A proposed “Indo-Pacific Deterrence Initiative,” a multibillion-dollar program to strengthen the U.S. presence in the Pacific in the face of a growing threat from China, cannot be done alone, say Heritage Foundation analysts.
For the United States to remain a Pacific power and protect American commerce and values in the years to come, one major challenge will be how to bring around partners undeterred by Chinese aggression.
“You would need a lot of your allies in that region because of the vastness of it, and because they are there,” said the Heritage Foundation’s defense budgeting analyst Fred Bartels.
Similar to a European initiative to strengthen NATO partners’ deterrence against Russia, House Armed Services Committee ranking member Rep. Mac Thornberry, a Texas Republican who is retiring after the 2018 elections, recently outlined legislation that would create an Indo-Pacific Deterrence Initiative to counter China.
Its hefty down payment of $6 billion is over and above the $1.6 billion increase requested by U.S. Indo-Pacific Command’s Adm. Phil Davidson, who sought $20 billion over five years to enhance deterrence.
Bartels and Heritage Asian Studies Center Director Walter Lohman, who co-authored a policy paper arguing for Congress to act now, said most of the proposed military construction funds would go to renovating and expanding existing U.S. bases in Hawaii, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands.
One major difference between the European Deterrence Initiative and the proposed Indo-Pacific Deterrence Initiative is the role of allies.
“One thing that I don’t like about the package as a whole, is that it doesn’t dedicate a lot of resources to building allies and partners with training and exercises,” said Bartels.
Lohman agreed: “You need that kind of allied infrastructure, and it’s lacking.”
Getting Pacific allies, particularly those in Southeast Asia, on board with a China deterrence program is a tough sell, said Lohman, even with territorial disputes and aggressive maritime activity such as the sinking of Vietnamese fishing vessels by the Chinese Navy.
Bartels explained that a robust U.S. presence in the Pacific, one that would withstand a Chinese offensive, does require investment in existing assets.
“If you are not going to harden your bases against what the Chinese could do to your bases, you’re just giving up the territory,” he said, but he noted that it is strategically important to disperse U.S. capabilities in the region.
“You need to be able to construct other assets and disperse them throughout the region,” he said.
While nations such as Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia have their own disputes with China, their relationship with China is complex and interdependent.
“We need to build them up, but we need to build them up in a way not explicitly directly related to China,” said Lohman. “It’s hard to bring them around, but they will work with us to develop capacity.”
He added: “They’re just not gonna want it framed in the terms of, you know, a new Cold War with China.”
Bartels and Lohman argued that the U.S. sees eye-to-eye on the China threat with traditional allies like Australia and Japan, but less so with South Korea, which relies on China to help contain the threat from North Korea.
The two security experts also make the case that Congress has the support of the U.S. public to act now more than ever before, even with trillion-dollar debt related to the domestic coronavirus response.
“I think that Americans have never had a more negative view of the Chinese Communist Party and how China operates in the world,” said Bartels. “That is making the case of why we should be more involved in the Indo-Pacific and why we should be promoting a free and prosperous Indo-Pacific.”
Lohman said it’s about more than just freedom of navigation in the Pacific, which is critical to the U.S. economy, its about protecting American values.
“We know the Chinese just keep growing in terms of capability,” he said. “And we’ve got to be able to somehow keep pace with that.”
