How Japan, Indonesia could help ease US-China tensions in Southeast Asia
As US Presidential-elect Joe Biden gears up to build a broader coalition of allies to deal with China, Beijing is doubling down on its critics with aggressive "wolf-warrior diplomacy".
Southeast Asia, lying squarely between the two arms of a giant geopolitical nutcracker, is feeling the squeeze of the superpower rivalry. To avoid conflict, new middle power configurations and bold diplomatic initiatives are in order.
There were initial hopes that the incoming Biden administration would soften the tone of recent tensions between Washington and Beijing, which have generated concern in a region that is dependent on China for trade and investment and at the same time is reluctant to take sides.
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But it increasingly looks like Biden's team, under domestic pressure to maintain a tough stance, will focus on making life harder for China by ensuring more effective cooperation with allies.
"The best China strategy, I think, is one which gets every one of our - or at least what used to be our - allies on the same page," Biden told The New York Times last week. "It's going to be a major priority for me in the opening weeks of my presidency to try to get us back on the same page with our allies."
Biden's quest is finding resonance in other Western countries. Germany and the Netherlands have framed new policies for Asia that specifically include aspirations to push China to embrace global norms and the rule of law. The European Union, meanwhile, has called on Biden to forge a new global alliance to meet the "strategic challenge" posed by China.
We have already seen the opening salvoes of China's response. In the past few weeks, Beijing imposed a series of punishing trade restrictions on imports of coal and even wine from Australia, a key US ally in the Asia-Pacific. Chinese diplomats followed up by attacking Australia's military deployment in Afghanistan. A doctored image posted on Twitter by a senior Chinese diplomat, citing a report that found Australian soldiers responsible for killing civilians, caused particular offence in Australia.
The doctored image of an Australian soldier slitting a child's throat released by a senior Chinese diplomat. Photo: AAP
Beijing has also lashed out at Britain and Canada for making statements critical of China.
The Chinese government has appeared to encourage strident, undiplomatic comments from scholars and officials, which in part can be explained by the need to shore up loyalty to the Communist Party leadership in the wake of a long-term stagnation of economic growth.
INCREASING RISKS OF CONFLICT
The broad risk is that the fanning of nationalistic sentiment inside China, and the stoking of anti-Chinese sentiment in countries like Australia - where questions have already been asked about Beijing's failure to contain the coronavirus and Chinese influence in domestic politics - increases the likelihood of conflict.
The most likely locus of armed conflict with China will be in the South China Sea. This is where Southeast Asian states will bear the brunt of US-China confrontation.
Behind the nationalist rhetoric and drum beat of economic sanctions, lies a steady militarisation of the geopolitical contest between China and Western powers. The US Navy has conducted a record number of freedom of navigation exercises in the South China Sea under the Trump administration. And while the increased US presence was seen by some in the region as a means of curtailing China's fishing forays and harassment of maritime exploration, the main effect seems to have been an escalation of Chinese actions and intransigence.
In addition, the deterioration of effective dialogue between the US and Chinahas increased the risk of a mishap or encounter between the two navies escalating, because of the paucity of crisis communications. A plausible scenario is one where Chinese naval or coastguard vessels clash with vessels from one of the Southeast Asian littoral states in the South China Sea: the US navy intervenes, leading to an escalation of conflict.
US President-elect Joe Biden. Photo: AP
Adding to this scary scenario is the pressure some Southeast Asian states have come under to accept military assistance from either of the two powers. Not since the Cold War has the region seen so many visits from the US military officials, who have urged closer cooperation and even requests to accept the basing of military assets.
The Secretary of the US Navy recently proposed the establishment of a new element of the Pacific Fleet to be based in Singapore - a suggestion vigorously denied by the Singapore defence ministry. US diplomats meanwhile, suspect that Cambodia may have secretly leased land to China to build a base - a claim Phnom Penh vehemently denies.
Another source of pressure is economic, with increased calls from the US and Europe for Southeast Asian states to boycott Chinese tech companies. The pressure is forcing a rethink about how to juggle with multiple supply chains in a market affected by decoupling between the US and China.
RELIEVING THE PRESSURE
The squeezing effect of superpower rivalry will only get worse in the coming few years, which begs the question what can the region do to relieve the pressure.
One formula is to look for alternative, buffering sources of power and influence. In this respect, it is noticeable that faced with increasing pressure from both the US and China, Myanmar recently turned to Japan for help to address the raging conflict between the army and the insurgent Arakan Army in the country's troubled Rakhine State.
Tokyo may have seen an opportunity to present itself as a middle power, careful to maintain links with both Beijing and Washington. Newly appointed Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, who made Indonesia and Vietnam the first countries he visited after becoming prime minister, recently hosted Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and stated the need for a "stable relationship" between the two countries.
Another effective way to relieve the pressure would be for the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) to more proactively and effectively engage the big powers in a dialogue on managing regional tensions. To be sure, there is already an alphabet of multilateral forums in the region. But these tend to be overcrowded confabs suffocated by boilerplate statements - and lately poorly attended by the US side in particular, though this might change under Biden.
Conventional wisdom among security experts is that neither China nor the US is willing to sit together in a multilateral setting to manage their tensions. Washington has never been happy to discuss sensitive security issues, and Beijing has sought to manage regional concerns by establishing its own forums for security dialogue.
One way to address the problem would be for a regional mid-sized power such as Indonesia, with its history of non-alignment to get the ball rolling to convene a more focused group of relevant actors - the littoral states in the South China Sea, China and the US, for example. Such a dialogue would avoid sensitive issues of sovereignty and strategic primacy, and focus instead on crafting confidence-building measures and guidelines to manage the risks of a clash in the area, which some Chinese as well as US experts consider is inevitable if the current trajectory persists unchecked.
Michael Vatikiotis is the author of Blood and Silk, Power and Conflict in Modern Southeast Asia
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
Copyright (c) 2020. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
