Opinion | A US Indo-Pacific strategy that isolates China is small-minded and dangerous

While it’s clear the US’ Indo-Pacific report targets China, few countries can afford to openly support the strategy and risk harming economic relations with Beijing

China’s rise in the next 30 years should help America realise it is not so exceptional and indispensable but, rather, an equal member of the international community

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US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrives at Air Force Station Palam in Delhi, India, on June 25. The Trump administration’s vision of a “free and open Indo-Pacific” seems to exclude China. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 2:00pm, 27 Jun 2019Updated: 7:33pm, 27 Jun 2019

Ever since US President Donald Trump spoke of a “free and open Indo-Pacific” at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Vietnam in 2017, the question has been: what is this, a vision, an initiative or a strategy? With the release of Pentagon’s “Indo-Pacific Strategy Report” on June 1, the dust has finally settled.

In the introduction to the paper, then acting defence secretary Patrick M. Shanahan frames “geopolitical rivalry between free and repressive world order visions” as the US’ main security concern and singles out China as a country which “seeks to reorder the region to its advantage”.

One doesn’t need to read the full text to know this strategy has China at its core. In what proved a litmus test, a Chinese scholar attending the Raisina Dialogue, a geopolitical conference in New Delhi, in January 2018, asked Indian panellists: if the Indo-Pacific is indeed free and open, could “the Quad” – the United States, India, Japan and Australia – accept China as a member? The response from the audience was a burst of laughter.

Here lies the dilemma of the Indo-Pacific strategy: if the geopolitical strategy is aimed at China, few countries would support it overtly; if it isn’t, why bother to develop such a strategy at all? As relations between China and the US deteriorate, all countries vowing not to take sides are actually taking sides in a smart way, that is, on issues rather than choosing partners.

For example, Asean countries are widely believed to rely on China economically and on the US militarily. Even the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations that want to see a US military presence in the region have joined China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and are open to using Huawei’s 5G technology.

The Quad might look like an anti-China club, but this is precisely the perception the US’ supposedly “like-minded” allies, India, Japan and Australia, are resisting. None of them – not even the US – wishes to jeopardise its bilateral ties with China for the gains of the other three.

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