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US: Remaking policy in
Asia?
By John Gershman
(With
permission from Foreign Policy in Focus)
Asia is arguably the region that has been most
dramatically affected by the shift in US policy since
the attacks of September 11, 2001.
US bases have
cropped up in Central Asia for the first time in
history. Five Japanese vessels participated in the
multinational naval contingent that was part of
Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, marking the
first wartime dispatch of naval vessels for operations
abroad since the end of World War II. (1) The
administration of President George W Bush has improved
relations with both Pakistan and India at the same time,
a feat never accomplished during the Cold War. The
administration has expanded military cooperation with
Taiwan that is unprecedented since the normalization of
relations with the People's Republic of China. And the
United States has improved military relations with the
Philippines to the closest they've been since the end of
the Cold War, and begun to re-engage in a significant
fashion with the Indonesian military for the first time
since ties were cut in 1999.
The Bush
administration came into office committed to change US
policy toward Asia. It aimed at reversing the
Clinton-era policies of engagement with North Korea and
China, and strengthening military alliances perceived as
having been slighted under president Bill Clinton,
particularly with Japan, but also with Australia, South
Korea, the Philippines, and Thailand. Military and
security issues were slated to displace economics as the
priority concerns of US policy toward the region.
After the September 2001 attacks and the launch
of the Bush administration's "war on terrorism", Bush
policy toward the region followed three uneven phases.
The first phase covered the period following the attacks
through the State of the Union address in January 2002,
and largely involved assembling a coalition that would
support (or at least not oppose) the US-led war in
Afghanistan. The second phase was marked by two events:
the identification of the "axis of evil" in the State of
the Union address and the launch of the so-called
"second front" in the war on terrorism in Southeast Asia
more broadly. In the third and current phase, signs of
open dissent are appearing within the administration and
between the administration and its hardline supporters
concerning the administration's relationship with China.
In addition, developments in the region as a whole are
complicating US efforts to implement its militarized
foreign policies and maintain supremacy in Asia.
Military partnership with Japan
Since
the end of the Cold War, US-Japan relations as a whole
have been characterized by the absence of a strategic
framework - a gap that the Bush administration has begun
to fill. In the first phase of the "war on terrorism",
the United States has put pressure on Japan to change
the way it thinks of war and peace.
The closest
thing to a blueprint for the Bush administration's
approach to Japan can be found in the so-called Armitage
Report, the product of a study group led by former
Clinton administration official Joseph Nye and current
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. (2)
The report places security at the center of the
US-Japan relationship and conceives of the US-Japan
security alliance as the primary anchor for US force
projection in the Pacific and Indian oceans. Despite the
35,000 ground troops in South Korea, no naval forces are
based there. Japan hosts the only home port for a
carrier battle group outside the United States, a
complete amphibious attack group, and a full marine
expeditionary force.
The Bush administration
wants a more substantial military partnership that would
begin to parallel relations with its European allies,
but there is no evidence that most Japanese want such a
relationship. Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi
has called for the repeal, or at least a
reinterpretation, of Article 9 of Japan's constitution,
which forbids Japan to wage war. A reinterpretation
would allow Japan to use military force as part of
"collective security" operations; that is, to assist
allied forces under attack outside of Japanese
territory. In a stark contrast to the Bush
administration, Japan's foreign policy places a greater
emphasis on multilateralism. Japan has signed the
land-mine treaty, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and
other multilateral arms control efforts and remains
upset by the Bush administration's rejection of the
Kyoto protocol. At a minimum, however, the
administration will push Japan further toward collective
defense, steps foreshadowed in the late 1990s by Japan's
approval of the revised US-Japan security guidelines and
its agreement to cooperate in pursuing theater missile
defense (TMD). Anything involving a more formal military
role for Japan in the region remains controversial both
within Japan and among many of its Asian neighbors,
including those friendly to Washington, such as South
Korea. Most countries in the region see a more
militarily assertive Japan, given its past military
adventures, as destabilizing and a danger.
The 'axis of evil' and beyond
The
second phase of the "war on terrorism" in Asia has
centered on confronting North Korea and expanding the
conflict to Southeast Asia. With North Korea, the Bush
administration has most clearly departed from the
policies of its predecessor. One of the Clinton
administration's few unqualified foreign-policy
successes was the negotiation of the Agreed Framework in
1994, under which North Korea agreed to freeze its
nuclear program in exchange for shipments of heavy fuel
oil and the construction of two nuclear reactors. When
the US followed the lead of South Korean President Kim
Dae Jung's "Sunshine Policy" with the North, tensions
fell to their lowest levels since the end of the Korean
War.
Secretary of State Colin Powell advocated
continuing the Clinton-era policies of engagement, but
he was overruled by hardliners soon after Bush entered
office and a review of policy toward North Korea was
launched. Bush embarrassed President Kim by criticizing
his Sunshine Policy when he visited Washington in March
2001. The events of September 11 might have sparked a
US-North Korean rapprochement. After condemning the
attacks, North Korea promptly announced that it would
sign the remaining international anti-terrorism
conventions that it hadn't already ratified. But the
United States kept North Korea on its terrorism list and
maintained the accompanying economic sanctions. This
more confrontational stance culminated with North
Korea's inclusion in the axis of evil in the 2002 State
of the Union address, even though the US State
Department claims North Korea hasn't engaged in
terrorism since the 1980s.
In late August, the
two Koreas reached an agreement on three major joint
economic projects, including reconnecting severed
cross-border railways, constructing an industrial
complex, and instituting anti-flood measures. After
Koizumi's historic trip in mid-September, Japan and
North Korea began negotiations over normalizing
relations. US assistant secretary of state for East Asia
James Kelly traveled to North Korea in early October and
at that meeting confronted North Korean officials with
evidence that it has engaged in a secret nuclear weapons
program since 1997 in violation of the Agreed Framework,
a charge that North Korean officials acknowledged to be
true.
North Korea's acknowledgement of the
weapons program, like its acknowledgement that it had
abducted Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s, seems
aimed at a broader dialogue with the Bush
administration. The Bush administration stance continues
to be divided as to how to respond to the recent
developments. (The State Department itself is divided,
as Undersecretary for Arms Control and International
Security John Bolton continues to wave the flag of the
"axis of evil" in contrast to the more positive views
articulated by Armitage and Kelly.) Although the future
of the Agreed Framework may be in doubt, the engagement
approach remains favored by the key countries in the
region. Emerging at the same time that the
administration is gearing up support to invade Iraq, the
intra-administration debate over how to respond to the
North Korean situation may have broader effects on US
policy toward weapons of mass destruction.
In
Southeast Asia, meanwhile, the US has focused its war on
terrorism in the Philippines and Indonesia. In
Indonesia, military cooperation is back on the table
despite congressional opposition on the grounds of
Indonesian military complicity in massive human rights
abuses. Increased military aid to Indonesia is typically
justified on the basis that it will promote democracy,
but the International Crisis Group (among many others)
has argued that bilateral military ties have not
succeeded in "producing an Indonesian military that
meets the standards of a modern, professional force
under civilian control".
In the Philippines, the
US deployed more than 1,000 troops in a partially
successful hostage rescue cum counter-terrorist
operation in the south of the country. Against the
backdrop of these counter-terrorism operations, the US
has been transforming the Philippines into a staging
area for power projection in the region (primarily
against China/Taiwan) but also to boost projection into
Central Asia and the Middle East. In August the Bush
administration added the Communist Party of the
Philippines and its armed wing, the New People's Army,
to the State Department's list of foreign terrorist
organizations. The most immediate effect was to get the
Dutch government to freeze the assets of the party
leadership, which remains there in self-imposed exile.
The longer-term agenda is likely to include an expansion
of training and exercises to be directed at countering
the nearly 35-year-old insurgency.
The Bush
administration foray into Southeast Asia has been
troubling for several reasons. First, the terrorist
threat was never as large as the rhetoric suggested.
While there is a small network of individuals and
organizations involved in terrorist activities, they
have no mass following. They represent a
law-enforcement, not a military, challenge. Second, US
military aid is strengthening unaccountable and
repressive militaries. It also risks undermining fragile
democratic institutions and legitimizing broader
crackdowns on political dissent by regional leaders.
Confronting China
In the first draft
of the 1992 Defense Policy Guidance drafted by Paul
Wolfowitz and Lewis Libby, it was unclear where the new
rival to US supremacy would most likely emerge. Europe
and Japan as well as China were among the candidates. By
the time the Bush administration came into office,
however, the proponents of this doctrine of supremacy
saw only one possible peer competitor emerging in the
foreseeable future: China.
But the Bush
administration was divided on its approach to China from
the moment it took office. Hardline neo-conservatives
such as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, his deputy
Paul Wolfowitz, and Undersecretary of Defense Dov
Zakheim represented a fairly unified Pentagon with John
Bolton as a key outpost in the State Department. They
have been backed by an even more rabid informal network
of China-bashers known as the "Blue Team" who are based
in congressional staff, right-wing think-tanks, and
media outlets. In the more moderate realpolitik camp
have been Powell, the director of the State Department's
policy planning staff, Richard Haass, Armitage, and
Kelly. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, while
largely siding with the hawks, has played a balancing
role on policy toward China.
Early in the
administration, the hawks appeared ascendant, their
rhetoric considerably sharper than that of the Clinton
administration. Bush denounced Clinton's efforts to
forge a "strategic partnership" with China, referring
instead to China as a "strategic competitor". The
Clintonesque pattern of engagement did prevail at key
points, however, such as the resolution of the April
2001 imbroglio involving the PC-3 spy-plane collision.
And through September 11, 2001, that approach appears to
have been maintained. Most notably, Bush met with
Chinese President Jiang Zemin twice in four months
(October 2001 and February 2002) and again last month.
The number and frequency of these meetings is
unprecedented in US-China relations.
The hawks
have not given up. Rumsfeld remains the only major
cabinet member not to have met with his Chinese
counterpart. Having apparently lost the
intra-administration battle over how to conduct direct
relations with China, the Pentagon has focused on
upgrading relations with Taiwan and other allies in the
region. (While it contains proponents of Taiwan
independence, the Bush administration does not formally
advocate this position.) In the midst of the spy-plane
negotiations in April 2001, the Bush administration
approved the most generous arms package for Taiwan in a
decade, including destroyers, anti-submarine planes, and
diesel submarines. While Bush administration rhetoric
with respect to Taiwan became less strident after the
September 11 attacks, the Pentagon quietly continued to
forge closer links between the US and Taiwanese military
establishments, culminating in a meeting between
Wolfowitz and Taiwan's minister of defense.
The
Blue Team, relatively quiet since September 11 last
year, renewed their salvos in mid-2002. These
China-bashers see an opportunity in the distractions of
the Chinese leadership's succession process to
strengthen US-Taiwan ties and heighten the anti-China
tone of the renewed military ties in the region. They
want a more explicit return to the framework of China as
a strategic competitor, a view expressed in the first
report of the US-China Security Review Commission, which
was staffed by a number of Blue Team members. The Blue
Team supports pending congressional legislation that
demands greater planning and operational integration of
the US and Taiwanese militaries that would, if passed,
contravene nearly 25 years of US policy toward China and
ignite a major crisis in US-China relations.
Challenges from the region
The
aftermath of September 11, 2001, enabled the US to
expand its military presence throughout the Asia-Pacific
region through military operations, exercises, aid, and
training programs that have consolidated the US
hegemonic military presence and deepened military
cooperation in the region. The net effect of these
expanded ties has been to expand the capacity for US
force projection and has undermined democracy by
strengthening unaccountable and repressive militaries in
countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines. These
developments were not "caused" by September 11 - ie,
these were not new policy initiatives - but the way the
Bush administration responded to September 11 created a
window of opportunity for already existing proposals to
succeed.
If the events of September 11 had not
happened, it is by no means clear that political support
would have existed for expanded ties with the
authoritarian regime in Pakistan or the chronically
repressive militaries in the Philippines and Indonesia,
either in the United States or in those countries. Nor
would economic resources - military and foreign aid for
the Philippines and Indonesia as well as debt relief for
Pakistan - have been as forthcoming. These new
relationships are driven by the Pentagon. The State
Department remains a junior partner and has no
significant resources to offer for fighting poverty or
strengthening civilian democratic institutions. At the
same time, key policies toward Asia have continued
regardless of September 11. The September 11 attacks did
nothing to weaken the Bush administration's support for
national and theater missile defense systems, or its
willingness to sell arms to and develop closer military
ties with Taiwan.
In this third phase of the
"war on terrorism", the internal conflict between the
hardliners and the advocates of engagement,
unsustainable in the long term, will continue until one
side or the other is defeated (with most of the betting
on Powell to resign first). The Pentagon has the edge,
since the recent boost in military spending gives it
resources that other agencies lack. The most likely
pressure for change in the foreseeable future will come
not from within the Bush administration but from the
region. China's leadership succession has just been
finalized, and a number of other key events will take
place soon - including presidential elections in South
Korea, and the decision to continue or abrogate the
Agreed Framework. If Japan and South Korea respond
positively to the new North Korean initiatives, and
continuing economic crisis makes a major expansion of
Japan's military role more difficult, US hardliners will
find it more difficult to promote confrontation with
North Korea.
The missing element is popular
mobilization at home to seize the opportunity presented
by the divide within the administration. Popular
mobilization forced Congress to cut ties with the
Indonesian military in 1999, and popular mobilization
can challenge, transform, or at the very least mitigate
the worst elements of Bush administration policy in the
region.
Notes
1. During the Gulf War
Japan contributed about US$10.8 billion out of the
estimated $60 billion it cost to fight the war and
minesweepers, but those only after the hostilities had
ended. See Yukio Okamoto, "Japan and the United States:
The Essential Alliance", Washington Quarterly 25(20)
(Spring 2002), pp 59-72.
2. The report was
published in late 2000 by the Institute for National
Strategic Studies under the title "The United States and
Japan: Advancing Toward a Mature Partnership", and is
available online at
http://www.ndu.edu/ndu/sr_japan.html. In addition to
Armitage, key Bush administration officials who
participated in drafting the report include: Paul
Wolfowitz (deputy undersecretary of defense), James
Kelly (assistant secretary of state for East Asia and
the Pacific), and Torkel Patterson (former senior
director for Asian Affairs, National Security Council).
John Gershman
(john@irc-online.org) is a senior analyst at the
Interhemispheric Resource
Center (IRC). A version of this essay will
appear in Global Power Trip edited by John Feffer
and published by Seven Stories Press (forthcoming spring
2003).
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