For more than a decade, successive administrations in the United States have struggled to prioritise the Indo-Pacific. Although President Joe Biden’s Indo-Pacific Strategy has placed the region at the top of Washington’s global priorities, US rhetoric has been matched only partially with the actions and resources required to transform its regional strategic position following years of underinvestment. Washington must intensify its eff orts on all three elements of US regional defence strategy – prioritisation, posture and partnerships – if it is to have any hope of upholding a favourable Indo-Pacific balance of power amid China’s growing capabilities and assertiveness.
The US can no longer guarantee a favourable regional balance of power by itself. There is a growing consensus in Washington that a collective approach to Indo-Pacific defence strategy is required – one that strengthens US regional capacity for high-end deterrence and war fighting and actively empowers and leverages allies and partners.
It is one thing to outline Indo-Pacific ambitions and another to deliver them amid competing priorities. In 2021 and early 2022, the Biden administration has had to navigate this trade-off in the face of two major crises: its messy departure from Afghanistan and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Balancing simultaneous competition with Russia and China will remain a considerable challenge, complicating plans to deploy resources and attention to the Indo-Pacific.
The Biden administration has sought to accelerate eff orts to strengthen the military capabilities of allies and partners as part of a framework for collective defence, which it dubs ‘integrated deterrence’. It has also embraced minilateral efforts to deepen ties, while fostering collective resolve for a potential Taiwan Strait crisis. However, given mounting concern that China will be able to challenge the prevailing regional order by force in the second half of this decade, it is unclear whether current efforts to strengthen and integrate alliances and partnerships will come to fruition in time to reinforce deterrence and improve the balance of power in the United States’ favour.
For more than a decade, the United States has struggled to prioritise the Indo-Pacific, improve its military posture in the region and modernise its network of alliances and partnerships to advance a collective approach to regional defence strategy. In 2011, then US president Barack Obama announced the now famous ‘rebalance’ to Asia amid a drawdown of US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.1 However, the defence-policy aims of the rebalance were never properly realised, undermined as they were by budget cuts, resurgent conflict in the Middle East, Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine and Washington’s complicated ties with Indo-Pacific allies. While former president Donald Trump dropped the term rebalance and adopted a more abrasive stance towards allies and partners, his administration similarly sought to bolster US regional posture and defence partnerships as part of an explicit focus on ‘great power competition’ with China.2 Yet this approach also failed to make much headway, waylaid by US military build-ups against the Islamic State (ISIS) and Iran, ongoing defence-budget shortfalls and the president’s own corrosive effect on alliance management. Although both administrations presided over some improvements in the United States’ military position, a combination of strategic distraction, inadequate resources and incremental alliance reform stymied the timely development of efforts to balance China’s rising military power.
President Joe Biden has continued these attempts to prioritise the Indo-Pacific, vowing to pursue ‘extreme competition’ with China, ‘modernize’ US military capabilities and ‘revitalize’ US alliances and partnerships.3 Biden’s Indo-Pacific Strategy, released in February 2022, placed the region at the top of Washington’s global priorities, promising to deliver ‘intensifying American focus’.4 However, this rhetoric has been matched only partially with the actions and resources required to transform the United States’ regional strategic position following years of underinvestment.
Three aspects of US defence strategy highlight the administration’s mixed success in advancing a more robust and collective approach in the Indo-Pacific. Firstly, Biden has displayed commendable strategic discipline in extricating the US from 20 years of conflict in Afghanistan and, so far, in managing a complex war in Ukraine while also trying to prioritise competition with China. Yet Biden’s policies on these issues have only served to remove impediments to a future US rebalance to Asia. They have not advanced the United States’ standing as the Indo-Pacific’s leading power and, in the case of Ukraine, will require ongoing restraint. Secondly, in common with its predecessors, the Biden administration’s efforts to strengthen US military posture in the Indo-Pacific have been largely incremental and have not been accompanied by a defence-spending plan commensurate with the aims of US strategy. This will limit progress on reinforcing deterrence vis-à-vis China for the rest of this decade. Finally, Biden’s team initiated important changes to the way Washington works with close allies on collective-defence objectives. Its support for the new defence-industrial partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom and the US (the AUKUS agreement), which will furnish Canberra with a fleet of nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs), is the most consequential example of this agenda.5 But AUKUS and other alliance reforms will take years to pay dividends for the Indo-Pacific balance of power. They are also no substitute for robust US investment in the capabilities and posture required for regional defence. The result is ongoing uncertainty about the United States’ long-promised rebalance and the sustainability of its strategic position in the Indo-Pacific.
TOWARDS A STRATEGY OF COLLECTIVE DEFENCE
After nearly 75 years as the region’s pre-eminent military power, the US can no longer guarantee a favourable balance of power in the Indo-Pacific by itself.6 Many US strategists have been slow to appreciate this geopolitical reality. But there is now a growing consensus in Washington that a collective approach to Indo-Pacific defence strategy is required – one that strengthens US regional capacity for high-end deterrence and war fighting and actively leverages the military capabilities of its allies and partners.7
Two trends have brought US defence strategy to this point. Firstly, China’s sustained military modernisation has transformed the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) into a highly capable joint force, thereby eroding the foundations of US military dominance. In addition to fielding the world’s largest navy and air force, the PLA’s formidable anti-access/area-denial capabilities now pose unprecedented challenges to the United States’ ability to project power into and within the Western Pacific.8 Moreover, as the PLA is postured primarily for Indo-Pacific contingencies, whereas the US military remains globally dispersed in support of a multi-region grand strategy, Beijing’s home-field advantage is further tilting the US–China regional balance. These developments are driving a fundamental rethink of US military strategy, with new approaches set to require significantly greater involvement by Washington’s regional allies and partners.
Secondly, the misalignment between US strategy and available defence resources has prevented the Pentagon from responding quickly to China’s military rise. For much of the last two decades, Washington’s focus on the Middle East has reduced military readiness, distorted force-structure priorities and, until recently, left the joint force ill-equipped and unable to prepare adequately for high-end military competition with a peer adversary. Years of budget austerity and unpredictable defence funding have compounded this problem, while Washington’s extensive global commitments have distracted successive administrations from investing sufficiently in efforts to balance China’s power.9 By 2018, the gap between US capabilities and the great-power threats posed by China and Russia had become so wide that the bipartisan National Defense Strategy Commission, mandated by Congress, warned that ‘the U.S. military could lose the next state-versus-state war it fights’.10 In 2022, this warning is as relevant as ever.
Although these trends have gathered momentum for over 20 years, Washington has been slow to articulate the case for a more robust and collective approach to Indo-Pacific defence strategy. The first signs of this thinking emerged in the early days of George W. Bush’s presidency, when planners of a nascent Asia-focused ‘reorientation strategy’ quietly emphasised the need to bolster US regional posture and develop a ‘federated network’ of allies and partners to check China’s rise.11 However, these objectives were overtaken by the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks and the subsequent war on terror, despite some initial progress on realigning global force posture, improving inter-operability with Asian allies and nurturing closer US–India strategic ties.
The push for a collective regional defence strategy re-emerged more prominently in the lead-up to Obama’s rebalance, with the Pentagon’s 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review contending that Asia’s ‘emerging security landscape requires a more widely distributed and adaptive U.S. presence … that relies on and better leverages the capabilities of our regional allies and partners’.12 Over the next six years, the Obama administration made the shift from a ‘hub-and-spokes’ model to a ‘networked’ model of Indo-Pacific alliances and partnerships a defining feature of the rebalance. Speaking at the 2014 IISS Shangri-La Dialogue, then US secretary of defense Chuck Hagel explained that this strategy involved ‘modernizing our alliances, helping allies and partners develop new and advanced capabilities, and encouraging them to work more closely together’, including by ‘enhancing their joint capabilities … and encouraging them to become security providers themselves’.13
Yet it was not until the Trump administration that the US underscored explicitly the need for a collective approach to uphold a favourable balance of power in the Indo-Pacific. Based on a stark assessment of the United States’ ‘eroding’ military advantage vis-à-vis China, the 2018 National Defense Strategy refocused the joint force on high-end war fighting and on transforming US ‘alliances and partnerships into an extended network capable of deterring or decisively acting to meet the shared challenges of our time’.14 This marked a step change in the Pentagon’s thinking – one that advocated a truly integrated approach in which key allies and partners would assume a far more ‘active’ and ‘equal’ role in balancing Chinese power.15 While appealing to Trump’s preoccupation with ‘burden-sharing’, the strategy was founded on its authors’ appreciation of the ‘asymmetric strategic advantage’ provided by allies and partners, including as a ‘supplement [to] U.S. military strength’.16 This applied, in particular, to Australia, Japan and India, which were seen as integral to offsetting shortfalls in US military power and more willing to contribute to a collective balance of power (see Figure 1.1).17 In 2017, the revitalisation of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (or Quad) between these four powers underlined this approach. Although Trump’s transactional approach to allies and partners prevented the US from making significant progress on implementing a collective framework, the administration’s vision for a coalition defence strategy was broadly welcomed in Canberra, New Delhi and Tokyo and took root in US defence-policy circles.
Figure 1.1 Quad and Chinese defence budgets in the Indo-Pacific, 2021
60% is a frequently used approximation for how much of the US defence budget could be mobilised for Indo-Pacific priorities, noting that Washington’s other global priorities account for at least 40% of the total. This is not an accurate characterisation of how the budget works, and is only intended to depict a rough regional balance of resources. China’s defence budget is adjusted upwards to reflect purchasing-power parity (PPP) rather than market exchange rates. Source: IISS, Military Balance+, milbalplus.iiss.org
Biden has embraced this collective approach and committed to empowering allies and partners to play a larger and more integrated role in US strategy. His administration’s vision for a ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ is, like its predecessor, based on a sober assessment of the limits of US power and the imperative of increasing burden-sharing.18 The White House’s 2022 Indo-Pacific Strategy underlined the need for a collective approach as part of a larger effort to prevent a Chinese ‘sphere of influence’ in the region, noting:
Changing strategic circumstances and historic challenges require unprecedented cooperation with those who share in this vision. … We will support and empower allies and partners as they take on regional leadership roles themselves, and we will work in flexible groupings that pool our collective strength to face up to the defining issues of our time, particularly through the Quad.19
On regional defence policy, the strategy is equally clear about the growing role for allies and partners, explaining:
We will more tightly integrate our efforts across warfighting domains and the spectrum of conflict to ensure that the United States, alongside our allies and partners, can dissuade or defeat aggression in any form or domain … [in addition to] finding new opportunities to link our defense industrial bases, integrating our defense supply chains, and co-producing key technologies that will shore up our collective military advantages.20
Three lines of effort in US strategy are therefore clear: ‘prioritizing the PRC challenge in the Indo-Pacific’; modernising the United States’ own ‘defence presence’ and ‘capabilities’; and strengthening collective action with allies and partners.21 Although the Biden administration has made some progress on aspects of this strategy, more effort is needed on all three elements — prioritisation, posture and partnerships — to bolster the United States’ regional strategic position and preserve a favourable balance of power.
THE INDO-PACIFIC AND COMPETING PRIORITIES
The Biden administration has stated consistently that its primary security priorities lie in the Indo-Pacific. At his confirmation hearing in January 2021, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin underlined this focus, stating: ‘Globally, I understand that Asia must be the focus of our effort. And I see China, in particular, as the pacing challenge.’22 Similar messages run through the administration’s major policy documents, including its summary of the 2022 National Defense Strategy, released in March 2022, which labelled China as ‘our most consequential strategic competitor’.23 These high-level statements are important not just as leading indicators of resource allocation but also for strengthening US credibility in the eyes of regional allies and partners. Yet it is one thing to outline Indo-Pacific ambitions and another to deliver them amid competing priorities. In 2021 and early 2022, the Biden administration has had to navigate this trade-off in the face of two major crises with the capacity to distract the US from its Indo-Pacific focus, namely the United States’ messy departure from Afghanistan and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Entering office with a promise to ‘end the forever wars’, Biden announced the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in April 2021 and moved swiftly to complete it four months later.24 Justifying his actions, Biden claimed the 20-year campaign had successfully reduced the risk of terrorist attacks against the US from Afghan soil, declaring ‘the fundamental obligation of a President … is to defend and protect America – not against threats of 2001, but against the threats of 2021 and tomorrow’.25 The administration also framed the drawdown as an attempt to deliver long-delayed rebalance objectives. In July 2021, Kurt Campbell, the US Indo-Pacific coordinator at the National Security Council, described this transition as ‘painful’ but necessary, forecasting: ‘We’ll see some real challenges in places like Afghanistan, but a much greater focus on the Indo-Pacific.’26 In this sense, the drawdown embodied a persuasive strategic logic, welcomed in most Indo-Pacific capitals, by which extensive US military and diplomatic resources tied up in Afghanistan could be redeployed to regional priorities.
This logic, however, was marred by poor execution. Beyond the chaotic scenes at Kabul airport, US credibility was dented by failures of intelligence and capacity-building, which led the Afghan government to fall rapidly to Taliban forces. Unlike European allies, who were highly critical of the decision to leave and alarmed by the ensuing humanitarian crisis, the United States’ Indo-Pacific friends adopted largely pragmatic views. At a tactical level the drawdown sent mixed signals about Washington’s ability to manage simultaneous challenges – embodied by its decision to redeploy to the Middle East the USS Ronald Reagan, its only aircraft carrier in Asia, to help with the evacuation.27 There was also extensive public debate in allied and partner countries about the implications of the withdrawal for Washington’s Indo-Pacific commitments – and its willingness to endure military costs in a future crisis with China.28 These arguments had little traction in official circles where, on balance, the withdrawal was well received by regional allies and partners – India being the prominent exception, owing to its interests in Central Asia.29 For close allies like Australia and Japan, Biden’s decision was taken as a sign of Washington’s belated willingness to reduce military commitments in a secondary theatre and curb the risks of strategic overstretch.30 In this sense, Biden’s Afghanistan policy advanced US credibility in the Indo-Pacific.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 presented a more significant challenge for Biden’s Indo-Pacific agenda – and one that cuts to the heart of the United States’ identity as a superpower that can manage ‘two-front’ global commitments.31 Faced with overwhelming domestic and European pressure, the administration felt compelled to respond forcefully to an aggressive act that threatened to upend Europe’s strategic order and undermine US standing as the guarantor of global security. At the same time, the administration’s own strategic priorities demanded that it support Ukraine in ways that did not excessively shift attention or resources away from the Indo-Pacific or raise the risks of escalation or entrenchment. Indeed, the crisis provided a textbook example of the difficult choices Washington will continue to face as it seeks to prioritise the China challenge.
Biden’s initial approach was reasonably well calibrated from an Indo-Pacific standpoint. Washington supported Ukraine with extensive military and economic assistance while ruling out direct involvement in hostilities. It deployed a small number of troops to NATO frontlines to reassure European allies and fostered global solidarity for sanctions designed to punish Russia and cripple its economy. Importantly, it consistently signalled, in the words of US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, that US policies towards Ukraine and Taiwan, Asia’s premier flashpoint, ‘are not the same’.32 In short, the administration displayed strategic restraint under difficult circumstances. Washington’s principal Indo-Pacific allies have been broadly, albeit cautiously, supportive of its handling of the crisis.
But risks of US overextension persist in both the Middle East and Ukraine. Notwithstanding the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the end of combat operations in Iraq, the United States’ troop presence in the Middle East remains considerable (see Figure 1.2) and Iran still looms large in US threat assessments. Nor has there been a linear eastward shift in US defence resources, though some high-end capabilities – such as advanced fighter aircraft and air- and missile-defence systems – have finally exited the Middle Eastern theatre. The situation in Ukraine is more concerning, where a protracted conflict appears certain. Despite the administration’s attempts to stay focused on Asia, the Ukraine crisis has already led to a delay in the launch of the 2022 National Defense Strategy to give the Pentagon time to reconsider the implications of an ‘acute’ Russia threat for US defence planning.33
Figure 1.2: US active-duty military personnel assigned by regional command, 2012-21
Sources: US Defense Manpower Data Center, dwp.dmdc.osd.mil; US Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller), comptroller.defense.gov
This bodes ill for a sharp prioritisation of the Indo-Pacific. Of greater immediate concern is the extent to which Washington’s support for the Ukrainian resistance is taking a toll on US defence resources. Beyond the US$3.4 billion in military assistance already committed, at the time of writing Congress is considering an administration request for an additional US$33bn in wide-ranging support for Ukraine.34 Reports also suggest that the Pentagon may need to delay the delivery of military hardware to Taiwan as a result of extensive transfers to Ukraine.35 Balancing simultaneous competition with Russia and China will therefore remain a considerable challenge, complicating plans to deploy resources and attention to the Indo-Pacific.
SLOW EVOLUTION OF US REGIONAL POSTURE
The Biden administration’s rhetoric about prioritising the Indo-Pacific has delivered only modest improvements in regional posture to date. The Pentagon’s Global Posture Review, concluded in late 2021, failed to initiate a decisive shift in regional focus or to better align resources with regional priorities. Instead, the review largely summarised Indo-Pacific posture shifts already under way, while restoring European posture to its pre-Trump status quo and shelving plans for further Middle East drawdowns.36 Reported revisions to internal ‘posture decision-making processes’ hinted at the possibility of bolder moves in future but showed little urgency to push forward with resource reallocations in the near term.37 As such, the review heightened concerns among US allies and partners that the administration may be unwilling or unable to invest quickly in a more robust forward military position and strategy of ‘deterrence by denial’ – an approach supported by Australia and Japan.38
Nevertheless, Washington began some important Indo-Pacific posture improvements in 2021 and early 2022. Most prominently, at the Australia–US Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN) in September 2021, Canberra and Washington unveiled the most significant enhancements to bilateral force-posture initiatives in a generation.39 With the aim of strengthening Australia’s position as a forward operating hub, these included plans for a ‘combined logistics, sustainment, and maintenance enterprise to support high-end warfighting and combined military operations in the region’, complementing ongoing upgrades to combined fuel stockpiles and logistics enablers in the country.40 The two sides also agreed to increase the rotational presence of US air, land and sea capabilities at Australian facilities, to expand integrated military exercises and to deepen maritime logistics cooperation. These measures will see ‘aircraft of all types’ – code for nuclear-capable bombers – deploy to Australian airfields, as well as more frequent visits by US surface vessels and submarines.41 While there is no timeline for the delivery of these initiatives, they can be expected to make a meaningful if modest contribution to sustaining US military presence over the next five to ten years.
Beyond Australia, efforts to augment US regional posture have been more piecemeal (see Figure 1.3). Slow-moving upgrades to deployments and facilities on Guam and its surrounding islands have continued, reinforcing the island’s role as the primary hub for US military operations in the second island chain. These include new air and naval military construction projects on Andersen Air Force Base and long-awaited plans to increase the number of SSNs home-ported in Guam from two to five.42 Elsewhere, the administration has simply restored or reaffirmed prior posture arrangements. The decision to permanently station helicopter and artillery divisions in South Korea, for instance, marks a formalisation of existing rotations rather than a new initiative.43 Similarly, the US–Singapore recommitment to sustaining rotational deployments of P-8 maritime-patrol aircraft and littoral combat ships is not expected to lead to increased presence.44 Although Secretary of Defense Austin made important headway in the Philippines in June 2021 – convincing President Rodrigo Duterte to reinstate the Visiting Forces Agreement and paving the way for long-delayed military construction under the 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement – even this was a return to the status quo ante.45 Taken together, these efforts have only nudged US posture in the direction of rebalance objectives.
Figure 1.3: Selected developments in US posture in the Indo-Pacific
Source: United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, www.ussc.edu.au
The Biden administration’s belated progress on implementing the Pacific Deterrence Initiative (PDI) provides some grounds for cautious optimism. Conceived in 2017 and formalised in 2020, the PDI was developed by US lawmakers and US Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) as a way of directing the Pentagon to allocate more funds to strengthening the United States’ regional military position.46 Focused on pressing war-fighting needs west of Hawaii, it is intended to support a more resilient and distributed military posture in a range of areas – including munitions stocks, fuel, logistics, air defences and radars – while also supporting enhanced exercises with frontline allies and partners.47 While Biden’s first budget request, for the fiscal year (FY) 2022, overlooked PDI priorities in favour of investments in military platforms, Congress subsequently intervened to push resources into initiatives like the Guam Defense System, a critical air- and missile-defence project, and planning activities to support other ‘shovel-ready’ posture enhancements.48 The resulting compromise was far from perfect, with some experts estimating that 80% of the US$7.1bn fund was spent on ‘stuff the services were already doing’.49 However, it has led to a more focused US$6.1bn PDI request for FY2023. Although considerable daylight persists between the Pentagon and INDOPACOM, this is a positive development.50 The PDI’s progress will continue to be watched carefully by US allies and partners, who regard its implementation as a barometer of the administration’s willingness to invest seriously in a military strategy to deter China.
Figure 1.4: US defence budgets compared to a 3-5% annual growth target, 2018-21
Source: IISS, Military Balance+, milbalplus.iiss.org
Developments in US regional posture also need to be viewed in the broader context of Biden’s defence budget and strategy. The administration’s budget allocations to date suggest it is following a ‘shrink to modernise’ approach of investing in emerging technologies and high-end war-fighting capabilities to prepare for a China threat in the 2030s at the expense of additional capacity and capability to deter conflict in the 2020s.51 There may be a logic to this approach in view of US resource constraints. But it means substantial Indo-Pacific posture investments will be even more important for reducing military risk in the near term. It also means Biden, like Trump, is failing to meet the target of 3–5% real annual defence-budget growth often cited by leading defence figures as necessary to sustain US strategy in an era of great-power competition (see Figure 1.4).52 These shortfalls alarm US planners, particularly with respect to prospects for a future war over Taiwan. As INDOPACOM Commander Admiral John Aquilino warned in March 2021 during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, ‘this problem is much closer to us than most think … . We ought to be prepared today.’53 In lieu of additional US resources, the Biden administration is turning to allies and partners to pick up some of this slack.
EMPOWERING AND INTEGRATING ALLIES AND PARTNERS
Consistent with its recognition that the US cannot deter China or maintain a favourable regional balance of power alone, the Biden administration has sought to accelerate efforts to strengthen the military capabilities of allies and partners as part of a framework for collective defence, which it dubs ‘integrated deterrence’.54 At its core, it is a push for greater burden-sharing. While Trump’s pursuit of this goal often appeared transactional, the Biden administration argues that its aim is to ‘incorporate ally and partner perspectives, competencies, and advantages at every stage of defense planning’.55 This approach has led to important upgrades in strategic policy and defence cooperation with Australia and Japan and, to a lesser extent, South Korea and India. The administration has also embraced minilateral efforts to deepen ties among allies and partners, while fostering collective resolve for a potential Taiwan Strait crisis.
This agenda is not without its difficulties. In common with earlier efforts to modernise US regional ties, many of these initiatives will take years, and in some cases decades, to deliver (see Table 1.1). Most will require difficult reforms to the outdated processes by which Washington has previously worked with regional allies and partners, such as export controls, technology- and data-transfer rules, so-called ‘Buy American’ provisions and the sharing of classified information.56 Furthermore, although Canberra, New Delhi, Seoul and Tokyo are broadly supportive of Washington’s collective-defence agenda, all still harbour concerns, albeit to varying degrees, about the costs and benefits of integration across force structure, strategic policy and defence-industrial arenas. Set against mounting evidence that China will be capable of challenging the prevailing regional order by force in the second half of this decade, it is far from clear whether current efforts to strengthen and integrate alliances and partnerships can overcome these hurdles in time to reinforce deterrence and restore a favourable balance of power vis-à-vis China.
Sources: White House; US, Department of State, www.state.gov; US, Department of Defense, dod.defense.gov; US, Department of Treasury, home.treasury.gov; India, Ministry of External Affairs, mea.gov.in; Japan, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, www.mofa.go.jp; Australia, Department of Defence, www.minister.defence.gov.au; Australia, Office of the Prime Minister, www.pm.gov.au; USEmbassy and Consulate in the Republic of Korea, kr.usembassy.gov; Australian Financial Review, www.afr.com; Defense News, www.defensenews.com; Hindu, www.thehindu.com; Wall Street Journal, www.wsj.com
Australia is at the forefront of this collective-defence agenda. Beyond the expansion of US−Australia force-posture initiatives, Washington and Canberra have embarked on a long list of military sales and defence-industrial projects to support Australia as it seeks to create a ‘more potent, capable and agile Australian Defence Force’ able to play a more active role in defending the regional order.57 In 2021 and early 2022, this has involved efforts to ‘grow’ Australia’s ‘self-reliant ability to deliver deterrent effects’ through long-range strike capabilities, including US BGM-109 Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles for the navy and extended-range AGM-158B joint air-to-surface stand-off missiles (JASSM-ER) and AGM-158C long-range anti-ship missiles (LRASM) for the air force.58 Washington has also agreed to support Canberra’s aim to produce strike capabilities domestically through the sovereign Guided Weapons and Explosive Ordnance Enterprise, though this initiative hinges on future US decisions to waive export restrictions and share sensitive intellectual property with Australia – discussions which have so far moved very slowly.59
The launch of the AUKUS agreement in September 2021 is now a focal point for defence-industrial integration. Promising to revolutionise Australia’s high-end military capabilities and ‘foster deeper integration of defence-related science, technology, industrial bases and supply chains’, AUKUS is the clearest example of Washington’s willingness to pursue major alliance reforms.60 Its flagship initiative to provide Australia with conventionally armed SSNs marks the first time Washington has entrusted an ally with the US Navy’s nuclear-propulsion secrets since 1958, when it reached a similar agreement with London. SSNs will provide a stealthy, survivable and lethal capability that can deploy to distant locations, like the South China Sea and Northeast Asia, for long periods. From Washington’s perspective, it also guarantees that Canberra has cutting-edge capabilities to contribute to a future high-end fight.61 These capabilities, however, will not be available soon. While the AUKUS partners will sign off on an SSN design by March 2023, even a ‘mature design’ – like the British Astute class or US Virginia class – is unlikely to yield an Australian SSN capability before 2035.62 The complex technical, bureaucratic and nuclear-stewardship challenges associated with operating SSNs means that Australia’s future submarines will not contribute to the military balance for 15–20 years.
Of greater near-term value is AUKUS’s parallel effort to develop ‘joint advanced military capabilities’.63 With a dual focus on fielding new capabilities this decade and co-developing cutting-edge technologies for the future, this effort involves a growing list of plans for cooperation in areas ranging from autonomous undersea capabilities and quantum technologies to hypersonic- and counter-hypersonic-missile capabilities. Officials expect trials and experimentation in some of these areas to begin within three years, with autonomous underwater vehicles and quantum technologies at the front of the queue. This is a potentially positive signal. Indeed, it is only by pooling the research, innovation and defence-industrial sectors of trusted allies that the US can hope to maintain its eroding capability edge vis-à-vis China. If AUKUS is to succeed where previous efforts to bring Australia and the UK into the US National Technological and Industrial Base have failed, however, Washington will need to address the legislative, commercial and export-control barriers that have prevented a trilateral ‘defence free-trade area’ in the past.64
In Northeast Asia, Japan is the focal point of the Biden administration’s push to integrate regional alliances via new force posture, contingency planning and defence-technology initiatives. In January 2022, the two sides agreed to ‘strengthen joint capabilities by fully aligning strategies’, highlighting plans to jointly stockpile munitions and increase shared use of US and Japanese facilities.65 Coupled with a new Special Measures Agreement that reorientates Tokyo’s financial support for US Forces Japan towards joint facilities and combined military exercises, these developments foreshadow wider changes in Tokyo’s self-defence arrangements.66 Impending revisions to Japan’s National Security Strategy and other policy documents are expected to articulate a more active security role for its Self Defense Forces, including through developing ‘counterstrike capabilities’ to target ‘enemy base[s]’.67 The establishment of a new US–Japan framework for advanced defence and technology cooperation – with ‘counter-hypersonic technology’ as its initial priority – is likely to support this agenda.68 While defence-technology cooperation has historically moved slowly, in this case Washington acted on Tokyo’s request in less than four months, signalling greater urgency.69 Implementing reforms, however, is another matter. Although Japan’s ruling party has indicated its support for a more integrated alliance, Japanese and US views may diverge on priorities when it comes to discussing revising alliance roles and missions, making changes to the 2015 Guidelines for Japan–US Defense Cooperation difficult to achieve.70
The Biden administration has also sought new ways to help South Korea contribute to the United States’ collective-defence aims in Northeast Asia. In May 2021, Washington and Seoul agreed to scrap 40-year-old guidelines limiting South Korea’s ballistic-missile programme,71 allowing the latter to produce and field longer-range strike systems and enhance its capacity for space-based surveillance.72 This paved the way for expanded alliance cooperation on space and counter-space projects, with Washington and Seoul signing their first space-policy research agreement in April 2022.73 Yet closer defence-industrial and -technology integration is largely missing from the alliance agenda. Although South Korean officials have called for ‘mutually beneficial’ collaboration on defence-industry matters since the establishment of a high-level bilateral mechanism in 2016, this has produced little tangible progress, limiting both countries’ ability to pool their defence-industrial sectors.74
The administration is also working hard to advance defence integration with India, including through enhanced information-sharing, maritime cooperation and defence trade.75 Washington and New Delhi announced their first project under the 2012 Defense Technology and Trade Initiative (DTTI) in July 2021, providing a test bed for deepening defence-industrial cooperation.76 In April 2022, the two sides flagged the potential for cooperation on ‘underwater domain awareness’ and for Indian shipyards to support US Maritime Sealift Command vessels.77 Despite this, efforts to deepen the US−India partnership remain slow given the rapidly deteriorating balance of power.78 Such efforts are also becoming more challenging to implement in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which, from a US perspective, has cast New Delhi’s defence ties with Moscow as a growing liability.79 Although the Biden administration has tried to protect US−India defence ties from domestic criticism – for instance, it has so far declined to sanction India for acquiring Russian S-400 air-defence systems despite the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, which mandates sanctions against countries engaging in significant transactions with certain countries, including Russia – substantive progress is unlikely to be rapid.80
More broadly, the Biden administration has accelerated Washington’s embrace of minilateral strategic-policy initiatives to deepen what Jake Sullivan calls a new ‘latticework’ of alliance and partner relations.81 Most prominently, Biden’s elevation of the Quad to the leader level in March 2021 injected new momentum into the grouping, with progress on vaccines, public health, critical technologies, infrastructure and other priorities.82 This is important in the competition for influence with China. Far less progress has been made in advancing the Quad’s potential as a military-balancing coalition, with action on building blocks like information-sharing and maritime-domain awareness still largely confined to the bilateral level.83 The Biden administration has also invested significant time in reviving trilateral cooperation with South Korea and Japan, convening at least 18 cabinet-level or senior officials’ meetings since taking office. While animosities between Seoul and Tokyo continue to limit progress, the talks secured a commitment to deepen cooperation on North Korea and regional stability more broadly.84
Washington has enjoyed some success in building international support for Taiwan. The administration secured references to the importance of ‘peace and stability’ across the Taiwan Strait in joint statements with the leaders of Japan in April 2021 and the leaders of South Korea in May 2021. The statement following the US−South Korea−Japan trilateral in February 2022 echoed these words. In each of these cases, the reference was unprecedented.85 Similarly, the 2021 AUSMIN communiqué by Canberra and Washington emphasised ‘Taiwan’s important role in the Indo-Pacific region’ and both sides’ intent to strengthen ties with Taipei.86 This consensus has also been reflected in high-level expressions of support for Taiwan by US allies and in various joint statements between Australian, British, French and Japanese officials.87 Coupled with the administration’s ongoing efforts to bolster Taiwan’s military capabilities, this ‘minilateralisation’ of concerns about Taiwanese security marks a critical part of Washington’s strategy to forge collective resolve on this potential flashpoint. It also complements an uptick in major combined military exercises, such as INDOPACOM’s theatre-level Large Scale Global Exercise in August 2021, which are working to operationalise deeper integration among key US allies in preparation for potential high-end war-fighting needs in the future.88
CONCLUSION
A year is not a long time in the sweep of ongoing US efforts to chart a more robust and collective-defence strategy for the Indo-Pacific. While Biden’s stewardship of this agenda has been far from perfect, the administration deserves credit for advancing important lines of effort and working to prioritise the region under difficult geopolitical circumstances. On this score, its withdrawal from Afghanistan, initial restraint in Ukraine, incremental posture investments and support for the ground-breaking AUKUS partnership represent signature achievements. The administration’s restoration of productive relations with regional allies and partners has also been critical to operationalising its embrace of a collective-defence framework. More can be expected on this front in the forthcoming 2022 National Defense Strategy and 2022 National Security Strategy.
However, Washington will have to intensify its efforts on all three elements of US strategy – prioritisation, posture and partnerships – if it is to have any hope of upholding a favourable Indo-Pacific balance of power amid China’s growing capabilities and assertiveness. This will require far more significant investments in US capabilities and forward military presence, as well as sustained strategic discipline – particularly in Europe – as calls for greater US attention and resources mount in response to grinding hostilities in Ukraine. Above all, the US will need to do more to empower and integrate allies and partners, in particular by providing incentives to these countries to play a larger role in collectively defending the regional order. This means allaying lingering doubts about Washington’s ability and willingness to invest in the military rebalance and deliver a credible deterrence strategy. While the Biden administration has made valuable down payments on a more effective strategy, time is not on its side to accelerate this collective agenda.
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