The USA, India, Australia and Japan want to strengthen their cooperation in the Southeast Asian region and create a strong counterweight to China on many levels.
An Indian diplomat recently referred Militär Aktuell to the digital summit held on March 19 by the heads of state of the so-called “quad states”, the Indo-Pacific alliance currently being formed between the USA, India, Japan and Australia. The four nations want to join forces against China’s growing influence and military strength – even if this is not clearly stated. This involves Beijing’s military build-up, its maritime expansion activities, but also 5G technology and coronavirus vaccines. While the quad states see their alliance as an effective means of cross-border cooperation, the association is naturally sharply criticized in China and seen as an attempt by the USA to take over hegemony in the Indo-Pacific.
In any case, the new US President Joe Biden leaves no doubt that his administration is seeking an active role for the United States in the Indo-Pacific: “The United States is committed to working with our partners and all allies in the region to achieve stability.” The Quad countries have formed an alliance primarily because they want to contain China’s growing power in East Asia and Oceania. The US National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, spoke – in disguise – of “a confrontation with autocratic models”. At the digital summit, the heads of government of the four countries also discussed Beijing’s growing political, economic and military influence. By their own definition, they are a loose forum in which the governments work together towards an international order based on liberal values in the Pacific region. Technological dominance and military expansion
Jake Sullivan also announced the establishment of working groups (WGs) on 5G technology, cyber security and vaccines. The WGs are to develop common standards for the alliance on these topics. The issue of control over 5G technology has escalated in recent years, particularly in connection with the US sanctions against the Chinese company Huawei. In this country, there are still hardly any such fears. In any case, the domestic air traffic control authority Austro Control awarded a network contract for internal data exchange to Huawei just a few days ago (see report) because the company was the best bidder under public procurement law, as emphasized to Militär Aktuell. In any case, the US-Chinese power struggle in the Indo-Pacific is taking on an ever stronger military component. Last week, the Japanese news portal Nikkei Asia published an opinion piece by a former US Navy admiral on possible US war preparations against China. According to the article, the US think tank “Atlantic Council” recently published a kind of blueprint for strengthening the US troop presence in East Asia. The Biden administration is currently considering elements of this. Specifically, the US Navy could, for example, carry out “more aggressive patrols in the maritime areas around China”. The US Department of Defense would like to involve other NATO states, as well as the powers surrounding China – Australia, New Zealand, India, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Vietnam. The US Air Force has also stationed additional long-range bombers in the Pacific region. The strengthening of the troop presence is flanked by the definition of so-called “new red lines” for possible direct combat operations against China.
At the same time, India in particular is complaining about the increasing presence of the Chinese navy (PLAN) in the Indian Ocean, which is now the world’s largest navy in terms of the number of surface ships. According to a former Chief of Staff of the Indian Navy, there are currently six to eight Chinese warships in the Indian Ocean. According to Oriana Mastro from the US think tank “American Enterprise Institute”, China has even expanded its maritime ambitions beyond the South China Sea under President Xi Jinping. The navy is now also being used “to protect distant waters” and has been transformed for this purpose. China’s presence in the Indian Ocean – also via the first permanent foreign base in Djibouti and temporarily in the Seychelles or the Maldives – is likely to serve the purpose of securing maritime trade routes, among other things to safeguard its vital oil imports from the Gulf region. For their part, the Quad states are responding with a kind of “sabre-rattling” in the Indian Ocean. In October last year, the alliance held the annual “Malabar” naval maneuver there for the first time as a quad. It involved an American and an Indian aircraft carrier, a Japanese destroyer and an Australian frigate. At the same time, Japan and Australia agreed on a joint military agreement. “We will strike back if necessary if China uses coercion and aggression,” US Secretary of State Blinken said from Tokyo these days. Regulations instead of coercion, democracy instead of autocracy in Asia – the message from the renewed quadruple alliance seems clear. Vaccines as a geostrategic “weapon”
In addition to all this, the Quad Group also agreed on a joint vaccine initiative. The four countries want to jointly provide up to one billion doses of the US monopoly manufacturer Johnson & Johnson for Southeast Asian countries. The project is to be financed by the USA and Japan. The vaccines are to be produced in India and distributed through Australia. The initiative is in competition with China’s efforts to distribute its own vaccines in Asia and thereby expand its political influence in the region. The People’s Republic currently supplies its vaccines to 69 developing and emerging countries, including some Asian states. At the same time, the USA is apparently not even considering supplying any of its stocks of Astra Zeneca vaccines to the EU. Not least because of this, it can be seen that geostrategic considerations are likely to be at the forefront of the countries’ minds when it comes to the issue of vaccine exports. Instead of exploring common ground and averting the dangerous escalation of various tensions, each side is playing to its own population and taking the maximum position. As announced, the US representatives ignored China’s red lines and directly addressed sensitive human rights issues, including the situation of the Uyghur Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, including re-education camps, the suppression of democratic protests in Hong Kong, Chinese territorial claims in the entire South China Sea and the situation on the island of Taiwan, which Beijing has labeled “renegade”, including the open threat of military action.
Beijing describes Quads as “clique formation”
According to various commentaries on CCTV and in other state-controlled Chinese newspapers, the new Quadrilateral Security Dialogue is nothing but a political show, but its plans cannot be realized for the following reasons:
- On the one hand, the four countries involved are each concerned about their own interests. The USA and Japan are very interested in the South and East China Seas, while the Western Pacific region is particularly important for Australia. India, on the other hand, is focusing its efforts on matters in the Indian Ocean.
- In addition, the three non-American countries could not dance exclusively to the tune of the USA for economic reasons alone. China is the largest trading partner of Japan, India and Australia. India is currently hoping for accelerated approval for dozens of its investment projects in China, while Australia has expressed the hope of restoring its timber and iron ore exports to China. It should be obvious that none of these countries want to lose their access to the Chinese market just because they are “saluting” the US.
- It is now important to closely monitor how the new US administration is pursuing “a dangerous policy of clique formation and optional multilateralism”, according to Cina. “The consequences of this approach could be renewed divisions and conflicts as well as a threat to stability and peace in the region.”
USA-China meeting in Alaska
The USA and China engaged in a heated exchange of words in front of a large press audience the day before the quad meeting. And not virtually, but in real-life face-to-face meetings between the two foreign ministers in Ancorage, Alaska. Blinken accused the Chinese leadership of threatening the rules-based order. His counterpart Wang criticized Washington’s interference in China’s internal affairs. The day before the meeting, the USA had announced further sanctions against Chinese officials due to the actions of the authorities in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
Yang called for “abandoning the Cold War mentality and the zero-sum game attitude in the relationship between the two countries”. According to Yang, China and the US share common interests, for example in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic and climate change. The US must “stop promoting its own ideas of democracy in the rest of the world. The vast majority of countries do not recognize US values and models as global values!” The exchange of blows in front of the press lasted a full hour. However, the subsequent talks without representatives of the press were said to have been “substantive, serious and direct”, according to both sides. The talks could pave the way for a summit between Presidents Biden and Xi Jinping next month – possibly on “Earth Day” on April 22, when both presidents could announce their efforts to combat climate change. This would certainly be an issue on which an agreement is most likely to be reached. Militär Aktuell has visited US, Indian, Japanese and Chinese warships in recent years. All interlocutors there hope for a peaceful future without major conflicts, but – unsurprisingly – leave no doubt that they would carry out their orders consistently in an emergency. However, only PLAN members “let slip” claims to various sea areas and zones of influence. In their opinion, China can no longer be constricted or “pushed around”. In many cases, this sounds very suspiciously like the “place in the sun” that the Wilhelmine German Empire made its raison d’être more than 100 years ago. Will the consequences be similar?
