THE United States has installed a new military chessboard in Asia Pacific against China and year 2023 has further increased its martial presence in the region. The US military alliances/emerging partnerships/arms sales in shape of QUAD, and AUKUS and Arc of Alliances with Korea, Japan, Philippine, Vietnam, India and reopening of its diplomatic offices in small islands and arms sales to Taiwan, Korea, and Japan all clearly demonstrate its trans-regional aims and hidden plans against China. The 2023 was full of US eventful and unnecessary manoeuvring and the US military presence in the South China Sea provoked the Chinese policy makers. The scripted episodes of the American RC-135 plane and US vessels further deteriorated military and diplomatic ties between two superpowers.
Accordingly, show of US growing aggressiveness remained a permanent feature during 2023. Rightly, Beijing blamed the US accusing it of deliberately provoking risk by sending aircraft and vessels for close in reconnaissance near its shores which posed a serious danger to its national security. It is crystal clear that the US Government and military establishment considers China as the biggest challenge to the Western-dominated international order. The US military freedom of navigation exercises in Asia-Pacific near China has further deepened and expanded its diplomatic and military presence in the region and Arc of Alliance stretches from Japan to the Philippines and Australia, and from India to Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands is getting momentum against China.
The US opening of new embassies in the region, deployment of troops and more advanced military assets, as well as obtaining access to sites in key areas facing the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait is the part and parcel of its new military chessboard in the Asia-Pacific region. Taiwan and South China Sea have become new flashpoints in the region posing serious security risks. China rightly accuses the US of pursuing a policy of containment, encirclement and suppression and therefore its leaders have pledged to resist. Time and again, the Chinese President Xi Jinping termed the US military presence as unprecedented server challenge to his country’s development. Even the Chinese high military leadership strongly condemned the US Cold War mentality, and said Beijing would not be intimidated and would “resolutely safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity, regardless of any cost.
It is pertain to mention that Xi’s dream of national rejuvenation and modernization of the Chinese military should not be equated as any regional as well as global risk. Moreover, its well established historic claims on various islands should not be tagged any act of annexation or military assertiveness. China’s Taiwan is matter of territorial integrity and national sovereignty. Xi called unification of Taiwan as an unshakable commitment which is legitimate and the growing clout against China is playing with fire and polluting the regional peace and stability.
Unfortunately, the Biden Administration has accused Beijing of leveraging its commercial, military and technological might to pursue a sphere of influence in the Indo-Pacific” and become the world’s most influential power. It is absolutely untrue and based on misperceptions. It seems that the US’s campaign to counter China has been its efforts to deepen and expand its military and diplomatic ties with countries in the Asia Pacific. It includes boosting relations with regional allies such as Australia, Japan and South Korea, and non-allies such as India and Vietnam has arguably resulted in the most robust US diplomatic and military posture in the Asia Pacific in recent decades posing security risks to China and its peaceful persuasions of macro-economy, trans-regional connectivity and, above all, opening-up and modernization.
To contain China, in Australia, the US, along with the United Kingdom, has announced a historic security partnership to equip Canberra with up to five nuclear-powered attack submarines by the early 2030s. Moreover, both have also announced plans to increase the rotational presence of US air, land and sea forces on the island continent and build airfields to operate nuclear-capable B52 bombers from northern Australia.
In Japan, the US has increased its troop presence on the Okinawa Islands, including equipping its maritime units there with long-range fire abilities in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. In South Korea, the US has pledged its new security assurances including the deployment of a nuclear-armed submarine to the Korean peninsula for the first time in four decades. More significantly, the US has announced a new trilateral security partnership with Seoul and Tokyo, a significant achievement given the long history of mutual bitterness between the two countries.
Moreover, the Philippines has granted the US access to four more sites in the country, bringing the total to nine locations that US forces have access to, albeit on a rotational basis. Interestingly, three of the four new sites are in the provinces of Cagayan and Isabela in northern Philippines, facing Taiwan, while the other is in eastern Palawan, near the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. In essence, the US’s unwise political and immature diplomatic posturing on Taiwan and the South China Sea is creating a spirit of distrust, disharmony, and instability in the Asia Pacific region. Consequently, regional economies and communities could face difficult times in the future.
The US constant arms supplies/sales to Taiwan and continued garrison mentality forming new military partnerships, bases, controversial visits and hidden activities along with prolonged false and fake hybrid war against China will have spillover socio-economic, geopolitical and geostrategic repercussions. To further strengthen its military presence in the Asia Pacific, the US has expanded its military and diplomatic footprints in Islands. Most recently, it inked a security deal with Papua New Guinea that gives it unhindered access to several key airports and seaports in the Pacific nation and re-opened an embassy in the Solomon Islands after a 30 year absence. It has also opened an embassy in Tonga and is in talks with Kiribati and Vanuatu to establish a diplomatic presence there. It seems that two opposite forces are colluding in Asia-Pacific. One represents (China) economic stability, sustainability, trans-regional connectivity and other banks (US) on confrontations and conspiracies disturbing regional peace, prosperity and peaceful persuasions.
—The writer is Executive Director, Centre for South Asia & International Studies, Islamabad, regional expert China, BRI & CPEC & senior analyst, world affairs, Pakistan Observer.
Email: mehmoodulhassankhan@yahoo.com
views expressed are writer’s own.
