William Hung
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Evolving As-Pac alliances key to improving global economics and security, US official says - IHS Jane's 360
The US doesn't have any intention to leave the Asia-Pacific region anytime soon. As long as there are still countries openly embracing the US to stay in Asia, then the US will stay.
The United States is evolving and diversifying its alliances in the Asia-Pacific region to pace security threats
US strategy is focused less on 'collective defence' and more on political-military co-operation to address a broader range of regional and global security challenges
To pace evolving threats in the Asia-Pacific region, the United States has been making a concerted effort to modernise its alliances with key states there as well as diversifying those relationships to enable future co-operation on a broader swath of security challenges, a US National Security Council member said on 2 December.
US alliances with Asian nations remain the centrepiece of President Barack Obama's Asia-Pacific rebalancing strategy, but as the region's security challenges evolve, alliances too must evolve to remain relevant to both partners, Dr Evan Medeiros, special assistant to the president and senior director for Asian Affairs of the National Security Council, told an audience in Washington, DC.
Such an evolution involves altering capabilities, communication channels, and command arrangements to deal with traditional and non-traditional threats, he said during his remarks at the National Bureau of Asian Research's Strategic Asia 2014-15 book launch.
Medeiros gave the US-South Korea alliance as an example of how changes in that vein have been carried out since 2009: "We've adopted revised missile guidelines, updated our 'Strategic Alliance 2015', and continued to invest in new command-and-control arrangements and capabilities," he said. Moreover, the United States has been encouraging South Korea to invest in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capability as well as missile defence, and the two states agreed to delay the transfer of operational control over US and South Korean forces.
Changes also abound in the US-Japan alliance, in which the two nations are expanding co-operation in space and cybersecurity issues and have redefined their bilateral defence guidelines for the first time in 17 years.
Non-traditional security issues, such as natural disasters, also benefit from alliances that continue to evolve. As one example, Medeiros singled out the US-Japan-Australia humanitarian response to the Philippines in the wake of Typhoon Haiyan in 2013.
Besides modernising alliances and working with regional partners, another important component of staying abreast of threats is ensuring that the United States is making the proper investments in modernising its own force structure in the Asia-Pacific region. Much of that is taking shape on the US military front, in the form of the Department of Defense (DoD) dispatching two additional ballistic missile defence ships to Japan, deploying a second TPY-2 radar there, and by 2017 forward stationing Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II fighters there.
In addition to the force structure changes in Japan, the DoD also is developing Guam as a strategic hub, building up the US Marine Corps presence in the region - notably in Australia - plus sustaining US Air Force bombers and shifting more nuclear-powered attack submarines to the Western Pacific. The DoD also recently revealed plans to deploy the US Navy's next-generation Zumwalt-class destroyers to Asia in the latter part of the decade, he noted.
In the past, US alliances with Asia-Pacific states were focused almost exclusively upon collective defence due to a common threat. However, Medeiros said that the United States now is "diversifying our alliances from simply institutions focused on collective defence to political-military institutions that serve as platforms for diverse co-operation on a broad range of regional and global security challenges".
An example of this, he said, is the US alliance with Japan and Australia. The three nations are working together in Afghanistan and collaborating on challenges including the Islamic State and Iraq, Ebola in Africa, Russia/Ukraine, and North Korea. The US-Republic of Korea alliance also is a good example, he said, because the focus is no longer solely on the North Korea threat, but the two states now discuss a 'global Korea' and are working on issues including clean energy, nuclear security, and Iran.
Medeiros believes there are hidden benefits to the US approach to alliances in the Asia-Pacific. "What we have found is, as we modernise our alliances, as we pursue these new forms of co-operation, this has created a very permissive environment for plural-lateral interactions," he said. "What we're finding is now our partners are more capable and more willing to work more with each other, which is something the United States warmly welcomes."
Japan, for instance, is partnering more with India, Australia, and Vietnam, and all of those countries are collaborating more with each other.
The US doesn't have any intention to leave the Asia-Pacific region anytime soon. As long as there are still countries openly embracing the US to stay in Asia, then the US will stay.
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