How the US Can Reassure Asia
The Big One.
Does ARIA Matter?
On the final day of 2018, U.S. President Donald J. Trump signed into law the Asia Reassurance Initiative Act. ARIA, as the act is known, finds its origins in Senate hearings in 2017 and 2018, as the Trump administration made apparent that it was heading down an increasingly confrontational path with China. ARIA is designed as a complementary legislative instrument to the administration’s Indo-Pacific policy; its topline contribution to the administration’s efforts is in its authorization of $1.5 billion to support ongoing and new U.S. projects toward partners and allies in the region.
At The Diplomat, Carl Thayer underlines the accountability requirements on the executive branch imposed by the act too. “The Asia Reassurance Initiative Act will hold the Trump administration, including the secretary of state, accountable for its implementation through funding appropriations, annual reports to Congress, and the development and review of strategies to meet the Bill’s objectives,” Thayer notes.
Thayer explains the Act’s comprehensive nature. It reflects the newfound geographic understanding of the “Indo-Pacific” in the United States and covers everything from relations with India to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula to relations with Australia and New Zealand. The law calls for the president to “develop a diplomatic strategy that includes working with United States allies and partners to conduct joint maritime training and freedom of navigation operations in the Indo-Pacific region, including the East China Sea and the South China Sea, in support of a rules-based international system benefiting all countries.”
Along with the administration’s rollout of an Indo-Pacific strategy—one that continues to lack a defining document—ARIA has largely received a warm welcome among strategic analysts in the region. ARIA certainly is an encouraging basis for a new period of U.S. thinking about Asia. It will require an extension after its $1.5 billion annual authorization period expires in 2023.
The real measure will come in how the Trump administration takes the momentum from ARIA and its Indo-Pacific strategy to present a budget in the upcoming fiscal year to support additional programs in Asia, including capacity-building programs like the Maritime Security Initiative. As others have detailed, U.S. capacity-building support for Asian allies and partners continues to lag considerably behind spending in the Middle East and Europe.
Where ARIA and no sum of dollars can make a true difference is in the political commitments espoused by the White House. Here we return to the familiar problem of the incumbent U.S. president’s unorthodox foreign policy thinking, which has left states across the region uneasy about how the U.S. might behave in the future despite the bureaucracy and legislature clearly signaling support for a concerted engagement policy in Asia. Two years into the administration, that appears to be a problem without a solution.
Bottom Line: ARIA will be welcomed by U.S. allies and partners in the region, but it doesn’t get the Trump administration past other problems facing its Asia policy.
Bonus: Prashanth Parameswaran and I are back with the first Asia Geopolitics podcast of 2019 on ARIA. Listen here.
East Asia.
In the final days of 2018, South Korea and Japan found themselves in a major row—and it wasn’t over Japan’s actions on the Korean Peninsula in the first half of the 20th century or over their territorial dispute in the East Sea/Sea of Japan. It began when Japan accused a South Korean navy destroyer of activating its fire control radar system toward a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force Kawasaki P-1 maritime patrol aircraft.
The row has snowballed since then, adding to other irritants in the bilateral relationship, including a November 2018 decision by South Korea’s Supreme Court that Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries owed South Koreans compensation for World War II-era forced labor.
Writing for The Diplomat, Sukjoon Yoon, a former South Korean navy captain, analyzes the contours of what might have actually transpired during the incident that started the latest impasse—and why:
The stance taken by Japan on this incident is best explained by political factors. The government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is currently suffering historically low approval ratings, and this situation clearly provides a useful pretext to stir up jingoistic sentiments in his base. South Korea’s Supreme Court has also recently ruled that Koreans drafted into forced labor during World War II are eligible for compensation, and Seoul has also renounced arrangements made by the previous administration to draw a line under the issue of Korean sex-slaves, also during World War II. Obviously, Abe is seeking an opportunity to strike back at Korea, and is therefore using the P-1 incident for political purposes.
Whatever the reality, the United States appears to be sitting out the spat between its two allies entirely—and perhaps for the better. Washington has generally avoided getting involved in bilateral spats between South Korea and Japan, each of whom are allied with it through separate treaties. The Trump administration may be particularly ill-equipped to mediate in a dispute like this.
One final aside is that the incident appears to have worsened already-bad public perceptions of the Abe government in South Korea at a time when North Korean propaganda has repeatedly emphasized Japan’s position as an enemy of the Korean people. Amid continuing inter-Korean rapprochement and worsening Seoul-Tokyo relations, there’s a sense that Pyongyang may attempt to capitalize on this opportunity further.
Bottom Line: 2019 begins with relations between South Korea and Japan taking a nosedive over a radar lock-on incident, snowballing tensions from late-2018.
South Asia.
The Indian relationship with Iran was in the spotlight in early January with a visit by Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif to India. Zarif’s agenda while in the country was broad, but the focus was without a doubt on energy and how New Delhi and Tehran might continue to do business even as the Trump administration’s new sanctions weigh on Iran’s ability to export oil. (India received a temporary waiver from the sanctions that went into place in November—the final of two rounds of new U.S. sanctions.)
In talks with Zarif, Nitin Gadkari, an Indian cabinet minister, noted India’s continuing interest in the port of Chabahar, where New Delhi has made considerable investments. India views the port as a strategic linchpin, allowing it to bypass Pakistani territory and increase its trade flows with Afghanistan and Iran.
As Sudha Ramachandran writes, India crossed an important milestone at Chabahar recently by taking control of operations at the Shahid Beheshti port at Chabahar:
India is developing the Shahid Beheshti terminal at Chabahar over five phases and on completion, the port’s capacity will be around 82 million metric tons (MT) per annum. State-run Indian Ports Global Limited (IPGL) will be responsible for the port’s management for a temporary period of 18 months and if the two sides agree on extending the lease, a 10-year period thereafter.
Chabahar represents an interesting case given that the Trump administration chose to specifically exempt India’s involvement there from sanctions in November, too. Arguably, the decision was borne of a recognition of the strategic importance of the port in allowing India to play a greater role in stabilizing Afghanistan through increased economic interactions and trade. After Zarif’s visit, it appears that Indo-Iranian cooperation on Chabahar largely remains on track.
Bottom Line: Whatever the future of Iranian energy exports to India, the Chabahar port development project appears to be mostly on track.
To Watch: Even after its experiences with Chinese debt under the presidency of Mahinda Rajapaksa, Sri Lanka finds itself with few options to handle its ongoing debt servicing. In an exclusive interview with Reuters, the country’s junior finance minister notes that Colombo is considering a $300 million-$1 billion loan package from China. “It’s extremely difficult to tap the international market due to tight conditions and rating downgrades,” he notes.
Southeast Asia.
The Wall Street Journal ran a bombshell report earlier this month, showing that Chinese officials had attempted to strike a deal with the former Malaysian government of Prime Minister Najib Razak to bail out the country’s controversy-stricken 1 Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) state development fund. The report is a vital read—especially for its eye-popping revelations that Chinese authorities were involved in surveilling the Journal itself in Hong Kong. (It’s unclear how successful these efforts were or how Najib’s government used the outputs to any end.)
At The Diplomat, Prashanth Parameswaran dives deeper into what the report tells us—and doesn’t tell us—about the trajectory of Malaysia-China ties. 1MDB’s shadow hangs over bilateral ties even today, especially as the incumbent prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, has reviewed and suspended a range of China-backed projects agreed to by Najib’s government. As he notes:
...the combination of suggestions of efforts by Malaysian officials to link infrastructure projects to the 1MDB scandal to funnel money, direct acknowledgement of preferential treatment in terms of evaluating the cost of these projects, and a deliberate effort to conceal facts from the Malaysian population, make that link stronger than it had been before. It also reinforces the idea of a general gap between market-based considerations in these projects and the political rationale for them, which is in of itself significantly independent of the 1MDB factor (although that gap admittedly exists to a degree in other projects as well far more commonly than often appreciated).
The airing of the Najib-era dirty laundry around 1MDB is being closely watched around the region and around the world. I fully expect we’ll see more evidence emerge over the course of the year.
Bottom Line: The 1MDB scandal showcases the extent to which the former Malaysian government collaborated with China.
Bonus: Rumors are growing that Vietnam will play host to the second summit between U.S. President Donald J. Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Viet Phuong Nguyen takes a look at the structural reasons Hanoi might be as good as it gets for a second summit meeting.
Central Asia.
The past few issues of this newsletter have been Uzbekistan-heavy in the Central Asia section and this time is no exception as important reform implementation continues. Earlier this month, the country formalized the granting of visa-free access to the citizens of 45 countries, part of President Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s ongoing changes to the country’s international profile amid other general reforms.
It wasn’t easy getting here after former President Islam Karimov’s death. As The Diplomat’s Catherine Putz discusses,
There were stumbles early on in Uzbekistan’s effort to liberalize its visa policies. In December 2016, as Mirziyoyev formally assumed the presidency, he issued a decree that was set to roll back visa requirements for a number of countries. The surprisingly rapid opening, however, was within a month dealt a devastating blow: A new decree in early January 2017 punted visa changes to 2021, including not only expansion of the visa-free list but also an electronic visa system.
As I noted in the previous edition too, it’s now also easier than ever for Uzbek citizens to travel in the region and around the world. With the onset of 2019, the country officially abolished its Soviet-era practice of requiring exit visas for its own citizens, making good on an August 2017 Mirziyoyev directive.
Bottom Line: Uzbekistan has started the implementation of a liberalized visa regime for foreign travelers from 45 countries, continuing its overall reform process.
Bonus: Along the lines of ongoing visa reform, Khamza Sharifzoda takes a look at a proposed “Silk Visa” between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, which would allow travelers with a visa from either country to travel between both—ideally to facilitate greater inter-connectedness and reduce barriers for business travelers that may have engagements in both countries. (The “Silk Visa” is also expected to have salutary effects on regional tourism.)
Asia Defense.
As I highlighted at The Diplomat this week, an interesting new report in Japan’s Sankei Shimbun underscores plans by the United States to host a first-ever ballistic missile test off the Japanese island of Okinawa later this year. The system to be tested is the the MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) off the U.S. Army’s M142 High-Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) launcher. (Other reports have said two separate systems are to be tested, conflating the HIMARS system itself for a missile—HIMARS is a launch platform.)
The test, if it comes, will mark an important shift in the U.S. posture along the First Island Chain and should be seen in conjunction with the almost certain upcoming demise of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty between the United States and Russia. That treaty barred either country from developing, possessing, or testing ballistic and cruise missiles with range capabilities between 500 km and 5,500 km. With it out of the way, the U.S. will be free to develop and deploy previously prohibited missiles in places like Okinawa.
Okinawa specifically is highly likely to be an attractive basing location for prospective new U.S. missiles (which would require years to undergo development). Of course, all of this raises the prospect of even sharper tensions on the island itself between locals and U.S. forces. The island of Okinawa comprises less than 1 percent of Japanese territory, but hosts nearly three-fourths of all U.S. military installations and personnel stationed in the country already. The prospect of road-mobile U.S. missile launchers driving around the island, turning Okinawa into more of a target for China than it is today, is unlikely to prove popular locally.
Bottom Line: The United States will be broaching an important “first” with Japan later this year, according to a recent report.
Don’t Miss It: France and Japan held a major “two-plus-two” dialogue in early January, pledging to hold bilateral military exercises and a sustained dialogue on maritime cooperation in the Indo-Pacific.
Keep an Eye Out: Last year, BRP Gregorio Del Pilar, one of the Philippine Navy’s three Hamilton-class cutters, was badly damaged in a navigational incident. A Philippine official has said that the vessel will likely be back online for operations before the end of the year.
Shifting Assessments: A new Defense News report highlights a recent U.S. defense intelligence assessment that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army is at a point today where it is confident that it might be able to match competitor’s abilities in actual combat—raising the prospect of a conflict across the Taiwan Strait.
Extras.
Don’t miss a recent podcast with Van Jackson on the 2017 crisis between the United States and North Korea.
If you’re looking for a wonky but fascinating read, I’d recommend Owen Cote’s recent article examining the survivability of contemporary nuclear ballistic missile submarines. The Diplomat’s Robert Farley has a condensed look at Cote’s argument over at our Flashpoints section.
Please do feel free to reach out with comments, tips, and feedback at ankit@thediplomat.com and follow me on Twitter at @nktpnd and The Diplomat at @Diplomat_APAC.