Is the US focus on Asia a first step away
from being a global power?
Media
coverage of President Barack Obama’s high-profile visit to Australia and plan
to boost US presence in Asia may mask America’s shrinking global footprint. The
combination of concern over China and the US debt crisis could set Washington
on a course to becoming a mere regional power in the Asia Pacific.
According
to a just published report by the London-based International Institute of
Strategic Studies, defense spending is rising in Asia – much of it driven by
China, which accounts for 30 percent of the region’s military budget – and
falling in Europe and US. The think tank attributes the trends to economic
growth in Asia and what it calls strategic uncertainty. And that uncertainty
has provided the US with a tempting opportunity to reassert itself in the
region while cutting back elsewhere.
Last
November, the Hawaiian-born Obama announced what his administration is calling
a pivot towards Asia, representing a significant shift in policy since he took
office. The change is driven by changing perceptions of Chinese power, but it’s
also partly a result of diminishing US financial clout. Although Washington
insists it will retain military superiority, the pivot could well mark the
beginning of a geopolitical shift that ends up with the US being predominantly
a regional power in the Asia-Pacific.
In the
early days of his administration, Obama went out of his way to avoid offending
China. On his first visit to the country, he took a lot of flak from political
supporters as well as opponents and human rights groups for toning down
criticism of China’s human-rights record. Then in July 2010, US Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton challenged China’s territorial claims to the South China
Sea, stating that the US had a national interest in freedom of navigation there
and calling for a regional code of conduct, even though Beijing prefers to deal
bilaterally with its neighbors in such territorial disputes. Chinese officials
interpreted Clinton’s comments as hostile, and the Foreign Ministry in Beijing
accused the US of virtually attacking China.
In
November last year Clinton formalized the policy shift in in an essay for
Foreign Policy, stating that the US would pivot towards Asia.
The
administration has clearly decided going easy on Beijing was yielding no results
and sees China’s growing military power in East Asia as a threat to US
influence in the region, which went largely unchallenged since the end of the
Korean War. Following Clinton's article was Obama’s visit to Australia and his
announcement that 2,500 US Marines would be deployed to a new base near Darwin.
In
terms of concentrating military and diplomatic effort where most needed to
preserve US influence, this makes strategic sense for Washington. China is
regarded as the only country likely to rival the US for military and economic
power in the next few decades. Chinese defense spending is increasing by over
10 percent a year, and if the US wants to contain Beijing, it calculates that’s
best done close to China’s borders and coasts. On top of this, two of the
world’s potential flashpoints are on China's frontiers, the Korean Peninsula
and the South China Sea.
But
this new focus on Asia and promise to reinforce US military forces in the
region are planned at the same time as growing debt mandates steep reductions
in the Pentagon’s spending, equipment and manpower. Defense Secretary Leon
Panetta has proposed reducing personnel by 100,000, cutting new spy planes and
transport aircraft, and slowing spending on the new Joint Strike Fighter. So it
seems inevitable the pivot will mean reduced military commitment in Europe and
other parts of the world. The US is already planning to withdraw two combat
brigades from Europe and trying to encourage its NATO allies to pick up the
slack. The nascent Africa Command, Africom, could have its budget cut as well.
The
navy, essential to the projection of US power globally, will fight to retain
its current complement of 11 aircraft carriers, but success is by no means
certain. The frontrunner for the Republican nomination for November’s
presidential election, Mitt Romney, has made an issue of the navy’s size,
arguing it is at its smallest since 1917 and promising to build 15 ships a
year. However, many defense analysts argue his plan is unaffordable without
deep cuts in the army and air force, given Republican demands to cut government
spending. So far, the Romney campaign has not specified how his administration
might pay for expansion of the navy.
Last
year's intervention in Libya offered a glimpse of where US policy may be going.
Initially, the Obama administration was markedly less enthusiastic than Britain
and France. The Europeans took the lead in front-line action, although the
Americans were essential for destroying Libyan air defenses and the supply of
precision munitions. In Libya, this was dubbed “leading from behind,” but it
illustrated how Washington wants to pass responsibility for the defense of
Europe and western influence in neighboring regions, such as North Africa, to
the Europeans.
Despite
the Libya intervention, the call for shifting responsibility seems to be
falling on deaf ears at the moment as Europeans cut their defense spending and
confront their own economic crisis by reducing their budget deficits.
In the
US, too, the Pentagon cuts have been presented as a necessity to help reduce
the huge budget deficit, and there is no guarantee cuts in overall defense
spending will be temporary. If Washington fails to bring down its deficit
substantially in the next few years, future presidents may have to cut defense
spending further.
The
plan to focus on East Asia could still be derailed, of course. When asked what
was most likely to blow his government off course, the late British Prime
Minister Harold Macmillan replied, “Events, my dear boy, events.” In the case
of the US pivot, the most likely event – a known unknown in the Rumsfeldian
sense – is a conflict in the Middle East where the US commitment to Israel
could lead to American military forces being used against Iran to try to stop
Tehran developing nuclear weapons.
In
explaining the pivot to the Asia-Pacific in a speech to the Australian
parliament last November, Obama said the US was winding down its military
commitments in Iraq, after US combat troops left in late 2011, and Afghanistan,
from which the US plans to have withdrawn all but trainers and advisers within
the next two years, to focus further east. But even if Obama ends up sending
forces into action again next door in Iran, that would most likely delay,
rather than derail, the shift in focus to the Asia-Pacific, given the strategic
consensus in Washington that China is its main challenger.
The
Obama administration insists the US will maintain its worldwide military reach.
However, while no American leader is likely to take the political risk of
declaring that the US is no longer a global power, Washington could well be on
a course to becoming a de facto regional power in the Asia-Pacific simply
because it cannot afford to contain a growing China and maintain a global
military presence.
Alistair
Burnett
Asia
Sentinel
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