Looking beyond the coronavirus, military powers jostle for dominance in Indo-Pacific region

This is the fourth in a series exploring the global backlash that China may face as a result of its actions and rhetoric during the coronavirus pandemic. This story examines the outlook from a military viewpoint, including relations in the South China Sea, with China’s neighbours and with the United States.

As the USS Barry, one of the US’ most advanced destroyers, sailed through the Taiwan Strait last Thursday, an officer on board posted a message on Facebook: “They don’t call us the Finest Forward Deployed Destroyer for nothing! Your Bulldogs always have the watch – together, we ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific!”

Based in Yokosuka, Japan, the guided-missile destroyer was no stranger to the sensitive channel separating Taiwan and mainland China. In fact, this was its second passage through the 180km [112-mile]-wide waterway – defined as part of the South China Sea under international protocol – this month.

As the Covid-19 global health crisis continues to rage around the world, infecting more than 3 million people and causing more than 210,000 deaths, military manoeuvres are being analysed to see if the pandemic has changed the balance of force in the region.

American warships were just some of the frequent naval visitors to the Taiwan Strait. The Chinese military has also made its presence felt. The Liaoning, China’s first aircraft carrier paraded through the waterway with its strike group just one day before the USS Barry arrived.

And then on Tuesday, China’s Southern Theatre Command, which oversees the South China Sea, issued a stern warning against the “intrusion” of the USS Barry into the surrounding waters of the Paracel Islands. China calls them the Xisha Islands and Vietnam calls them the Hoang Sa Islands.

“These provocative acts by the US side … seriously violated China’s sovereignty and security interests, deliberately increased regional security risks and they could easily trigger unexpected incidents,” a spokesman of the command said.

The frequency of such tours has raised concerns among military observers and analysts that these exercises could lead to miscalculation as different countries use their militaries to jostle for greater influence or rattle the sabre amid the pandemic.

“Adversaries who think now is the time to challenge the #USA: you’re dangerously wrong,” United States Secretary of Defence Mark Esper tweeted in mid-April.

And on Wednesday last week he tweeted: “Do not test our resolve. Our service members continue to demonstrate why the American people call on the US military during the most trying times.”

The Covid-19 pandemic has plunged already strained China-US relations into a deepening rift as officials from both sides engage in a blame game about delays that have allowed the contagious disease to spread.

Experts are now looking at how the pandemic will affect other aspects of China’s international relations.

Zhu Feng, a professor of international relations at Nanjing University in eastern China, expressed worry that Beijing and Washington had grown even further apart because of the pandemic.

“China and the US are supposed to work together to battle this world-sweeping deadly contagion, but what worries me most is that the geopolitical strategic competition and differences between the two countries have widened because of the pandemic,” he said.

Zhu said Washington’s growing cosiness with Taipei had also alarmed Beijing.

While Taiwan was a key security issue in the region, analysts warned that manoeuvring by nations had increased the risk of turning the Indo-Pacific area into a tinderbox.

This month, the US Navy’s amphibious assault ship and a Japanese navy Murasame-class destroyer conducted three-day bilateral communications exercises and division tactics in the Philippine Sea and the East China Sea. The East China Sea is the site of territory disputes between Beijing and Tokyo over the Diaoyu Islands, or Senkaku Islands as they are called in Japanese.

The joint drills came 10 days after a collision between a Japanese destroyer and a Chinese fishing vessel in the East China Sea, causing a hole in the destroyer. No one was hurt, according to the Japanese defence ministry.

On Tuesday last week, another US amphibious assault ship and a guided-missile cruiser joined with an Australian frigate.

They entered the contested waters off Malaysia, where a Chinese government survey vessel, the Haiyang Dizhi 8, has been operating close to a drill ship under contract to the Malaysian state oil company, Petronas, according to a report from Reuters citing regional security sources.

“The show of force of the US and Australian warships in the South China Sea was aimed at warning China: ‘The pandemic will not give you any opportunity to change the current balance of power [in the region]’,” Zhu said.

“And [it also means to] tell Malaysia and other Southeast Asian countries that no matter how the pandemic develops, the US is still Big Brother in the region,” he added.

The South China Sea remains one of the biggest stress points in Asia. Beijing claims almost all of the area but has conflicting claims with Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei. The conflict has remained unresolved for decades and has now become another flash point with the US.

Alexander Huang Chieh-cheng, a former deputy minister on Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, which handles the island’s ties with the mainland, said China and the US were tangled in a bitter competition.

“In comparative terms, the US presence has been a response to increased People’s Republic of China’s ‘far sea navigation training’ with its newly acquired air and naval assets,” Huang said, referring to Beijing’s expanded military clout.

“The US wants to reassure [its allies of] its commitment to the security and stability in the Taiwan Strait, as well as in the larger Indo-Pacific region.

“[Chinese President] Xi Jinping has said that the vast Pacific Ocean is big enough to accommodate both the PRC [People’s Republic of China] and the US. However the PRC’s build-up in the South China Sea and training exercises have, in the eyes of Americans, threatened the freedom of navigation and challenged the US predominance in maritime Asia.”

Drew Thompson, a former US defence official and now a senior research fellow at National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, wrote in a recent paper that China under Xi’s leadership has taken a more aggressive stance in dealing with its neighbours.

“Xi Jinping’s rise to power has heralded a new foreign policy that is more assertive and uncompromising toward China’s neighbours, the US and the rest of the world,” he wrote.

He warned that Xi’s assertiveness would put China’s diplomatic and defence policies at higher risk, especially given Beijing’s determination to resolve the Taiwan problem.

“The pandemic does not fundamentally change the military or strategic balance across the Taiwan Strait but it potentially increases the possibility of miscalculation if Beijing thinks its handling of the pandemic gives it a military advantage,” Thompson told the South China Morning Post.

Last week, the PLA’s Eastern Theatre Command, which covers China’s eastern seaboard, published four belligerent articles emphasising the urgency for the Chinese military to strengthen its combat readiness as the country faced challenges at home and abroad during the pandemic and that the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) must play a “pivotal role in safeguarding China’s national interests”.

Separately, an analysis published in mid-April said that following the Covid-19 pandemic, the voice of “unifying Taiwan by force” had become “louder and louder” on the mainland. It was published on a media website affiliated with the mainland’s Taiwan Affairs Office, which oversees Beijing’s policies on the island.

Citing opinions by retired PLA generals, the analysis said the US would not go to war with China over Taiwan, other than providing the island with intelligence and weapons.

But Collin Koh, a research fellow of the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, cautioned that such an assumption was risky.

“It’s unwise to underestimate the resolve of the Trump administration, given that in recent times it’s been putting more focus on enhancing strategic ties with Taiwan, having seen the island as a crucial element to its Indo-Pacific strategy,” Koh said.

“US credibility is at stake if it’s shown to be unwilling to defend its allies.”

Michael Jones, former chief of staff of US Central Command, was quoted by the Military Times, a US-based military news website, saying it had become imperative for US diplomats to reach out abroad and explain Washington’s intention to avoid mistakes and misunderstandings.

“Covid-19 merely is a factor that can lead to miscalculation,” Jones was quoted as saying. “If they [US adversaries] were to assume this is one more distraction that would keep the US from responding to an attack or challenge, it could add to the possibility of miscalculation.”

Additional reporting by Lawrence Chung

Other parts of this series have examined China hanging onto foreign manufacturers, China-US relations amid the virus blame game and the outlook for China’s economy as it recovers from the outbreak. Next time, the Post looks at how global organisations have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic.