OPINION:
China is building up one what may become one of the most impressive military coalitions in world history in the Indo-Pacific region, including India, Australia, the Asian Tigers, Vietnam, Korea, Japan and the Republic of the Philippines. Unfortunately for Beijing, this emerging coalition is anti-Chinese. China’s President Xi Jinping has apparently made a deliberate policy of bullying and antagonizing his nation’s neighbors in the region, and he has succeeded.
For centuries, the Chinese traditionally looked at neighboring states as tributaries at worst or clients at best, but there has generally been a mixture of conciliation and coercion in the relationships. Pre-Xi, China seemed to be on regional charm offensive; but all of that has changed recently. There is not much diplomacy involved in China’s regional actions of late. China claims that its crackdown in Hong Kong and its bullying of Taiwan are internal political disputes, but its aggressive actions in the South China Sea are clear violations of international norms and law of the sea.
Vietnam and the Philippines as well as Taiwan have issues with China’s illegal claims to sovereignty over islets in the South China Sea. Japan and China have a dispute over the Senkaku Islands. Taken as a group, it is easy to write these issues off as normal border disputes along with the longstanding China-India border disagreements. However, some of China’s recent actions are hard to explain other than as regional bullying.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte went out of his way to try building a closer relationship with Beijing at the cost of his relationship with the United States only to be rudely rebuffed. Likewise, Australian attempts to develop closer ties with China have were met with threats and bluster. These were golden opportunities that most rising powers would have leapt at. Mr. Xi is inexplicably playing off a different sheet of music. His “my way or the highway” approach to regional actors is a clear message to them that he wants the United States out of the Indo-Pacific theater and that he intends to use all elements of national power — to include military and economic coercion — to enforce his will.
To date, the United States has pushed back strongly against Mr. Xi as have several regional actors. India, Japan and Australia have joined the United States in forming the so-called Quad Group to oppose Chinese bullying. Some commentators have expressed the desire to see this expanded into a NATO-like alliance. That is not likely to happen any time soon. Many regional nations don’t like each other much more than they do China, and some have competing territorial claims.
For the last seven decades, the United States has maintained bilateral defense agreements with a number of these nations, which have not historically been prone to work with each other. For example, Japan and South Korea have major issues that Americans are constantly forced to referee. Vietnam, Taiwan and the Philippines have the previously mentioned competing claims in the South China Sea. That doesn’t necessarily mean that an effective coalition for deterrence of China is not possible, but it will take much American patience to make one happen.
As I have said in these pages before, the first step should be an Indo-China version of the Monroe Doctrine strongly stating that any attempt to resolve a regional issue by force would cause American intervention against the party initiating the conflict. Regional actors would be invited to participate in exercises designed to counter such aggression under U.S. leadership. Taiwan would be covered in this doctrine. The United States would not formally recognize Taiwan independence as that would cross a red line for China, but it would erase the studied ambiguity toward Taiwan’s defense that has been American policy since President Nixon recognized Red China in the 1970s.
An Indo-Pacific Doctrine would have to be a whole of government approach. China’s bullying of regional actors is as much economic as military, and the United States should be prepared to assist victim nations with both economic aid and lucrative bilateral trade agreements. As burgeoning military exercises take place, the United States can encourage regional partners to standardize ammunition, communications and air/sea defense. The NATO alliance has strengths and weaknesses, and we can learn from those in crafting an Indo-Pacific coalition.
China is beginning to show the hubris that Athens exhibited prior to the Peloponnesian War, and that did not end well for it. Athens created the coalition that eventually defeated it by its misdeeds. Chinese strategists should begin reading Thucydides.
• Gary Anderson lectures on Wargaming and Alternative Analysis at the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs.
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