For Asia, there is bad news and good news from the National Security Strategy released by the Biden administration last week. First, the bad: Washington’s decision to double down on superpower competition with China will dash hopes of some in the region that the Trump administration’s course of confrontation was a whirlwind one. But there is also good news: Asian allies and partners will welcome Washington’s continued engagement in the Indo-Pacific despite a major war in Europe. Furthermore, by toning down the Biden administration’s framework of geopolitical competition as an existential struggle between democracy and autocracy, the new strategy is likely to increase the space for engagement between Asia and the United States.
Since Washington’s policy shift under then-President Donald Trump, Asia has cautiously watched the collapse of four decades of economic integration and geopolitical convergence between the United States and China. For many countries in the region, the new reality of superpower competition was a problem that they tried to eliminate with the oft-repeated mantra of not wanting to choose.
Some had hoped that the confrontation with China was just a one-off aberration under Trump that would be corrected by the new Democratic administration. That this was an illusion was already evident in March 2021, when the Biden administration’s interim security policy guidance stressed continuity with his predecessor, not a break. Still, governments and observers in Asia continued to hope for an easing of Sino-US tensions, perhaps in connection with a potential meeting between US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the upcoming G20 summit. in Bali, Indonesia. , in November.
For Asia, there is bad news and good news from the National Security Strategy released by the Biden administration last week. First, the bad: Washington’s decision to double down on superpower competition with China will dash hopes of some in the region that the Trump administration’s course of confrontation was a whirlwind one. But there is also good news: Asian allies and partners will welcome Washington’s continued engagement in the Indo-Pacific despite a major war in Europe. Furthermore, by toning down the Biden administration’s framework of geopolitical competition as an existential struggle between democracy and autocracy, the new strategy is likely to increase the space for engagement between Asia and the United States.
Since Washington’s policy shift under then-President Donald Trump, Asia has cautiously watched the collapse of four decades of economic integration and geopolitical convergence between the United States and China. For many countries in the region, the new reality of superpower competition was a problem that they tried to eliminate with the oft-repeated mantra of not wanting to choose.
Some had hoped that the confrontation with China was just a one-off aberration under Trump that would be corrected by the new Democratic administration. That this was an illusion was already evident in March 2021, when the Biden administration’s interim security policy guidance stressed continuity with his predecessor, not a break. Still, governments and observers in Asia continued to hope for an easing of Sino-US tensions, perhaps in connection with a potential meeting between US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the upcoming G20 summit. in Bali, Indonesia. , in November.
The new strategy presents the challenge from China more decisively than any US policy document in the past. It asserts that China “is the only competitor with the intention of reshaping the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to do so.” It also points to Beijing’s “ambitions to create an enhanced sphere of influence in the Indo-Pacific and become the world’s leading power.” To “compete responsibly with [China] to defend our interests,” the White House promises to “align our efforts with our network of allies and partners.”
For those in Asia who expect current policies to be short-lived, the new document notes that “the next ten years will be the make-or-break decade.” The document points to the current moment as a “turning point, where the choices we make and the priorities we pursue today will set us on a course that will determine our competitive position in the future.” In short, the United States is determined to defend its primacy against China in the economic and security domains. Washington wastes no time turning its toughest China strategy into policy: Just days before the document was released, Washington announced sweeping new sanctions designed to cut off Beijing’s access to advanced semiconductor technology.
For Asian governments, the bottom line must be that competition with China is now an enduring feature of American politics. Meanwhile, Beijing, whose increasingly confrontational course under Xi prompted the US to rethink its China policy, has surely already recognized that the US policy change is real. Therefore, Beijing can be expected to strengthen its own policies to confront Washington.
As former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd put it, the Chinese Communist Party “has concluded that there has been a long-term, bipartisan hardening of US strategy, including profound changes in Taiwan and the ‘one China policy.’ In the view of China, Japan, Australia, India and [NATO] they have also become more confrontational, seeking to balance Chinese power through institutional arrangements.”
Whether they like it or not, Asian nations will have to come to terms with the profound change in the Sino-US relationship. Realists in the region have seen this coming, and some of them see opportunities for states in the region to use the rivalry to their advantage. Former Singaporean diplomat Bilahari Kausikan, for example, argues that, for Southeast Asian governments, “not choosing does not mean sitting low and hoping for the best.” Sino-American rivalry, he argues, “creates an agency to pursue our own interests because it expands the space and opportunity for maneuver.”
The good news about the new National Security Strategy is that the Biden administration, which has spent significant time engaging with disputed areas of the Indo-Pacific, appears to understand the dilemmas of countries in the region caught between the United States and China. . “Many of our allies and partners,” the document states, “are on the front lines of [China’s] coercion and are rightly determined to try to secure their own autonomy, security, and prosperity. Washington promises to “support their ability to make sovereign decisions in accordance with their interests and values, free from external pressure.” The emphasis on “sovereign decisions” by countries marks a much-needed shift from Washington’s familiar “with us or against us” attitude.
The new strategy also seeks to calm Asian concerns about the consequences of unbridled superpower competition. The document underscores the tension between competition and the need to collaborate with rivals on global issues, from climate change to pandemics. That is where the idea of “responsible competition” with China comes from. However, translating this into actual policy might not be easy.
For those in Asia who have been on the receiving end of Chinese power, such as India and Japan, the National Security Strategy offers strong assurance that the United States will remain engaged in the region despite a major war in Europe and traditional distractions. in the Middle East. East. Washington, the strategy emphasizes, has “entered a consequential new period of American foreign policy that will demand more of the United States in the Indo-Pacific than has been asked of us since World War II. No region will matter more to the world and to ordinary Americans than the Indo-Pacific.”
Skeptics might question the ability of the United States to simultaneously confront Russia in Europe and China in the Indo-Pacific. But the US strategy of developing a loose network of alliances and partnerships provides a foundation for addressing both challenges. In Asia, this includes long-established bilateral treaty alliances as well as new minilateral agreements, including the AUKUS partnership and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue. The idea, the document explains, is to create “a network of strong, resilient and mutually reinforcing relationships.” This flexible approach is critical to building strong alliances with countries, such as India, that have traditionally been averse to formal alliances and blocs.
The National Security Strategy retains the ideological framework of a struggle between democracies and autocracies, an idea that has little resonance in Asia and other parts of the developing world. But the document also makes explicit, in a way that recent US rhetoric has not, that there will be room to engage with partners that are not necessarily democratic. The new global coalitions that Washington wants to build include “countries that do not embrace democratic institutions but nevertheless depend on and support an international rules-based system.” This departure from the initial framework suggests that the Biden team is willing to adapt to Asian realities in order to deal with the threat from China.
This important change is based on the golden rule of any strategy, which is the need to define a hierarchy of priorities. An attempt to address all challenges will succeed in solving none. The new strategy recognizes that countering China must take precedence over promoting democracy in Asia, which is home to diverse political systems. Support for Asian democracy is likely to remain an important long-term ideological goal for Washington. But now it is steeling itself to meet the more pressing challenge of winning the competition with China.
