Containing China and revitalizing strained alliances are the two main objectives of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s first overseas trip to the critical Indo-Pacific region, but he will also try to draw India closer to the United States, said defense officials and experts.
Hoping to rebound from Trump-era quarrels over basing agreements in Japan and Korea, Austin declared he will embrace a defense posture that leverages partners and allies that share the U.S. goal of a free and open Pacific. Austin’s stops alongside Secretary of State Antony Blinken will include Japan and South Korea before he flies solo to India and U.S. Indo-Pacific Command headquarters in Hawaii.
Austin declared China would be the department’s “pacing challenge” and early on created a China Task Force at the Pentagon to identify priorities. Now, he is getting to work with the so-called “Quad” grouping of the U.S., Australia, Japan, and India, which met virtually with President Biden Friday morning.
“The Quad is not an alliance,” said Center for Strategic and International Studies’s Asia and Japan Chairman Michael Greene Monday morning on a press call with CSIS Korea Chairman Victor Cha.
“It’s a grouping of maritime powers that essentially want freedom of navigation and a rules-based order. It has, in its current iteration, largely been made possible thanks to Beijing,” he added, referring to China’s excessive maritime claims and aggressive actions against its neighbors.
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The Pentagon often notes that five of America’s seven alliances are in the Pacific, and while India has a policy of nonalignment, Austin will be aiming to move the country further into the U.S. orbit and away from China’s pull.
On a Friday afternoon press call, Biden’s acting deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Indo-Pacific, David Helvey, was light on details of what Austin will be asking of Japan and Korea, saying only that he hopes to “transform” and “operationalize” the defense relationships. He will also visit U.S. troops and meet with America’s top general on the peninsula, Gen. Robert Abrams.
To be sure, the defense secretary will celebrate recent victories with his counterparts in Seoul and Tokyo, who recently signed long-stalled basing agreements that former President Donald Trump had bargained hard for America to profit from. In renewing former President Barack Obama’s failed “Asia Pivot,” Biden dispatched Austin and Blinken to make big promises to Asian partners.
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga will reportedly be the first White House visitor, supplanting traditional ally Great Britain. The Quad also aims to deliver to South and Southeast Asia 1 billion doses of coronavirus vaccine.
“Essentially overwhelming China’s very aggressive, wolf-warrior vaccine diplomacy,” Greene said, describing China’s strings-attached approach to diplomacy, which often includes heavily indebting countries in order to reap exclusive mineral and port deals.
“It’s a huge play. It’s what Southeast Asians, in particular, have said they want to see from the big powers,” he added.
The U.S. will need its allies should conflict arise with China, and it hopes to curtail the tide of China’s regional hegemony by strengthening partnerships in the region.
Congress made a down payment on the effort, authorizing $6.8 billion for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative that aims to build capacity of regional partners, finance 21st-century exercises, and provide information technology upgrades to keep China from shutting down communication.
Courting India
Indo-Pacific Command told the Washington Examiner Friday that India stands to benefit from some of the PDI investment, especially infrastructure to improve multinational command-and-control and maritime situational awareness.
Indopacom commander Adm. Phil Davidson went so far as to call India the “defining partnership of the 21st century.”
Greene told the Washington Examiner he also expected Austin, a former four-star general in the Army, to make a play for enhancing cooperation with India’s Army.
“We now exercise military exercises with the Indian forces more than the rest of the world combined, basically,” he said.
India values its nonaligned position, and Cold War relationships still lead the country to buy Russian and French defense equipment. But conflict at the line of actual control with China in the Himalayan mountains gave the U.S. an opportunity to reach out a hand to India.
“The Indian troops suffered. They didn’t have good cold-weather gear. The Chinese had better equipment. And traditionally, it’s the Indian navy that has found it most beneficial to work with the U.S. Navy,” he explained. “The army now, which is so important in Indian politics, is more and more inclined to work with the U.S.”
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While it is Blinken who will meet with Chinese counterparts in Alaska after the 2+2 summits conclude, China is sure to occupy much of Austin’s discussion with allies in the region.
“This is an administration that’s really focusing on the China problem and really focusing on allies,” Greene summed up.
