depend on the United States to be secure can no longer be sustained. Clearly, Australia must become more serious in its own defense, and seek security cooperation with other regional powers such as Japan and India to promote a rules-based regional order (White, 2017, 2019; Dean et al., 2019; Chacko & Wilson, 2020). Constructivism tells us that countries form and reinforce collective identities and uphold shared values. In alliances, apart from material considerations of military and economic resources, power, and capabilities, culture, history, political systems, etc. can be important common values that bind alliance members. These are clearly reflected in Australians’ views of the alliance and their faith and confidence in the “great and powerful friend” of theirs. For instance, Australian public opinion toward the alliance has been quite consistent and supportive. The Lowy polls conducted over the past decade support this conclusion, including toward the controversial Marine rotation in Darwin. In the 2020 polling, 78% of Australians consider the alliance as either very or fairly important to the country’s security while 88% support the Quad. However, the public have been more cautious toward Australian

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involvement in military action led by the United States, for instance, in the Middle East, with only about 40% of those polled indicating support. However, a majority (60%) disagree that the country’s alliance means that Australia is obliged to support US military action in Asia (Gill, 2015, p. 97; Kassam, 2020). While the majority would not accept former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser’s argument for severing the alliance, it could be argued they also hope that Canberra can influence the alliance to serve Australian interests. A minority indeed worry about where the alliance might take Australia if Canberra is so aligned with Washington on defense and security matters (Medcalf, 2014). The alliance is not just of a military nature, however important and critical it is. The formal ties at the highest political level, institutional links within but more prominently supplementing the ANZUS framework, and just decades of working together have powerful path-dependent effects that enable Canberra to withstand occasional “shocks”, such as the Clinton administration’s decline to offer military assistance during the 1999 East Timor crisis and more recently the rather disruptive and unpredictable Trump policies (Beeson & Bloomfield, 2019). The two countries share many common interests. These include shared values such as respect for democratic principles; rules-based international and regional order; cultural affinity; strategic interests in pushing back Chinese assertiveness in the region and in maintaining a free and open Indo-Pacific; and a very close economic relationship (Cox & O’Conner, 2020). The last point has often been used by Australian politicians to emphasize the point that the United States, rather than China, is Australia’s largest economic partner. For instance, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop in her January 2014 visit to the United States made a point that America, not China, was Australia’s top economic partner. As of 2019, US investments in Australia were at A$984 billion, 40% more than its total investments in China and directly responsible for 7% of Australia’s GDP in that year, with 320,000 people employed in US majority-owned companies. Meanwhile, toward the end of 2019, Australian investments in the United States totaled nearly A$837 billion (Deliotte Australia, 2020; Holden & Mondschein, 2016; King, 2016). On the eve of the 30th Australia-US Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN) scheduled in late July 2020 in Washington D.C., Australia’s foreign affairs and defense ministers published an article in The Australian reaffirming the two countries’ shared values, history, interests, and natural affiliation and looked forward to enhanced military cooperation in interoperability, intelligence gathering, and joint training, at a time of uncertainty (Payne & Reynolds, 2020). The joint statement released after the meeting emphasized that the Indo-Pacific is the focus of the alliance, and the two allies are working with other regional partners and the Five Eyes partners as part of the networked structure to support an inclusive and rules-based regional order. The joint statement also listed areas of cooperation between the two allies, from force posture, joint military exercises/training, and power projection to the United States’ access to Australian facilities, and closer collaboration in defense innovation and development (DFAT, 2020b). The meeting also revealed a divergence between Canberra and Washington in terms of priorities and approaches: Australia seeks a more Indo-Pacific-focused approach and where the alliance can

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make better contributions, whereas the US approach remains confrontational and China focused (Ford & Townshend, 2020). The alliance is not without its strains and tests. Given China’s significance as a major trading partner and increasingly also a key investor in Australia, Canberra has always been careful in managing its relationship with Beijing. Especially on economic issues, Australia has at times resisted US pressure and adopted policies it considers will advance its interests. Again, the AIIB case is illustrative. While initially the Abbott government chose to not join citing national security reasons, with the United States’ major European allies’ decisions to participate, Canberra’s position also shifted, not wanting to be left out of a major source of capital and the opportunity to participate and affect the development of this new institution (Walker, 2014). Indeed, Canberra and Washington have not always been on the same page on a number of other regional issues. Twice, in 2004 and again in 2014, two senior Australian ministers raised questions about whether ANZUS automatically obliges it to get involved in Taiwan conflicts. Likewise, unlike in the past, Canberra may not be willing to engage in missions beyond its own region. Increasingly, Australia views the US-led alliance systems in the region as constituting a network of bilateral alliances, alignments, and partnerships. ANZUS should fit into and complement it and support Australia’s regional engagement efforts (Carr, 2020; Wainwright, 2016). The need to demonstrate that Canberra pursues its own national interests and has an independent foreign policy has informed its delicate approach to alliance management. While sharing some similar positions with Washington, ranging from the South China Sea to Hong Kong, Australian policies do not always follow in lockstep with those the Trump administration wanted its ally to also adopt. The recent statements by Australian foreign and defense ministers at the AUSMIN are clearly reflective of Canberra’s determination to follow its own scripts on the issues of economic decoupling and freedom of navigation patrols (Kelly, 2020; Collinson & Laurenceson, 2020). While Australia shares common values, interests, and concerns with a number of countries in the region, and indeed some analysts have proposed that these can be the foundation to build and strengthen minilateral arrangements such as the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Medcalf, 2020), it remains to be seen if Australia’s regional partners are reliable, capable, and willing to come to its assistance should it face serious security threats, and when the US alliance can no longer provide or proves to be inadequate to provide such assistance or guarantee in the face of growing Chinese challenges (White, 2020). Australia, like the region’s other US allies and security partners, faces serious choices in a region increasingly defined by a bifurcated structure—one with China as the center of economic dynamics and one anchored in a still strong but also ambivalent United States for security guarantees (Castillo & Downes, 2020). The Biden administration’s renewed pledge for closer consultation with allies and partners in the region, in contrast to Trump’s unpredictable and inconsistent approach to alliance management, has restored some confidence in Canberra. Washington’s commitment to stand up on behalf of its allies and the First Quad Leaders’ Summit provide further indication of how the new US administration intends to respond to the China challenge (Campbell & Doshi, 2021;

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The Age, 2021). While Biden’s Asia team offers reassurance of a careful and informed regional policy, some of the issues regarding the United States’ staying power remain, not the least because Washington’s priorities remain primarily domestic—controlling the Covid pandemic and restoring American economy (USSC and Perth USAsia Centre, 2021). Indeed, recent analyses have suggested that America no longer enjoys military primacy in the Indo-Pacific, with current defense spending, force structure, and procurement inadequate in preparing the transition from antiterrorism/insurgence to great power competition. In other words, there is a misalignment between Washington’s strategic ends (e.g., the new Indo-­ Pacific Strategy and the Free and Open Indo-Pacific) and the available means, not to mention the disruptive and unpredictable nature of the Trump administration policy with detrimental impacts on the United States’ Asian alliances, including that with Australia. This deeply worries Canberra (Townshend et al., 2019). Some Australian analysts are already calling Canberra to seriously reconsider the defense posture it has maintained since the end of WWII, and to develop a more independent and strengthened self-defense capability. The recent Australian Defence Strategic Update (DSU) in a way begins to address some of these issues. The Morrison government has committed A$270 billion in defense procurement for the next 10 years, focusing on such platforms as long-range anti-ship missiles, hypersonic weapons, underwater surveillance systems, and space and cyber capabilities, among others. In addition, the Australian defense forces will also be strengthened and restructured to enhance their deterrence and power projection capabilities (Macmillan & Greene, 2020).

4.5  Conclusion Australia has always been in need of “great and powerful friends”—Great Britain before, and the United States after the Second World War—given its own unique geographic location and a relatively small population. Indeed, Australia has benefited from a US-dominated regional order for the past seven decades. However, that order is undergoing fundamental transformation. With China’s rise, the economic component has shifted with the Chinese economy becoming the engine of growth and the largest trading partner for most countries in the region. When US-China relations were stable, Australia seemed to have had the best of two worlds—security guarantee from the United States and economic prosperity through trade with China, but the changing geostrategic landscape where strategic rivalry between Beijing and Washington is on the rise and in the open, whether Canberra can continue to “ride two horses” at the same time becomes increasingly questionable. Australia and the United States have maintained a strong alliance relationship for seven decades, and this strong relationship will likely continue as the two countries face future challenges (McDonald & Tan, 2021). While different in their preferences and priorities and faced with an ever-changing geostrategic landscape over the past decade, both the ALP and Coalition governments have maintained

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bipartisan approaches to alliance management. Most prominent has been Canberra’s strong support of US security policy as advocated through Washington’s new Indo-­ Pacific Strategy, which has continued and expanded the rebalancing-to-Asia posture launched by the Obama administration, and greater cooperation in the defense areas, including allowing the United States access to Australian defense facilities beyond and in addition to the Marine rotations in Darwin. At the same time, Canberra has also sought to maintain a stable relationship with China. It remains confident that it can manage an increasingly tenuous diplomatic relationship while at the same time preserving economic ties with Beijing. This task has become more challenging as Australia continues to strengthen its alliance with the United States and could be entrapped in US-initiated military operations aimed at China. A critical task for Canberra in the coming years will be to manage its vital security relationship with the United States without unnecessarily alienating China and compromising its own fundamental national interests. It remains to be seen if Canberra is up to the challenge. International relations theories can help us understand Canberra’s foreign policy in general and its approaches to the alliance in particular. It is clear from the above discussion that no single theory can capture the complexities of Australia’s perspectives of the world and assessments of regional geopolitics, the domestic dynamics and processes affecting ends-means calculation and formulation of specific policies, and the change and continuity in seven decades of the alliance but more critically, the challenges and opportunities Australian governments of both political persuasions have faced. Clearly, realism (or neorealism) has been the predominant lens through which Australia views the world and assesses its changing environments, given its unique geographic location, a continent-size territory, and a relatively small population. Security has always been front and center on the minds of policymakers, and power and capacity to defend itself, either through internal and external balancing efforts, have remained a core element and guiding principle for national security policy. However, the concern over the loss of its autonomy as a junior partner in an alliance arrangement over which Canberra has typically followed the US lead has endeared and encouraged the Australian government to pursue supplementary strategies in addition to its alliance with the United States. These include multilateral institutions, both related to the region’s security architecture and its economic prosperity. Canberra has made important contributions to those institutions and continue to work with the region’s other powers to respond to and manage the challenges the partners share. Clearly, liberal institutionalism continues to have great appeal and remains the preferred intellectual guide, especially for the ALP (although as the opposition party they have complained the overly hard-power and hard-edged approaches adopted by the current coalition government). Constructivism highlights how closely shared identity and values play an important part in continuing to foster and strengthen the alliance, notwithstanding occasional difficulties and differences. They help to preserve the core values of the alliance that provides security for Australia but bilateral interactions certainly go beyond military and defense matters. They also explain how the two

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countries—Australia and the United States—work as like-minded powers in the region to promote rules-based order at the international and regional level. However, Australia’s geographic identity as an Indo-Pacific nation with significant economic ties with the region has also at times compelled Canberra to adopt hedging strategies for both security and prosperity. This has proved to be the most challenging aspect of its foreign policy making—an increasingly impossible balancing act of riding two horses.

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Morgan, W., & Chan, M. (2018, Dec 13). How U.S.-China tensions could get a lot worse. Politico https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/13/us-­china-­south-­china-­sea-­disputes-­1061811 Morgenthau, H. (1948). Politics among nations: The struggle for power and peace. Alfred A. Knopf. Murray, L. (2015, March 29). Australia ignore U.S. to join Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The Australian Financial Review. Nicholson, B. (2014b). Our bases win joint strike fighter repair role. The Australian, Dec. 19. Nicholson, B. (2014a). $12.4bn fighter deal sets defense record. The Australian, April 23. O’Connor, B. (2014, Nov 5). Australia too ready to forget costs of U.S. wars. Sydney Morning Herald. Payne, M., & Reynolds, L. (2020, July 24). Australia’s U.S. ties a union of strength and shared values. The Australian. Probyn, A. (2020). Trump’s presidency has forced Australia to ask some fundamental questions. ABC Analysis. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-­11-­01/trump-­forced-­australia-­to-­ask-­ fundamental-­questions/12831402. Accessed 16 Nov 2020. Reilly, J. (2012). Counting on China? Australia’s strategic response to economic interdependence. Chinese Journal of International Politics, 5(4), 369–394. Robson, S. (2019, Oct 21). U.S. military presence in northern Australia will grow, former defense official says. Stars & Stripes. Ruby, F. (2020). Silent partners: U.S. bases in Australia. Australian Foreign Affairs, 10, 29–53. Rudd, K. (2007). Leading, not following: The renewal of Australian middle power diplomacy. The Sydney Papers, 19(1), 1–13. Scrafton, M. (2020, Feb 27). What do the Chinese think of the U.S.-Australian alliance? The Conversation. https://johnmenadue.com/mike-­scrafton-­what-­do-­the-­chinese-­think-­of-­the-­us-­ australian-­alliance/. Accessed 29 Oct 2020. Silvers, J. (2019). U.S. Army Pacific holds ceremony honoring Australian generals. Snyder, G. (1984). The security dilemma in alliance politics. World Politics, 36(4), 461–495. Starr, B., & Browne, R. (2020, May 15). U.S. increases military pressure on China as tensions rise over pandemic. CNN, https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/14/politics/us-­china-­military-­pressure/ index.html. Stromseth, J. (2019). Don’t make us choose: Southeast Asia in the Throes of US-China rivalry. The New Geopolitics Asia. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. https://www.brookings. edu/wp-­content/uploads/2019/10/FP_20191009_dont_make_us_choose.pdf Switzer, T. (2018, June 27). Australia’s choice: Chinese trade – or American security? The Spectator. https://www.spectator.com.au/2018/07/australias-­choice-­chinese-­trade-­or-­american-­security/. Taylor, R. (2014, June 13). U.S. and Australia to cooperate on Asian missile-defense plans. Wall Street Journal. Taylor, B. (2016). Unbreakable alliance? ANZUS in the Asian century. Asian Politics & Policy, 8(1), 75–85. Tellis, A., Szalwinski, A., & Wills, M. (Eds.). (2020). Strategic Asia 2020: U.S.-China competition for global influence. The National Bureau of Asian Research. Thayer, C. (2015, March 31–April 1). Australia, the ANZUS alliance and U.S. rebalancing to the Asia-Pacific. Keynote paper presented at the International Conference on Australia-Asia Relations under Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Taipei: National Cheng-chi University. The Age. (2021, March 16). Quad a big step up for Australia. https://www.theage.com.au/world/ asia/quad-­a-­big-­step-­up-­for-­australia-­20210316-­p57b33.html. Accessed 18 March 2021. Tow, W., & Limaye, S. (2016). What’s China got to do with it? U.S. alliances, partnerships in the Asia-Pacific. Asian Politics & Policy, 8(1), 7–26. Townshend, A., Thomas-Noone, B., & Steward, M. (2019, August). Averting crisis: American strategy, military spending and collective defence in the Indo-Pacific. The United States Studies Centre. Tubilewicz, C. (2010). The 2009 defense white paper and the Rudd government’s response to China’s rise. Australian Journal of International Affairs, 45(1), 149–157.

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Chapter 5

The Russia-US-China Strategic Triangle in the Asia-Pacific Artyom Lukin

5.1  Introduction It makes little sense to investigate the Russia-US bilateral relations in the Asia-­ Pacific for the simple reason that such relations barely exist, even despite the two countries being neighbors across the Bering Strait. Since the Second World War, Russian-American strategic interaction has been primarily centered on Europe, which remains the case today. The Middle East (Syria), Central Asia (Afghanistan), and Latin America (Venezuela) can be regarded as secondary areas for contemporary Russia-US politics. In contrast, East Asia hardly registers in bilateral dealings between Washington and Moscow. This is mainly explained by Russia’s posture in the region, which is strictly defensive. Even though Russia possesses an extensive Pacific Ocean coast, its presence in the Pacific is quite tenuous in demographic and economic terms, with the Russian Far East numbering just over 6 million residents and accounting for roughly 5% of Russia’s GDP. Russia also lacks naval power to project force in a predominantly maritime region. Moscow does not seek any geopolitical expansion in the Asia-Pacific, focusing instead on reducing vulnerabilities of the Russian Far East so as to preclude risks of losing sovereign control over Russia’s eastern territories. Moscow’s lack of geopolitical ambitions and its limited leverage in the Asia-­ Pacific allow Washington to treat Russia almost as an afterthought when dealing with the region. This was the case under the previous US administrations and it did Some parts of this chapter draw upon Artyom Lukin. (2020). The Russia-China entente and its future. International Politics. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41311-­020-­00251-­7 A. Lukin (*) School of Regional and International Studies, Far Eastern Federal University, Vladivostok, Russia

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 T. Akaha et al. (eds.), Trump’s America and International Relations in the Indo-Pacific, Contributions to International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75925-4_5

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not change under Trump. That said, Russia is still a great power, largely owing to its formidable military—especially nuclear—capabilities. There are only two other great powers in the contemporary international system—the United States and China. What position Moscow takes in the unfolding competition between Washington and Beijing is a matter that cannot be ignored by either player. This is a strategic triangle, a reincarnation, of sorts, of the US-USSR-PRC triangle that came into being in the early 1970s. This time, however, Moscow, not Beijing, is the least powerful pole in the great-power constellation. Despite being the lesser among the three great powers, Moscow’s strategic choices matter. If Russia aligns with Beijing against Washington, which is what is actually happening now, it will inevitably have implications both at the level of the global international systems and at the level of the crucial regional subsystems, including East Asia. This makes Moscow a factor in the Asia-Pacific strategic game whether Washington acknowledges it or not. This chapter argues that US-Russia contemporary relations in the Asia-Pacific need to be considered through the prism of the Moscow-Washington-Beijing strategic triangle. Therefore, this chapter begins with a discussion of the triangle’s emergence and development and then proceeds to examine its current state, paying special attention to how it applies in the Asia-Pacific context. It looks at the growth of strategic ties between Russia and China in economic and military areas, much of it driven by their shared hostility toward the United States. This chapter argues that the level of the Russo-Chinese alignment can be characterized as a quasi-alliance, or entente, and may at some point rise to a de facto, or even formal, alliance. This chapter also assesses the impact of the Russia-China alignment on East Asia, where Moscow increasingly collaborates with Beijing as a supporting actor. This chapter further discusses the United States’ response to the Sino-Russian axis during the Trump administration and concludes with some predictions on how the great-power triangle might evolve under the Biden administration.

5.2  T  he Metamorphoses of the Moscow-Washington-Beijing Triangle: From Brezhnev, Mao, and Nixon to Putin, Xi, and Trump The strategic triangle composed of Moscow, Washington, and Beijing is already five decades old.1 It came into being in the early 1970s, when the United States and China formed a quasi-alliance to counter what they perceived as the shared threat from the geopolitically ascending Soviet Union. The triangle almost dissolved by the late 1980s, when the Soviet Union was disintegrating and Moscow essentially

1  The strategic triangle in international politics can be defined as a relationship involving three geopolitical players, in which each actor takes into account the third actor in managing its relationship with the second (Dittmer, 2016, p. 118).

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ceased to be an active geopolitical player. This situation continued until the second half of the 1990s. The USSR’s successor, the Russian Federation, was then too weak and distracted by the internal chaos to play any significant role on the international stage beyond the post-Soviet space. The great-power triangle was replaced by America’s “unipolar moment.” It was not long before the triangle made a comeback. After initial expectations to be embraced as part of the Western world, Moscow felt bitter disappointment, and even anger, with the West, for being treated as a defeated adversary that could at best be a subaltern partner in the US-dominated order. At the same time, Beijing, having not long ago emerged from the Tiananmen crisis and associated penalties from the West, was subjected to the humiliation of the 1995–1996 Taiwan Strait crisis, which demonstrated China’s impotence vis-à-vis the American superpower. The mid-1990s marked a watershed both in Russia’s and China’s foreign policies, leading to the proclamation of the Sino-Russian strategic partnership during Boris Yeltsin’s visit to China in April 1996. Meeting in Moscow in April 1997, Yeltsin and Jiang Zemin signed the Declaration on a Multipolar World and Formation of a New International Order, which stated their common vision in clear opposition to the US-centered hegemony. After Vladimir Putin succeeded Yeltsin in 2000, there was a brief interlude when Russia attempted to strengthen relations with the West and, for a while, partnership with China lowered in importance for the Kremlin. Yet from the mid-2000s, Russia’s relations with the United States and its Western allies began to deteriorate, culminating in the Ukraine crisis of 2014 and the 2016 election meddling scandal. Faced with isolation from the West, Russia pushed for closer ties with China. Beijing was generally receptive. It refused to join the Washington-led campaign of ostracizing Moscow and displayed benevolent neutrality regarding the Russian moves in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, but Beijing was still cautious in advancing its strategic bonds with Moscow. Although China had its problems with the United States, they were still deemed manageable, and Beijing had no intention to antagonize Washington by associating itself too closely with a combative Russia. By 2018, Beijing’s calculations apparently began to change as the bipartisan consensus solidified in Washington that China presents the greatest national security threat to America. Russia is still considered a major and dangerous rogue state, but Beijing can no longer hope that the Kremlin’s actions will distract Washington from concentration on China. Beijing will either have to capitulate to the United States, renouncing its superpower ambitions, or take a stand. If it chooses the latter, as seems most likely, it needs strong allies to withstand American pressure. Russia is the only available option. This is leading to the present situation when both Moscow and Beijing can see it worthwhile to significantly upgrade their strategic partnership, possibly elevating their relationship to the level of a de facto or perhaps even de jure alliance.

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5.3  T  he Russia-China Side of the Triangle: The Geoeconomic Dimension Since 2009, China has ranked as Russia’s top trading partner as an individual country. Since the Ukraine crisis in 2014, Russia saw the exports and imports with all of its top 10 trade partners decrease—except with China. From 2014 to 2019, Russia-­ China trade volume rose by 17% (Visloguguzov, 2019). In 2019, Russia-China trade grew 3.4%, reaching a record high of $111 billion. One of the trends is Russia’s increasing imports of Chinese-made autos and industrial equipment. China has surpassed Germany as the top supplier of industrial machinery to Russia (Gabuev, 2020b). Due to the effect of the coronavirus pandemic, in January–June 2020 the Russia-China trade dropped by 5.7%, to $48 billion. Russia’s exports to China fell 11.6% while China’s exports to Russia grew 0.8%. At the same time, Russia’s economic dependence on China showed a noticeable increase during the 2020 pandemic, with China’s share in Russia’s foreign trade rising to 18.1% from 16% a year earlier (Biang, 2020b). On the one hand, Russia’s pull into China’s geoeconomic orbit is inevitable, driven by the logic of the international marketplace. China needs huge volumes of natural resources and Russia is a major supplier of these. On the other hand, Russia’s embrace of China as the main economic partner was a political decision born of the Ukraine crisis and the ensuing confrontation with the West. Since 2014, the Russian economy has been subjected to mounting sanctions, mainly driven by Washington. In order to withstand the pressure from the United States and its Western allies, Russia needed a strong external partner (Gabuev, 2016, p. 3). It was in the area of hydrocarbons that Russia’s economic pivot to China has been the most impressive. Since 2015, Russia has increased the oil exports to China by 60% (Kiselyov, 2019), replacing Saudi Arabia as China’s top supplier of crude oil. In December 2019, the Power of Siberia pipeline started delivering natural gas to China. Chinese state-owned companies are stakeholders and major buyers of liquefied natural gas from Russia’s projects in the Arctic. In June 2020, Gazprom’s CEO Alexei Miller announced ambitious plans for China’s market. Three more pipelines from Russia to China will be laid. Gazprom’s annual supplies to China should eventually reach 130 bcm (billion cubic meters) (Dyatel, 2020). As China’s consumption of natural gas is projected to double over the next 15 years, Gazprom’s plans seem realistic enough (Shi, 2020). Russia has also been increasing food supply exports to China (Grove & Kurmanaev, 2019). Russia’s agricultural exports to China grew 28% in January– August 2020 (Biang, 2020a). Food is now Russia’s second biggest export item to China after oil (Gabuev, 2020a). Soybeans are the food commodity China is most interested in. Beijing considers Russia as one of the alternatives to soy imports from the United States, even proposing to form a “soybean industry alliance” with Russia (Wu, 2020). China’s economic decoupling from the United States, which is also bound to result in a decrease in China’s imports of US commodities, is likely to increase

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Beijing’s long-term interest in Russian raw materials. Russian supplies, most of which come overland, are also more secure in the light of a possible naval blockade—an option the United States and its allies may well take in a military conflict with China. Russia’s turn to China—and away from the United States—is happening in the financial domain too. In 2018, Russia’s Central Bank drastically reduced the share of its assets held in the United States from 29.9% to 9.7%. At the same time, the Russian Central Bank increased its Chinese holdings from 2.6% to 14.1%. The share of the bank’s dollar-denominated reserves also decreased from 45.8% to 22.7%, while its yuan holdings jumped from 2.8% to 14.2% (Bank of Russia, 2019). In June 2019, Moscow and Beijing inked an agreement to switch to national currencies in bilateral trade as they ramp up efforts to move away from the US dollar (Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation, 2019). Russia has become the biggest international holder of yuan-denominated reserves. Notably, the share of renminbi in the reserves of global central banks is only around 2%, of which a quarter is held by Russia (Zhou, 2020). According to Alexey Maslov, director of the Moscow-based Institute of Far Eastern Studies, Russia’s push to accumulate renminbi is not just about diversifying its foreign exchange reserves. In this manner Moscow seeks to encourage Beijing to become more assertive in challenging the dominance of the US dollar (Simes, 2020a). Russia and China have yet to show they can effectively collaborate on major high-tech projects and achieve the levels of technological integration and division of labor found in the West. This, however, can change as Russia and China are losing access to Western technology. As Samuel Bendett and Elsa Kania (2019) point out, [o]ver the past couple of years, U.S. policy has sought to limit Chinese and Russian engagements with the global technological ecosystem, including through sanctions and export controls. Under these geopolitical circumstances, the determination of Chinese and Russian leaders to develop indigenous replacements for foreign, particularly American technologies, from chips to operating systems, has provided further motivation for cooperation.

Digital will be one key sector indicating the progress of Russian-Chinese hightech cooperation. Moscow has signaled that Russia will be happy to use Chinese 5G and IT technology, provided the manufacture of hardware is localized in Russia. China’s hi-tech champion, Huawei, is expanding its presence in Russia, planning, among other things, a fourfold increase of its Russian-based R&D staff (Makarova, 2019). The Huawei chief Ren Zhengfei went on record saying that his company was increasing investments in Russia because of US sanctions (Chen, 2020). The Huawei founder may be somewhat overstating Russia’s capacity to become the alternative to the United States. But there is no denying Russia is getting benefits from Huawei’s troubles with Washington. A Council on Foreign Relations report argues that Huawei’s closer engagement with Russia is part of the company’s efforts to adapt to its inability to access US technologies. Furthermore, “Huawei’s expansion in Russia is poised to strengthen the connection between Huawei and Russia and the Sino-­ Russian tech partnership more broadly” (Dudley, 2020).

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In some cases, the US factor can inhibit the Russia-China economic interaction. Somewhat ironically, as Russia, post-2014, turned to China to avoid US-led sanctions, some Chinese banks, including state-owned ones, have restricted transactions with Russian clients for fear of US penalties. This reflects the reality of US financial sway over China that is unlikely to disappear in the near future (IntelliNews, 2018). When China and the United States struck the “Phase 1” trade deal, Moscow became concerned the deal would diminish Chinese demand for Russian products, since the agreement committed Beijing to increase imports of US hydrocarbons and foodstuffs. Reflecting those worries, Putin’s senior economic advisor, Maxim Oreshkin, criticized the US-China trade deal as a “threat” to multilateral international trade (U.S.-China Deal Dangerous for World Trade: Oreshkin, 2020). A US-China decoupling can also turn out to be a mixed blessing for Russia. A prominent Russian economist estimates that, on balance, the divorce of the world’s biggest economies will be bad for Russia due to its detrimental effects on the global economy. The negative impact could be partially offset if Russia integrates into Chinese value chains, but Moscow is wary of such integration because it can make Russia dangerously dependent on China (Afontsev, 2020).

5.4  T  he Russia-China Military Axis: Sending a Message to the United States Russian weapons sales contributed a lot to China’s military modernization in the 1990s and 2000s. However, for a long time, it was India, rather than China, that was the privileged buyer of Russian arms: Moscow was willing to supply New Delhi with some of Russia’s top-notch weapons and related technologies, while generally selling less advanced systems to China. This pattern changed in the mid-2010s, when Moscow agreed to sell China two of its best conventional weapons, S-400 surface-to-air missile systems and Su-35 fighter jets, making Beijing their first foreign buyer (Putz, 2015; Novichkov & Hardy, 2014). Russia’s assistance to China is no longer limited to conventional weapons. In October 2019, Putin made a sensational revelation that Russia was helping China build a “missile attack early warning system” (EWS) that would allow it to detect incoming ICBMs (Stefanovich, 2019). This may signify a qualitative rise of the Russia-China military-political and technological cooperation. Only the United States and Russia currently possess such systems that are crucial components of their strategic deterrence capability. In October 2020, Putin declared that Russia and China had “achieved a high level of cooperation in the defense industry,” including in “the sharing of technologies.” Putin emphasized that “cooperation between Russia and China is boosting the defense potential of the Chinese People’s Army, which is in the interests of Russia as well as China” (Putin, 2020).

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Russian experts note that Russia’s current military collaboration with China is mostly in areas which should not jeopardize Russia’s national security but will significantly complicate the US military planning vis-à-vis China (Kashin, 2019). Moreover, Russia-China cooperation in military technology is no longer a one-way street. Even though China still relies heavily on Russia in areas such as high-­ performance aircraft engines, Beijing has outpaced Moscow in AI, shipbuilding, and drones. As one Russian military expert notes: “In the not so distant future, China could be the one selling arms to Russia, such as drones or ships… China has a potent shipbuilding industry. They make their frigates and destroyers like hot buns on a stove. It is totally possible to order hulls for our prospective ships from China” (Simes, 2019). There are other military-strategic complementarities, too. As a Russian military specialist puts it, “[j]ust having Russia and China exchange information between their early warning systems will allow both countries to significantly bolster their security. Additionally, China has a better opportunity to respond at sea since its navy is growing stronger, whereas Russia has better anti-air and anti-missile defense systems” (Simes, 2020b). In the area of military training, 2,000 intermediate and high-level Chinese officers have graduated from Russian military academies. The upper ranks of the PLA Navy, in particular, are reported to be full of these graduates (Goldstein, 2020). Another important dimension of Sino-Russian military cooperation is joint exercises. Although Russian and Chinese forces have been regularly exercising together since 2005, the watershed moment came in September 2018 when China participated in Russia’s Vostok-2018 strategic maneuvers held in the Russian Far East, reportedly Russia’s largest military exercise since 1981. China sent a relatively sizeable contingent of 3,200 troops accompanied by military hardware including 30 aircraft. As Michael Kofman (2018) points out, Russia’s invitation of China to the Vostok exercise and Beijing’s decision to increase the profile of its military-to-military engagement with Moscow sent important signals vis-à-vis both China and the United States: Moscow has been careful to make the exercise scenario for Vostok based more on aerospace and naval attack—i.e., aimed at U.S. expeditionary forces and their Pacific allies, as opposed to a land-based contingency that implies fighting Chinese forces. Official Chinese involvement is yet another indicator that Russia and China are more inclined to balance the United States rather than each other.

In May 2015, in a move fraught with symbolism, Russia and China conducted their first naval exercise in the Mediterranean, NATO’s maritime backyard, while in 2016 and 2017 joint naval maneuvers were also held in sensitive geopolitical areas in Asia and Europe—in the South China Sea and the Baltic Sea. In July 2019, Russia and China conducted the first joint air force operation beyond their national borders. Russian and Chinese long-range nuclear-capable bombers accompanied by fighter jets and surveillance aircraft carried out a patrol over the East China Sea and the Sea of Japan. The patrol’s route ran over a sensitive area in the vicinity of the Dokdo (Takeshima) islands, disputed between South Korea and Japan. Seoul claimed that a Russian military plane from the joint patrol

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group twice violated Dokdo’s airspace, prompting South Korean interceptor jets to fire hundreds of warning shots (Lendon, 2019). China and Russia apparently sought a maximum demonstration effect. Russian defense minister Sergey Shoigu left little doubt that the joint air patrol was a message to Washington and its Asian allies: “As two neighbors seeking strategic partnership, Russia and China are thus messaging to everyone that they want to ensure their security” (Loktionova, 2019). China’s top military officials have also occasionally made statements indicating that military cooperation with Russia has America as the main addressee. While in Moscow for “2  +  2” talks with Russian defense and foreign ministers, China’s Minister of Defense Wei Fenghe said his visit was a signal to “let the Americans know about the close ties between the armed forces of China and Russia” (Lo, 2018). Beijing’s public policy documents, albeit less explicit, also indicate the elevated status of China-Russia political-military ties. In China’s 2019 White Paper on national defense, Russia is mentioned 24 times, up from 2 in the 2015 edition (State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China, 2019). According to the document, “[t]he military relationship between China and Russia continues to develop at a high level, enriching the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination for a new era and playing a significant role in maintaining global strategic stability.” New developments in the Sino-Russian military cooperation did not go unnoticed by the US military commanders. Speaking at a US Senate hearing in February 2020, the NORTHCOM Commander General Terrence O’Shaughnessy (2020) spoke of “signs of a nascent but growing strategic cooperation between China and Russia—including the combined bomber patrol last July and Chinese participation in multiple Russian exercises.” The Sino-Russian military axis is already beginning to seriously complicate the American strategic posture. As some American military experts acknowledge, the United States does not have the capacity to deal simultaneously with a resurgent Russia in Europe and the Chinese challenge in the Pacific (Associated Press, 2018). A scenario in which China and Russia take coordinated actions in the Pacific and European theaters—for example, China invades Taiwan while Russia launches a large-scale military operation in Europe (Newsham, 2019)—no longer looks purely imaginary. Taipei is already concerned that Russian warplanes have been increasingly involved in what may be “joint Sino-Russian activity in and around Taiwanese airspace” (Oudenaren, 2020). Northeast Asia is currently the most suitable theater to operationalize an emerging military alliance of Moscow and Beijing. Russia and China have a direct presence in the region, where they maintain substantial military potentials that—if combined—can complement each other. And importantly, it is in the North Pacific where they both directly intersect with the United States. A publication by the London-based think-tank RUSI notes: “Military cooperation between Russia and China is emerging in the region. Their joint exercises used to be nothing more than political demonstrations. But there are signs that they raised the level of cooperation to upgrade interoperability on a tactical level” (Umio, 2020). As Michael Kofman (2020) suggests, Russia and China may be preparing to act together in three

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contingencies: a joint intervention in Central Asia, an expeditionary operation in Africa or the Middle East, and a coordinated deployment of forces in a crisis in the Asia-Pacific. If the China-Russia military partnership continues its upward trend, it will inevitably affect the security order in the Western Pacific. Joint actions by Russia and China can challenge the system of US-centered alliances in East Asia and alter the strategic balance there.

5.5  The Security Trilemma of Strategic Arms Control The Moscow-Washington-Beijing strategic triangle has always been asymmetric in the area of strategic arms, with Russia and the United States being far ahead of China in terms of their nuclear capabilities. Consequently, the questions of nuclear arms control were deemed to be a matter to be negotiated between Moscow and Washington. The Trump administration changed this long-established pattern. Washington made it clear that the traditional—Soviet/Russian-American—system of arms control makes little sense as long as it does not include China. The Trump administration’s reasoning was not without merit: the immense growth in China’s overall technological and economic capacities has aroused concerns that Beijing, despite its professed commitment to the “minimum deterrence” posture, may reach for the status of a nuclear superpower. A top US military commander points out that “China is on a trajectory to be a strategic peer to us by the end of the decade. So for the first time ever, the U.S. is going to face two peer-capable nuclear competitors... We have never faced that situation before” (Vergun, 2020). The American concerns are amplified by China’s policy of nontransparency with respect to its strategic and nuclear arsenals. In 2019, the Trump administration withdrew from the 1987 US-Soviet Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. The formal justification for the pull-out was Washington’s belief that Russia was producing and deploying ground-­ launched cruise missiles in violation of the terms of the treaty. However, apart from Russia’s alleged cheating, Washington’s decision to kill the treaty was motivated even more by the desire to restore the military balance with China since Beijing was not constrained by the INF and thus left free to amass a vast arsenal of missiles posing a growing threat to the United States and its allies in the Western Pacific. The Trump administration officials went on record that, with the INF Treaty dead, the United States would promptly move to deploy intermediate-range missiles in the Asia-Pacific (Baldor, 2019). Even though it was the Chinese, not Russian, military capabilities that the Trump administration intended to counter by placing US missiles in the Asia-Pacific, Russian officials repeatedly expressed concern, stressing that the US intermediate-­ range weapons will have parts of Asian Russia within range, leaving Russia no choice but to respond (Antonov, 2020). Vladimir Putin himself issued such a warning, stating that Russia “undoubtedly will have to take reciprocal steps” if “our

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American partners …deploy medium- and short-range missiles in the Asia-Pacific Region” (Putin, 2020). Given that possible US missiles in the Pacific will mainly target China, Russia’s military response to them, if it materializes, will de facto be a quasi-alliance move in support of China. The strategic dynamics triggered in the Asia-Pacific by the Trump administration’s INF withdrawal, and its intent to place missiles in the vicinity of China, represents a “strategic trilemma” in the sense that the actions of State A (the United States) to close a perceived military vulnerability with State B (China) result in countermoves from State C (Russia) and may even encourage B and C to form a coalition against A. As one analyst notes, “[r]ather than drawing China and Russia into trilateral arms-control negotiations, early indications are that U.S. deliberations on missile deployments are exacerbating arms-racing dynamics and consolidating military cooperation between Beijing and Moscow” (Ogilvie-White, 2020). In 2020, the fate of the New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty), signed by the Obama administration with Moscow, came increasingly into question as the treaty was set to expire in February 2021. The Trump administration was reluctant to extend the treaty unless China joined it. Starting talks with Russia on the future of the New START, Washington told Moscow that it was in Russia’s interest to assist the United States in getting China to the negotiation table. According to the Trump administration’s logic, Russia should cooperate with the United States on the China issue for two reasons: first, without Chinese consent to join the strategic arms control regime, the United States will shed any remaining limitations and constraints on its strategic and nuclear forces, starting an arms race that would ruin Russia’s economy; second, Russia should have a stake in limiting China’s nuclear warheads and missiles, since they are a threat not only to the United States but to Russia as well (Gertz, 2020). However, Moscow made it clear that it would not “carry water for the U.S.” when it comes to bringing China to arms control talks in exchange “for some ephemeral benefits” from Washington (Chernenko, 2020). The Kremlin also signaled that it does not see Chinese nuclear weapons as a major threat, reiterating that it is up to Beijing to decide whether China should join any future multilateral strategic arms control agreements. At the same time, Moscow was adamant that the United States’ allies, Britain and France, must join any such multilateral negotiations. Tellingly, Russia’s nuclear deterrence doctrine, released in June 2020, does not treat China as a potential threat. Petr Topychkanov (2020) observes, “[a]llusions to the nuclear-armed states in Asia and the Middle East as a potential nuclear threat are now absent from the official narrative in Russia.” China is sending similar messages. According to a prominent Chinese expert, there is no need for China-Russia arms control talks because there is no security dilemma between the two. “There is only a need for US-China bilateral talks that should focus on resolving the Taiwan problem. The Taiwan problem is the main reason why China needs intermediate-range missiles. Until there is progress on Taiwan the US should not expect Beijing to limit its missile forces.”2 2  Remarks by a leading Chinese security expert at the online workshop on the prospects for strategic arms control in Northeast Asia, hosted by Far Eastern Federal University in July 2020.

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5.6  T  he Russia-China Emerging Collaboration in East Asia: Pushing the United States Out East Asia is China’s home region but also one where Russia, by virtue of possessing the Far Eastern territories, is a resident power. Moscow, which has traditionally been concerned with keeping sovereignty over its vulnerable Far East, does not at present see China as a major security risk on Russia’s eastern borders. All border delimitation issues between Moscow and Beijing were resolved in the 1990s and 2000s, while the 2001 Sino-Russian Treaty of Good-Neighborliness, Friendship, and Cooperation explicitly states that the two countries have no territorial claims to each other. Furthermore, Moscow is well aware that Chinese military preparations are directed primarily toward Taiwan, the Western Pacific, and the South China Sea, not against the Russian Far East. In the wake of the Soviet Union breakup, in the 1990s and early 2000s, there emerged a discourse, fueled by many Russian politicians and media, about China overtaking the sparsely populated Russian Far East. As Russia became more confident under Putin and Moscow moved to cement strategic ties with Beijing, such fears receded substantially. However, there is still the cliché, persistent among the Western media and commentariat, of a Chinese demographic invasion of the Russian Far East. For example, a Wall Street Journal article claimed recently that “about 300,000 Chinese, some unregistered, could now be settled in Russia’s Far East” (Simmons, 2019). In reality, the actual number of the Chinese who live more or less permanently in the Russian Far East is far lower, and there are very few cases of illegal Chinese migration. There is no imminent risk of the Russian Far East falling under Chinese control demographically or otherwise, especially as China’s northeastern provinces are themselves depopulating (Leng, 2019). Not sensing any major Chinese menace to the Russian Far East, Russia chooses not to engage in rivalry with China in East Asia. On the most important issues of contemporary East Asian geopolitics, Moscow has tended to support Beijing or displayed friendly neutrality. In return for its cooperation in East Asia, Moscow expects Beijing’s acknowledgment of Russian interests in areas of paramount concern to the Kremlin, such as the Middle East and Eastern Europe (Lukin, 2019). On the Korean Peninsula, Moscow has largely played second fiddle to Beijing. As the Russian Foreign Ministry put it, on the Korean Peninsula issues, Moscow “works in  lockstep” with Beijing (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, 2020). This is echoed by the Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi, who pointed out that, regarding the Korean Peninsula, “Russia is on the same page with China” (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, 2020). On the South China Sea disputes, although Russia’s official stance is strict neutrality, some Russian moves may be seen as backing Beijing. For example, following the July 2016 Hague tribunal ruling that rejected China’s claims to sovereignty over the South China Sea, Putin expressed solidarity with China, calling the international court’s decision “counterproductive” (Reuters, 2016).

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Russia shares with China the objective of reducing American influence in East Asia and undermining the US-centric alliances in the region. As long as Moscow perceives Washington as the main adversary, it will continue efforts to weaken the system of alliances that undergird America’s global primacy. The thrust of Moscow’s policy to undermine US alliances is directed at Europe, but part of the effort is also focused on Northeast Asia. As James Brown (2020) points out, “Russia certainly is seeking to encourage South Korea and Japan to distance themselves from the United States... Moscow’s ultimate aim is for South Korea and Japan to abandon their alliances with the United States and embrace neutrality.” Although never recognizing it publicly, Russia and China may already be coordinating some of their actions with respect to the US alliances in Northeast Asia. Some Western analysts express the concern that “Moscow and Beijing may unite their efforts to drive a wedge between the United States and its East Asian allies, thereby combining China’s economic weight with Russia’s skills in influence operations” (Brown, 2020). A symbolic manifestation of Russia’s alignment with China, and opposition to the US goals in East Asia, came in the form of Moscow’s rejection of the concept of the Indo-Pacific promoted by Washington and the Quad partners. Russian officials believe that the Indo-Pacific narrative is unacceptable since it is primarily designed to contain China. The Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov repeatedly branded the Indo-Pacific as an attempt by the United States to draw India, in a coalition with Japan and Australia, into confrontation with China, while depriving ASEAN of its central role in the Asia-Pacific architecture (Tarasenko, 2019). Russian weapon sales are helping China alter the military balance in the Western Pacific to the detriment of the United States and its allies. Russia’s decision to assist China with getting its own missile attack early warning system may have also been partly motivated by the desire to strengthen China vis-à-vis the United States in their rivalry for primacy in East Asia. The Russian ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, hinted as much by saying that this strategic system will “cardinally increase stability and security in East Asia” (TASS, 2019b). Russian deference to China on East Asian issues, albeit somewhat hurting Moscow’s great-power pride, makes geopolitical sense. The Kremlin treats Pacific affairs as an area of lower concern than Europe, the Middle East, or Central Asia. Mongolia, which constitutes Siberia’s underbelly, is the only East Asian nation that can count on Russian security protection in case it finds itself in danger of external aggression. The role of Russia as “the ultimate guarantor of Mongolian sovereignty” is even recognized by American foreign policy experts, including a US ex-­ ambassador to Ulan Bator. They argue, correctly, that Russia has “a clear and enduring interest in an independent Mongolia” (Goodson & Addleton, 2020). In some cases, Russia does act against Chinese wishes in East Asia, demonstrating that it is still an independent actor in the region. One example is Russia’s drilling for hydrocarbons in the areas of the South China Sea on the Vietnamese continental shelf over which China lays sovereignty claims. The Russian state-owned energy company Rosneft operated on Vietnam’s shelf, despite Beijing’s displeasure and periodic harassment by Chinese ships (Zhou, 2020). However, in 2020, Rosneft

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reportedly had to halt its activities in the Chinese-claimed areas after Beijing pressured Hanoi to terminate its offshore development with the Russian oil major (Gavin, 2020).

5.7  From a Sino-Russian Entente to a Sino-Russian Alliance? The rising levels of diplomatic, geoeconomic, and military collaboration between Russia and China inevitably lead to the question whether they could be on the verge of forming an alliance. Officially, both Beijing and Moscow have repeatedly denied any intentions to create a political-military alliance. For example, in October 2019, the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov emphasized that Russian-Chinese relations “have never been at such a high and trusting level in all spheres,” but asserted at the same time that “neither Russia nor China are planning to set up a [military] alliance” (TASS, 2019a). Lavrov immediately added some ambiguity to his statement, remarking that the two powers are “allies” when it comes to “defending international law” and opposing “intervention in domestic affairs” (TASS, 2019a). In the same month, none other than Putin himself called Russia-China ties “an allied relationship in the full sense of a multifaceted strategic partnership” (Putin, 2019). This is not the first time Putin has characterized Russia and China as “allies”. In October 2014, meeting with Premier Li Keqiang, the Russian leader referred to the two countries as “natural partners and allies” (Ng, 2014). In October 2020, Putin gave the most definitive statement yet on the possibility for a Russia-China military alliance. He said such an “alliance is not on the agenda now.” Still, Putin added, it is “conceivable” and “cannot be ruled out in principle” (Putin, 2020). Russian top officials’ occasional use of the “A-word” with respect to China is hardly a slip of the tongue or a mere figure of speech. The ambiguity in describing the relationship with China is likely deliberate and strategic, designed to signal to the United States that Moscow is just one step away from forming a full alliance with Beijing. Xi Jinping and other Chinese officials have never publicly called relations with Russia “allied”. This is not surprising as doing so would directly contradict China’s non-bloc and nonalignment pledges which are still part of Beijing’s official doctrine. Beijing might also be careful not to excessively provoke the United States with pronouncements of an alliance between America’s chief great-power competitors. That said, official Beijing has never refuted Moscow’s periodic invocation of the alliance language with respect to Russia-China ties, which can be interpreted as the desire to maintain ambiguity. Moscow and Beijing are clearly signaling to Washington that they are prepared for a counter-US alliance. The question is, if this readiness is real or bluff? Most likely, it is a mix of both at the moment. The best way to make sense of the current Russia-China strategic relationship is to view it as a great-power entente, falling short of a formal alliance but having grown much closer than the “strategic partnership” the two countries established in the 1990s. An entente, as Dmitry Trenin (2015) reminds us, is a harmonious association of two major powers based on the commonality of some key interests; the

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perception of common threats; a measure of foreign and security policy coordination; and a degree of empathy between their leaders.

5.8  T  he United States: Searching for a Response to a Russia-China Axis The Trump administration’s December 2017 National Security Strategy (NSS) and January 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS) identified “the revisionist powers” China and Russia as America’s two main adversaries, formally reorienting US national security strategy and US defense strategy toward an explicit primary focus on great-power competition (Renewed great power competition: implications for defense—issues for Congress, 2020, pp. 1–2). Notably, the NSS directly states that China “seeks to displace the United States in the Indo-Pacific region and reorder the region in its favor.” At the same time, the NSS (2017) does not see Russia as a major challenge in the Indo-Pacific, merely pointing out that Moscow “seeks to restore its great power status and establish spheres of influence near its borders.” While naming China and Russia as primary strategic competitors, NSS, NDS, and other policy documents of the Trump administration see them as separate actors, without explicitly recognizing the existence of the China-Russia axis. In other words, Washington’s official discourse under Trump, in continuity with the Obama administration, dismissed the notion of a US-Russia-China triangle and, hence, denied the need for Washington to readjust relations with either Moscow or Beijing in order to be better positioned to deal with the bigger threat. During the Trump tenure, there were influential voices in the US foreign policy community who insisted that the strategic triangle did exist and called for Washington to try and improve relations with Moscow (the lesser contender) so as to strengthen America’s position vis-à-vis Beijing (the main challenger). Not surprisingly, it was Henry Kissinger, one of the main architects of the strategic triangle back in the 1970s, who reportedly suggested to Trump and the president’s inner circle that the United States should work with Russia to contain a rising China (Allen-Ebrahimian et  al., 2018). Several senior White House officials reportedly held the view that Russia would be a useful counterweight to China (Allen-Ebrahimian et al., 2018). One of the prominent proponents of a US policy to normalize relations with Russia in order to counter China is Robert Blackwill. He argues that Washington “should attempt to initiate an extended conversation with Vladimir Putin and the Russian government on world order and the security of Europe and Asia” (Blackwill, 2020, p. 35). Pointing out that “the increasing Russian embrace of China is clearly not in the U.S. national interest,” Blackwill admits that achieving rapprochement with Moscow would require major concessions on the part of Washington, such as putting an end to further NATO enlargement, lifting the post-Crimea sanctions, and readmitting Russia into the G8 (Blackwill, 2020, p. 36).

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The view represented by Kissinger, Blackwill, and some others never got traction in Washington during the Trump administration years. Instead, a different approach became mainstream both in the US government and expert community. It has three main features. First, it is acknowledged that the Sino-Russian relationship is no longer an “axis of convenience” (Lo, 2008). The Moscow-Beijing partnership is now seen as an “axis of authoritarians” that poses a potent threat to the United States and allied interests (Ellings & Sutter, 2018). Second, of the two great-power rivals, China is generally viewed as the more serious challenge than Russia. There are nuances, however. Many within the US policy establishment subscribe to the view that, in the words of the then Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Joon Rood, “China is the greater long term strategic challenge, while Russia is the larger near term threat because of the overwhelming lethality of its nuclear arsenal and also because of some of the behavior that the Russian government has exhibited” (Dozier, 2018). Such a perception was, to a great extent, caused by the traumatic scandal over the alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election. Third, even though the Russia-China axis is recognized as real and detrimental to US interests, with China viewed as the more serious strategic threat than Russia, the mainstream approach rules out attempts at collaboration with Moscow to counterbalance Beijing. The argument against rapprochement with Russia is summed up by Matthew Kroenig (2020), the Deputy Director in the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council. He argues that “there is little to be gained and much to be lost by attempting to sidle up to Moscow.” Kroenig predicts that “[i]n exchange for giving China a cold shoulder, Putin would almost certainly demand unpalatable concessions, such as granting Russia a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe and limiting U.S. missile defenses.” Furthermore, Kroenig warns that, even if Putin did promise to work with the United States, he cannot be trusted. Finally, “having a GDP smaller than Italy’s,” Russia is a declining power and “does not bring much to the table.” Robert Sutter (2019), who also represents the mainstream approach, is skeptical about the ability of the United States to drive a wedge between Russia and China, noting “the strongly converging Russian and Chinese interests and identity and a pervasive view in Moscow and Beijing that the U.S. is irresolute and in decline.” Instead of trying to play Kissingerian triangular games, this approach calls for strengthening America domestically, building up its military capabilities, and reinforcing US alliances (Sutter, 2019). In a nutshell, this approach calls for the United States to deal from the position of strength with both China and Russia, rather than trying to accommodate the lesser challenger (Russia) to balance the greater threat (China). As Washington’s stance toward China progressively hardened, the strategic discourse weighing “the Russia threat” versus “the China threat” has also evolved. Speaking at the Munich Security Conference in February 2020, Defense Secretary Mark Esper made it clear that China was by far the biggest threat to the United States, with Russia a distant second, followed by the “rogue states” North Korea and

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Iran (Esper, 2020). In May 2020, the State Department released a policy paper, authored by the Assistant Secretary for International Security and Non-Proliferation, Christopher Ford, on how the United States should compete with the great-power competitors, China and Russia. In this document, Beijing is accused of harboring the desire to achieve the “hegemonic place” in the world, whereas Moscow’s main geopolitical goal is seen as much less sinister: “Russia desires a multipolar world managed by a concert of major powers that can counterbalance what it perceives as unilateral U.S. power” (Ford, 2020). The palpable rise in the China threat perception inevitably called into question the Trump administration’s official policy of treating Beijing and Moscow as America’s co-equal foes. A 2020 policy paper from an influential think tank in Washington points out that while both Russia and China “are indeed revisionists and pose considerable risk to US interests, the magnitude of the challenge posed by a China with the world’s second-largest economy far exceeds that of Russia.” The report argues that designating both China and Russia as the principal priorities “has led to confusion and a misalignment of effort. For the sake of bringing greater clarity to the application of the department’s time, energy, and budget resources, NDS 2022 should go further than its predecessor by being explicit that China is the principal priority, while Russia is the focus of the secondary effort. This will have the immediate effect of ending a debate within various parts of the Pentagon, where some factions give priority to the European theater and others to the Pacific” (Montgomery & Sayers, 2020). The intensifying alarmism about China may be leading Washington to be more tolerant of Russian activities in the Indo-Pacific, provided they create a counterbalance to China. A Congressionally mandated report, produced in January 2020 by the Center for a New American Security and titled Rising to the China Challenge, leaves no doubt as to the main external threat to the United States: “Managing the China challenge should be an organizing principle of U.S. foreign policy, not just one among many other pressing priorities in the world” (Ratner et  al., 2020). Addressing the role of Moscow, the report admits that “[f]urther isolating Russia in Asia and preventing its arms sales to a variety of states could push Moscow into a closer and more co-dependent relationship with Beijing.” For the sake of containing China, the CNAS report recommends tolerating Russian military sales to Indo-­ Pacific countries, especially India, Indonesia, and Vietnam. The report argues that “Congress should … allow CAATSA exemptions for Indo-Pacific states that wish to procure Russian weapons, provided these weapons would be used to balance against China.” The big question is, what was Donald Trump’s preferred policy toward Russia and China? As Robert Sutter noted, “President Trump remains an uncertainty in these relationships given his avowed unpredictability in foreign affairs; the president avoids using the strong rhetoric of administration policy documents when dealing with Chinese and Russian matters, and his determination to sustain close personal ties with both China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin further complicates U.S. relations with Beijing and Moscow” (Sutter, 2019). Even if Trump, as many suspected, actually desired to substantially improve US-Russia relations, all

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his efforts in that direction were nipped in the bud by the concerted opposition from the Washington bureaucracy and Congress.

5.9  Conclusion Regardless of Donald Trump’s alleged sympathies toward Moscow and Vladimir Putin personally, it was under his watch that US-Russia relations reached a historic low not seen since the early 1980s. Europe and the Middle East remained the main theaters for Russian-America interaction during the Trump years, whereas there was little direct engagement between Russia and the United States in the Asia-­ Pacific. One unfulfilled chance for Russia-US collaboration in East Asia was on the Korean peninsula, where Moscow has some leverage due to its close ties with North Korea. Russia welcomed Trump’s overtures to Pyongyang, but Trump’s approach to dealing with Pyongyang left no space for multilateral diplomacy in which Russia might have been a participant. At the same time, the Trump tenure saw further solidification of the Russia-China axis, which was a logical outcome of Washington’s strategy of dual containment of both Beijing and Moscow. East Asia saw an increased collaboration of Russia and China, with Moscow generally backing Beijing’s growing assertiveness in the region, much of it directed at pushing the United States out of East Asia. With Trump gone and Biden in the White House, what would the change in Washington mean for the US-Russia-China triangle? During the election campaign Joseph Biden called Russia “the biggest threat to America right now in terms of breaking up our security and our alliances,” while characterizing China as “the biggest competitor” (Aaro, 2020). That apparently differed from the Trump administration’s narrative that put China, rather than Russia, as the number one adversary. That said, if anyone had expectations that the Biden administration would focus on countering Russia while trying to avoid tensions with China, they proved to be wrong. The initial months of the new administration demonstrated that Biden acted within the firm bipartisan consensus in Washington that China, not Russia, is by far the most serious external challenge to the United States. As one observer noted, differences on China between Trump and Biden “tend to be more stylistic than substantive” (Feinberg, 2021). The Interim National Security Guidance released by the Biden administration in March 2021 concentrated on competition with China while only placing Russia as a distant second great-power adversary (Interim National Security Strategic Guidance, 2021). Biden’s defense secretary Lloyd Austin also identified China as the number one priority, with Russia relegated to the level of the lesser “nation-state threats” grouped together with Iran and North Korea (U.S. Department of Defense, 2021). It is almost certain that, under Biden, we will see continuation of basically the same policy, with the US government increasingly focusing strategic resources on competition with China. Russia will still be treated as a serious adversary, but Moscow will be put somewhat on the back burner in terms of policy priorities. The Biden administration is unlikely to replay

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Nixonian-Kissingerian games of wooing the lesser rival (Russia) to counterbalance the bigger challenger (China). Washington’s dual containment strategy will likely continue, pushing Russia and China into an ever tighter mutual embrace. To end on a more optimistic note, there are at least two areas where the Russia-US interaction in the Asia-Pacific could make some progress under the Biden administration. The first is the Korean peninsula. There is a chance that Biden might continue attempts at engagement with North Korea, albeit without theatrical summitry of the Trump era. At some point, a return to a multilateral diplomacy, perhaps a revival of the Six-Party Talks, cannot be ruled out. Russia would welcome such a move as it has always supported the Six-Party Talks, seeing them as an incipient institution not only for resolving the North Korea nuclear issue but also for managing security in Northeast Asia. The second area for positive US-Russia interaction is strategic arms control. Unlike the Trump administration, the Biden White House has more appetite for, and more faith in, arms control. This was amply demonstrated by the swift renewal of the New START Treaty literally in the first days of the Biden administration. The resurrection of the INF Treaty is unlikely, but Washington may walk back the Trump administration’s plans for a swift deployment of intermediate-range missiles in the Pacific. This could help stave off dangerous arms races at the global level as well as in the Asia-Pacific.

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Goldstein, L. (2020). The fate of the China-Russia alliance. The National Interest, January 25. https://nationalinterest.org/feature/fate-­china-­russia-­alliance-­117231 Goodson, J., & Addleton, J. (2020). How great power competition is changing the geopolitics of Mongolia. Stratfor, January 24. https://worldview.stratfor.com/article/ how-­great-­power-­competition-­changing-­geopolitics-­mongolia-­china-­russia-­united-­states Grove, T., & Kurmanaev, A. (2019). A surprise winner from the U.S.-China trade spat: Russian soybean farmers. The Wall Street Journal, 21 February. https://www.wsj.com/articles/ russia-exploits-u-s-china-trade-tensions-to-sell-more-soybeans-11550745001 IntelliNews. (2018). Chinese banks comply with U.S. sanctions against Russia, September 18. https://www.intellinews.com/chinese-­banks-­comply-­with-­us-­sanctions-­against-­russia-­148751/ Interim National Security Strategic Guidance. (2021). The White House website. March. https:// www.whitehouse.gov/wp-­content/uploads/2021/03/NSC-­1v2.pdf Kashin, V. (2019). Tacit alliance: Russia and China take military partnership to new level. Carnegie Moscow Center, October 22. https://carnegie.ru/commentary/80136 Kiselyov, S. (2019). Energeticheskiye mosty Evrazii. Nezavisimaya Gazeta, October 24. http:// www.ng.ru/economics/2019-­10-­24/100_193324102019.html Kofman, M. (2018). Vostok-2018: Russia and China signal growing military cooperation. Russia Matters, September 10. https://russiamatters.org/analysis/ vostok-­2018-­russia-­and-­china-­signal-­growing-­military-­cooperation Kofman, M. (2020). The emperors league: Understanding Sino-Russian defense cooperation. War on the Rocks, August 6. https://warontherocks.com/2020/08/ the-­emperors-­league-­understanding-­sino-­russian-­defense-­cooperation/ Kroenig, M. (2020). The United States should not align with Russia against China. Foreign Policy, May 13. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/13/united-­states-­should-­not-­align-­russia-­against-­ china-­geopolitical-­rivalry-­authoritarian-­partnership/ Lendon, B. (2019). Why Russia and China are wading into a centuries’ old dispute over a tiny island cluster. CNN, July 27. https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/26/asia/south-­korea-­russia-­ japan-­china-­warplanes-­analysis-­intl-­hnk/index.html Leng, S. (2019). China’s Northeastern rust belt struggling to retain population as economic slowdown speeds up exodus. South China Morning Post. https://www.scmp.com/economy/ china-­economy/article/3009213/chinas-­northeastern-­rust-­belt-­struggling-­retain-­population Lo, B. (2008). Axis of convenience: Moscow, Beijing, and the new geopolitics. Brookings Institution Press. Lo, K. (2018). U.S. take note: Chinese, Russian militaries are closer than you think, China’s defence minister says. South China Morning Post, April 4. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/ diplomacy-­defence/article/2140301/us-­take-­note-­chinese-­russian-­militaries-­are-­closer-­you Loktionova, M. (2019). “Ne sobiralis’ zadirat’ SShA”: Shoygu obyasnil polyoty Tu-160. Gazeta. Ru, August 18. https://www.gazeta.ru/army/2019/08/18/12586165.shtml Lukin, A. (2019). Russia’s game on the Korean Peninsula: Accepting China’s rise to regional hegemony? NBR, March 29. https://www.nbr.org/publication/ russias-­game-­on-­the-­korean-­peninsula-­accepting-­chinas-­rise-­to-­regional-­hegemony/ Makarova, E. (2019). Huawei stalo tesno v Krylatskom. Kommersant, August 19. https://www. kommersant.ru/doc/4065780 Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation. (2019). Russia & China agree to significantly boost trade in ruble and yuan at the expense of the U.S. dollar, June 28. http:// www.ved.gov.ru/eng/general/news/19/25081.html Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China. (2020). Transcript of state councilor and foreign minister Wang Yi’s exclusive interview with Reuters, February 15. https:// www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/zxxx_662805/t1745264.shtml Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. (2020). Polozheniye vokrug Koreyskogo poluostrova, January 17. https://www.mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/news/-­/ asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/3995958?fbclid=IwAR2cHJoBSgLas 6p6a-­ebxvvYShDPKWpugHKVba57hQz-­zXQ4Oahp0e0WGuw#18

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Stefanovich, D. (2019). Russia to help China develop an early warning system. The Diplomat, October 25. https://thediplomat.com/2019/10/russia-­to-­help-­chinadevelop-­an-­early-­warning-­system/ Sutter, R. (2019). Prepared statement at the Hearing on “An emerging China-Russia Axis? Implications for the United States in an era of strategic competition.” U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, March 21. https://www.uscc.gov/hearings/ emerging-­china-­russia-­axis-­implications-­united-­states-­era-­strategic-­competition Tarasenko, P. (2019). Indo-Tikhookeanskomu partnerstvu ocherchivayut granitsy. Kommersant, July 31. https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/4046773 TASS. (2019a). Russia, China not seeking military alliance — Lavrov, November 2. https://tass. com/politics/1086654 TASS. (2019b). Posol RF: Sistema Kitaya o preduprezhdenii o raketnom napadenii povysit bezopasnost’ regiona, October 20. https://tass.ru/politika/7021121 Topychkanov, P. (2020). Russia’s nuclear doctrine moves the focus from non-­ Western threats. SIPRI, October 1. https://www.sipri.org/commentary/blog/2020/ russias-­nuclear-­doctrine-­moves-­focus-­non-­western-­threats Trenin, D. (2015). From greater Europe to greater Asia? The Sino-Russian Entente. Carnegie Moscow Center. https://carnegie.ru/2015/04/09/ from-­greater-­europe-­to-­greater-­asia-­sino-­russian-­entente-­pub-­59728 U.S.  Department of Defense. (2021). “Austin outlines his top three priorities on defense, people, teamwork.” DOD News. March 5. https://www.defense.gov/Explore/News/Article/ Article/2526532/austin-­outlines-­his-­top-­three-­priorities-­on-­defense-­people-­teamwork/ U.S.-China Deal Dangerous for World Trade: Oreshkin. (2020). Russia Business Today, January 24. https://russiabusinesstoday.com/economy/u-­s-­china-­deal-­dangerous-­for-­world-­trade-­oreshkin/ Umio, O. (2020). From Japan: a view of ‘Global Britain’ and the UK Integrated Review. RUSI, August 4. https://rusi.org/commentary/japan-­view-­global-­britain-­and-­uk-­integrated-­review Vergun, D. (2020). China, Russia nearing status as U.S. nuclear peers, Stratcom commander says. U.S.  Department of Defense, July 30. https://www.defense.gov/Explore/News/Article/ Article/2294574/china-­russia-­nearing-­status-­as-­us-­nuclear-­peers-­stratcom-­commander-­says/ Visloguguzov, V. (2019). V plyuse tolko Kitay. Kommersant, August 9. https://www.kommersant. ru/doc/4054828 Wu, W. (2020). China calls for ‘soybean industry alliance’ with strategic partner Russia. South China Morning Post, August 26. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/ article/3098980/china-­calls-­soybean-­industry-­alliance-­strategic-­partner-­russia Zhou, C. (2020). China’s wish to end U.S. dollar dominance is unlikely to come true with no genuine challenger in the wings. South China Morning Post, August 20. https:// www.scmp.com/economy/china-­e conomy/article/3098118/chinas-­w ish-­e nd-us-­d ollardominance-­unlikely-­come-­true-­no

Chapter 6

US-India Ties During the Trump Years and Beyond: Continuity and Convergences Sharad Joshi

6.1  Introduction Despite the foreign policy issues, uncertainties, and upheavals surrounding the administration of President Donald Trump, Washington’s ties with India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi remained an important partnership. The two largest democracies in the world, once termed “estranged democracies” by the senior US diplomat Dennis Kux, have become firm allies since the early 2000s, a trend that continued during the Trump years. This chapter assesses the state of US-India relations during the single term of President Donald Trump, which also coincided in its entirety with Narendra Modi as prime minister of India. Among the defining features of US-India relations in the last two decades have been a continuity toward closer ties across changes in governments in both countries, and a convergence over important strategic issues. There is now bipartisan/cross-party consensus in both the United States and India on the need for a bilateral strategic partnership. Counterterrorism cooperation after the 9/11 attacks, closer defense ties, and the bilateral civilian nuclear agreement signed in 2008 were important turning points. But the most important element of convergence has been their shared threat perception of the rise of China in the Indo-Pacific. Keeping these developments in mind, the fundamental questions for the two countries include: What kind of bilateral relationship are they willing to accept? Will disagreements in specific issue areas adversely influence the trajectory of their strategic partnership? There are several areas of disagreement between them, but none of these disagreements, even when

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© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 T. Akaha et al. (eds.), Trump’s America and International Relations in the Indo-Pacific, Contributions to International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75925-4_6

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seen in their totality, are likely to wreck the foundations of this strategic partnership, which demonstrates a degree of maturity in their relationship.

6.2  I nternational Relations: Theory, Ideology, and US-India Relations From the theoretical perspective, US-India ties largely conform to the realist paradigm and its associated balancing strategies. Fundamentals of realism include a state’s quest for its security and maximizing power in an anarchic world which is the fundamental structural reality in international relations. Neorealism or structural realism posits that the structure of the international system and the distribution of power decisively influence the behavior of states, especially the state’s quest for security and maximization of power in an anarchic world. In addition, balance of power theory holds that the rise of a major power would be met with attempts at balancing by a countervailing set of policies or a coalition, in order to restore equilibrium in the system. In an anarchic world, states have to prioritize security, by pushing back against threats from the emergence of a hegemonic power, by expanding their own capabilities (internal balancing), expanding overall capabilities through alliances with other states (external balancing), and formulating strategies in accordance with those of the hegemonic rising power (emulation) (Wohlforth et  al., 2007, p.  157). Therefore, to balance against a perceived threat, alliances and partnerships might be formed among states based on convergence of threat perceptions, shared values, and common domestic political systems. Here it is useful to note that a strategic relationship between two countries might not always be a formal alliance, whether political, diplomatic, or military. The formal distinction is important to note because India and the United States have not concluded any broad-based defense treaty (despite foundational defense agreements in recent years) and are regarded as “strategic partners.” Moreover, closer US-India relations does not constitute bandwagoning in the traditional sense, which implies allying with a potential threat, because despite disagreements in their relationship, the United States is generally not considered a security threat to India. If balancing and bandwagoning are understood as opposite ends of the spectrum of a state’s strategies for dealing with a revisionist rising power, then hedging, in which an explicit choice between the two extremes is avoided, falls in between (Kang, 2009, pp.  7–8). This approach lies at the heart of India’s posture toward China, which is an important context for US-India relations. Hedging can be understood as a posture toward a potentially threatening and revisionist rising power which combines cooperative and confrontational elements with economic and diplomatic overtures as well as a security component to guard against a downturn in relations (Ciorciari & Haacke, 2019). Hedging seeks to retain room for maneuverability and is also different (though not mutually exclusive) from balancing and bandwagoning, and can raise the costs of revisionism on the part of rising powers

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through economic interlinkages. Such an approach is also rooted in the distribution of power in the international system and its constraints under which states operate. Apart from the structure of the system, analysis of foreign policy behavior of states also requires us to consider the agency of actors on specific foreign policy issues. International relations theory or realism has generally focused on the structure of the system rather than agency of actors, which can restrict understanding of the impact of individual decision-makers on foreign policy, and therefore, it is relevant to consider the political beliefs of state leaders (Hudson, 2005, pp.  1–30). Having said that, both structural factors rooted in the Cold War rivalry and domestic ideological forces influenced the direction of US-India relations during the decades before the 1990s and continue to do so. Indian foreign policy and grand strategy debates have grappled with these structural constraints, especially with regard to China and Pakistan as major security threats. As noted by Kanti Bajpai, Indian grand strategy has historically been driven by three approaches: Nehruvianism, neoliberalism, and hyperrealism. Nehruvianism focuses on internationalism and diplomacy, while hyperrealism focuses on balance of power considerations in the realist tradition and neoliberalism takes the view that economic capabilities in a globalized world are essential to power (Bajpai, 2013). Indian grand strategy objectives can also be summarized as: (a) ensuring that in the South Asian neighborhood, New Delhi seeks primacy and a veto against intrusion by external powers; (b) balancing other powers in the Indo-Pacific on issues of concern to Indian national interest; and (c) globally, to emerge as a great power and decision maker in international relations (Mohan, 2006, p. 18). In recent years, India has also stressed maintaining “strategic autonomy,” which can be understood as retaining independence in decision-making and self-­ sufficiency. It reflects a combination of realism and India’s traditional nonalignment posture in conducting foreign policy. However, there is also an emerging argument that this strategic autonomy would be strengthened through a closer partnership with the United States, in particular since pressures from China are the main threat to this autonomy (Abhyankar, 2018; Smith, 2020). Elements of this strategic autonomy can be discerned in India’s decision to not join the military coalition in Iraq after 2003, and to seek to maintain its long-standing partnership with Russia, instances that demonstrate a national interest-driven realist approach (Mehta, 2020). In addition, scholars have connected increasing pragmatism in Indian foreign policy to structural realism, moving away from Nehruvian idealism and providing the basis for a national interest-based foreign policy in pursuit of material power, which also then justifies alliances for such objectives.1 Structural realities also denote a geographical element. India is located in South Asia, but is strategically a part of the Indo-Pacific, which is a geopolitical structure and space that provides the overarching context of contemporary US-India relations. The “Indo-Pacific” is a recent geopolitical concept promulgated by the United States that views the Indian and Pacific oceans as a contiguous area and frame of

 For a summary of this shift, see Miller and De Estrada (2017), p. 30.

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reference, with a clear objective of containing and balancing China’s rise and hegemonic objectives (Heiduk & Wacker, 2020). By 2017, Washington had begun using the term “Indo-Pacific” in official statements (although the designation had been periodically used earlier and by others such as Japan and Australia). According to a senior White House official, the use of the term meant that, “we have strong and growing ties with India. We talk about ‘Indo-Pacific’ in part because that phrase captures the importance of India’s rise” (The Economic Times, 2017). In addition, the US military’s Pacific Command was renamed the Indo-Pacific Command in May 2018 to highlight the importance of India and South Asia. At the substructural level, individual idiosyncrasies and political ideologies of leaders sometimes influence foreign policy decisions and may reinforce or clash with overall establishment views on foreign relations. This chapter demonstrates that in some instances, the specific ideological postures and preconceived notions of elected leaders have had a bearing on particular issues in US-India bilateral relations, even if temporarily (trade and immigration, for instance). But the overall positive trajectory of their relationship dates back long before President Trump took office in January 2017, and looks set to continue under the Biden presidency. During the Trump administration, Trumpism as a foreign policy ideology advocated an “America First” policy toward the rest of the world. This approach ostensibly seeks to emphasize US national interest, taking a transactional view of foreign relations. The Trumpian worldview questioned the utility of alliances, saying that the US allies such as Japan, South Korea, and Germany should be more forthcoming in their contributions to their partnership with the United States, an attitude that also put pressure on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Trumpist foreign policy also included elements of isolationism, with a reluctance to get involved in military operations in different parts of the world and a disdain for multilateral agreements such as the Paris Agreement on climate change, which the Trump administration left in 2017 (the Biden administration rejoined soon after taking office). This ideological approach also sought to reject and remake trade agreements, alleging unfair treatment of the United States by its trade partners. It might be useful to distinguish between the thinking of President Trump on foreign policy from the foreign policy establishment in Washington as embodied in the key foreign, defense, and national security institutions  – the Department of State, Department of Defense, and the National Security Council. Certainly, there are important differences among foreign policy camps within and across political parties, but there were no fundamental differences when it came to the US policy in the Indo-Pacific. The constructivist notion of self-identity is also relevant. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) conform to the ideology of Hindu nationalism, or Hindutva, which traditionally has been directed more toward domestic social issues. Hindutva as a foreign policy approach seeks a more muscular approach to defense and security, especially in the neighborhood, in the realist tradition, as well as a higher global status for India, while also focusing on soft power objectives under which India would be a vishwaguru (world teacher) of Hindu culture for the rest of the world (Hall, 2017, pp.  113–131). But the Modi

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government’s foreign policy approach is not necessarily a radical departure from its immediate predecessors, the Manmohan Singh and Atal Bihari Vajpayee governments. Part of the reason for the lack of major change in Indian foreign policy can be located in structural constraints under which India has operated throughout its independent history (Rajagopalan, 2020, p. 171). The United States viewed India after the Cold War as a “swing state,” or a balancing power that could considerably strengthen any alliance of which it was a part; for the Modi government, the objective has been to go beyond just a balancing state role to become a leading power in a multipolar world (Tellis, 2016, p. 4).

6.3  US-India Ties in the Trump Era India and the United States had an uneasy relationship through most of India’s independent history (Jain, 2019). An important early guiding pillar of Indian foreign policy was that of nonalignment (NAM), propounded by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, under which New Delhi would not ally with either the United States or the Soviet Union during the Cold War (Singh, 2019). India turned to the United States for military assistance in the aftermath of the 1962 war with China. With the Sino-US rapprochement in the early 1970s, and India signing a formal treaty with the Soviet Union in the midst of the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war, US-India relations remained estranged (Madan, 2019). The end of the Cold War and the disintegration of the Soviet Union meant that India had to reassess its relationship with the United States and the principle of nonalignment, amidst a crisis in its state-oriented economic model, and this reassessment acted as a catalyst for a transformed international posture. The 1998 Indian nuclear tests and the subsequent US engagement of India to address nuclear nonproliferation issues paved the way for a new beginning of bilateral relations (Talbott, 2004). Today, the United States and India have common strategic interests around which the two countries have converged, including global counterterrorism, dealing with the rise of China in the Indo-Pacific, stability in Afghanistan, maintaining a rules-based international order, and maintaining a free and open Indo-Pacific, including freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. The US-India ties intensified during the Trump administration and built on a strong continuity across administrations in Washington since the final years of the Clinton administration. Although this chapter examines US-India relations under Donald Trump, it is very much a reflection of more enduring trends in ties between the two countries since the end of the Cold War. During these periods, in New Delhi also, under successive governments of prime ministers Atal Bihari Vajpayee (BJP), Manmohan Singh (Congress Party), and Narendra Modi (BJP), India has continued its policy of closer ties with Washington, regardless of party affiliation. There is unanimity across the political spectrum in both the United States and India about the need for closer strategic relations. The question then is how this attitude translates to specific policies and cooperative mechanisms, especially in the security dimension.

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Washington has had a more settled idea of the relationship that it seeks with New Delhi – one of a close strategic alliance to balance the rise of China in the Indo-­ Pacific, with a more institutionalized cooperative military partnership. These goals have been the basis of the policy of successive administrations in the United States toward India over the last two decades. US-India defense ties deepened further during the Trump years with the increased importance of India for US strategy in the Indo-Pacific. In late 2017, the Trump administration released its National Security Strategy (NSS), which put even greater importance on India’s role in the Indo-­ Pacific than the earlier iterations of this strategy document during the Obama and George W. Bush presidencies (Ayres, 2017). The NSS said that the United States welcomed “India’s emergence as a leading global power and stronger strategic and defense partner,” and placed an emphasis on the Indo-Pacific for the first time in this strategy document (The White House, 2017, p. 46). The NSS stated that China (and Russia) “challenge American power, influence, and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity,” and in the Indo-Pacific, the United States “will redouble our commitment to established alliances and partnerships, while expanding and deepening relationships with new partners that share respect for sovereignty, fair and reciprocal trade, and the rule of law” (The White House, 2017). Under President Obama, the United States had already sought to “pivot” to the Asia-Pacific as part of a strategy of “rebalancing” in that region to deal with China economically and militarily. This push continued throughout the Trump administration. Toward the end of the Trump administration, the State Department noted that, “the United States supports India’s emergence as a leading global power and vital partner in efforts to ensure that the Indo-Pacific is a region of peace, stability, and growing prosperity” (The U.S. Department of State, 2021a). The Trump administration formulated an Indo-Pacific strategy in 2017, developed by the National Security Council, and declassified in January 2021 (a document that would not have become public until 30 years later in a normal procedure). According to the document, the United States aims to “accelerate India’s rise and capacity to serve as a net provider of security” through “a stronger foundation for defense cooperation and interoperability; expand our defense trade and ability to transfer defense technology,” and “offer support to India through diplomatic, military, and intelligence channels – to help address continental challenges such as the border dispute with China” (Tingle, 2021). The strategy speaks of preventing Beijing from establishing “illiberal spheres of influence,” and ensuring “US strategic primacy” in the region (Allen-Ebrahimian & Dorfman, 2021). The declassified 2017 US strategy document made clear that the United States wanted to build India’s capabilities in order to balance China. But for India, explicitly siding with the United States against China as part of a balancing-based realist approach could compromise its quest for strategic autonomy, and foreclose India’s options for dealing with China under a continued hedging posture (Singh, 2021a) . Of course, balancing and hedging strategies are not mutually exclusive and can overlap. Joint military exercises and arms sales could be considered a part of either posture, depending on the perceptions of the potential adversary regarding the kind

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of approach being implemented against it, based on the potential resolve and commitments of the alliance. India’s desire for a higher global status as a leading power includes becoming part of the international decision-making community. The Trump administration continued Washington’s formal diplomatic support for India’s quest for permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), as an indicator of its commitment to raise India’s standing globally. These are formidable goals for Indian foreign policy, and given the opposition from China on both counts, it is unlikely that New Delhi will achieve these memberships in the near future. US-India relations in the Trump era were also characterized by a close personal relationship between Donald Trump and Narendra Modi. Part of the closeness in bilateral relations is also on account of the growing clout of the Indian American community in the United States. They are relatively wealthy and have increased their political participation in the United States in recent decades. During the Trump years, there was a much greater mobilization of the Indian American community by both Trump and Modi, with the growing emphasis on the community as an important voting bloc. The personal connection between Trump and Modi was visible in several bilateral visits, including by President Trump to India in January 2020, in which he addressed a massive rally in Ahmedabad, in the western Indian state of Gujarat, of which Modi had previously been chief minister, and said that Modi was “a man I am proud to call my true friend” (Khanna, 2020). Previously, in September 2019, Modi attended a rally for Indian Americans in Houston, Texas, titled “Howdy Modi,” which also featured Trump and other American political leaders. Trump’s predecessors, especially Obama and Clinton were also received with great fanfare during their official visits to India, but with the Trump-Modi interaction, there appeared to be a more concerted attempt to use such public diplomacy for bolstering domestic political standing of the two leaders. Finally, although the US foreign policy establishment (especially the State Department) during the Trump years offered full support to India as a key American partner in the Indo-Pacific, there was some skepticism and unease in Delhi due to the perceived unreliability of the White House, including with respect to the US administration’s more hardline economic policies (Trivedi & Pande, 2018). These concerns also reflected possible adverse consequences for India from the Trump administration’s objectives and possible changes of strategy in the Indo-Pacific, and toward China. Donald Trump’s impulsiveness was also visible in statements expressing dissatisfaction with India’s role in Afghanistan, which was in line with his overall complaint that US allies were shortchanging Washington in matters of security and trade (Mohan, 2019). One can relate the unreliability and unpredictability concerns to the foreign policy decisions that emanated specifically from the White House under Trump. For instance, decisions such as the US withdrawal of troops from Syria in late 2019 after conversations between President Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan; the criticism of the US military alliances, especially NATO by President

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Trump; and the decision by President Trump to hold summit meetings with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un – these were decisions and postures that were driven by the key decision-making actor, President Trump, against the consensus view of the foreign policy establishment in the United States.

6.3.1  Shared Democratic Values? Constructivism’s understanding of international politics can shed some light on the growing amity in US-India relations. Common democratic values in US-India ties have always been an important point of reference in descriptions of the bilateral relationship and its potential. Official interactions and joint statements often note this aspect as the basis for deeper ties between Washington and New Delhi. During the Trump years, nationalism as an ideology also gained ground in both nations. But references to the democratic character are also meant to provide a rhetorical and deeper political and diplomatic foundation for a strategic alliance, or at least closer ties between India and the United States, as part of a balancing strategy in the Indo-­ Pacific. According to a senior US official and scholar, “Because India is a fellow democracy without hegemonic interests and with a propensity to seek peaceful resolution of its conflicts, its increased economic and political involvement in Asia will help to further overall US goals in the region” (Curtis, 2007). Democracy as an organizing principle can thus bolster alliances by moving away from a transactional and threat-based convergence of interests toward a deeper set of binding principles (Ayres, 2020). Under the Trump administration, there was a renewed attempt to push for an alignment of democracies in the Indo-Pacific through calls for a “new alliance of democracies” by the Trump administration, to counter China’s “new tyranny,” as noted by the then Secretary of State Michael Pompeo (Bengali, 2020). India and the United States also share common interests in their responses to the outbreak of the Covid pandemic. Vijay Gokhale, a former Indian foreign secretary, wrote that “the shortcomings of the regime will further fuel a debate on the superiority of the Chinese model as an alternative to democracy. Will this form the ideological underpinning for the birth of a new Cold War?” (Gokhale, 2020). But common democratic values between the United States and India did not prevent periodic criticisms from Washington over the Modi government’s policies on Jammu and Kashmir, especially the August 2019 bifurcation and change in the designation of the state to a union territory governed directly by the central government, and the abrogation of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which gave special status to the then state of Jammu and Kashmir. Also of concern in the United States was the Modi government’s Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in 2019 due to its implications for Muslim refugees in India. However, it must be noted that the concerns expressed in Washington were not from the Trump administration, but mainly from members of Congress (Madan, 2020a) .

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Additionally, Donald Trump’s state visit to New Delhi in February 2020 took place while anti-CAA protests were taking place in Delhi, and as the visit ended, the Indian capital experienced its worst communal riots in decades. President Trump’s supportive response for Prime Minister Modi can be attributed to Trumpism’s overall disinterest in issues of human rights and democracy, the influence of realist thinking and the need to align both countries in a balancing posture against China (Ayres, 2020).There was, however, a response from Prime Minister Modi after the insurrection at the United States Capitol by supporters of President Trump in January 2021 to overturn the results of the presidential election. In a statement on Twitter expressing his distress, Modi said, “Orderly and peaceful transfer of power must continue. The democratic process cannot be allowed to be subverted through unlawful protests” (Sen, 2021a) . Experts have speculated that under the Biden administration there might be more attention to issues of human rights in India, but there is also a consensus that regardless of these considerations, the need to balance China would be the primary driving force in US-India ties (Verma & Gettleman, 2020). Indeed, the first major interaction between Biden and Modi was at the March 2021 virtual meeting of the Quadrilateral Security Initiative, with its unstated China focus.

6.4  The China Factor in US-India Relations China has increasingly become the most prominent issue of convergence at the heart of US-India security relations, even when it is not explicitly mentioned. The United States views China as a global strategic competitor seeking regional hegemony in the Asia-Pacific, while for India, Beijing is its primary regional adversary, and the key hurdle in its quest to fulfill its grand strategic goals, including its aspiration for a UNSC seat as a permanent member, NSC membership, and a more active role beyond the subcontinent. India and China have longstanding boundary disputes and went to war in 1962 which ended in defeat for India. The question then is to what extent India and the United States are on the same page regarding strategies of containing and balancing China. Even if there is strategic convergence on the potential threat from China, is there convergence in the strategies for balancing? The key reality is that India does not have the military and economic wherewithal to compete with China, which emphasizes Delhi’s need to build up internal and external balancing toward Beijing, and this reinforces the importance of the United States in Indian strategic calculations. During the Trump years, both India and the United States saw increased tensions in ties with China. Washington sought to counter increasingly aggressive moves by China, especially in the South China Sea, most of which is considered by Beijing as its own territorial waters, a notion that is disputed by some other countries in the region. Since 2013, Chinese nuclear-powered submarines had been patrolling the Indian Ocean, an example of Beijing’s naval expansion in the region (Harold et al., 2019, p. 155). China’s attempts through its BRI to control strategically important

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points in the Indian Ocean such as the Gwadar port in Pakistan and Hambantota in Sri Lanka have further enhanced US-India threat perceptions. India competes with China in the Indian Ocean region to gain influence with smaller states. Experts in the United States have also stressed the need to build up a “collaborative countercoercion” agenda with India in order to deter China’s coercive abilities against Delhi and other South Asian countries (White, 2021, p. 4). There is growing concern in Washington that China would attempt military action to conquer Taiwan in the next few years. The United States might not have an upper hand in a potential military conflict with China, as China expands its military capabilities in the Indo-Pacific, with precision-guided missiles, targeting satellites, and the largest navy in the world (Kitfield, 2021). The United States’ relations with China in recent years have especially been characterized by disputes over economic and trade issues. The Trump administration was especially concerned with the growing trade deficit in favor of China. This led to tit-for-tat tariffs by Washington and Beijing, which  put pressure on their economies even before the global economic slowdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. Moreover, China’s policies in Xinjiang and Hong Kong further intensified tensions with the Trump administration. Over the last 15 years, Sino-India relations stalled at first, and then deteriorated with repeated military crises, after more than a decade of maturing ties after the 1993 Border Peace and Tranquility Agreement between the two countries. The first was in 2017, when Indian and Chinese troops engaged in a standoff over Chinese road construction in Doklam, a disputed territory claimed by China and Bhutan, with whom India has close ties. While the crisis eventually deescalated, it was another indicator of the potential for conflict between India and China along their long border. Subsequently, in June 2020, India and China had their worst military confrontation since the September 1967 Nathu La clashes on the Sikkim border. At positions on the Line of Actual Control (LAC), especially in the Galwan Valley, Ladakh, Indian and Chinese troops clashed, leading to scores of casualties. India and China finally agreed to disengage in the region in February 2021, after several rounds of high-level military talks over the previous months. These two military confrontations reinforced the shared US-India concern over China. Speaking of the summer 2020 Ladakh episode, senior US government official Lisa Curtis noted in September that, “throughout the crisis, the U.S. provided strong and unambiguous support for India, and our cooperation has certainly grown closer. We are encouraged by India’s strong, yet responsible approach to Chinese aggression” (The Tribune, 2020). The Ladakh confrontation as well as Chinese incursions into Arunachal Pradesh in northeastern India have renewed the arguments for closer defense ties with the United States, perhaps even in the form of a formal military alliance or US military bases (Gupta, 2020a, pp.  31–37; Gupta, 2020b). India’s current hedging strategy emerged due to uncertainties from the Obama administration’s failed attempts at rapprochement with Beijing in its early years, and these led India to consider hedging as a present-day version of nonalignment, involving a strategic partnership with the United States, pursuit of stability in ties

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with China, and engaging in defense partnerships with regional powers to balance Beijing (Pant & Joshi, 2016, pp. 5–6). Under India’s hedging approach against China, New Delhi has not been part of an overt, formal military alliance against Beijing. Hedging has also been preferable to avoid provoking China into a militarily antagonistic relationship that will foreclose all other options for India. The hesitation on the part of successive Indian governments since the 1990s also stems from domestic politics, the continued influence of nonalignment principles, and the suspicion toward the United States in Indian foreign policy circles. After the summer 2020 Ladakh crisis, however, New Delhi might be reassessing the continued utility of its hedging approach vis-à-vis China, and less cautious about provoking Beijing, and therefore would be likely to seek a closer military relationship with the United States (Martin et  al., 2020). Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said in January 2021 the Galwan crisis had “profoundly disturbed” ties with China, and that US-India relations were likely to become closer during the Biden administration (Krolicki, 2021). The slow and limited progress made in India’s ties with China through various agreements signed since 1993 is now likely to be overshadowed for the foreseeable future by the Ladakh and Doklam crises (Pant, 2020). This then has a bearing on Delhi-Washington relations. For the Trump administration, the Galwan clash emphasized the importance and urgency of a closer military relationship between India and the United States, and one former senior Trump administration defense official said, “My former Pentagon colleagues see the India dust-up as nothing you’d want but a greater opportunity for further strengthening US-India cooperation. Our defense strategy is getting a boost from all this” (Martin et al., 2020). Finally, both India and the United States have expressed skepticism over China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which includes the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and the “Maritime Silk Road,” connecting nations of Southeast Asia as part of a Chinese-dominated sea trading network. Washington and Delhi believe that the BRI is a mercantilist strategy for Chinese economic and political hegemony in the Indo-Pacific and Eurasia, which also compromises India’s national sovereignty. Allegations of “debt trap diplomacy” have been leveled at Beijing for enmeshing countries into massive loans. The 99-year lease of the Sri Lankan port of Hambantota by Chinese companies is regarded as a prime example of this strategy, a case that has raised concerns in both India and the United States about Chinese naval expansion in the Indian Ocean region.

6.4.1  The “Quad” Closer defense ties between India and the United States have also acted as a catalyst for increased defense interactions between India and other Indo-Pacific powers, especially Japan and Australia, driven especially by a shared concern about China’s aggressive rise. For instance, the US-India Malabar naval exercises that began in

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1992, added Japan as a permanent member since 2015, and Australia participated in the 2020 edition (after participating last in 2007), while the United States has also included India in its trilateral security exchanges with Japan and Australia (Harold et al., 2019, p. 145). The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (“Quad”), a forum for security interactions between the United States, India, Australia, and Japan, was first established in 2007 after their cooperation during the tsunami rescue efforts of late 2004. It became dormant in 2008, after the new Australian government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd left the initiative, persuaded by Beijing. The Quad was revived in 2017, and is meant for strategic discussions regarding the Indo-Pacific, especially China’s naval expansion in the Indo-Pacific. There is now renewed focus on the Quad, which is now a cornerstone of the Biden administration’s Indo-Pacific policy. In recent years, especially 2020, there has been a noticeable increase in tensions between Quad members and China. Aside from the India-China Ladakh crisis in 2020, Australia’s ties with China have also undergone a downturn over questions in Australia regarding the origins of the Covid-19 virus, economic pressures from China, and interference in Australian politics by Beijing (Ruwitch, 2020). There have been increased tensions between China and Japan in the East China Sea over the disputed Senkaku/ Diaoyu Islands. In addition, there have been intensified aggressive military interactions between the US and Chinese forces in the South China Sea over freedom of navigation, and the US support for Taiwan, which reflects an increasing military rivalry between the two great powers, a harbinger for the future (Hille & Sevastopulo, 2021). In March 2021, the Quad held its first ever heads of government summit, virtually, which focused especially on boosting Covid-19 vaccine production, and on setting up joint working groups on climate change, technology, and cyber security. Even though China was not the key focus at this meeting, the grouping is regarded as seeking avenues for balancing China, and according to one expert, Washington is “trying to team up with partners to alter the international operating environment for Beijing rather than to directly confront it” (Ruwitch & Kelemen, 2021). The US National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan, said in January 2021 that the Biden administration would build on the Trump administration’s focus on the Quad, and after the March summit, Sullivan said that, “The Quad, at the end of the day, is now a critical part of the architecture of the Indo-Pacific” (News18.com, 2021). The Quad interactions aim at improving trust and interoperability among their militaries, including in areas such as anti-submarine warfare (Chanlett-Avery et al., 2020). The narrative around the Quad does not officially focus on China, but on broader collective and human security issues, including maritime cooperation and cybersecurity, as a way of reassuring the region of the positive contributions planned, even though the push for the Quad remains rooted in dealing with China’s increasingly aggressive attitudes (Sevastopulo & Kazmin, 2021). In the Covid-19 era this also symbolizes vaccine diplomacy as part of soft power competition with China. Nevertheless, the debate continues over the future of the Quad, and whether it can be an effective mechanism for balancing China in the Indo-Pacific. A number of questions show that the Quad remains a work in progress, albeit one that has

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received a fillip since 2017. Would the Quad transform into a formalized military alliance, and are the individual members ready for such a step? After all, India, Japan, and Australia have to take into account their respective dyads and complex relationships with China, including extensive economic ties. In addition, if there are military conflicts with China involving one of the Quad members, how would the others react? It would also depend on the type of conflict or skirmish, which might leave sufficient hesitation within the Quad about taking a major military step against Beijing. From the Indian perspective, this is a pressing issue, given the 2020 Ladakh crisis. Former senior Singaporean diplomat Kishore Mahbubani has argued that given China’s economic influence in Asia, it is unlikely that the four countries will be able to push back jointly against China through a ramped-up Quad (Mahbubani, 2021).2

6.4.2  Countervailing Balancing from China-Pakistan From the balancing perspective, also to be considered is the continued deepening of the China-Pakistan defense and security alliance. This is hardly something that commenced only during the Trump administration. The Beijing-Islamabad alliance dates back to the 1960s as the two adversaries of India joined hands in a defense and diplomatic partnership that eventually acquired a nuclear and missile cooperation dimension as well. In fact, at various points in the 1970s and 1980s, there was a tricornered cooperative relationship between the United States, China, and Pakistan, especially since the Nixon administration’s rapprochement toward Beijing. More recently, a major irritant in US-Pakistan ties has been the closer US-India relations. Since the end of the anti-Soviet Afghan mujahideen campaign of the 1980s, Islamabad’s complaint has been that for the United States, Pakistan is a short-term partner, especially meant to support US military operations in Afghanistan, whether in the 1980s against the Soviet occupation or after the 9/11 attacks for the US-led military campaign against Islamabad’s ally Taliban and Al Qaeda. Beijing is Pakistan’s closest and all-weather ally and a mechanism for putting military pressure on India, and China’s alliance with Pakistan helps it contain India to the South Asian region. For over a decade now, Indian defense planners have taken into consideration the possibility of a simultaneous two-war scenario with both China and Pakistan, and this further emphasizes the need for closer defense ties between India and the United States. After the 2005 joint announcement of a US-India nuclear agreement , Pakistan’s angst against the United States intensified further as India’s nuclear weapons program was effectively dehyphenated from Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal in the view of most of the international community,

2  It is noteworthy that both Australia and Japan are part of the new Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) free trade agreement along with China that was signed in November 2020.

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through the US-India civil nuclear cooperation agreement, and the revelations of the A.Q. Khan nuclear proliferation network in Pakistan in 2004. China and Pakistan strengthened their own decades old military and civilian nuclear cooperation arrangement in 2010 after the US-India civil nuclear deal and the Washington-championed waiver for India from the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) (Joshi, 2011). Similarly, after the United States and India signed the Basic Exchange and Cooperation for Geo-Spatial Cooperation in October 2020, China and Pakistan concluded their own defense agreement involving new mechanisms on intelligence sharing on Indian military forces (Aamir, 2020).

6.5  US-India Defense Ties The last two decades have seen increased defense cooperation between the United States and India on many levels – foundational agreements, joint military exercises, training, and the US sale of crucial military equipment, platforms, and weaponry – in the quest for greater interoperability between their militaries and strengthening their strategic partnership for balance-of-power and other common security objectives, including building up India’s military capabilities in the region. The 2018 US National Defense Strategy stated that part of the objectives of the US Department of Defense is to “maintain favorable regional balances of power in the Indo-Pacific” (and other regions), and “defending allies from military aggression and bolstering partners against coercion, and fairly sharing responsibilities for common defense,” objectives that are very relevant to the aspirations underlying the US-India defense relationship (U.S. Department of Defense, 2018, p. 3). For decades till the end of the Cold War, India depended on the Soviet Union for the bulk of its military hardware, including its air force capabilities, such as the MiG-21 and MiG-29 aircraft, and transport aircraft. This close connection continued after the breakup of the Soviet Union, as New Delhi continued to acquire major weapons systems and platforms from Russia, such as the Sukhoi-30 multirole fighter aircraft, the INS Vikramaditya aircraft carrier, and the leased nuclear-­ powered submarine, INS Chakra. This trend shifted as over the last two decades the United States has entered into an important defense trade partnership with India, and several major items, such as C-130 and C-17 tactical and strategic aircraft, Apache and Chinook helicopters, P-8I anti-submarine patrol aircraft, and the USS Trenton/INS Jalashwa, have been sold to India. Under the Trump administration, defense ties between India and the United States continued to deepen, as the two countries completed the set of foundational or enabling agreements. Just a week before the November 2020 presidential election, Washington and New Delhi signed a major defense agreement, the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement on Geospatial Cooperation (BECA). This agreement involves sharing satellite information, including geospatial and aeronautical intelligence for precision targeting, that could be helpful to India in a potential conflict with China, and also allows transfer of navigational and avionics equipment

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on US aircraft sold to India (BBC News, 2020). The agreement was signed during the visit to India of Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and Secretary of Defense Michael Esper in late October 2020 as part of the third edition of “2 + 2” dialogue between the two countries. The fact that it took place a week before the presidential election, in the midst of a global pandemic, underscored the importance of the interaction. The two countries had signed two earlier foundational defense agreements, including the Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA) in September 2018, which secures advanced communication and encryption systems, and would allow for the transfer of high-tech military equipment such as MQ-9 Guardian drones, as well as possible upgrades for the Indian Navy’s P-8I Long-Range Maritime Reconnaissance Aircraft, among other major equipment (Joshi, 2018). In February 2019, it also became a member of NATO’s Tier 2 in the Allied Committee 135, which permits exchange of information as part of NATO’s classification of logistical items, following the Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement (LEMOA) in 2016 at the conclusion of the second foundational agreement (Joshi, 2019). Earlier, the first of the foundational agreements, the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) had been signed in 2002, with an industrial security annex to it signed in 2019. India was designated a “Major Defense Partner” in 2016, and in 2018, it was placed in the “Strategic Trade Authorization” tier 1 status, which permits license-free use of military and dual-use technologies (The U.S. Department of State, 2021b). The foundational agreements provide the institutional framework for more comprehensive defense cooperation, including operational cooperation, among the respective militaries, and show the degree to which shifts have taken place in their security relationship. Such developments might have been unthinkable less than two decades ago. In fact, the US ambassador to India during the Trump term, Kenneth Juster, has noted that the foundational agreements, especially LEMOA and COMCASA, helped facilitate US assistance during the border crisis (Juster, 2021). Moreover, major domestic political hurdles in India toward enhanced defense ties with the United States have steadily declined in recent years. As noted by a former Indian deputy national security adviser, Arvind Gupta, “We have crossed the hump of uncertainty on both sides” (Slater, 2020). In the past, there was also greater opposition from political parties in India over closer ties with the United States, as evidenced by the debate over the civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with the United States in 2005–2008 (Joshi, 2008). India’s confrontations with China during the Trump years are likely to necessitate an increased focus also on its maritime capabilities in the Indian Ocean region to counter Chinese naval expansion there. The Indian Navy views any increase of its capabilities as reflecting its role as a “preferred security partner,” and might opt for weapons systems and platforms that are highly interoperable with its key allies (Joshi, 2021). The two countries have also intensified their military-to-military relationship through a variety of military exercises to strengthen joint operations and interoperability. The Malabar naval exercises have been taking place annually since 2002, having first begun in 1992, and now also include Japan as a permanent member. The

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Cope India exercises between the Indian and the US air forces have taken place five times since 2004, most recently in 2018. In addition, their first triservice exercise took place in 2019. Experts have recommended more effective exercises that would involve smaller countries of South Asia, as well as ensuring that these regular exercises become the basis for routine joint military operations (White, 2021, pp. 11–12). An enduring element of US-India ties over the last decade and a half has been the expansion of their bilateral defense trade relationship. During 2016–2020, India was the world’s second largest arms importer after Saudi Arabia, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), even as there was a 53% decline in Russian arms imports to India between this period and 2011–2015, although this is likely to be reversed to a degree as India’s deals with Russia in 2019–2020 are implemented (Wezeman et  al., 2021, p.  4). India’s arms imports from the United States dropped by 46% in 2016–2020, compared to 2011–2015, which could be due to bureaucratic procurement processes, but weapons imports from the United States could increase in the next few years as Delhi's purchases of major armaments and platforms, including fighter planes, come to fruition (Wezeman et al., 2020, p. 9). The United States was also the fourth largest supplier to India in 2016–2020, dropping from second place in 2011–2015 (Wezeman et al., 2020, p. 9). During the Trump years, India’s arms purchases from US defense companies continued from earlier years. The two sides inked a major $3 billion deal during Trump’s visit to Delhi in February 2020 under which India would purchase 24 Sea Hawk helicopters with Hellfire missiles from Lockheed Martin and additional Apache helicopters (Holland & Ahmed, 2020). Earlier, in 2019, they signed a $670 million agreement for spare parts and logistics support for India’s C-17 aircraft. There are distinct advantages for India regarding defense acquisition from the United States, including advanced technology, top-shelf spare parts, and the removal of allegations of corruption in deals (Gupta, 2020c, pp. 182–183). Negotiations for further defense sales to India continued during the Trump administration. For example, Boeing and the US government seek to win the contract to provide the Indian Navy with 57 Multi-Role Carrier-Borne Fighters (MRCBF) with the F/A-18 fighter, discussions for which continued in the Trump years, along with aircraft trials (Joshi, 2020a) . Discussions during the Trump term also focused on India seeking armed drones from the United States, after acquiring two Sea Guardian drones on lease in 2020 for maritime patrolling. The Trump administration had exempted the sale of long-­ range armed drones from the “strong presumption of denial” for Category I systems under the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) guidelines (White, 2021, p. 11). Washington also tried to persuade India to buy the armed MQ-9 drones from General Atomics during the October 2020 “2 + 2” dialogue, which might have provided a foreign policy and domestic jobs win for the administration just before the presidential election, but Delhi turned down the offer, reportedly due to the price tag of $16 million per drone (Shinkman, 2020). By the early months of the Biden administration, Delhi had apparently come around to purchasing 30 armed MQ-9B Predator drones, which became even more relevant after recent crises with Pakistan and China over the last 2 years (Sen, 2021b) .

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There are challenges in areas of defense and intelligence cooperation which have been noted by experts, with recommendations such as increased open source intelligence collaboration and increased dialogue on capabilities in space (White, 2021). There also remain some concerns and disagreements toward closer defense cooperation, including over technology transfer, India’s Defense Procurement Policy (DPP), and US concerns that India’s DPP does not take into account geostrategic objectives and operational partnering for selection of equipment (Abercrombie, 2018). Disagreement over offset rules has now been eased by New Delhi. This would remove offset obligations from government-to-government initiatives, while also increasing the maximum foreign direct investment in the defense sector to 74% from 49%, which would help attract more advanced technology, according to a senior official of the US-India Strategic Partnership Forum (Joshi, 2020b).

6.6  The S-400 Deal and the India-Russia Defense Ties As US-India ties have strengthened in recent decades, a potential irritant is India’s long-standing close relationship with Russia, especially Delhi’s purchase of the S-400 air defense system from Moscow. Despite Donald Trump’s affinities with and quest for closer ties with Moscow, the US foreign policy establishment across the partisan political divide views Russia as an adversary. Under the 2017 US law, the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), Washington imposed further sanctions on Iran, North Korea, and Russia, with the provision to impose sanctions on those countries that engage in a variety of transactions with the three states, including the sale and purchase of defense technologies and platforms.3 The S-400 system is a Russian surface-to-air defense system that India finalized with Moscow in October 2018 for $5.5 billion, with the delivery of the first of five systems set for late 2021. A major hurdle, especially for enhanced US-India defense ties, is that the S-400 deal would limit interoperability between their militaries, as noted in 2018 by the then US House Armed Services Committee chair Mac Thornberry, and impact the sale of US fighter aircraft to India (Scroll.com, 2018; Miglani, 2021). As noted earlier, Russia has traditionally been India’s largest supplier of defense equipment and platforms, and an important ally on the world stage, despite its arms exports to India declining by 47% between 2010–2014 and 2015–2019 (Wezeman et al., 2020). The key question now is whether New Delhi’s deepening ties with Washington and its historically close relationship with Moscow are necessarily a zero-sum game. The Russian relationship is important for India as a way of potentially 3  The S-400 has been a source of disagreement in ties between the United States and Turkey also, after Turkey signed an agreement to purchase the system from Russia in 2018, despite warnings from the Trump administration. This was especially on account of Turkey’s participation in the F-35 fighter aircraft joint development program, which would have been compromised if operated alongside the S-400 system.

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balancing against China, or at the very least preventing further closeness between Moscow and Beijing, and forestalling Russia’s interactions with Pakistan (Madan, 2018). The S-400 can be considered a symbol of strategic autonomy for India, and the February 2019 Balakot crisis with Pakistan and the summer 2020 Ladakh clash with China increased the importance of this system further. Despite the S-400 disagreement, Washington and Delhi did sign the BECA in late October 2020. Subsequently, the incoming Biden administration asserted in January 2021 that India was unlikely to get a waiver from CAATSA sanctions for the S-400 acquisition, a stance which has to be viewed in the context of Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy that includes a key role for India in balancing China. Indeed, the US ambassador to India during the Trump years, Kenneth Juster, said that the S-400 sanctions specter conveys doubts to Delhi about US commitment to a long-­ term partnership, and is counterproductive (Juster, 2021).

6.7  Nuclear Matters As noted earlier, since India’s first nuclear test in May 1974 under the Indira Gandhi government, the country’s nuclear weapons program was a frequent source of friction with the United States and a key hurdle toward a strategic partnership between the two countries. India has remained outside the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) since its inception, which New Delhi regards as being discriminatory. During the 1990s, there was pressure on India from the Clinton administration to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), and sanctions were imposed on both India and Pakistan after their nuclear tests in summer 1998. Subsequently, US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbot and Indian External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh held 14 rounds of discussions in the final years of the Clinton administration on a variety of issues, especially India’s nuclear status. This was a turning point in dealing with the nuclear question in US-India relations, and in 2005 President George W.  Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced their intention to forge a civilian nuclear cooperation agreement. The agreement, concluded in 2008, followed the approval of the India-specific safeguards agreement by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and the waiver granted to India by the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). The US-India agreement was considered key to transforming Washington’s partnership with New Delhi (Rice, 2006). India continues to be outside the NPT, and is unlikely to sign the CTBT, but these stances are no longer a hurdle in US-India ties. During the Trump years, India’s nuclear weapons program did not appear to be a prominent issue in their bilateral discussions. In general, part of the reason could be India’s reluctance to discuss nuclear issues at the bilateral level, but such discussions could become more important given shared concerns of China’s expansion in the nuclear, cyber, and space realms, which would have an impact on Indian deterrence capabilities (White, 2021, pp. 18–19). At the same time, nuclear escalation and instability in the region frequently becomes a topic of discussion during

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India-Pakistan military crises, and the Balakot skirmish in February 2019 worried some in Washington on this count. Indo-Pak crises generally involve nuclear and missile signaling by Islamabad as a means to get the international community (especially the United States) to intervene and pressure India. But, as scholars have noted, with the United States viewing India as a long-term strategic ally, it would continue siding with India in such episodes (Dalton, 2019a). Aside from that, in recent years, there has been a renewed debate in India over the country’s no-first use (NFU) posture which it has maintained since 2003. There have been calls in India to eschew the NFU on the grounds this would strengthen its deterrent against Pakistan, and that retaining it constrains India’s options against Islamabad (Dalton, 2019b). But rejecting the NFU could dampen India’s goal of being regarded as a responsible nuclear weapons state, so Delhi is unlikely to make major official change in its declared posture. During President Trump’s visit to India in February 2020, there were expectations that the Westinghouse corporation would sign an agreement with the state-­ owned Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) for the purchase of six nuclear reactors by India, but this did not take place due to disagreements over India’s nuclear liability regulations, which are not in line with international norms that place liability for accidents on the operator of the plant, not the manufacturer (Haider & Peri, 2020; Miglani & Arora, 2020).

6.7.1  The Iran Issue in US-India Relations The United States also considers India to be an element of its strategy to put pressure on Iran’s nuclear weapons program through stringent economic sanctions. In July 2015, the Obama administration, other permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, and Germany had concluded the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Tehran to stop Iran’s uranium enrichment program for several years. However, in May 2018, the Trump administration withdrew from the agreement. There had been periodic pressure from the United States on India to end purchase of oil from Iran – New Delhi was the second largest buyer of Iranian oil after China. By May 2019, India had ended its purchase of Iranian oil, as the United States prepared sanctions against countries that had continued to deal with Iran. At the same time, India quadrupled its imports of oil from the United States (Verma, 2019). US tensions with Iran further nosedived with the killing of the chief of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Quds Force Maj. Gen Qasem Soleimani in a US drone strike in Baghdad in January 2020. Any crisis or conflict between the United States and Iran would have an adverse impact on the Indian economy given the region’s importance for India’s oil and natural gas imports, and on the safety of

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millions of Indian citizens working in the Middle East (Madan, 2020b) .4 Thus, for India, a key objective in the Middle East has been to balance its partnership with the United States with its economic interests related to Iran.

6.8  Counterterrorism Cooperation Even before the attacks of September 11, 2001, it was increasingly clear in the prior decade that jihadist terrorist and insurgent groups were cooperating and allying with one another in South Asia; groups including Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and the India-­ focused Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Muhammad, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen. There was a convergence of threat perception in both the United States and India regarding a network of jihadist terrorist groups, several of whom were supported directly by Islamabad. However, the larger structural context of US posture toward South Asia continues to be an important qualifier here. Washington had to (and to an extent, still does) consider its ties with Pakistan, as part of the hyphenated status that Islamabad enjoyed with New Delhi, and importantly, to take into account Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, which effectively rendered the country “too big to fail.” After the 9/11 attacks by Al Qaeda, as the United States commenced its counterterrorism operations against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee offered military assistance for this mission, including the use of Indian military bases. For reasons of geography, logistics, and Pakistan’s close ties with the Taliban, there was more immediate need for Islamabad’s military support, and Pakistan once again became a frontline state. But the period also saw expanded US-India counterterrorism cooperation as part of broader longer term defense and security ties between the two countries. Counterterrorism cooperation was elevated to a higher level in 2000 with the establishment of a regular institutionalized mechanism for counterterrorism discussions and cooperation, the Counterterrorism Joint Working Group. The working group held its 17th meeting and the third session of the India-US Designations Dialogue in September 2020, which reaffirmed their commitment against terrorism and the need for Pakistan to stop allowing its territory to be used by terrorist entities (Ministry of External Affairs, 2020). Counterterrorism cooperation between the United States and India was evident (though with some disagreements) in the investigations and prosecutions into the November 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks, which killed 174 people, including six US citizens. These investigations are considered to have been an important turning point in strengthening US-India counterterrorism collaboration (Kronstadt & Pinto, 2012, p. 17). The Mumbai attack investigations and prosecutions continue to the present day. India and the United States have indicted Sajid Mir, the chief planner 4  It is worth noting that the Soleimani killing also led to the Indian government expressing a renewed interest in acquiring Predator drones that were involved in the operation, in the context of potentially targeting terrorist leaders across the border in Pakistan (Negi, 2020).

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of the Mumbai attacks, and have demanded that Pakistan extradite him, although that is unlikely to happen (Miglani, 2020). New Delhi continues to seek the extradition from the United States of Tahawwur Rana, a Pakistani-Canadian convicted of providing material support to the LeT in 2013, while David Coleman Headley, a key planner of the attacks, was convicted in a US court after a plea bargain and so cannot be extradited to India because of the “double jeopardy” clause (Singh, 2020). The Rana extradition case could become a source of disagreement between the two governments, if US courts deny India’s extradition request (Goudie et al., 2021). More generally, over the years there have been some hitches in collaboration, including bureaucratic differences, uneven domestic counterterrorism capacity in India, some differences over the nature of Pakistan’s role, concerns in India over US commitments, as well as Delhi’s fears that Washington might recruit intelligence assets in Indian organizations (Kronstadt & Pinto, 2012). Thus, the main issues of relevance in the US-India counterterrorism cooperation relationship are: (a) terrorist attacks in India by groups based in Pakistan, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad and (b) terrorism and Taliban’s role in Afghanistan. Pakistan’s links with jihadist terrorist groups targeting India are the key feature of Delhi’s counterterrorism interactions with the United States. India has consistently sought to mobilize the international community to put pressure on Islamabad to permanently end all support for terrorism. This is the US position as well, and successive administrations in Washington have pressured Islamabad by threatening to cut back on the military and economic aid that the United States provided after the 9/11 attacks in exchange for Pakistan’s assistance in Afghanistan. There has long been a convergence in the objectives between India and the United States on pressuring Pakistan to permanently clamp down on terrorist groups and US positions have frequently emphasized this priority, bolstering India’s position internationally. Periodic official assessments from the United States continue to put pressure on Islamabad due to its continued links with jihadist groups. For instance, the 2020 US State Department’s annual report on terrorism was critical of Islamabad for not doing enough against India-focused jihadist groups and the Haqqani Network (Gannon, 2020). At the multilateral Financial Action Task Force (FATF), both India and the United States advocated firm measures against Islamabad, due to the lack of consistent and permanent effort by the Pakistan government in clamping down on terrorist groups and their financing activities, including those of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad. India and Pakistan concluded a ceasefire agreement in February 2021 which can be attributed in part to Pakistan’s need to reset its relationship with Washington under a new administration in the United States and India’s motivation to avoid further tensions with Islamabad in the midst of the downturn in its ties with China (Ganguly, 2021). It could also be influenced by the Biden administration’s renewed push for a peace settlement in Afghanistan that would require better ties between India and Pakistan as a prerequisite for movement on the Afghan peace process (Singh, 2021b) .

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6.8.1  Afghanistan The two-decade-long US military campaign in Afghanistan is the country’s longest military operation, and successive administrations in Washington have sought to wind down American involvement through an acceptable peace agreement in Afghanistan. The Trump administration’s primary objective in Afghanistan was also to ensure an end to US military operations and presence there, which had been its presidential campaign promise in 2016. The US government and the Taliban concluded a peace agreement in February 2020, which involves a commitment to a ceasefire among the different forces in the country, withdrawal of all foreign troops, negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban, and counterterrorism commitments by the Taliban, especially in ending the activities of Al Qaeda, and the Islamic State group (Maizland, 2020). By the end of the Trump administration, US military presence in Afghanistan declined to about 2500 troops, and the Biden administration announced a full withdrawal of U.S. forces by September 11, 2021. . The Trump administration’s priority to withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan facilitated a reset of ties toward a transactional approach with Islamabad in 2018, seeking Pakistan’s assistance in using its leverage over the Taliban to facilitate a peace agreement in the country, which would enable a US departure (Afzal, 2020). India and the United States agree on the need for peace and stability in Afghanistan, but the question is how this would influence Delhi’s security interests. It might be noted that during the Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s visit to the White House in July 2019, Trump mused about mediating on the Kashmir issue between India and Pakistan, prompting Delhi to respond that Kashmir is a bilateral issue, and the US State Department offering a clarification to this effect (Chaudhary, 2019). More importantly, jihadist groups based in Afghanistan pose a major counterterrorism threat to India. These groups, especially the Taliban, have a long history of collaborating with Pakistan-based jihadist terrorist groups fighting India, such as Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM). During the 1990s, especially after the takeover of Kabul by the Taliban in 1996, Kashmir-focused jihadist groups such as Harkat-ul Mujahideen formed a close working partnership with the Taliban and the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). This relationship manifested in the hijacking of the Indian Airlines plane from Kathmandu to Kabul in December 1999, which led to the release of jihadist terrorists from Indian prisons (Hussain, 2007). Afghanistan continues to be a haven for Al Qaeda, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and the Islamic State group, and therefore, a complete withdrawal of international forces by the middle of 2021 that leads to the Taliban’s effectively taking control of the country risks expansion of terrorist violence in the region. This would be a direct threat to Indian security. Relatedly, the Taliban’s return, even in a power-sharing arrangement, would mean increased Pakistani influence in Afghanistan and pose a challenge for Indian interests, with the loss of a friendly government in Kabul that has been in power for almost two decades.

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6.8.2  India’s “Surgical Strike” Policy At least since the 1990 India-Pakistan crisis, Washington has played a role in defusing crises between the two subcontinental rivals. These episodes have been sparked by attacks on Indian territory by jihadist terrorist groups backed by Pakistan. The 2001–2002 crisis, which was provoked by the attack on the Indian Parliament by Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) terrorists, the November 2008 Mumbai attacks by Lashkar-e-Taiba, and the 1999 Kargil conflict, all saw the involvement of the US government to varying degrees in trying to end the standoffs and preventing military escalation. During the Trump years, the major terrorist-sparked crisis between India and Pakistan came in February 2019, when Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) terrorists carried out a suicide bombing of a convoy of the Indian Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) in Pulwama, Jammu and Kashmir, which killed 40 soldiers. India responded less than 2 weeks later with an air strike by Indian Air Force (IAF)’s Mirage 2000 jets on Balakot, in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province targeting a JeM training camp and militants. In retaliation, Pakistan sought to strike in Jammu and Kashmir, but in the subsequent dogfight with IAF MiG-21s, an Indian pilot was brought down into Pakistani custody and released a day later, after which the crisis was defused. The extent of the role played by the United States in this crisis is not fully known, and it coincided with President Trump’s visit to Hanoi for a summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. According to the then US National Security Adviser John Bolton: “After hours of phone calls, the crisis passed, perhaps because, in substance, there never really had been one” (The Wire, 2020). In an official statement after speaking to the Indian and Pakistani foreign ministers, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo termed the IAF’s Balakot strike as “Indian counterterrorism actions,” and apart from urging restraint from both sides, also conveyed to Islamabad the “urgency of Pakistan taking meaningful action against terrorist groups operating on its soil” (India Today.in, 2019). This could be regarded as Washington tacitly siding with India in its military strike (Noor, 2020).5 Prior to the February 2019 Pulwama attack, there had been other major terrorist attacks in Jammu and Kashmir in recent years. In September 2016, a few months before the US presidential election that year, an attack by Pakistan-backed terrorists on an Indian army camp in Uri, Kashmir killed 17 soldiers. In response, the Modi government launched a military strike on a terrorist training camp in Pakistan Kashmir, which was officially announced and entered the public imagination as a “surgical strike” (Sasikumar, 2019). The Obama administration’s response to India’s strike was one of support for Delhi and expectations from Pakistan that it would target and take “effective action” against terrorist groups  (White, 2019) . Thus, Washington had already begun offering some degree of acceptance for more 5  There was also some concern in Washington about possible escalation of tensions between India and Pakistan after the revocation of Jammu and Kashmir’s status by Delhi in August 2019 (Curtis, 2021).

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aggressive Indian counterterrorism measures prior to the Trump administration, a stance that continued with the Pulwama-Balakot crisis in February 2019. The ceasefire agreement between India and Pakistan in February 2021 offers hope that there will be a decreased risk of military crises between the two countries. But the continued presence of India-focused terrorist groups in Pakistan shows that the fundamental situation remains unchanged, something that the Biden administration has to consider in its dealings with the South Asian rivals.

6.9  Economic Ties Between the United States and India For decades after India’s independence, successive governments starting with Nehru implemented an autarkic state-run economy. The liberalization of the Indian economy from 1991 created opportunities for foreign direct investment into the country and acted as a catalyst for better economic (and overall) ties between India and the United States during the 1990s. During the Trump years, economic statecraft became more prominently intertwined with US foreign policy objectives and ideology. Increased trade and economic interdependence among major powers can mitigate military competition by raising the costs of war. While these linkages are certainly valid, it is precisely these economic interdependencies with China that have come under increased scrutiny from the security perspective. Washington’s tariff tussle with Beijing also influenced US ties with India. Trade disagreements between India and the United States during the Trump administration became more prominent. This is not to suggest that under the Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton administrations, trade ties were free of irritants. In fact, the same issues on bilateral trade which came to the forefront during the Trump administration existed during preceding US administrations. But the difference on trade matters were elevated to a higher level of bilateral disagreement, in part possibly based on ideological motivations, although, it must be emphasized, it did not damage the foundations of the bilateral relationship. During President Trump’s visit to India in February 2020, there was some hope for a bilateral trade deal, but even a “mini trade deal” did not come to fruition because of continued differences on a number of issues including India’s tariff and nontariff barriers on the agricultural, manufacturing, information and communications technology sectors, and price controls on medical devices, while India has opposed US steel and aluminum tariffs and anticompetitive subsidies for the American dairy sector ( Cloen & Nooruddin, 2020). Indian market access disagreements also led to the removal of India from the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) in March 2019, under which selected developing countries can export duty-­ free products to the United States, affecting the Indian pharmaceutical, textiles, and agricultural sectors ( Cloen  & Nooruddin, 2020). Issues under negotiation also include intellectual property rights, India’s localization practices, restrictions by Delhi on e-commerce platforms, and disagreements with the United States at the

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World Trade Organization (WTO) on fisheries duties, and e-commerce customs duties (Akhtar, 2020). There is some expectation that under the Biden administration, the differences will be bridged. For instance, in early 2021, the Indian government allowed increased FDI in its insurance sector, which was an objective for US negotiators (Arora, 2021). Thus, protectionist tendencies became a more salient issue in US-India ties during the Trump years. Moreover, the Covid pandemic put immense pressure on the global economy, including on trade relations and flow of goods and services, pushing large parts of the world into a recession. Both India and the United States saw a decline in economic growth, especially India, whose economy was expected to have contracted by 9.6% in 2020, but which then emerged from a recession by the end of 2020 with a 0.4% growth rate, and is expected to grow by 7.3% in 2021, according to the United Nations (Bhagat & Kumar, 2021; Economic Times, 2021) . At least till the first half of 2019, US-India goods trade increased to its highest level ever, $92 billion (Rossow, 2020). But even before the pandemic hit, Indian economic growth had slowed down since 2016. But the pandemic brought concerns about global economic and trade supply chains including information technology services provided by companies in India, which demonstrated an intensification of US-India commercial relations (Rossow, 2020). Among the other irritants in US-India ties during the Trump years was the issue of immigration. Donald Trump came into office with a hardline immigration agenda, which, most notably, took aim at undocumented immigrants in the United States and constructing a border wall with Mexico. But the Trump administration’s immigration policy was also focused on reducing the numbers of employment visas issued, including in the H-1B category. About 75% of the roughly 85,000 H-1B visas issued every year go to Indian nationals, and so measures against H-1B visas was of specific concern for the Indian government. Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar emphasized in December 2019 that the flow of professional talent from India to the United States was an important element of economic cooperation, and acted as a “strategic bridge” (The Economic Times, 2019). Subsequently, the Covid-19 pandemic led to executive orders to stop any further H-1B employment visa applications in 2020. And in October 2020, the Trump administration sought to reduce H-1B visa petitions further by scrapping the lottery system for H-1B, increasing the required salaries for applicants, and tightening the eligibility requirements (Kanno-Youngs & Jordan, 2020). These measures caused some concerns within the Indian government, with Jaishankar saying that a more favorable US visa policy would be positive for both countries (Reuters, 2020). 

6.9.1  Concerns over China’s Economic Capabilities In both the United States and India there does seem to be an emerging view to decouple their economies from China, although this is much easier said than done. Economic statecraft was also visible in New Delhi’s posture toward China,

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especially after the summer 2020 military crisis, with growing public sentiment in India against Chinese economic expansion in the country. One policy measure has been to ban a series of Chinese smartphone and online marketplace and video applications, such as TikTok, Club Factory, Tencent, and Alibaba, which have led to financial setbacks for some of these firms (McMorrow & Findlay, 2020). This demonstrates that during the Trump administration, there was a coincidence in the Indian and American economic postures toward China, if not actual convergence. (The Trump administration issued an executive order banning TikTok in June 2020, which was then reversed by the Biden administration.) It is unclear to what extent there was coordination between India and the United States on these economic policies toward China. Even before the Ladakh confrontation in summer 2020, New Delhi was already taking steps to regulate Chinese investment in the Indian economy. For instance, the Modi government introduced rules in April 2020 requiring government approval for any foreign direct investment from countries bordering India, which clearly focused on China with its increased investment, especially in the technology sector (Bahree, 2020). The US government has been at the forefront of the push to bar Huawei from providing 5G communications technology for mobile networks globally for security reasons. During Trump’s visit to Delhi in February 2020 and in earlier US-India discussions, Washington sought to dissuade Delhi from allowing Huawei into India’s 5G network (Bhaumik, 2020). In India, this matter has become more urgent, especially after the 2020 Ladakh clash, and formed part of the discussions between the two governments. The Indian government is likely to bar both Huawei and ZTE from providing 5G mobile equipment to Indian telecommunications companies (Ahmed & Phartiyal, 2021). Despite all this, data for 2020 showed that China had displaced the United States as India’s largest commercial partner with two-way trade at $87.6 billion in 2020, and a bilateral trade gap of $45.8 billion for India, based on major purchases of heavy machinery, telecom equipment, and home appliances (Sundaram & Chaudhary, 2021; Krishnan, 2021). China’s economic and trade expansion moves in Asia through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) are another source of concern for India and the United States. The Trump administration withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement that the Obama administration had negotiated with 11 countries of North America, South America, and the Asia-Pacific in the belief that he (Trump) could negotiate better and stronger bilateral deals with terms favoring the United States. But Trump’s decision to leave the TPP was a major concession to China, with geopolitical implications for the United States (and other countries) in the region (Bremmer, 2019; Baker, 2017). There is no broad free trade agreement in the region that the United States is part of, which detracted from the Trump administration’s stated objective of a “free and open Indo-Pacific” (Ayres, 2017). India is not part of the TPP, or the Asia-Pacific Economic Forum (APEC); successive US administrations, including the Trump White House, did not address this absence (Ayres, 2017). India left the emerging RCEP framework in November 2019 because of concerns over safeguarding the country’s dairy and agricultural sector, “rules of origin”

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issues, and over giving away further domestic market share to China (Haider, 2020). Washington’s allies in the region favor greater US economic statecraft and involvement in trade leadership in order to push back against further Chinese economic influence, but it is unclear if the United States is ready to rejoin the TPP for domestic political reasons (Green, 2021). Other areas of collaborative economic strategies could include joint development of emerging technologies as the United States has become concerned over “the threat of Chinese leadership in key technology areas,” according to a bipartisan US commission on artificial intelligence (Ignatius, 2021).

6.10  Conclusion During the Trump term, US foreign policy went through uncertainties and unpredictability on several fronts. For example, US ties with European Union and NATO countries, especially Germany appeared strained, as the Trump White House expected greater financial commitments from NATO partners. With North Korea, after initial saber-rattling and sharp rhetoric from both Washington and Pyongyang, Donald Trump dramatically met the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on three occasions, although no meaningful agreement was ever reached (Roy, 2020). These examples demonstrated some of the ways in which Trumpist foreign policy differed from its predecessors in the White House, both Democratic and Republican. In the midst of all this, bilateral ties between India and the United States demonstrated the extent of shared strategic interests, especially in balancing the expansion of China in the Indo-Pacific, reflected especially in the reactivation of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, which has been readily accepted by the Biden administration as the cornerstone of its Indo-Pacific policy. Some elements of the Trump White House’s policies, driven by Trumpism as an ideology, caused disagreements between Washington and New Delhi, but they did not damage the overall foundation and trends in their relationship. US-India relations have reached a degree of maturity so that disagreements in various sectors are likely to be treated in isolation, rather than coalesce to disrupt the foundations of their partnership. The key cases and issues discussed in foregoing analysis reveal this pattern of strengthened US-India relations largely exhibiting a continuity from previous administrations, and this pattern looks set to continue in the new administration. Perhaps the last word in emphasizing the continuity in US-India relations can be left to the Biden White House, which issued an Interim National Security Strategic Guidance document in March 2021, highlighting global threats posed to democracies and pointed at China as the “only competitor potentially capable of combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to mount a sustained challenge to a stable and open international system” (The White House, 2021). The document also highlights the importance of alliances with countries like India as a way of strengthening US national interest, and shows the convergence of interests of the two erstwhile estranged democracies.

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Smith, J. (2020). Strategic autonomy and U.S.-Indian relations. WarOnTheRocks.com, November 6. https://bit.ly/38Sp5XY Sundaram, K., & Chaudhary, A. (2021). China Back as top India trade partner even as relations sour. Bloomberg, February 22. https://bloom.bg/3tgSClQ Talbott, S. (2004). Engaging India: Diplomacy, democracy and the bomb. The Brookings Institution Press. Tellis, A. (2016). India as a leading power. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. https:// bit.ly/30OPSAa The Economic Times. (2019). U.S. should not obstruct flow of talent from India: Jaishankar on H-1B visa, December 20. https://bit.ly/3vnIrxI The Economic Times. (2020). Indo-Pacific’ over ‘Asia-Pacific reflects India’s rise: U.S. official. The Economic Times, November 5. https://bit.ly/36yk6dQ The Tribune. (2020). U.S. provided ‘strong and unambiguous support’ to India during border crisis with China: White House official, The Tribune, September 17. The U.S. Department of Defense. (2018). Summary of the 2018 national defense strategy of the United States of America. U.S. Department of Defense. https://bit.ly/3rcYBGR The U.S. Department of State. (2021a). U.S. Relations with India. Bilateral relations fact sheet, January 20. https://bit.ly/2YgnhCg The U.S. Department of State. (2021b). U.S. Security Cooperation with India. Bureau of Political-­ Military Affairs, January 20. https://www.state.gov/u-­s-­security-­cooperation-­with-­india/ The White House. (2017). National Security Strategy of the United States of America, December. https://bit.ly/3uIKRXq The White House. (2021). Interim National Security Strategic Guidance. March. https://www. whitehouse.gov/wp-­content/uploads/2021/03/NSC-­1v2.pdf The Wire Staff. (2020). In John Bolton’s new book, India gets hardly any play. TheWire.com, June 24. https://bit.ly/3ay2Mqv Tingle, L. (2021). Previously secret details of Trump administration’s Indo-Pacific strategy revealed. ABC News (Australia), January 12. https://ab.co/39ybK84 Trivedi, A., & Pande, A. (2018). India is getting cold feet about Trump’s America. ForeignPolicy. com, August 30. https://bit.ly/3oEK7OO Verma, N. (2019). Filling the Iran oil gap in India: U.S. supplies outshine Middle East crude. Reuters, June 24. https://reut.rs/3aeVTtW Verma, P., & Gettleman, J. (2020). Biden is expected to expand U.S.-India relations while stressing human rights. The New York Times, December 24. https://nyti.ms/3ePczMR Wezeman, D., Kuimova, A., & Wezeman, S. (2021). Trends in international arms transfers, 2020. SIPRI fact sheet, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), March. https://bit. ly/3vWsqPy Wezeman, P., Fleurant, A., Kuimova, A., Da Silva, D., Tian, N., & Wezeman, S. (2020). Trends in international arms transfers, 2019. SIPRI fact sheet, March 2020, page 4. https://bit.ly/3laeoF4 White, J. (2017). Why America can’t escape its role in the conflict between India and Pakistan. Brookings Institution. https://brook.gs/3p1I73z White, J. (2021). After the foundational agreements: An agenda for U.S.-India defense and security cooperation. Brookings Institution, January. https://brook.gs/3r8Ime3 Wohlforth, W., Little, R., Kaufman, S., Kang, D., Jones, C., Hui, V., Eckstein, A., Deudney, D., & Brenner, W. (2007). Testing balance-of-power theory in world history. European Journal of International Relations, 13(2), 155–185.

Chapter 7

Trump’s America in the Indo-Pacific: Southeast Asians Coping with Harsh Realities and Trying to Come Out Ahead Katja Weber

7.1  U  S Policies Vis-à-Vis the Indo-Pacific During the Obama Administration (please add the missing text from page one before this section!!!) I will also send a short abstract. Since the end of World War II, the United States has thought of itself as the “main underwriter of security in Asia” (Carter, 2016, cited in Rivera, 2017, p.  13). Via bilateral alliances with Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, Taiwan, Australia, South Korea, and Singapore (also known as hub-and-spokes alliances), the United States, for many decades, managed to stabilize the Asia-Pacific region. When the 2008–2009 global financial crisis changed the distribution of capabilities in the international system, states had to react to this changed environment. The United States and Europe, adversely impacted by the crisis, saw the balance of power shifting to Asia, substantially increasing China’s military and economic capabilities. Consequently, the United States responded with a pivot1 toward Asia. (President Obama used the term on November 17, 2011, during visits to Australia and Indonesia, but later the pivot was referred to as “rebalancing.”) High profile visits by members of the Obama administration (the president, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, etc.) were used to “strength[en] alliance commitments with U.S. treaty allies including Japan, Australia, the

1  Hillary Clinton, Former Secretary of State, coined the term in an article in Foreign Policy which appeared in October 2011.

K. Weber (*) The Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 T. Akaha et al. (eds.), Trump’s America and International Relations in the Indo-Pacific, Contributions to International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75925-4_7

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Philippines, and building new partnerships with Southeast Asian states” (Fly, 2018, p. 2). There was also the thinking that India could potentially become an important strategic ally (ibid.). According to Kuik, Idris, and Nor (2012, pp. 322, 325), the United States saw the need “to push back and reassert its dominance and supremacy in the region…to maximize its relative position.” It did so by “commit[ing] to eventually maintain 60 percent of its global naval assets in the region” (Fly, 2018, p. 2). This new strategy entailed “new troop deployments to Australia, new naval deployments to Singapore, and new areas for military cooperation with the Philippines” (Mishra, 2014, p. 150). Additionally, the United States sought to “intensif[y] military coordination with Japan and South Korea, and [to] bridg[e] gaps with Indonesia and Vietnam…” (ibid.). At the same time, the United States has “stepp[ed] up its involvement in regional multilateral forums” (Kuik et al., 2012, p. 316) via active participation in the ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting (ADMM) Plus and the East Asia Summit (EAS). With respect to the territorial disputes in the South China Sea (SCS), former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton articulated US principles during an ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) meeting in 2010, categorically opposing the use or threat of force. She stressed that the United States seeks to uphold freedom of navigation, respect for international law, and that claimants should pursue claims and rights in accordance with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) (Rivera, 2017, p. 15). Unfortunately, China is of a different mindset, rejecting the decision of the Permanent Court of Arbitration which, in its 2016 ruling, invalidated China’s historical claims over territories in the SCS. Instead, it favors bilateral negotiations in which it has the upper hand. In the economic realm, the Obama administration and China also had significant differences. Here, President Obama pushed for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)—a proposed trade agreement among Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam which was to turn the region into a stable economic zone and give rise to the world’s largest free trade zone (Mishra, 2014, p.  163). And although the United States stressed that it “welcomes the emergence of a peaceful, stable, and prosperous China” (Carter, 2016, p. 71 cited in Rivera, 2017, p. 14), TPP was perceived as a way to contain China and thus viewed as a hostile move by Xi Jinping. Not surprisingly, China responded by seeking to increase its economic influence in the region by institution-building and projects like the Belt and Road Initiative which will be discussed in more detail later. In sum, during his time in office, President Obama sought to counter increased Chinese assertiveness by mandating for the United States to play a greater role in Asia-Pacific both bilaterally and multilaterally. While he put measures in place to deter China from engaging in further aggression, cognizant of the important trade relationship between the United States and China, he, simultaneously, sought cooperation and consultation with his regional rival. But since, during his final year in office, President Obama increasingly became preoccupied with crises in the Middle East and Russia, his Asian allies began to question the United States’ commitment

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to them (Fly, 2018, p. 3). Would the United States be able to afford an active militarily presence in the region in the years to come? Would it ask its allies to share more of the burden in the future?

7.2  U  S Policies Vis-à-Vis the Indo-Pacific During the Trump Administration According to scholars like Legarda and Fuchs (2017, p. 2), President Trump has “withdrawn or damaged U.S. leadership around the world” (pulling out of the TPP, UNESCO, the Paris climate agreement, the Iran nuclear deal) and China has used this to its advantage reaching out to different countries in various parts of the world, including Southeast Asia. As part of his “America First” philosophy, Trump, moreover, has imposed tariffs on numerous goods from China and voiced contempt for multilateralism. This suggests a very different “more nationalist and transactional” approach (Mastanduno, 2020, p. 178) toward the Indo-Pacific from that of his predecessor, but the Trump administration’s policies toward the region deserve a more nuanced look. When it comes to military relations, one detects a fair amount of continuity. At present, the United States does continue its military relations with its Asian allies and bilateral alliances still are viewed as the main security guarantors of the region. Southeast Asia, due to its geographic location—“in the middle of the Indo-Pacific region astride strategically and commercially vital sea-lanes” (Singh, 2018, p. 4)— remains of great importance to the United States. In fact, Singh (2018, p. 5) goes as far as to suggest that “[t]he Indo-Pacific in a sense will be akin to the central front in Europe which ran through Germany during the Cold War.” Given that President Trump’s 2018 National Defense Strategy labeled China a “strategic competitor” (cited in Fly, 2018, p. 5), it is not surprising that the United States proposed to boost arms sales to the region and increase combined military exercises. According to the Trump administration, “the U.S. sold US$9.42 billion worth of arms and provided more than US$500 million in security assistance (more than double the previous year) to regional states over the past 12 months” in 2018 (cited in Storey & Cook, 2018, p. 4). In July 2019, “the U.S. agreed to transfer 60 refurbished Stryker armored vehicles to the Thai Army. In September, the inaugural ASEAN-U.S. Maritime Exercise (AUMX) was held in the South China Sea” and the United States and Singapore renewed their defense agreement for another 15  years (Storey & Cook, 2018, p.  7). Additionally, the United States conducted more Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPS) in the South China Sea, suggesting an increased US naval presence in the region. The most significant changes, however, occurred in the trade realm. Trump’s withdrawal from the TPP on his first full weekday in office caused a shift in focus to the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) which China leads and discussions of a TPP-11, both of which excluded the United States. As Trump

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made clear during his visit to Asia in November 2017, he sought to “rebalance U.S.China trade relations by ceasing intellectual property theft and providing fair market access to U.S. firms” (Kehoe, 2017, p. 3). He, furthermore, emphasized during an APEC summit in Vietnam during the same month that he was determined to compete with China’s Belt and Road Initiative with a Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) concept. FOIP, we were told, would concentrate on three areas: “enhancing shared prosperity, championing good governance and civil society, and ensuring a peaceful and secure regional order” (Kavi & Anwar, 2019, p. 1). And, two strong democracies, the United States and India, were to protect this vision (Fly, 2018, p. 4). The Trump administration, it appears, sought to signal to Southeast Asian countries that the United States was interested in fair, reciprocal trade, and that it had no intention to exploit them. But, as long as Trump challenged US trade partners and accused them of unfair trade practices, countries like the Philippines would increasingly turn to China in the hope of acquiring lucrative trade deals. While China’s investments in Southeast Asia have doubled over the last 2 years, US investments in the region have gone down (Kavi & Anwar, 2019, p.  2). Fly (2018, p. 7) predicts that, “[w]ithout additional U.S. resources, regional efforts to provide alternatives to China’s massive loan guarantees and investments in infrastructure will likely come up short.” Or, as has been suggested by the Council on Foreign Relations (2018, p. 9), FOIP needs “meat on bones” to be reassuring. When it comes to diplomatic and people-to-people relations, the United States also could do better to improve its rapport with ASEAN nations. For instance, the United States could attend East Asia Summit meetings, play a more active role in the ARF and ADMM Plus, and expand its educational and cultural programs (Kavi & Anwar, 2019, p. 3). Case in point: October 29, 2019, when, instead of traveling to Asia himself, President Trump announced that his Assistant for National Security Affairs Ambassador Robert O’Brien would head up the US delegation to the November 4, 2019, ASEAN-US Summit and East Asia Summit. This lack of high-­ level engagement on the part of the United States was viewed as an insult by ASEAN countries and represented a significant departure from the cordial relations President Obama had with numerous Asian leaders. Instead of sharing his thoughts with Asian heads of state and government in person at the ASEAN-US and EAS summits, President Trump ordered the US State Department to release a document, The United States and ASEAN: Expanding the Enduring Partnership, a day prior to the summit meetings, suggesting that US engagement with the ASEAN countries had never been stronger. And, a day later, the US administration followed up with an implementation report on FOIP.  As Storey and Cook (2018, p. 5) make clear, however, these documents compared negatively with China’s BRI and Japan’s Partnership for Quality Infrastructure Initiative in that they lacked a single big-ticket item, focused on private investment rather than direct government support, and missed an attractive trade component. Chen and Wang (2018, p. 1), similarly, suggest that the financial support offered by the United States was dwarfed by the massive loans China was providing to Southeast Asia. Hence, FOIP had not been particularly well received by Southeast Asian countries,

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but rather, was perceived as both anti-Chinese and as a threat to ASEAN centrality (Singh, 2018, p. 5). To summarize, there were significant differences between the Obama and Trump administrations’ approaches to Asia. Whereas Obama “sought to reassure Southeast Asian states and ASEAN and avoid direct rivalry with China”…[Trump] put “competition with China front and center” (Storey & Cook, 2018, p. 2). This was not surprising since President Trump’s first National Security Strategy contended that “China seeks to displace the U.S. as the paramount power [in the Indo-Pacific] in order to achieve regional hegemony and ultimately global pre-eminence” (Storey, 2018, p. 2). Additionally, President Trump’s strong preference for unilateralism did not bode well. Preoccupied with getting a “better deal” for America (Patel & Hansmeyer, 2020, p. 212), his behavior not only created growing uncertainty regarding the United States’ future role in the Asia-Pacific region, but damaged US leadership and caused reputational costs for the United States.

7.3  A  n Increasingly Assertive China and the Chicken-­and-Egg Question Whereas the United States is concerned about a significant rise in China’s power, President Xi is convinced that the United States seeks to contain China and refuses to treat it as an equal partner (Rivera, 2017, p. 10). Viewing the United States as the main challenger to its peaceful rise, in 2014, Xi unveiled a “New Approach for Asian Security Cooperation” in which he stressed to “let the people of Asia run the affairs of Asia, solve the problems of Asia and uphold the security of Asia. The people of Asia have the capability and wisdom to achieve peace and stability in the region through enhanced cooperation” (Xi, 2014, p. 392). In addition to telling the United States to stay out of Asian affairs, during the Obama administration, China engaged in massive island building in contested areas of the South China Sea, extracted resources from these areas, and built new military bases on outposts in the SCS. Given the United States’ military power and numerous bilateral alliances with countries in the Indo-Pacific, China, foremost, saw the need to increase its naval power and “protect its sovereignty claims over the South China Sea” (Rivera, 2017, p. 11). Thus, when Xi accepted a second 5-year term as China’s president in October 2017, in a speech to the Communist Party Congress, he emphasized the need to expand China’s military spending (Legarda & Fuchs, 2017, p. 11). Aside from fearing the United States’ military might, China perceives America as a threat to its economic well-being. Obama’s TPP was viewed as an effort to exclude China from economic cooperation in Asia Pacific, and Trump’s more recent trade war further exacerbated Chinese concerns about US hostile intentions. Not surprisingly China, which for nearly two decades already had sought closer economic relations with several of its neighbors, recently intensified its regional

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trade and investment efforts to increase its prosperity. A free trade agreement (FTA) signed by China and ASEAN in 2002 received various upgrades over the years—an Agreement on Trade in Goods (2005); an Agreement on Trade in Services (2007); an Agreement on Investment (2009); an enhanced FTA (2015)—allowing China and ASEAN in 2018 to celebrate 15 years of their “Strategic Partnership for Peace and Prosperity” and, in November of the same year, to announce the “ASEAN-­ China Strategic Partnership Vision 2030” (Bader, 2005, p. 6). China also worked on an alternative to the TPP, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) which, according to Patel and Hansmeyer (2020, p. 214), “covers an area accounting for half of the world’s population and almost one third of global GDP.” Additionally, China negotiated bilateral free trade pacts with several ASEAN members and, as a result of its economic pursuits in the region, had become ASEAN’s largest trade partner and third largest provider of FDI (Das, 2018, p. 2). As will be seen shortly, the amount of support any specific ASEAN member is likely to receive from China through projects like the Belt and Road Initiative depends in large part on three factors: its “economic dependence” on the regional hegemon, its “traditional long-term relations” with China, and whether it has “territorial disputes” with its larger neighbor (Chen, 2016, p. 3). Aside from economic goals, China attempts to spread its political influence in the region. Via institution-building, for example, joining ASEAN +3 (Japan, South Korea, and China), ARF, and backing the East Asia Summit, it seeks to ensure that it has a voice in regional fora and that it can pursue its strategic goals. In general, however, China has a clear preference for bilateral negotiations, especially when it comes to addressing maritime problems, since in such a setting, it clearly has the upper hand due to the significant power asymmetry between China and its negotiation partners. In a nutshell, China makes use of the current leadership void in the international system by expanding its economic, political, and military influence in its neighborhood. Convinced that the United States is pursuing a containment strategy, China has sought to increase its power by enhancing its own military capabilities, protecting its territorial claims in the SCS, and promoting closer economic ties with its neighbors via the BRI. Whether the changes observed in the international environment are the result of US policies, or whether they stem from changes in regional power relations such as an increasingly assertive China, largely depends on how far one chooses to go back in history. One might argue that President Xi responded to Obama’s pivot to Asia and that Trump, in turn, was responding to an increasingly assertive China. Alternatively, one could begin one’s investigation earlier and suggest that President Obama had no choice but to play a more active role in the Asia Pacific since, otherwise, China may have shut the United States out from the region. That is, the United States, perceiving China as a threat to US interests, had to balance against an increasingly powerful China. In some respects, thus, the current situation is reminiscent of the Cold War days where great powers were eyeing each other trying to ascertain each other’s intentions and capabilities. As was the case then, it is not always easy to determine who started what and recent developments in the

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international system are likely to be the result of a combination of both US and Chinese policies. What is clear is that relations between China and the United States have become more contentious in the last few years. While the United States’ reliability as a trustworthy ally, due to changes in the Trump administration’s policies such as the withdrawal from the TPP and an increasing trade war with China, is being questioned by many countries in the Indo-Pacific, China is rapidly increasing its military expenditures and fiercely pursuing its Belt and Road Initiative. As a result, individual ASEAN countries are forced to reevaluate their foreign policies and to reconsider their strategic options. This likely means that it will become increasingly difficult for ASEAN to speak with one voice and this will undermine the organization’s effectiveness.

7.4  A  SEAN Countries’ Responses to the Changed International Environment In today’s international environment characterized by increased uncertainty and changes in the distribution of power/capabilities, according to Kuik et  al. (2012, p. 317), ASEAN countries display a “deep-seated anxiety over the uncertain commitment of a giant far away, and not wanting to antagonize the giant next door.” Predictably, this has caused Southeast Asian countries to engage in cost/benefit analyses to determine to what extent they may need to adapt their foreign policies. Should they balance (cooperate with the United States and other potential allies) against an increasingly powerful China? Should they bandwagon and seek closer ties with the regional hegemon (China)? Or, fearful of getting caught between the United States and China, should they avoid putting all their eggs in one basket and hedge? The latter, as will be discussed below, consists of a mixed strategy of confrontation and engagement which might also entail the pursuit of closer relations with other regional and extra-regional powers. For a neorealist like Waltz (1979), the distribution of capabilities in the international system drives states’ behavior. In an anarchic international environment, an increase in capabilities by a country, in this case China, poses a challenge to other countries and they now need to act to assure their security. They can either increase their own capabilities (internal strategy) or seek allies (external strategy). As Walt (1987) makes clear, states that are threatened and do not engage in self-help typically balance against the challenger, only very weak states occasionally bandwagon (join the threatening side in the hope of being left alone). Thus, according to neorealists, the system provides constraints and opportunities and states conduct cost/ benefit analyses to determine how best to respond to them. As explained above, due to recent changes in the international environment, Southeast Asian countries currently confront two main sources of uncertainty. On the one hand, they do not know how China’s rise will manifest itself. On the other

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hand, they are concerned about the reliability of future US support. This ambiguity suggests that the international system does not always send clear signals (Rose, 1998), and, even if it did, as Ripsman (2011, pp.  1–5) points out, “states do not always perceive systemic stimuli correctly,” their leaders may not always respond rationally, and there may be domestic constraints (political and/or economic) that could make a proper response impossible. Given the ambiguity regarding constraints and opportunities in the international environment at present, and the absence of a clear and imminent threat, a range of foreign policy options appears to be available to the Southeast Asian countries which a systemic theory, by its very nature cannot explain. As we know from our IR Theory classes, a systemic theory like neorealism can only account for recurring patterns of behavior, rather than specific outcomes. Hence, as neoclassical realists like Rose (1998), Lobell, Ripsman, and Taliaferro (Schweller, 2009), Ripsman (2011), and Reichwein (2015) have argued for some time now, one needs to integrate systemic, domestic (unit), and cognitive (sub-unit) factors into one conceptual framework to obtain greater explanatory power. Put differently, one needs to “cross-­ fertilize” neorealism with unit-level variables and understand that a “broad range of unit and sub-unit variables…can intervene between systemic stimuli and foreign policy responses” (Ripsman, 2011, p. 8). This is to say that in order to explain variety in states’ behavior, it does not suffice to solely examine systemic variables, but one also needs to look at the role of domestic actors like political elites, their beliefs, ideas, perceptions, and a country’s history (Jørgensen et al., 2015). Due to the great heterogeneity of the ASEAN countries, one would not expect a one-size-fits-all strategy, but rather carefully assessed multi-faceted responses. Given differences in threat perception, for example, between claimant (Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei) and non-claimant (Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Indonesia, and Singapore) states with respect to the SCS, not all ASEAN countries have turned to the United States in the hope that it will provide a counterweight to China, nor have they all sided with China. It is no surprise that the weakest Southeast Asian countries, Laos and Cambodia, which are seriously dependent on China with respect to trade and infrastructure financing, are bandwagoning with China. But since, due to the great power asymmetry between these countries and China, the latter clearly holds the upper hand, bilateral deals with China seldom work in the underdeveloped Southeast Asian countries’ favor. A good example provides the Mohan-Boten Economic Cooperation Zone, a cross-border Chinese initiative with Laos. As Ku (2016, p. 2) explains, the “primary aim of the [project] is not to ‘promote the proposal of the One Belt One Road jointly,’”…but, to facilitate further Chinese expansion into Laos and other parts of Southeast Asia. Begun in December 2015, this railway project, moreover, appears to enrich top Laotian politicians who, according to experts in Laotian politics, receive “millions in bribes” (Kurlantzick, 2018, p. 4), while the country, due to its small population size and absence of significant industrial activity to date, has no real need for a high-speed rail. Thus, it is not only the vast power discrepancy between Laos and China and the former’s serious economic dependence on the latter that explains why Laos elects to have close ties with its giant neighbor, but also

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political ties between the two countries’ elites that make engagement quite lucrative for Laotian politicians. Another example of Chinese involvement in Southeast Asia is the Lancang-­ Mekong Cooperation (LMC), proposed by China in 2015. It is part of China’s BRI and seeks to connect China with mainland Southeast Asia. With this project, China seeks to “play [a] preponderant economic role in [the] Mekong region” (Chheang, 2018, p. 4) and hopes to “consolidate its leadership in its own backyard” (Busbarat, 2018, p. 4). There are, however, considerable downsides to Chinese investment in countries like Laos and Cambodia. Often new jobs from such investment go to Chinese immigrants instead of locals. Moreover, environmental considerations tend to be neglected in the receiving countries and there are serious concerns over debt repayment. According to Das (2018, p. 9), “China holds approximately 50% of … [the] total debt” of Cambodia and Laos at present. As a result, these countries are in danger of losing their policy autonomy. There has, in fact, already been such an incident when China insisted that Cambodia block a statement at an ASEAN meeting that was seen to go against China’s interests in the South China Sea (Das, 2018, p.  10). And, potentially most detrimental, should Laos and/or Cambodia fail to repay their massive loans, they may eventually be forced to surrender critical infrastructure like roads, rails, and ports (Kurlantzick, 2018, p. 6). So then why would Cambodia not try to fight such close engagement with China? Solely focusing on power asymmetry and economic dependence appears insufficient, especially since the United States, recently, has also made efforts to offer some economic support via FOIP. Much like in the case of Laos, an important factor for the particular policy choice is that Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen and a few of his cronies cultivate close ties with China’s political elite in exchange for significant bribes. This has not gone unnoticed by Cambodia’s opposition party in exile, the Cambodian National Rescue Party, which has vowed that, should it get elected, it will fight such corrupt practices and seek more diverse investments through stronger ties with the United States and various European countries. Other ASEAN members who are less susceptible to Chinese pressure seek to avoid becoming overly dependent on China. To varying degrees, they attempt to mitigate risks by avoiding having to choose sides. To offset long-term risks, they engage in “hedging” behavior which, as Chand, Garcia, and Modlin (2018, p. 27) explain, “includes elements of soft balancing and engagement.” Adopting a hedging strategy allows countries to reap benefits by maintaining economic and political ties with multiple powers, thereby decreasing their vulnerabilities and providing additional insurance. Or, as Rivera (2017, p. 17) puts it, hedging makes it possible to “avoid… outright hard balancing or bandwagoning against major powers.” Koga (2018) similarly places hedging on the balance of power spectrum and situates it in the middle between balancing and bandwagoning. And while Kuik (2008b, cited in Kuik et al., 2012, p. 318) agrees that hedging is “a strategic behavior under the conditions of high stake and high uncertainties in which an egoistic state actor…seeks to ensure its long-term interests,” he does not view it as a “middle” position but rather as “a bundle of mutually counteracting options.”

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What matters for our purposes here is that hedging involves a mix of engagement and soft balancing that gives some flexibility to the countries that elect to pursue this strategy. After all, in a world characterized by high uncertainty, it would be foolish to “hard” balance with the United States which China might perceive as containment and consequently escalate hostilities. At the same time, sole reliance on China appears risky and unwise in that it might further alienate the United States and prevent potentially lucrative strategic partnerships with other regional and extra-­ regional powers. The goal of hedging, ultimately, has to be to reap as many benefits from cooperation as possible while, simultaneously, mitigating risks. According to Fröhlich and Loewen (2018, p.  5), this translates into states “engag[ing] in economic interactions with the source of danger and…get[ting] involved in risk-­ reduction strategies through military upgrading, intensified defense cooperation and balancing a potential hegemon through diplomatic strategies.” Thailand provides a good example of a country that does not want to have to choose between the United States and China. Instead, it prefers to “ben[d] with the prevailing winds” (cited in Mishra, 2014, p. 157). In this way, it can simultaneously uphold a Strategic Partnership with China and be a treaty ally of the United States. When it comes to economic matters, Thailand “bandwagons” with China, but “balances” against China with its big brother, the United States, in the military realm (Mishra, 2014, p. 158). Relatedly, Indonesia strives for a “dynamic equilibrium,” that is, it wants to keep a superpower rivalry in the region to a minimum (Mishra, 2014, p. 159). Fearful of China’s growing military power, “particularly [its] blue-water naval capabilities,” and trying to keep damage to its economic growth minimal, Indonesia seeks to advance a “middle way” (Weatherbee, 2019, p. 2). As Kuo (2019) points out, it is one of the most reluctant countries in Southeast Asia to choose sides. Since President Jokowi has decided to give domestic priority to the building of infrastructure while China is seeking additional partners for its BRI, China can be expected to play an increasingly important role in Indonesia’s economic development. At the same time, however, Indonesia will remain protective of its sovereignty and fiercely object to “any perceived territorial infringements” in the SCS (Kuo, 2019). Case in point: recent clashes between the two countries around the Natuna Islands where Indonesia detained several Chinese fishermen. When it comes to ties with the United States, the two countries, last year, commemorated 70 years of diplomatic relations. For a number of years, they have also had a defense relationship largely consisting of visits by military leaders and regular exercises (Parameswaran, 2020a). Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, there has been substantial cooperation with respect to counterterrorism and Nantu (2019) characterizes military relations between the two countries as “genuinely warm.” Whether this will lead to a strategic partnership is not yet clear but what can be said for sure is that the United States is willing to aid Indonesia in terms of military modernization. In February 2020, a commission in Indonesia’s legislature, according to Parameswaran (2020a), “approved a plan for the navy to receive up to 14 ScanEagle unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and upgrades for three Bell 412

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helicopters from the US government, which was part of the capacity-building program for Southeast Asian navies.” Additionally, to understand Indonesia’s reaction to recent changes in the international environment, one needs to recall that the country has been the leader of ASEAN since its founding and, although it experienced severe economic and political crises following President Suharto’s resignation in 1998 (Smith, 1999), it now once again has taken the lead among Southeast Asian countries. Perceiving ASEAN centrality and thereby regional stability as increasingly threatened, Indonesia has developed frameworks such as an Indo-Pacific Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation and, more recently, an Indo-Pacific Cooperation Concept to reduce tensions in the region. To date, however, neither could be agreed upon, due to the hesitancy of several fellow ASEAN members (Weatherbee, 2019). Malaysia also fears getting caught in the power struggle between the United States and China for dominance in the region (Valencia, 2018, p. 2). It seeks a balance in its relations with both countries and much will depend on South China Sea developments where so far it has been a “quiet claimant” (Rivera, 2017, p.  18). Malaysia, moreover, insists on being treated fairly. Former Prime Minister Mahathir,2 upon assuming power in 2018, halted several Belt and Road projects in Malaysia including the East Coast Railway Line (estimated to cost RM55 billion or more) and the Trans-Sabah Gas Pipeline (estimated at RM9.4 billion), since they were seen as too costly (Fook, 2018, p. 2). What he wants to avoid, as he made clear during his first visit to China in August 2018, is “a new version of colonialism” where the poor are unable to compete with the rich (Fook, 2018, p. 5). As a result of Mahathir’s second visit to Beijing in April 2019, however, relations between the two countries appear to have improved significantly. Now, projects like the East Coast Railway Line appear to be back on track at a reduced cost of RM44 billion (Fook, 2019, p. 3). Regarding security concerns, according to the US State Department’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs (2020), the United States and Malaysia “cooperate closely on security matters, including counterterrorism, maritime domain awareness, and regional stability, and participate frequently in bilateral and multilateral training, exercises, and visits.” Much like with Indonesia, the United States appears to be prepared to transfer some military equipment to Malaysia, in this case aircraft mission systems “via the Pentagon’s Maritime Security Initiative (MSI)” which might include “a maritime surveillance radar, an electro-optical sensor turret, and an electronic support measure system” (Parameswaran, 2020b, p.  1). Additionally, Malaysia and the United States have significant economic ties which are codified in a bilateral Trade and Investment Agreement (TIFA). As one can glean from a Bilateral Relations Fact Sheet (US State Department’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, 2020), Malaysia is the United States’ “third-largest trading partner among the 10 ASEAN members…after Singapore and Vietnam,…whereas the United States is Malaysia’s third-largest trading partner, after China and Singapore.”

 He resigned on February 24, 2020, and has since been replaced by Muhyiddin Yassin.

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When it comes to the Philippines, the first thing one notices is a clear change from former President Benigno Aquino III’s strategy of balancing China. Although the United States remains the prime security guarantor and the Philippine-US alliance continues to be central to the defense of the Philippines, President Duterte has distanced himself from his predecessor’s hardline approach to the South China Sea. Duterte has decided not to enforce a ruling issued by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in 2016 that upheld the Philippines’ territorial claims in the South China Sea (Kurlantzick, 2018, p. 5) in exchange for significant trade concessions, grants, loans, and investment from China. That is, Duterte elected to let territorial disputes rest in exchange for economic gains. While some may view recent changes in Duterte’s policies vis-à-vis China as a form of appeasement, I argue his strategy is more usefully characterized as hedging. The Philippines seeks to preserve some independence and freedom of action by continuing joint military exercises with the United States—albeit with a shift in focus from territorial defense exercises to non-traditional security concerns such as humanitarian assistance and disaster relief—while pursuing economic deals with China and, as will be seen shortly, engaging in cooperation with several other great powers like Japan and India. To mention but one further Southeast Asian country, Vietnam, like the Philippines, objects to China’s greater assertiveness in the South China Sea. And yet, it has no interest in joining “a rigid anti-China bloc,” preferring to be part of a flexible security network that includes China but also other countries which can “manage China’s rise” (Le, 2018, p. 1). At present, Vietnam appears most comfortable with a mixed strategy that includes “diplomatic protest,” “appeals to [the] international community and media portraying China as aggressor,” “threat of legal action,” and “defense cooperation” with other countries such as the United States, Australia, Japan, and India (Legarda & Fuchs, 2017, p. 6). But, when Vietnam felt that the United States would be unlikely to support it in its struggle against the Chinese in the South China Sea, Vietnam seized its oil-drilling endeavors there (Fook & Hop, 2018). This suggests that Vietnam is prepared to adapt its foreign policy when changes in the international environment call for it. When it comes to relations with the United States, common strategic interests, particularly with respect to maritime affairs, are of utmost importance (Doan, 2019, p. 1). Even though President Trump, accusing Vietnam of taking advantage of the United States, imposed heavy duties on Vietnamese steel products in July 2019, relations between the two countries have not suffered irreparable harm. While Vietnam’s willingness to address US trade concerns was perceived as a step in the right direction, more importantly, both countries see eye-to-eye with respect to China’s adventurism in the SCS.  Both are strong proponents of a “rules-based order” which, according to Doan (2019, p. 7), is likely to lead to a strengthening rather than weakening of bilateral ties. In sum, the above makes clear that geography, economic dependence, and power asymmetry make it difficult for ASEAN countries to “disengag[e] with a country such as China” (Nagara, 2018, p. 4) and may limit their foreign policy choices. As long as many Southeast Asian countries are in need of vast infrastructure investment

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and the region’s serious trade dependence on China continues, China can be expected to further its political agenda in Southeast Asia. There is obvious concern that China will pursue its maritime claims more vigorously (Das, 2017, p.  3), thereby contributing to further regional instability. What is also apparent is that the Southeast Asian countries do not speak with one voice when it comes to their policies vis-à-vis China. Claimant states in the SCS dispute have different priorities than non-claimant states which explains why, to date, ASEAN could merely agree on the pursuit of a “binding Code of Conduct on the SCS with China” (Rivera, 2017, p. 1). And, given the uncertainty concerning China’s future actions, it is not surprising that most ASEAN states favor a US presence in the region and view it as essential to regional stability. And yet, they do not want to directly confront China, but hedge and keep their options open. As Baviera (2016, p. 79, quoted in Rivera, 2017, p. 13) aptly puts it, some immediate neighbors of China view the giant as “offer[ing] one open hand of cooperation and at the same time a fist ready to pound. In response, these countries offer one arm ready to embrace and one poised to fend off unwanted advances.” Along similar lines Japan and India, among other regional powers, as well as an extra-regional entity like the European Union (EU)3 (Weber, 2021) have been reassessing their security and economic policies vis-a-vis the Indo-Pacific and, due to the above-discussed uncertainties in the international environment, not only have increased their own military capabilities but have sought closer ties with several Southeast Asian countries, thereby providing them with additional choice in their hedging maneuvers. Space constraints make it impossible to take a close look at these policy changes. By way of illustration, I will solely focus on Japan and sketch how it adjusted its policies vis-à-vis several of its ASEAN neighbors. Keenly aware of China’s rise and greater influence in the region, Japan continues its significant economic support to Southeast Asia which it has provided throughout the Cold War period in exchange for raw materials. From 2011 to 2016, Japanese investment in Southeast Asian countries averaged $20 billion each year (Ritter, 2017, p.  2). In July 2015, Japan together with Myanmar and Thailand agreed to develop the Dawei Industrial Zone along Myanmar’s coastline and Prime Minister Abe pledged $6.1 billion for infrastructure projects along the Mekong River (Mazza, 2015, p.  3). In November 2017, Japan, moreover, gave "over 1.1 billion  USD in foreign aid loans to Indonesia for developing an international port in the Jakarta area and strengthening an Indonesian university” (Gallagher, 2018, p. 4). And, during the same month, at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting Japan spearheaded a plan to replace the TPP with a new multilateral trade arrangement: The Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (Ritter, 2017, p. 1; see also Chap. 2 in this volume). Additionally, since it has important economic and security interests in the South China Sea, Japan is also playing a greater role in the military affairs of the region.

3  For a discussion of the EU’s foreign policy changes vis-à-vis the Indo Pacific, see Weber (2021 forthcoming).

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To curtail China’s expansion in contested territorial waters Japan, for several years, has been involved in joint military and training exercises in Southeast Asia (Jimbo, 2013, p. 1). It, moreover, has begun to transfer military equipment (it promised 10 coast guard ships to the Philippines and six to Vietnam) (Chand et al., 2018, p. 44) as well as aircraft and maritime communication systems (Jimbo, 2013, p.  2). Additionally, Japan has pursued multilateral cooperation via the ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting-Plus (ADMM-Plus) (Singh, 2017, p.  97). These cooperative efforts are important in that, by strengthening the Southeast Asian countries, the latter are more likely to stand their ground against China. As Gallagher (2018, p. 2) points out, as of yet, “Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam have not explicitly prioritized their relationships with China over those with Japan,” suggesting that “Japan still wields broad influence in the region.” And although Duterte, more recently, has pursued closer ties with China in exchange for lucrative economic rewards discussed above, due to continuing territorial disputes over the Spratly Islands, the Philippines still seeks further cooperation with Japan and, to the extent possible, with the United States. The same goes for Vietnam which engages in defense dialogues with both China and Japan (Gallagher, 2018, p. 5). In sum, at a time when China seeks to exert greater influence on several Southeast Asian countries and the United States’ future reliability as an ally in the region is being questioned, the above discussion suggests that ASEAN countries do not necessarily have to give in to increased Chinese pressure. Rather than choosing sides between the United States and China, many Southeast Asian countries have decided on a hybrid strategy of soft-balancing and engagement involving multiple powers. That is, they have consciously elected to transcend the past and not to dwell on unfortunate historical legacies rooted in Japanese imperialism in order to reap the benefits from closer cooperation with Japan and further hedge against possible risks associated with future Chinese and/or US behavior. Such mixed foreign policies elude neorealists but can be accounted for by neoclassical realists who focus on more than just systemic constraints.

7.5  P  rospects for US-ASEAN Cooperation after the 2020 US Elections In the run up to the 2020 US presidential election, numerous scholars have been speculating about a Biden administration’s relations with Southeast Asia. There appears to be consensus that “the United States has to first get its own house in order…” before it can “exercise significant influence” internationally (Cooley & Nexon, 2020, pp. 11–12). Domestic renewal may be necessary before a return to multilateralism can be contemplated (Patel & Hansmeyer, 2020). And then multilateralism may take on a new form, namely “a patchwork of coalitions of like-minded states” (Burns, 2020, p. 6). In this scenario, the United States, most likely, will draw on its partnerships with Japan, South Korea, India, and Australia and renew

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diplomatic ties with these long-time allies, but also attend EAS meetings once more “and more consistently engage with organizations such as ASEAN at the highest levels” (Lee, 2020, p. 39). Additionally, we once again can expect the United States to place renewed emphasis on a rules-based international order. As Lee (2020, p. 41) insists, “[a] Democrat White House will not remain silent or indifferent to ‘corrupt’ and ‘insider’ deals between China and Southeast Asian governing elites.” Whereas the Trump administration turned inward, a Democrat president can be expected to defend liberalism, democratic values, and human rights. When it comes to military matters, the United States will likely be cautious in suggesting additional cooperation with the region. While some ASEAN countries, as Storey (2018, p. 7) explains, clearly would welcome closer military ties with the United States (especially Indonesia and Vietnam), others (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar) would be much more hesitant, fearing China may view this as aiding “in a US-led containment strategy.” At the same time, Southeast Asians can expect to engage in greater burden-sharing, if not burden-shifting (Kuik et al., 2012, p. 333). Keenly aware of the cost of military bases overseas, it is unlikely that the United States will seek any in Southeast Asia, and instead will try to use partner facilities. According to Lee (2020, p. 40), there, in fact, seems to be an expectation on the part of the Biden administration that smaller countries “step up” to enhance regional security. Finally, with respect to economic relations, prospects for US-ASEAN cooperation under a Democrat administration can be expected to be good. Although the TPP is unlikely to be revived, President Biden is likely to promote free trade with US allies in the region and either push for a new trade pact to compensate for the loss of TPP, or put the necessary “meat on bones” that FOIP still lacks, to signal the United States’ commitment to economic well-being in the region. Only time will tell how much a Biden administration will accomplish. For many Southeast Asians, who have been confronted with harsh realities during President Trump’s “America First” policies, better times may lie ahead. But ASEAN countries will have to do their part to ensure fruitful relations with the United States, rather than to take them for granted. In the short run, until the new US administration sends clear signals regarding its intentions vis-à-vis the Indo-Pacific, most ASEAN countries can be expected to continue avoiding choosing sides between the United States and China.

References Bader, J. A. (2005, September 6). China’s role in East Asia: Now and the future. The Brookings Institution. https://www.brookings.edu/on-­the-­record/chinas-­role-­in-­east-­asia-­now-­and-­the-­ future/ (accessed March 6, 2019). Burns, W. J. (2020). The United States needs a new foreign policy. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/07/united-­states-­needs-­new-­foreign-­policy/614110/

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Conclusion Jingdong Yuan, Tsuneo Akaha, and Wei Liang

This edited volume aims to address the most salient question(s) facing many international relations scholars today, namely, how to maintain stability and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific in the midst of a series of shocks, uncertainties, and imbalances globally, regionally, and bilaterally in social, political, and economic arenas. Seven chapters focus on the policy responses of regional players to the power transition and intensifying US-China rivalry in the region. Individual country’s policy reaction is infused with distinctive ideas about national interests, order, and identity shaped by economics, geopolitics, history, and values. These factors together have guided their relationship with the United States and with each other. The fact that China is the largest trading partner of most countries in the region and an integral part of the regional supply chain and the United States continues to provide security assurance to many of them has defined the strategic complexity of the region. This unusual feature has been defined by G. John Ikenberry as “two hierarchies” in East Asia, with countries in the region looking “to the Dragon for Economics and to the Eagle for security” (Ikenberry, 2016). To add to this already complex matrix is the clash of the values between the democracies and autocracies. Piecing together all the commonalities and differences among the states in the region, contributors to this volume agree that although realism continues to be a powerful analytical theory to help us interpret the recent developments in the region, it is the synthesis of realist, liberal institutionalist, and constructivist thinking that can provide a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the policy choices made by individual regional players. J. Yuan Centre for International Security Studies, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia T. Akaha · W. Liang Graduate School of International Policy and Management, Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, Monterey, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 T. Akaha et al. (eds.), Trump’s America and International Relations in the Indo-Pacific, Contributions to International Relations, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75925-4

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The analyses in the seven chapters examined the broad range of strategic adjustments made by the key regional powers in response to the rather capricious, disjointed, and often contradictory policy pronouncements and actions of the Trump administration, as well as the equally wide-ranging adaptations they had been making before Trump came to power. What was consistent during the 4 years under the “America First” banner was the unraveling of the central tenets of US foreign policy of the successive administrations post-World War II up to the Obama government. The Trump administration’s abrupt withdrawal from the Paris climate accord and the TPP in 2017 immediately after inauguration, the blockade of appointment of the new WTO appellate body members since 2017, effectively ending the body’s function, the Iran nuclear deal framework in 2018, and the replacement of NAFTA with USMCA in 2018, as well as the departure from the WHO during a global pandemic in 2020 put an end to the decades-long US leadership in multilateral institutions and international agreements. Observers of international affairs will long debate whether these actions represented Trump’s personal, vengeful moves against Obama’s major foreign policy achievements or signs of a declining United States, which is no longer able or willing to lead the world in the face of mounting challenges of issues and actors, or simply a transactional approach to foreign policy steeped in the “America First” ideologue/dogma. In fact, within the context of the Indo-Pacific, the analyses in this volume examined how the other key regional powers responded to the longer-­ term structural changes in the region’s political economy, including the growing concern about US leadership. Below, we will draw conclusions from the analyses in this collection about the impact of the Trump years on the policies of the regional powers examined and also discuss whether their strategic adjustments are likely to continue post-Trump and, in some cases, whether those adjustments are likely to contribute to or distract from regional peace and prosperity. In offering analytical and normative conclusions, we will draw on the insights gained from realism, liberal institutionalism, and constructivism.

 S Policy Toward China and Consequences for Other U Regional Powers Both the United States and China are undergoing sweeping changes domestically, with vigorous debate about where the country should be headed and what the future might look like. The first two decades of the new century is just the beginning of the wrestling between the two countries over ideas, power, and influence. During this long and lingering process of power transition, we have witnessed the strength, weakness, and inherent resilience of China’s communist regime. For those policy commentators who have long argued for the coming collapse of Beijing’s authoritarian regime, they have to accept the reality that the size of China’s economy will soon surpass that of the United States and the country’s democratization is not

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imminent. Ideological differences between the two countries will last for a long while. Rather, a more pressing question to ask is: would the rivalry be lessened if China became a democratic country? Or in the light of structural realism, is conflict inevitable between the current global hegemon and a rising rival? If conflict is inevitable, then it will not make much difference what Beijing thinks or does. Of course, that is not the case, as China has begun to “flex its muscles” by abandoning its longstanding “keeping a low profile” stance advocated by Deng Xiaoping and inherited by his successors, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. China’s foreign policy became much more assertive and aggressive since President Xi Jinping assumed power in 2012–13. The adverse change in Beijing’s policy in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and the South China Sea is undeniable. Chinese diplomats are not ashamed about their “wolf warrior” diplomacy. China’s official newspaper, the Global Times, endorsed this change as “a correction to the irrational worship of the U.S. that existed in the 1980s and 1990s” (Sheng et al., 2020). Similarly, the seemingly endless expansion of China’s trade surplus with the United States and its newly gained competitiveness in cutting-edge technology have turned China into the best target of cries over the “perils of globalization.” China’s state capitalism is exemplified with strong government intervention in economy, industrial policy, and trade and investment barriers. The US business community, which long served as the “positive anchor” for a stable and cooperative bilateral relationship since China’s opening, has changed its position to support a tougher stance against China’s discriminatory policies toward foreign trade and investment. According to the annual report released by the American Chamber of Commerce in China in 2019, American firms believed that “any deal to end the trade war must address the structural problems in Chinese economic system” (Martina, 2019). Over the years, animosity and hostility toward China have grown in American politics and society. The Pew Survey finds that negative views of China have increased nearly 20% since President Trump took office, and rose 13% since just 2019 (Silver et al., 2020). US-China relations sharply deteriorated during Trump’s term although the downward slide had started much earlier, as early as in 2008. As Liang and Paradise argue in their chapter, both China and the United States are responsible for the degeneration of the bilateral relationship and for the instability and uncertainty this has brought to the region. There are both structural issues characterized as the Thucydides’s Trap as a rising power and a reigning one are destined for strategic rivalry (Allison, 2017). At the same time, the dynamics of domestic politics in both countries have ruled out reaching out to each other half-way for fear of being accused of appeasement or unilateral concession. As a result, both Washington and Beijing have chosen the easy way – blaming the other side for one’s own problems, missed opportunities, or unrealistic expectations. Unless and until both powers recognize and accept the nature and realities of their relationship and work out a modus vivendi for co-existence, the US-China strategic rivalry will only intensify, even with a Biden administration. The consequences for the region and for America’s allies will be prolonged instability and risks of either entrapment or abandonment. As suggested by the chapter authors in this volume, most countries in the region view China as both an opportunity for economic growth and a potential threat to

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their sovereignty and autonomy. In other words, they share a common interest with the United States in curbing the aggressive behaviors of a rising China but do not necessarily want to decouple away from China economically or to be asked to take sides. The world benefited tremendously from the half-century cooperative relationship between the United States and China (Overholt, 2021). During this period, Washington adopted the engagement policy with the belief (and hope) that integrating China into the Western-led market and global order would support the liberals among the Chinese leadership to deepen pro-market reform and eventually China would transition to embrace free market and democracy. The engagement policy has created one of the closest bilateral trade and investment ties and the two economies are truly dependent on each other. But China today is moving toward a direction unexpected by the advocates of engagement policy, and even worse, with its growing financial resources, Beijing is able to build up its military, promote state-owned enterprises at home, and carry out checkbook diplomacy around the world. Some may question the validity of neoliberal institutionalism that suggests economic interdependence will help stabilize political relationship and avoid military confrontations as countries have tremendous economic interests at stake. Indeed, neoliberal ideas are still helpful and relevant for us to understand Sino-American relationship. Now geopolitical and geo-economic factors might drive bilateral relations toward the direction of a new Cold War, but economic interdependence and the need for US-China cooperation on a number of pressing global challenges including fighting climate change and pandemic have made a complete decoupling infeasible and less desirable. To a large extent, neoliberal institutionalism continues to be relevant and helps us expect further socialization of China’s behaviors in multilateral institutions. We should remember that during the period of US-China cooperation, regional powers in the Indo-Pacific enjoyed a long period of stability and expanding prosperity and have been able to create a sophisticated regional production network and supply chains. Asia-Pacific has become the “factory Asia” with its thriving innovation and manufacturing capacity, and the world’s economic center of gravity has moved from the Atlantic to the Pacific. With the continuing growth of India, the Indo-Pacific, including the Asia-Pacific, will no doubt be the engine of global economic growth for decades to come. Most regional powers will continue to take advantage of the rapid growth of China, a country with an abundance of labor, and the comparative advantages of the neighboring countries provide China with their capital, technology, intermediate goods, and raw material. “Rising tide lifts all boats” is a useful metaphor to portray the prosperous and deeply integrated manufacturing network in the Indo-Pacific region that we expect to see in the next decades. How the US-China relationship will evolve is crucial for both countries and for the entire Indo-Pacific region. We can locate the Indo-Pacific countries on a spectrum of policy stance as the US-China relations continue to strain amid the COVID-19 crisis. If the continuum ranges from full alignment with the US camp on one end to complete bandwagoning with China on the other end, the majority of

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countries are best seen as taking a middle position, namely, hedging in between. A bipolar system in the Indo-Pacific would largely determine the likelihood that most regional powers would attempt to avoid taking sides and reduce the risk of fully aligning with one of the two regional hegemons to balance against the other one. Economic interdependence, military capabilities, values and belief systems, and diplomatic preferences of different leaders are all relevant factors bearing on the policy choices of different states facing various circumstances. Among all the Indo-­ Pacific powers, Japan has been consistently associated with full alignment with the United States to balance against China on national and regional security matters but has nonetheless followed a strategy to avoid a violent confrontation in the region, including a softer tone and approach toward China, overtures toward China over nontraditional security issues, and enlarging Japan’s network of security cooperation beyond bilateral alliance with the United States. Many countries in the region, including Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Singapore, are adopting more clearly a hedging strategy while Thailand and the other three smaller developing countries (Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos) have moved into China’s orbit of influence. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam all contest China’s claim of the nine-dash line in the South China Sea (SCS). In 2013, Manila brought the dispute in front of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague and received ruling in favor of the Philippines in 2016. But the Duterte administration chose to soften its position and avoid a direct confrontation with China. Instead, the Duterte administration pursued a hedging policy by fostering security partnership with Japan, pushing for the negotiation of a Code of Conduct through ASEAN and in the meantime welcoming China’s infrastructure investment in the country. Even India, with heightened tensions with China over territorial disputes, and facing growing Chinese presence encroaching on its traditional sphere of influence in South Asia through China’s BRI, has chosen to confine its balancing strategy against China to where its vital national interests lie. Though India has declined to participate in China’s BRI, it is the largest borrower of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) to finance infrastructure projects in remote parts of the country. It has actively participated in the BRICS summits and the New Development Bank sponsored by Beijing. It has demurred from fully endorsing the elevation of the minilateral security dialogues such as the Quad to an Asia-NATO bloc explicitly aimed at China, despite entreaties from various US administrations from Clinton to Trump to get New Delhi on the China-containment wagon. In the post-COVID era, regional powers will face greater economic and political uncertainty and hence we contend that hedging is likely to become an even more prevalent strategy among the regional powers in the foreseeable future. Developing an effective China policy will be one of the top priorities of the new administration in Washington. This bilateral relationship is of great importance for China, the United States, and the region as a whole. An initial analysis of Biden’s appointments to China-related positions in his administration indicates that Biden will be very likely to try to resume, with necessary adaptation, Obama/Clinton’s approach: build an open and rules-based regional order by strengthening US ties

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with its allies in the region. The United States and China have too much at stake and no country can afford a multi-frontal confrontation with China. It seems that the punitive tariffs currently in place will continue unless a successful bilateral negotiation will bring enforceable new commitments from China on trade and investment liberalization. Regardless, the fierce competition between the United States and China on cutting-edge technologies, especially those which have national security and strategic implications, will lead to further tightening of US regulations on export control and additional scrutiny on acquisition approvals involving Chinese firms. The Biden administration could undo some of the disruptive policies of the Trump era, but it will be impossible to make all parties believe that they could go back to 4 years ago because key pillars of the bilateral relationship have changed, as briefly discussed below.

US-Japan Alliance and Regional Implications As Akaha and Hirata note in the chapter on US–Japan relations, Japan considers itself – and accurately so – the most important regional alliance partner of the United States. This is a constructivist aspect of Japan’s self-identity. Also, due to the constitutional constraints on its defense operations and international security role, Japan continues to rely on the United States’ regional and global presence. This is clearly a realist imperative for Japan. Moreover, Japan’s prosperity is unthinkable without the benefits it draws from the US-led system of norms and rules regarding international trade and financial exchanges. This reflects Japan’s neoliberal understanding of the importance of international institutions. In the face of the changing balance of power in the region and the growing power and influence of China, with whom Japan has difficult relations due to historical and contemporary disputes, Tokyo cannot but rely on its robust alliance with Washington and yet cannot afford to alienate Beijing to the point of irrevocably damaging its own trade and investment interests in China. Hence, Tokyo carefully pursues a defensive realist strategy that combines a degree of balancing against China and a degree of hedging through beefed-up national defense capabilities and expanded security and economic collaboration with international partners. In addition, Tokyo has been actively promoting the construction of regional security and economic architectures, including the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) initiative and the Quadrilateral Security Partnership (the “Quad”), the de-facto Japan-led Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) including Australia, New Zealand, and India (India participated in the RCEP negotiations with Japan’s invitation, but decided to opt out at the last minute in November 2019). As this collection of analyses shows, however, there is some uncertainty about the extent of these partners’ commitment to the initiatives and the effectiveness of yet-to-be-­ implemented measures and operational specifics of these frameworks. It also remains to be seen, from a realist perspective, whether these initiatives will serve as

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an effective counterbalance to China’s growing presence and influence in the region without unnecessarily antagonizing Beijing, particularly as the latter continues to expand and solidify its strategic and economic presence in the region and beyond, most prominently through the Belt and Road Initiative. Furthermore, a major deterioration of political relations between Japan and China has the potential to hurt Japan’s interests as a participant in the China-led RCEP.  Also, because Japan’s regional partners have different perceptions toward and interests in China, worsening of Japan–China relations may even affect the success of the Japan-orchestrated CPTPP and adversely affect its relationship with RCEP. Will the two frameworks develop as rivals or as complementary institutions? As far as Japan’s role in the evolution of these regional institutions is concerned, we expect Tokyo will carefully weigh its strategic and economic advantages and disadvantages in each of the frameworks while upholding its well-established preference for rules-based multilateral institutions in the management of international affairs. A key factor in Japan’s role in regional institution building will be the future direction of US-China relations. Biden and his foreign and defense policy teams are likely to resurrect key elements of the Obama-era policy toward China and other key regional actors. The Trump administration declared China a “strategic competitor” and President Biden sees China as the United States’ “most serious competitor” (U.S. Department of State, 2021). This means, among other things, Washington will remain a fierce critic of China’s aggressive behaviors in the South China and the East China Seas, domestic human rights abuses, violation of trade agreements and international law regarding intellectual property protection, and cyberwarfare and interference in US domestic politics. However, Washington will be more engaging, both bilaterally and multilaterally, with Beijing when it comes to issues that require their cooperation. One key issue over which the two sides must cooperate is the nuclear and missile development in North Korea and its corrosive effects on international cooperation for the region’s peace and stability.

 orth Korean Nuclear and Missile Development N and Implications for Other Regional Powers Trump’s personal diplomacy toward North Korea failed in several respects. First, it was never made clear, domestically or internationally, what exactly was the ultimate objective of his administration’s unilateral diplomacy that took the form of three summit meetings with Kim Jong-un. If the goal was simply to unplug the diplomatic funnel between Washington and Pyongyang, at least the summitry appeared to achieve it, at least initially. However, diplomacy for the sake of diplomacy is no diplomacy, especially if it simply aims to showcase the aura of authority and appearance of credibility of a “deal-making” president. What was and is at stake in the North Korean situation goes far beyond the political fortunes of an individual leader. It is nothing less than the peace and security of the entire region, that is, the lives and

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livelihoods of millions, perhaps billions of people that would be affected should the tension on the peninsula escalate and trigger an open armed conflict, whether it be nuclear or conventional. It would also mean the failure of US deterrence policy as well as the extended deterrence the United States promises to its alliance partners in the region, which is designed in part to obviate the latter’s need to develop their own nuclear capabilities. In this sense, the nuclear and missile development on the peninsula also concerns the future of the nonproliferation regime made fragile and uncertain in large part because of its failure to prevent the nuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Washington’s summit diplomacy toward Pyongyang did not contribute to the cause of nonproliferation. On the contrary, it appears to lend some legitimacy to the regime and has further solidified Kim Jong-un’s determination to continue his blistering diplomacy based on his country’s nuclear and nonnuclear weaponry. North Korea’s nuclear and missile development enabled Kim to solicit Trump’s endorsement, intended or not, of his position as North Korea’s uncontested leader. This is the second reason why Washington’s summit diplomacy toward Pyongyang was a failure. The third, related reason why Trump’s summit diplomacy toward North Korea faltered is that its failure to produce a denuclearization commitment by North Korea did not engender confidence on the part of the regional powers regarding Washington’s influence toward Pyongyang, an essential element of a regional system of international relations. In the initial phases of Washington’s summit diplomacy toward Pyongyang, South Korea and China did find reason enough to hope that the bilateral dialogue would bring about a thaw in the frozen regional politics regarding the nuclear status of the Korean peninsula. During this period, Seoul and Beijing found an opening for their own bilateral diplomacy toward Pyongyang. In contrast, Japan found itself increasingly isolated in the multiple summit diplomacy swirling around the peninsula. Russia, the remaining major regional power, was not (and is not) as hard pressed as Japan was in the need to establish a denuclearized Korean peninsula and Washington’s hot and cold diplomacy toward Pyongyang did manage to hold a Putin-Kim summit in Vladivostok in April 2019, where the Russian leader offered to help break the impasse over North Korea’s nuclear weapons development (Guardian, 2019). The neorealist perspective sheds much light on Washington’s summit diplomacy toward Pyongyang and on the strategic calculations behind the other regional powers’ diplomatic initiatives or lack thereof, regarding the nuclear and missile issues on the Korean peninsula during the Trump presidency. Liberal institutionalism’s expectations regarding regional multilateralism  – a la the Six-Party Talks framework or its possible replacement – had little or no chance as long as Trump was determined to pursue the unilateralism he demonstrated in this case, with little or no room for even bilateral coordination with its allies, let alone for coordination with Beijing or Moscow. Finally, there is some merit to the constructivist view that mainstream values and national identities inform national actors’ behavior in international affairs. Applied to the regional powers’ policies toward North Korea, this idea is relevant to South Korea’s unflinching pursuit of improved ties with the North, regardless of the prospect of a breakthrough in US-North Korea relations. Japan’s

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“wait and see” attitude and nearly complete reliance on US initiatives toward the North, even at the risk of being sidelined on the regional diplomatic scene, also lends support to the notion that Japan’s identity as the United States’ most important ally in the region is an important driver behind Tokyo’s endorsement of Trump’s summit diplomacy toward Pyongyang. China and Russia, on the other hand, see it is in their common interest to reduce the influence of the United States over Korean affairs because, according to their realist calculations, a smaller US presence in the peninsula would mean diminished US influence in Northeast Asia more broadly and would naturally enhance Chinese and Russian influence in the region. Moreover, China and Russia still believe that North Korea can play a useful role as a buffer state to help prevent the US military expansion to their borders and hence regime security in Pyongyang also serves Beijing and Moscow’s interests. However, beyond their common desire for a stable Korean peninsula, it is far from clear how they would want the divided peninsula to evolve in the future. For now, both neighbors benefit from the absence of armed conflict on the peninsula and from close economic ties with South Korea and therefore prefer the status quo with respect to the North-South division.

The US-ROK Alliance and Regional Complications The US-ROK alliance, one of the lasting vestiges of the Cold War that turned hot in Asia, is facing mounting challenges today. There are pressures for major change – both from within the alliance partners and from the actions of other key actors in the region. Our understanding of these pressures and our expectations regarding the evolution of the US-ROK alliance are informed by a realist view of alliance politics, supplemented by a constructivism interpretation of the two sides’ commitment to continue the bilateral alliance despite its fragile aspects. Questions have been raised about the viability of the US-ROK alliance as an effective instrument to prevent the North’s bellicose behaviors from threatening the peace and security on the peninsula and also destabilizing major power relations in Northeast Asia more broadly. Pressures for change to the bilateral alliance have come from both the United States and South Korea in terms of change in leadership and the respective administration’s positions on how best to deal with Pyongyang. Washington’s North Korea policy has shifted from administration to administration, with each presidency attempting to undo what they consider was the failed policy of their predecessor. This was clearly the case during the Trump administration and we expect the Biden administration to scrap its predecessor’s inconsistent and ill-­ defined policy toward North Korea. Similarly, sweeping changes have been seen in Seoul’s approach toward Pyongyang in recent decades, ranging from Kim Dae-­ jung’s “Sunshine Policy,” succeeded by Rho Moo-hyun but abandoned by Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye, who adopted visibly more hardline policies, to current president Moon Jae-in’s renewed attempt at reconciliation with the North.

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The growing power of China has also complicated the US-ROK alliance. Beijing has retained significant but yet-to-be-fully-tested leverage over Pyongyang but also gained substantial influence over Seoul through expanded bilateral economic ties between China and South Korea, which holds potentially far-reaching implications for future regional power alignment in the entire region of Asia, including the US-ROK alliance. More than a decade ago, China overtook the United States to become ROK’s largest trading partner. In 2019, China accounted for 25% of total South Korean exports while the United States only accounted for 13.6% of ROK’s global exports. It is impossible to imagine the future of the Korean Peninsula without considering China’s role, as a supporter of the regime in Pyongyang (albeit a reluctant one) but with an indeterminate potential to constrain North Korea’s bellicosity toward the South and toward its adversaries to the east (Japan and the United States). Pressure for change to the US-ROK alliance comes also from the failure of Seoul and Tokyo to develop a tripartite alliance with Washington by reconciling their differences over issues of history, particularly Japan’s treatment of Koreans during its colonial control of the peninsula from 1910 to 1945, and the sovereignty dispute over Dokdo Island/Takeshima, which is claimed and controlled by South Korea but also claimed by Japan. These complex bilateral relations between friends and allies render it extremely difficult for trilateral security cooperation involving Washington, Tokyo, and Seoul (Lind, 2020). As Paradise notes in his chapter, North Korea has grown as a military threat to South Korea and the United States and also as an important source of nontraditional security threats in the region. Neither the US-ROK alliance nor China’s growing power has prevented the North’s threatening and disruptive behaviors even though there is a clear congruence of interest among the regional powers in a denuclearized North Korea. Japan, arguably the most vulnerable regional actor as a potential target of North Korea’s nuclear hostility, has the ability to lend substantial support to the economic development of a denuclearized North Korea but has virtually no influence over Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile development. Moreover, the now dormant Six-Party Talks has clearly failed in its most important mission, prevention of nuclear arms development in the North, and this means the absence of any initiatives to use the multi-power framework to constrain the behavior of its participants. As Paradise observes, this lacuna represents an additional reason for looking for an alternative to the US-ROK alliance as an instrument to constrain North Korea’s threatening behavior. Today, however, US-China relations are arguably at their lowest point since diplomatic normalization in the 1970s. Bilateral relations between China and Japan and between Japan and South Korea are deadlocked in their historical and territorial disputes. Therefore, none of these countries is in a position to launch a major diplomatic initiative toward building a regional security architecture to replace the existing network of bilateral security alliances centered around the United States or push for a revival of the Six-Party framework. Finally, the deepening strategic partnership (now termed “comprehensive strategic partnership”) between China and Russia is a further complication in regional security affairs. Their partnership cannot be a foundation for a multilateral security architecture in Asia inasmuch as that partnership is built on Beijing and Moscow’s shared interest

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in countering – and if possible containing – the influence of the United States in the region and beyond.

The US-Australia Alliance The US-Australia alliance is expected to further strengthen during the Biden administration. Among Asia’s US allies, with the exception of Japan, Canberra has managed its alliance relationship with Washington rather successfully, despite the four tumultuous years dealing with a largely unpredictable Trump administration, as was discussed in the chapter by Yuan. There are a number of reasons why the alliance relationship has weathered the ups and downs during this period. One was that both Canberra and Washington appeared to be in general agreement on the emergent importance of both the Indo-Pacific concept and the subsequent US strategy of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific. Not only has Australia been the first among US allies to firmly support Washington’s geostrategic transition and expansion, but it has also taken upon itself the task of introducing and carrying out what it considers to be crucial elements of the alliance: increases in defense spending and procurement of major naval and air force weapons systems; greater access by US forces to Australia’s military facilities; and more active defense and security initiatives in the South Pacific together with other US allies and security partners. The third reason is that along with, and indeed prior to the Trump administration’s hawkish policy toward China, Canberra had introduced and implemented a series of legislative and policy measures aimed at stemming Chinese influencing operations and barring Chinese participation in Australia’s critical infrastructures such as 5G in communication and power grids, among others. Also, Australia did not back down from the economic sanctions imposed by China in 2020 including punitive tariffs and export restrictions on Australian wine, beef, and coal as a response to the “unfriendly” China policies adopted by Canberra. Last but not least, shared identity as democracies and strong institutions such as annual 2 + 2 AUSMIN meetings have also helped protect the fundamentals of the alliance, leaving it relatively intact as the Trump administration left office. Under the Biden administration, the US-Australia alliance faces both opportunities and challenges. Biden’s foreign policy team sends a strong signal to Canberra and the region’s capitals that America’s commitments to the Indo-Pacific will only deepen as the team contains many of the Obama administration’s Asia hands at top levels and the new national security structure clearly places the Indo-Pacific high on the administration’s agenda. The Biden team also indicates that they will be more consultative, multilateral, and resolute, offering assurances regarding its commitment to its allies, and this will provide sound guidelines for the alliance. During the Trump administration, ALP, the opposition party, indirectly criticized both Washington’s tendency toward unilateralism and the Coalition government’s seeming blindness in following sometimes highly counterproductive or even dangerous US approaches, which placed Australian interests at significant risks. The Biden

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administration’s emphasis on greater consultation with allies and partners, and its return to multilateral institutions such as the Paris Agreement on climate change ensure that Australia will and can provide its voices at the table of alliance management (Payne, 2021). The Biden administration also indicates that it shares and will continue to share the Trump administration’s assessments of the China threats although it had reservations about the tactics employed by the previous administration. The US-Australia alliance also faces serious challenges in the early years of the Biden administration. Apart from earlier concerns over the gap between US rhetoric for a strong Indo-Pacific strategy and the shortfalls in resource allocation to building the necessary capacities to meet mission commitments (Townshend et al., 2019), the fact that the Biden administration’s priorities will be on climate change, COVID pandemic, and repairing a deeply divided society at home will be concerning to Canberra. All of these will likely compete for attention. Canberra has good reasons to be concerned, as it needs continued commitments and explicit signals from the new administration in Washington at a time that Australia’s strong China policy over the past few years has placed it on a collision course with the region’s rising hegemonic power (Curran, 2021).

US-Russia Rivalry The dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s ended the bipolar global system anchored by the hegemonic power of the United States and the Soviet Union in their respective ideological camps and appeared to usher in an era of unipolarity with the United States as the sole remaining superpower. However, expectations of an emerging US-centric post-Cold War world order soon proved unrealistic as signs of power diffusion across the world emerged, heralding a world without a global hegemon. Now, it appeared as though global power would be shared by the United States, the European Union, and Japan, the latter two challenging the US dominance in European and Asian regional affairs. Still, the world was not a multipolar system as neither Europe nor Japan was a match against the US militarily and also because these contending powers shared a common interest in maintaining a liberal world order based on liberal democracies and market economies. However, the spectacular rise of China as a powerful global actor in subsequent decades and its growing strategic cooperation with the beleaguered but still powerful post-Soviet Russia left observers wondering whether they might yet see a multipolar world emerge. Decades after the end of the Cold War, the world cannot see a clear path toward a reconfigured but stable global system. In this uncertain context, the United States and Russia are experiencing shaky bilateral relations. The United States under the Trump administration was far from united and consistent in its actions toward Putin’s Russian. President Trump was openly unwilling to criticize Putin for his government’s meddling in US elections in 2016 despite the intelligence

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community’s unanimous findings against the Russian interference, was equally reluctant to implement Congressionally mandated sanctions against Russia over its annexation of Crimea and violent involvement in Eastern Ukraine, and undertook precipitous cuts in US military support and troop presence in some key areas of the Middle East, effectively ceding political influence to Russia in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, not to mention the withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear deal framework. The Trump administration’s actions in the Indo-Pacific significantly added to Russia’s incentive for closer strategic cooperation with China. As Lukin observes, the region’s peace and security is now heavily dependent on the intensity and direction of the Washington-Beijing-Moscow strategic triangle. Under Trump, according to Lukin, their worsening relations with Washington helped advance the Moscow-­ Beijing strategic partnership to such a point that we may reasonably entertain the possibility of a genuine alliance between the two. Moscow has realized for some time now that it has little independent influence in the strategic balance in the region and needs to move closer than ever before toward Beijing, whose growing power and great-power ambition can serve Moscow’s interest in diffusing Washington’s influence based on its deep and wide presence in the region. The Trump administration’s hardline policy toward Beijing over bilateral trade was a boon for Moscow. The failure of Trump’s summit diplomacy toward Pyongyang also enhanced Moscow’s recognition of the importance of Sino-Russian cooperation in maintaining stability over the Korean Peninsula, which is in their mutual interest. Moreover, as Lukin notes, Russia also views China as an important economic partner, particularly as the Washington-led Western sanctions against Moscow has contributed to the deepening of economic crisis in Russia. Although the Trump government added little to the international economic pressure on Russia, the Biden administration is expected to step up cooperation with its democratic partners in countering what the new president describes as “Russia’s aggressive actions – interfering with our elections, cyberattacks, and poisoning its citizens”1 (U.S. Department of State, 2021). At the same time, the new administration will look for opportunities for engagement with Moscow on issues of mutual interest, such as nonproliferation, global pandemic, climate change, and cybersecurity. Within the Asia-Pacific region, Moscow and Washington would stand to benefit from cooperating with other key actors over the Korean peninsula, as there is convergence of interest among them in a non-threatening North Korea and stable North–South relations.

 In his foreign policy speech at the State Department on February 4, 2021, President Biden singled out the case of Alexei Navalny, the most prominent critic of Putin in Russia, as an example of the Putin government’s mistreatment of its own citizens, as well as the violent response by the authorities against anti-Putin demonstrations that sprang up in many parts of Russia in the early months of 2021. Upon return to Moscow on January 17, 2021, from Berlin after a 5-month recovery from a near-fatal nerve agent attack, he was jailed, prompting the mass protests in the country. 1

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US-India Relations For the US Indo-Pacific strategy to succeed, India is a critical factor. For the past 20 years, since President Clinton’s visit in 2000, Washington has pursued a persistent policy of Engaging India, driven by a combination of strategic, economic, and normative considerations. Over the years, as the chapter by Joshi demonstrates, successive US administrations, and in particular those of George W. Bush and, to some extent, Donald J. Trump, have sought to develop a healthy, mutually beneficial, and sustainable relationship. During this period, Washington has steadily de-­ hyphenated its relationship with India from that with Pakistan so that the United States could implement its counter-terrorism strategies in Afghanistan and enlist Islamabad’s support without raising concerns in New Delhi. At the same time, the United States entered into security dialogues with India in the aftermath of the latter’s nuclear tests in 1998, and subsequently lifted sanctions imposed on India. In 2008, the two countries signed a civil nuclear agreement facilitating cooperation in the areas of nuclear energy, safeguards, and technology, in effect recognizing India’s de facto nuclear state status (Bajoria & Pan, 2010). Meanwhile, the two countries also enhanced defense cooperation, with the signing of the Next Step in Strategic Partnership in 2005, which opened up a range of areas for cooperation, including space and high-technology, in addition to the civilian nuclear sector. Defense cooperation has emerged as one of the more prominent features in the growing US-India strategic partnership. This was further enhanced during the Trump administration with the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA) and $3 billion deal in Indian purchase of advanced military equipment. India has in recent years become a major importer of US military equipment and the two countries have also expanded cooperation in other areas such as joint military exercises, logistic support, and high-level security consultation (White, 2021). New Delhi has also bid goodbye to its long-held principle on non-­alliance and not to enter more formal security arrangements, and become unequivocal in embracing such ideas and security arrangements as the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) and the revitalized Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), as discussed further below (Mohan, 2021). India attended the first-ever Quad leader summit in 2021 while U.S. Defense Secretary Llyod Austin’s first overseas trip included a visit to India. Realism provides persuasive explanations of the dynamics of US-India relations. Both face an assertive China in the region on a number of fronts. From the South China Sea to Maritime South Asia, Beijing’s growing presence presents serious challenges to US and Indian security interests that require coordinated responses. The growing US-India relationship both reflects their shared concerns about Chinese behaviors and informs balancing postures. For India in particular, the recent border standoffs and clashes with China have convinced policymakers in New Delhi that aligning with like-minded democracies in the region and strengthening security ties with the United States provide a better chance of managing the China challenge than confronting it alone. India and the United States’ shared identities as democracies also have enabled the two countries to embrace each other, especially where

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such principles as the rule of law, democratic system of governance, and universal values are concerned. Despite the tremendous progress in bilateral relations, Washington and New Delhi still face some serious challenges. While India has deepened its ties with the United States and broadened security cooperation with other US allies and partners, including Australia, Japan, and Vietnam, it also remains a member in other multilateral institutions, from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), to BRICS, whose interests and agendas do not always align with, and at times are opposed to, those held by the United States in terms of regional security architectures and governance norms in development finance. In addition, India has become the most outspoken critic of the US practices in some of the major global economic governance institutions, including its effort to lead and represent the developing world in the UN climate change talks, WTO Doha negotiations, and the recent debate on the WTO reform and the IMF governance reform. India has a long-standing defense relationship with Russia, and its recent purchase of S-400 air defense systems over US objections has emerged as a major point of contention between the United States and India (Detsch & Gramer, 2021). In addition, despite growing economic ties where the United States has in recent years become one of India’s top trading partner, the Trump administration’s imposition of tariffs on Indian imports resulted in Indian retaliation against US goods. Finally, some of the rather draconian measures the Modi government introduced in recent years, including on citizenship, Kashmir, and political dissent, have raised serious concerns in Washington and could pose a test for the Biden administration as it balances its interests in enlisting India as a key counterforce to a rising China and reprimanding New Delhi for its deviation from democratic principles (Ganguly & Basrur, 2021).

The Quad and Regional Implications The idea of a quadrilateral security dialogue among Australia, India, Japan, and the United States (Quad) was initially proposed by then Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2007. It was as novel as it was controversial, with neither India nor Australia at the time seeming eager to be associated with any arrangements that could be viewed as explicitly aimed against China. With Australia under the Rudd government pulling out, the idea was stillborn (Thakur, 2018). With Abe’s return to power in 2012, the Quad was again on the agenda. Calling it “Asia’s democratic security diamond,” Abe argued that Asia’s peace, stability, and freedom of navigation would benefit from the formation of a coalition of (democratically) like-minded sea-faring countries to counter the growing challenges China posed to the region (Abe, 2012). But, the Quad has become a more serious and concrete minilateral security arrangement among the region’s four democracies since the final years of the Obama administration, and only after the Trump administration had rolled out its

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Indo-­Pacific Strategy and the vision of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP). Several Quad ministerial meetings have taken place, one of them in Tokyo in 2020 amid the COVID pandemic. At the same time, Quad members have issued separate official statements supporting the rules-based regional order, freedom of navigation, and FOIP (Hanson & Laszcz, 2020). With China’s growing assertiveness, the Quad serves both as a platform for discussing responses – diplomatic as well as military among the four – and as a sign of determination to counter any threats to regional peace and stability. The quadrilateral arrangement received a significant boost in March 2021 when the first virtual Quad summit was held. The leaders reaffirmed their commitments to rules-based international order, freedom of navigation, and the rule of law. The leaders also pledged to strengthen cooperation and policy coordination in meeting the multiple challenges of climate, pandemic, cyber space, and critical technologies (The White House, 2021). Meanwhile, bilateral foreign policy and defense dialogues (2 + 2) between Quad members have been established, which in turn further strengthen the United States’ regional security networks and allow America’s allies and partners to forge security partnerships and/or elevate their own security ties in the wide Indo-Pacific region (Jung et al., 2021). For instance, for years, India had been hesitant to invite Australia to take part in the India-Japan-US Exercise Malabar as it could have sent clear anti-China signals. This psychological barrier was removed as Australia was invited to participate in the 2020 Exercise Malabar (Eckstein, 2020). The Quad 2.0 also faces significant challenges in the coming years. Underpinning the Quad has been the Indo-Pacific strategy, where members both share common visions and diverge in each party’s unique understanding and policy preferences (Choong, 2019). One is that despite its declared common purposes and its growing institutionalization and the significant developments of bilateral security ties between its members, when it comes to China, consensus in operational terms may be difficult to achieve because each has its own particular issues with China, priorities, and needs to balance the different aspects of its bilateral relationship with the latter. One particular challenge is to manage the trade-off between their security challenges and the varying degree of economic interdependence they have with China. The growing profile of the Quad raises expectations, alienates China, but will likely fall short of what it can actually deliver (Rai, 2018). For the most part, it remains an aspirational project and much needs to happen (e.g., China begins to pose even greater threats to member states) and evolve in institutional construct before it could replicate and become an “Indo-Pacific NATO.” A critical factor is US willingness to keep building and strengthening the Quad as a top priority on the one hand and ability to provide the critical leadership and necessary resources on the other. This could be a tough call as the Biden administration slowly puts the American house in order and gets the economy going, after it has successfully got COVID under control (Zvobgo, 2021). Washington will also be instrumental in determining the future direction of the Quad 2.0 and whether it will become a full-­ fledged alliance network against China. And the larger region probably will shun taking sides in the continuing US-China rivalry for fear they get trampled in the process. At the same time, as critics have pointed out, expanding US defense

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commitments to cover the entire Indo-Pacific region without corresponding increases in resource allocation could be seen as “balancing on the cheap” and runs the risk of overstretch at a time where frugality and greater allied resource sharing may be required (Mahbubani, 2021; Jackson, 2021).

FOIP and Regional Implications A recently declassified US document explains in detail the rationale behind the proposed vision of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP), and the specific goals it aims to achieve. It has served the “overarching strategic guidance” for implementing the Trump administration’s 2017 National Security Strategy (NSS) and provided a unique insight into Washington’s assessments of the nature and scope of the strategic rivalry with China, the economic and strategic values of the Indo-Pacific for the United States, and the need for strengthening US security alliances and security partnerships in the region (O’Brien, 2021). Washington has good reasons for deep engagement with the region: economic, diplomatic, and strategic. With $1.9 trilling in two-way trade, the Indo-Pacific underpins US economic prosperity and offers promising markets for American investments and opportunities. A region striding two important oceans, it is one of the world’s most important arteries of commerce and transport, with strategic sea lines of communication. The United States also maintains five military alliances and has been building and expanding security partnerships with the region’s growing economies and rising powers from India to Vietnam. While the Indo-Pacific Strategy as a policy framework was officially launched during the Trump administration – perhaps one of its most consequential legacies (Tellis, 2021), it has its intellectual origins in the Obama administration’s largely ineffectual “Asia Pivot” and Hillary Clinton’s famous claim that the United States had always been a Pacific nation (Campbell, 2016; Clinton, 2011). Guided by the principle of maintaining a rules-­ based order in the Indo-Pacific, FOIP emphasizes respect for sovereignty, peaceful resolution of disputes, free and fair trade, and adherence to international law, including freedom of navigation (U.S.  Department of State, 2019). Without question, China is front and center in this emerging strategy, as the Trump administration perceived it as a “revisionist power” that needed to be contained. US policy toward China therefore has to shift from engagement toward one of strategic competition (Calabrese, 2020). While America’s key allies and security partners share the FOIP vision, there is notable divergence in emphases, priorities, and approaches they embrace. Japan’s own FOIP, for instance, values economic prosperity through improvement of connectivity in addition to the importance of the rule of law and commitment to peace and stability (Yoshimatsu, 2018). Excepting the United States, America’s allies and partners are also equivocal in interpreting the notion of freedom of navigation and even its strongest supporter such as Australia would exercise caution in enforcing it, especially in the highly sensitive South China Sea, where China claims sovereignty

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over vast maritime territories also claimed by a number of other regional countries. There is general agreement on the principle of free and fair trade, but given the enormous economic stakes involved, none would go as far as to move down the path of economic decoupling threatened by the Trump administration. Finally, for FOIP to succeed, ASEAN’s buy-in would be critical. However, the region’s long-standing multilateral institution chooses to place inclusivity, consensus-­building and ASEAN centrality in its vision of FOIP. Here divergence becomes obvious. ASEAN clearly does not agree with the US view of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Instead, seeing it both as an opportunity to develop badly needed connectivity infrastructure in the region and as a threat to sovereignty and a potential debt trap if not well-managed, ASEAN countries have approached Chinese infrastructure investments positively but with caution. At the same time, ASEAN has resorted to a hedging strategy, seeking to stay out of the US-China strategic rivalry while trying to maintain good and stable relationships with big powers (Tan, 2020). It remains to be seen whether the Biden administration’s policy will continue to be guided by FOIP.  Given its emphasis on inclusiveness and multilateralism, the Biden team is likely to engage its allies and partners on the broader principles of maintaining and strengthening a rules-based regional order that respects sovereignty, emphasizes peaceful resolution of disputes, promotes free and fair trade with transparency and open markets, and ensures compliance with international law. It has shown that is prepared to be flexible and open to dialogue, including with China on important issues of mutual interests and share responsibilities from climate change to nuclear non-proliferation, but it has not indicated it will scrap everything from the Trump administration’s foreign policy playbook, including FOIP (Davis & Wei, 2021; Singman, 2021). The above analyses of both the US-Australia alliance and the evolving Indo-­ Pacific dynamics including Washington’s efforts to strengthen and refine the regional order (FOIP) are informed by IR theoretical perspectives as much as they reflect policy rationales. In view of China’s rise and its apparently much advantaged position in the post-COVID environment a key consideration and behaviors of the region’s key stakeholders, assessments of regional developments are getting their cue from the Realist perspectives on the nature of the international system as anarchical requiring self-help through either internal or external (or both) balancing strategies, to ensure sovereignty and security. As a result, alliance strengthening, as in the US-Australia case, and the formation of new alignments, are to be expected and reflect structural imperatives in the shifting balances of power in the Indo-Pacific. However, while the Realist logic may offer useful insights into what states can expect to face and must respond to, it does not predetermine nor exclude the important role of agency in decision makers’ ability to choose appropriate actions and adopt relevant policies less determined by the overall structural dynamics but differentiated and issue-specific situations. Hence, some of them would still find prospects of cooperation suggested by Liberal Institutionalism as appealing, such as continued relevance and new-found promises offered by multilateral and/or minilateral undertakings such as the Quad and the FOIP concept. Likewise, despite US

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withdrawal from the TPP (and hence CPTPP) and India’s last-minute decision to not join the RCEP, these regional institutions reflect strong economic incentives for cooperation among the region’s key players even as they continue to harbor security misgivings among some of them. Constructivist understandings of the world also shed light on how emerging initiatives and new alignments can be reinforced by elements of identity, in both normative and geographical terms, at the leadership level in all countries. Both the Quad and FOIP have been significantly influenced by the desire to maintain a rules-­ based order in the Indo-Pacific, FOIP emphasizes respect for the principles of sovereignty, peaceful resolution of disputes, free and fair trade, and adherence to international law, including freedom of navigation (U.S.  Department of State, 2019). However, as is discussed throughout the book, identity itself, as a useful analytical lens through which to assess states’ interests and preferences, is becoming much more complex as multiple and even conflicting identities are at play. This is particularly the case in the Indo-Pacific. National leaders representing their states share the same identity as their counterparts in other democracies and perceive common serious security issues with China, and yet they are not predestined to resort to balancing as the only policy option. Indeed, most of them retain hedging as an alternative option given their economies’ growing interdependence with China’s economy. Here, agency remains critical even though structure signals both limitations and possibilities.

 ilateralism Versus Multilateralism in Trade Policy B Development in the Indo-Pacific Although the term “Indo-Pacific” and policy initiative bearing this term have evolved over the last several years and become popular in the foreign policy discourse in some regional players, we have witnessed a slow progress in institution-­ building surrounding the Indo-Pacific region (He, 2020). The lack of US leadership has clearly contributed to the slow institutionalization in the region; however, a regional consensus has not yet emerged on the overall objective of the “Indo-Pacific initiative”: should the United States and its allies build a “networked security architecture” (Meijer, 2020) to counter China’s assertiveness or to develop a new regional order by incorporating China’s interests and reflecting the new power dynamics in the region? It is notable that this concept of Indo-Pacific has been explicitly rejected by China. Not only is it perceived as a US and Japan-led strategy whose aim is to contain China’s rise and its regional expansion of power and influence (Liu, 2020), but it is also at odds with China’s preferred vision of Asian regionalism. China previously confined its reference to “Asian regionalism” to Northeast and Southeast Asia but has now expanded it to include selective countries in the Pacific. By insisting on “Asia for Asians,” Beijing is advancing a framework of Asian regionalism through RCEP and BRI.  While the United States has lost much of its political

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credibility in the eyes of some Asian countries by withdrawing from the earlier US-dominated TPP agreement, China was able to successfully wrap up the RCEP agreement with ASEAN ten member states and Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Free Trade Agreement is a major step in integrating Asian economies into a single production network and trade bloc, something many previous initiatives have failed to accomplish. RCEP also constitutes much more than a mere “steppingstone” toward membership in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP); the former complements the latter and potentially expands the latter’s reach. It is a de facto CJK (China-Japan-South Korea) agreement in the absence of a formal trilateral agreement, which the three countries have negotiated nearly a decade ago but failed to conclude due to several pressing bilateral disputes over historical and territorial issues. RCEP, with its inclusiveness, could also be taken as a substantial step toward Asian regionalism. Third, China has aggressively pushed for its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in the Indo-Pacific and built many anchor infrastructure projects in Southeast Asia and South Asia. Though it has often been portrayed as China’s foreign policy initiative to build infrastructure and other connectivity projects along the ancient Silk Road route, it is indeed China’s intention to create a China-sponsored regional order, not only by making China a major trading partner, FDI provider, aid donor, and consequently creating an economic dependence on China, but also by allowing China to experiment with an alternative international governance and relations model that is different from the US-led rules-­ based order and will potentially better serve Chinese interests. China’s BRI strategy emphasizes intentional ambiguity to allow greater flexibility in the decision-making process, rendering the arrangements less legalized and less institutionalized and making it easier for China and the recipients of China’s aid to negotiate and renegotiate agreements as necessary. China’s strategy has also prioritized infrastructure building and connectivity projects, which China and some other developing countries consider a vital first step for economic development. This approach is preferred by small developing countries which have weak domestic governance and cannot always operate well by following extant international standards. But, it should also be acknowledged that this strategy has caused much anxiety among the countries which have endorsed the existing rules-based order and do not want to let the alternative source of cheap financing from China compromise the good governance and transparency that they see as fundamental principles of the international rules. One key finding of the volume is that states in the region adjusted their policy actions largely in response to the systemic change in the region, namely, power shift, transition, and rebalance. Many adjustments preceded the birth of the Trump administration and will last beyond the end of Trump’s term. Xi Jinping’s 8 years and Trump’s 4  years in power have undoubtedly escalated tension of regional rivalry, as characterized by Susan Shirk as “China’s overreach and the US’s overreaction” (Boudagh, 2019). Policy observers from the region and around the globe are confident that international relations in the Indo-Pacific will return to a more normal track with greater certainty and predictability under Biden’s administration.

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But, it is also a common understanding shared by most chapter authors in this volume that the strategic adjustments already underway in the region cannot and will not be easily undone because of two factors. First, the systemic rivalry between the United States and China is a lasting structural feature in the region and will outlive the leadership change in both China and the United States. For decades, neoliberals have argued that the closer-than-ever economic interdependence between China and the United States, illustrated by trade, investment, and people-to-people exchange, is the most powerful stabilizing force in ensuring a cooperative relationship despite the political tensions and ideological conflict between the two countries. However, the business community in the United States largely supported the US-China trade war under Trump, or at least there was a consensus within the community that even though trade war might not be the most effective way to pressure China for all the necessary changes, those changes were long overdue and should be seriously addressed by Washington. Second, China has successfully expanded its influence in the region through negotiating free trade agreements and the BRI projects. As recently as 2018, the US market was still receiving almost 20% of Chinese exports. But today, Southeast Asia and EU have replaced the United States as the largest and second trading partners of China. By withdrawing from the TPP, the United States has lost the opportunity to develop a powerful economic pillar of its Indo-Pacific strategy. Currently the Indo-Pacific initiative is mostly a geopolitical endeavor for the United States and other participating countries. The United States is no longer able to establish a two-pronged regional architecture as it did during the Cold War: to provide security guarantee to its allies in the Indo-Pacific and to become their most important economic partner. During Trump’s 4-year term, China took advantage of the leadership vacuum created by the United States’ haphazard regional policy and developed itself as a regional economic hub. Regional powers will have to face the prospect that their economic interdependence with China will be further strengthened after the implementation of the RCEP agreement and the completion of more BRI connectivity projects. Another key conclusion of this volume is that the United States and China should learn to coexist and effectively manage their rivalry although competition will continue to intensify. The ambition and strategy to contain one another or push one another’s influence out of the region will be self-defeating, including any efforts to build a bifurcated system and pressure middle powers in the region to hedge, balance, or bandwagon. Institutionalizing a regional order requires renegotiation among all the regional players, especially including both the United States and China (Foot, 2020). Although the United States and China disagree on many basic principles and values, they do share a common desire to maintain regional stability and prosperity and to defend a neoliberal order. The neoliberal order established during the post-World War II era has served China’s and the United States’ best interests although both countries have undermined the order in different ways and to different extent in recent years. The Trump administration’s “America first” doctrine substantially discredited the US willingness to provide global public goods. During Trump’s term, the United States pulled itself out of the Paris agreement, withdrew from the UNESCO and WHO, and paralyzed the functioning of the World

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Trade Organization by blocking the appointment of its Appellate Body members. On the other hand, by insisting on its developing country status, China has been reluctant to shoulder the global responsibility commensurate with its growing economic and political clout in global economic governance institutions such as the WTO. By sponsoring several new multilateral institutions including AIIB and New Development Bank (NDB), it may have compromised the fundamental rules upheld by the existing multilateralism on transparency, good governance, and environmental standards in order to advance its own interests. In fact, many commentators in China have also openly acknowledged that it is crucial for the United States to continue to honor its treaty obligations to its Asian and Pacific allies and view the United States as an indispensable stabilizer for the region. Many regional players have also expressed their frustration about being pressured to take sides between the United States and China. Regional leaders have made this point clear. For example, at the Shangri-La Dialogue held in May 2019, Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong bluntly stated that “proposals for Indo-Pacific cooperation are welcome if they are inclusive and not to create rival blocs, deepen fault lines or force countries to take sides.” Indonesian President Joko Widodo called for a similar vision to include China in the Indo-Pacific as “ASEAN and China have no choice but to collaborate” (Stromseth, 2019). As suggested by a Chinese scholar, the best option for China, the United States, and the region is to develop a “adversary-­ partnership” to cooperate in the areas of key interests and respect the areas of disagreement (Sun, 2020). The pending question then is: Can the United States and its regional allies work with China to develop a shared vision and architecture of regional order? In order to achieve this goal, both the United States and China need to adjust their policies to the changing realities in the Indo-Pacific, recognizing China’s dominance in regional economy and the United States’ primacy in regional security. They need to share regional leadership and provide each other enough policy space to deal with key regional issues. We should be mindful of the warning issued by the economist Charles Kindleberger in 1973 that the Great Depression persisted “because the international economic system was rendered unstable by British inability and the U.S. unwillingness to assume responsibility for stabilizing it” (Kindleberger, 1973). In the post-global pandemic era, we need, more than ever, US-China collaboration on critical global challenges and to maintain global and regional stability.

“Normalizing” America’s Place in the Region Upon assuming power as Trump’s successor on January 20, 2021, President Joe Biden declared, “This is America’s Day. This is democracy’s day. A day of history and hope, of renewal and resolve. America has been tested anew and America has risen to the challenge.” In an effort to reassure US partners that the United States was going to be actively engaged in global and international diplomacy, Biden continued, “We will repair our alliances and engage with the world once again, not to

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meet yesterday’s challenges but today’s and tomorrow’s challenges,” adding, “We’ll lead not merely by the example of our power, but by the power of our example. We will be a strong and trusted partner for peace, progress, and security” (Johnson & Sugiyama, 2021). The foregoing conclusions point to the most pressing and most consequential challenges the United States will face as it tries to restore its “normal” leadership role in the Indo-Pacific. President Biden has assembled a strong IndoPacific team with experienced career diplomats, strategists, and old Asia hands to manage regional affairs in a dynamic, post-COVID geostrategic environment. The challenges for the administration are whether domestic agendas in bringing pandemic under control and reviving America’s economy will compete for both resources and attention in the White House’s efforts to repair tattered alliances and restore US leadership in the face of a relentless and mounting challenge from China.

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