Since taking office, President Biden has embarked on a strategy to expand U.S. military access to allied bases across the Asia-Pacific region and deploy a variety of new weapons systems there. He also said the US military would protect Taiwan from Chinese aggression.
On Wednesday, Biden signed into law the $95 billion supplemental military aid and spending bill that Congress just passed, including $8.1 billion to counter China in the region. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken also traveled to Shanghai and Beijing this week to meet with Mr. Xi and other officials, calling China’s military activities in the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea “destabilizing.” It pointed out.
Mr. Xi told Mr. Blinken on Friday that the United States should not play a “zero-sum game” or “form small blocks.” “Both sides can have friends and partners, but they should not target, antagonize or harm the other,” he said, according to China’s official summary of the talks.
In early April, the leaders of the Philippines and Japan met with Mr. Biden at the White House, marking the first summit meeting between the three countries. They announced enhanced defense cooperation, including naval training and exercises planned jointly and with other partners. Last year, the Biden administration signed new trilateral defense agreements with Japan and South Korea.
Earlier this month, President Biden held a tripartite meeting with the leaders of Japan and the Philippines at the White House.
Yuri Gripas, New York Times
“2023 has been the most transformative year for U.S. military posture in the Indo-Pacific region in a generation,” Ely S. Ratner, assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, said in a statement after the interview. Stated.
The main change, he said, is that rather than concentrating U.S. forces in large bases in Northeast Asia, they will be spread out in smaller, more mobile units over a wider area of the region. This is primarily aimed at countering China’s efforts to build up forces capable of targeting aircraft carriers and U.S. military outposts in Okinawa and Guam.
These land forces, including the retrained and re-equipped U.S. Marine Coastal Regiment in Okinawa, will have the ability to attack warships at sea.
For the first time, the Japanese military will receive up to 400 of its own Tomahawk cruise missiles. The latest version can attack not only ships at sea, but also targets on land more than 1,150 miles away.
The Pentagon has also gained access for its military to four additional bases in the Philippines, which could eventually host U.S. fighter jets and state-of-the-art weapons if Washington and Manila agree to deploy offensive weapons. It may be possible to deploy mobile missile launchers.
The United States has bilateral mutual defense agreements with several allies in the region, so an attack on one country’s assets could trigger a counterattack by the other. Strengthening the U.S. military presence in the territory of allied nations strengthens the concept of mutual defense.
Additionally, the United States continues to send weapons and Green Beret trainers to Taiwan, a de facto independent island and the biggest flashpoint between the United States and China. Xi said the nation must ultimately rule Taiwan by force if necessary.
“We have deepened our alliances and partnerships overseas in ways that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago,” Kurt Campbell, the new deputy secretary of state, said last year when he was the White Party’s top Asia policy official. told reporters. House.
What’s stopping China?
Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said in an interview in Taipei that strengthening alliances and evolving military posture are essential to deterring China.
Referring to the People’s Republic of China, he said, “I am very happy that many countries in the region are beginning to recognize that they need to prepare for further expansion of the People’s Republic of China.”
For some Chinese military strategists, the U.S. effort is aimed at keeping the Chinese navy behind the “first island chain” – islands near the Asian mainland, from Japan’s Okinawa to Taiwan and the Philippines. That’s what it means.
U.S. military assets along these islands could prevent Chinese warships from entering the Pacific Ocean’s international waters further east if a conflict were to break out.
Chinese People’s Liberation Army leaders have also spoken of establishing military dominance in a “second island chain” located further out in the Pacific Ocean and including Guam, Palau and West Papua.
But some conservatives who criticize the administration’s policies argue that the United States should keep major weapons for its own use, and that new ships and weapons systems should be developed quickly enough to deter a rapidly amassing China. It claims that it does not produce.
Although some U.S. commanders acknowledge that the United States needs to accelerate ship production, the Pentagon’s combat capabilities in the region still exceed China’s, and the appropriate political and budgetary He says that improvements can be made quickly if there is proper involvement.
“We’ve really improved our warfighting capabilities over the last few years here in the Pacific,” Adm. Samuel J. Paparo Jr., the incoming commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said in an interview. “But our trajectory is still not a comparable trajectory to our adversaries. Our adversaries are building more capabilities and are building more warships per year than we are.”
Paparo said new U.S. warships remain more capable than those being built by China, and the U.S. military’s “total artillery weight” continues to exceed that of the People’s Liberation Army for now.
Military aircraft on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson during a joint US-Japan military exercise in the Philippine Sea in January.
Richard A. Brooks/Agence France Presse — Getty Images
The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, a Cold War-era arms control agreement between Washington and Moscow, banned land-based cruise missiles and ballistic missiles with ranges of 311 miles to 3,420 miles. But after the Trump administration withdrew from the agreement, the United States developed a number of small mobile launchers for previously banned missiles that can now be deployed across Asia.
Even with the new systems in place, the United States would still rely on its traditional assets in the region in the event of war: bases in Guam, Japan, and South Korea, and the troops and weapons there.
All U.S. officials interviewed for this article say war with China is both desirable and inevitable, a view that Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III has publicly expressed. But they also argue that military buildup and alliance strengthening, along with diplomatic negotiations with China, are key factors in deterring potential future aggression by Beijing.
“The negative factors in the relationship are still increasing and increasing, and the relationship is facing all kinds of turmoil,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told Blinken in Beijing on Friday. He warned the United States “not to interfere in China’s internal affairs, not to impede China’s development, and not to trample on China’s red lines and China’s sovereignty, security, and development interests.”
Japan
New deterrence efforts for the U.S. military have the dual meaning of strengthening maritime patrol operations and improving troop-level capabilities on land.
For the former, the Pentagon has said that U.S. Navy warships are fighting Japanese naval warships in the Western Ryukyu Islands near Taiwan, and that the Chinese Coast Guard is fighting Philippine warships in the South China Sea, where they are harassing Chinese-controlled ships and facilities. He announced that he will participate in more trainings. Philippines.
Last year, a swarm of Chinese militia and coast guard ships pursued a Philippine coast guard ship in the South China Sea.
Jess Aznar of the New York Times
To combat the latter, Marines and Army units already deployed in the Pacific have recently deployed medium- and long-range missiles attached to light mobile trucks, which was prohibited under the old treaty.
These trucks can be quickly lifted to new locations by Osprey tilt-rotor planes or large cargo planes, or driven away to avoid Chinese counterattacks. A new platoon of U.S. military watercraft being sent to the area could also be used to redeploy troops and launchers from island to island.
In an interview with the New York Times last year, Gen. David H. Berger, the then-Commander in Chief of the Marine Corps, said the Marine Corps was investigating strategic chokepoints between islands throughout the Pacific where Chinese forces were likely to pass. He said he had started an analysis. He said he has identified locations where Marine assault forces, such as the new Okinawa-based Coastal Regiment, can use these new weapons to attack Beijing’s warships.
Philippines
Last February, the Pentagon announced a new military base-sharing agreement with Manila that would add to the five bases the Pentagon previously opened in 2014, as well as four bases in the Philippines for use in humanitarian missions. Access to the base was given to the US military. An air force base with a runway long enough to accept heavy cargo planes.
Plotting their locations on a map shows that if the Philippines ultimately agrees to allow the U.S. military to put combat troops and mobile missile systems there, the U.S. will be able to protect the region’s oldest treaty ally. The strategic value of a location is demonstrated when requested.
One site on the northern tip of Luzon island gives missile-launching trucks the ability to attack Chinese ships across the strait separating the Philippines and Taiwan, while another, about 1,100 miles southwest, allows the U.S. to use Chinese-built It becomes possible to attack bases. in the nearby Spratly Islands.
The United States has committed $100 million in “infrastructure investments” to nine bases in 2023, with more funding expected this year.
Australia
The Pentagon has forged closer military ties with Australia and Papua New Guinea, expanding the United States’ bulwark against potential attempts by the Chinese military to establish dominance along the “second island chain.”
The Obama administration moved a number of Littoral Combat Ships to Singapore and stationed a replacement Marine force in Darwin on Australia’s north coast, giving the Pentagon more assets to respond to needs in the region.
Last year, the Biden administration significantly strengthened its commitment to Australia, one of the United States’ most important non-NATO allies.
The Virginia-class submarine North Carolina entered Perth, Australia last year.
Tony McDonough/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A new multi-billion dollar agreement between Australia, the UK and the US called AUKUS will permanently relocate some of the US Navy’s most advanced Virginia-class attack submarines to Canberra. The location of the new base for these submarines has not been announced, but the first group of Australian sailors to join the crew graduated from nuclear training in the United States in January.
These stealth submarines, which can fire torpedoes and Tomahawk missiles, could increase the number of threats facing Beijing in the event of a regional war.
Just north of Australia, an agreement in August gives the U.S. military increased access to Papua New Guinea for humanitarian missions and funnels U.S. tax dollars to upgrade military facilities there.
For Admiral Paparo, this expanding network of partnerships and security agreements spanning thousands of miles of the Pacific is in contrast to China’s “reconstructionist, revisionist, and expansionist policies” in the region that directly threaten its neighbors. is a direct result of what is called.
“I am confident that the United States and our allies and partners are in a stronger position and that we will prevail in any battle that occurs in the Western Pacific,” the admiral said.
“This is a hand that we would not want to trade with anyone who would go against us, but we are never satisfied with the strength of the hand and always aim to improve it.”
