The 2nd ASEAN Reader

82. Is There a U.S. Strategy for East Asia?

410 Sheldon W. Simon By: ROS Size: 7.5" x 10.25" J/No: 03-14474 Fonts: New Baskerville 82. IS THERE A U.S. STRATEGY FOR EAST ASIA? SHELDON W. SIMON Reprinted in abridged form from Sheldon W. Simon, “Is There a U.S. Strategy for East Asia”, Contemporary Southeast Asia 21, no. 3 (1999): 325–43, by permission of the author and the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. SECURITY RISKS IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC Imminent security risks in the Asia-Pacific are concentrated in Northeast Asia where the United States deploys most of its western Pacific armed forces and where its most unambiguous defence treaties apply. North Korea’s defiance of nuclear nonproliferation norms in 1994 and China’s provocative naval exercises over Taiwan in 1996 raised the prospect of direct U.S. military intervention, which, in turn, had the potential to shatter an unprepared U.S.– Japan alliance. If the United States had intervened at that time in Korea, and Japan had refused to assist because of its constitutional constraints, U.S. officials and analysts believed that the Japan–U.S. Security Treaty would have unravelled.1 This close call instead led the Clinton Administration to modernize the alliance to make it more effective in the event of future challenges. The China–Taiwan confrontation has also challenged the Clinton Administration’s dominant strategic belief that economic engagement and the privatization of the PRC economy would strengthen the political position of moderates within the country, who would promote a policy of peaceful relations with neighbours to elicit even more trade and investment on China’s road to prosperity. The basic lacuna in this vision, however, was that it ignored China’s irredenta, particularly with respect to Taiwan. The PRC–Taiwan imbroglio and North Korea’s growing missile capabilities have led to a modification of U.S. East Asian strategy so that economic engagement, represented by promises of aid to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), or North Korea, and World Trade Organization (WTO) membership for China, are now balanced by talk of building a regional missile defence, ostensibly directed at Pyongyang but interpreted by Beijing as also designed to neutralize its pressures on Taiwan. The Asian financial crisis of 1997–98 was also fraught with security risks. Economic 082 AR Ch 82 22/9/03, 12:57 PM 410 Is There a U.S. Strategy for East Asia? 411 By: ROS Size: 7.5" x 10.25" J/No: 03-14474 Fonts: New Baskerville turmoil led to political instability in Indonesia and considerable political tension in Malaysia, South Korea, and Thailand. Concern arose over the ability of Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK) to fund their share towards the new North Korean nuclear power plants as well as their ongoing cost-sharing arrangements for U.S. forces stationed in their countries. Despite domestic opposition in the United States Congress, the Clinton Administration achieved an expansion of International Monetary Fund (IMF) lending, emergency back-up financing, and export credit guarantees for all the Asian crisis-stricken states that asked for assistance. The United States proffered particular support, via the IMF, to South Korea and Indonesia. Equally important, the United States kept its markets open to the region’s exports despite record-setting balance of payments deficits. The economic crisis also slowed Asian military modernization, reduced operations and exercises, and led to requests for the reduction of host nation financial support for U.S. forces. The ASEAN countries which had focused on resolving South China Sea conflicts co-operatively have recently been so involved with reviving their economies that little attention has been paid to regional security.2 While external security concerns in Southeast Asia take a back seat to economic recovery, in the rest of Asia a more proactive shift is taking place as Washington designs new types of military co-operation with traditional friends, including Japan, South Korea, Australia, and even Taiwan. Although the primary deterrent target is North Korea, new capabilities could also be directed at China; and the PRC has responded angrily. Typical is a 3 June 1999 commentary in the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Liberation Army Daily castigating revisions in the U.S.-Japan Defense Guidelines as “speedily strengthening the integration of Japanese and American militaries. Japan’s policy of self-defense and its constitutional article giving up war are turning into mere scraps of paper.”3 China is concerned, too, about Japan-U.S. co-operation in theatre missile...