Where is America's Asia Policy?
Below is another conversation with my esteemed colleague Dr. Yohanes Sulaiman. This time we’re taking a break from the Ukraine War and instead discussing America’s Asia policy, especially in light of last month efforts by the Biden administration to ramp up its focus and attention to the region. What does Team Biden’s Asia policy look like? And has it been successful? Read on.
Brad Nelson: In May, there was quite a bit of Asia news coming out of the White House. ASEAN leaders visited Washington. Biden traveled to Asia to meet leaders from Japan, South Korea, and the Quad. And of course, Biden himself made news when he once again misstated America's longstanding Taiwan policy. The major deliverable to come from his trip was the unveiling of the new 13 country Indo-Pacific economic pact, which will focus on supply chain issues, digital trade, and green energy plans, among other things.
What do you make of all of this? Will this flurry of activity advance U.S. policy in Asia meaningfully forward?
Yohanes Sulaiman: Well, first of all, we shouldn't really expect anything huge from presidential visits. In most cases, it is just the symbolism that matters, that the U.S. is paying attention to China, ASEAN and East Asia. Still, I hope that the U.S. could at least do better with the optics. For instance, Biden got roasted by Southeast Asian analysts for promising $150 million in aid pledges for ASEAN, compared to China's $1.5 billion. Of course, the U.S. has provided more than that in reality, $12.1 billion, according to the White House, while China's $1.5 billion in reality may not be that amount. Still, the optics are bad, because it looks like the U.S. is not serious in trying to buy the hearts and minds of ASEAN.
And of course Biden's misstatement and the clarifications about this later are also problematic. While perhaps it is a Freudian slip, presidents are not supposed to make that kind of gaffe (well, perhaps except Trump). In any case, what is important is what happens after all of this activity, whether the U.S. will pay more attention to Taiwan and Southeast Asia after having been distracted for months by Putin's stupidity in Ukraine.
BN: Let's face it, Biden's Asia policy is still undeveloped, which is both confounding and a disaster. The Biden administration has some ideas about Asia, America's role in it, and China's rise, but that's about it. Team Biden knows that the U.S. should compete hard with China (whatever that means), cooperate with China on issues of mutual interest and push back against Beijing when China seeks to undermine American national security, but all of this is vague and boilerplate stuff.
And alarmingly, Biden still hasn't figured out how to incorporate economic issues effectively into a China strategy that has lopsidedly emphasized arms and allies. Even the much-hyped Indo-Pacific pact leaves much to be desired. It’s not a free trade pact, which is what members really wanted, and it doesn’t address increased market access among members. So while U.S. media has called this a trade agreement, it really doesn’t touch much on trade at all. Team Biden hopes that the pact stimulates trade down the line.
I could go on. In short, even though there has been lots of diplomatic face time between the Biden administration and leaders and officials in Asia, America's Asia policy is no better than what it was during the Trump years, to be frank. And in some ways, it's actually worse, given Biden's reflexive emphasis on the democracy versus authoritarianism cleavage in world politics, something that doesn't go over particularly well in Asia and is counterproductive to wooing partners and allies in the region.
It's been well over a year since Biden came into office, it's past time to get this right. And this is doubly problematic for Biden. After all, he campaigned on the argument that Team Biden was a group of experienced professionals who would solve/mitigate America’s foreign and domestic problems, in contrast to reckless goofballs in the Trump administration. If people were listening closely, it should be apparent that Biden framed his administration as a technocratic government. But he's not only not really addressing the big problems he promised to tackle, Biden’s government has managed to create and allow new problems to fester (baby formula crisis, inflation, the Ukraine War, etc.).
The rise of China is the defining issue of our time. Biden knows this, as does his staff. They all knew, back in January '21, that they would spend lots of time on Indo-Pacific affairs. Hence, if they were serious and prepared, Biden should have entered the presidency on January 20, 2021 with an almost ready-to-go Asia policy. Yeah, that didn't happen. And that's irksome to me because, as the experienced foreign policy hands that they were, they knew that, as is always the case, new and pressing foreign and domestic policies would surface, and those things would divert attention and resources from the U.S. at the expense of America's focus on Asia. So the Ukraine War is just an excuse; Team Biden knew better from the start. And if they didn't, then that just further makes the case for shunning "the Blob" and limiting its influence on U.S. foreign policy.
YS: At the same time, I wonder what causes this problem. Is it because Biden is essentially a domestic politics president? To his defense, there is just a lot of stuff on his plate to tackle domestically in the U.S., from the aftermath of the pandemic to all the usual domestic debates (abortion, gun violence, etc.) and the widening polarization between the left and the right. Though in the case of China, it looks to me that both Congressional Republicans and Democrats are actually in accord. But the aftermath of the pandemic and the economic problems that followed means that there is less money that can be used to counter China's economic largesse in the Indo-Pacific.
And I agree with what you said. It looks to me that there are fewer people who really understand what is going on in Asia and especially in Southeast Asia. It seems the old Cold War mentality of focusing on defense is still strong. They seem to forget that one of the main reasons why America’s influence was strong during the Cold War was due to a lot of aid being poured all over the world. Think about USAID. While U.S. aid to the region is still a lot, it is getting overshadowed by China's largesse, and the U.S. needs to pick up its game. Another problem that may be tangential to this problem is that there are fewer people in academia who have deep knowledge on Southeast/South Asia compared to back in the late 20th century, especially with academia focusing more on quantitative works. And I suspect this has negative impacts on America’s engagement throughout the Indo-Pacific.
BN: You pose a good question, an interesting question. The U.S. hasn't elected a strategic thinker as president since George H. W. Bush, and he was a relic of the cold war era. Even Biden, with all of his foreign policy experience as Senator and Vice President, really isn't a strategic thinker. He's much like Obama—an in-the-moment problem solver. Frankly, I don't think America has been interested in strategic policy since the cold war. And that's because U.S. citizens really don't see any state-based threat as being on par with America today and certainly not at the level of the old Soviet Union. Over the last 5-7 years, there's been a massive ramp up of U.S. government narratives depicting China as America's new enemy and threat, but relatively few Americans currently see China that way. Sure, they don't like China, but they don't see China as some massively urgent priority. Only academics, think tankers, and Washington do.
Moreover, there's another trend to consider: the wars of the 2000s have cautioned Americans against reckless, provocative, and militant foreign policies. That's led to a resurgence of nationalism and neo-isolationism in some quarters of the U.S. That explains, at least in small part, the rise of Trump. And I think those political attitudes and preferences are providing some headwinds that Biden is now facing. Heck, Biden knows this. His "Foreign Policy For the Middle Class" is inspired by this wave of sentiment in the U.S. Many Americans don't want crusading, needless disputes and wars, blank check offers of protection for foreign friends and allies, large disbursals/shipments of foreign aid/arms, confrontational foreign policies, etc. So while Washington is in agreement on getting tough on China, as you noted, it's not really a winning political issue for Biden. Really, all the U.S. has gotten in return for strong-arming China during the last several years has been rising prices on various consumer goods, a closer Sino-Russia partnership, and increasing reluctance by Beijing to work with the White House on any and all global issues and problems.
So where does the Biden administration go from here? How do you foresee the Biden administration's Asia/China policy developing over the next few years?
YS: I think it will evolve slowly. While China has been behaving aggressively, it still hasn't crossed a red line like Russia did in Ukraine, although it does keep testing the limit. And at this point, there isn’t enough political will in Washington or in Middle America to deal with China. And Europe is also distracted and divided. Unless China starts acting like Japan did in the 1930s and 1940s or the Soviet Union during the Cold War, I simply don't see any possibility of abrupt change in U.S. policy. Yes, there will be more engagement with and outreach to the Indo-Pacific, but you won't see a cold war era-scale of assistance to U.S. allies and partners in the region.
BN: I tend to agree. Biden's roll out of his China/Asia policy will happen slowly and it will evolve slowly, as it's constrained and influenced by distractions in the U.S. and abroad and the relative absence of strategic thinking in Washington—despite, as you noted, near bipartisan consensus that China needs to confronted and contained by America.
I think a major punchline here is that China's salami slicing tactics in the South China Sea and elsewhere have proven to be very successful. Sure, some countries have been turned off by China's heavy-handedness at times. But in the end, that hasn't been a big deal for Beijing. China has reaped enormous benefits, in terms of political influence and wealth, and the costs have been relatively low. Importantly, China hasn't acted so provocatively and aggressively so as to trigger a tight, cohesive balancing coalition directed against it. The Quad is still far away from being a functional alliance. There isn't an Asian NATO. ASEAN doesn't want to pick a fight with China and prefers to have good relations with both the U.S. and China. U.S. allies like Australia, Japan, and South Korea would rather bury their heads in the sand than try to contain Beijing. And America hasn't been persuasive enough or offered enough inducements to get its partners and allies to more actively confront China.
This raises a question, though. What's the point at which China begins to provoke real, meaningful balancing behavior in the region?
YS: Here we have a dilemma: when is the red line crossed? Sooner or later China may overreach in the South China Sea, and I think at that point, states will have to balance China. Still, China's economic largesse remains an important variable here that prevents states from taking strong actions against China.
BN: In general, I agree, but what is “overreaching”? At what point does it occur? It would be a worthwhile endeavor by China watchers—whether academics, analysts, or bureaucrats—to operationalize the point at which an anti-China coalition within the Indo-Pacific is likely to be triggered into formation. It would be good for all sides of the Pacific to have a baseline expectation of when and why the region might harden and split into two (or more) blocs. It would also give U.S. political, security, and military leaders a better idea of what would have to happen in order to get fence-sitters off the ledge and into a U.S.-led partnership against China.
Much of today’s forecasting about the Indo-Pacific is grounded in wargames, and those are useful and can offer some insights on the topic at hand. Even so, wargames often don’t figure out the precise conditions and timing of when balancing coalitions emerge. Frankly, this issue actually derives from a weakness within realist scholarship—the theoretical home of the balance of power. Realism treats balancing as something that’s self-evident. Emerging powers rise too fast or grow too strong or act too aggressively, so the logic goes, and in response, a countercoaltion is formed to deter and possibly contain these new behemoths. What’s left unsaid and unaddressed is the fine-grained conditions and timing in which balancing is likely to occur. This gap in the realist literature has seemingly bled into contemporary analyses about U.S.-China relations, unfortunately. Nevertheless, it’s not too late to begin drafting hypotheses on this very topic. I’d be particularly interested to see a fully-fleshed out logic specifying a series of conditions and causal events that would likely need to occur in order to transform the Quad from what it is to today to an active balancing coalition.