Can the US build a military alliance against China?

07.08.2023 11:39

The NATO summit in Vilnius (11-12 July), although it did not go down in history with momentous decisions, may be remembered as a milestone in the China-West conflict, especially in terms of rhetoric. In its final communiqué, the alliance accused the PRC of “malicious hybrid attacks, cyber operations and spreading disinformation” aimed at itself, and in response was warned against damaging “China’s legitimate interests” and especially against moving “eastwards towards the Pacific”

Source: discred.ru

China’s concerns are understandable. The Vilnius meeting was attended by the leaders of Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, the Pacific states, which reinforced suspicions that Washington is preparing to expand NATO into the largest water area or create a separate anti-China alliance within it. Attempts of this kind have indeed been made by the Americans since the Cold War, but have not yet yielded tangible results.

Concerns on the ocean

There are half a dozen of them: SEATO, ANZUS, ANZUK, ASPAC, AUKUS, QUAD – international organisations in the Pacific Ocean that have ever been created with the participation of the UK or the US. Their names are almost unknown to the general public. The reason is simple: designed to contain China, they have not made significant progress.

The idea that the People’s Republic of China needs containment dates back to the 1950s, when, after the Communist victory in the civil war, the White House considered them permanent allies of the USSR and adversaries for itself. Simultaneously with NATO (1949), the Americans created two more blocs with similar names – CENTO (1955) and SEATO (1954). The latter was expected to control the communist threat on the shores of East Asia, i.e. to target the PRC.

SEATO’s organisational structure, which was modelled on NATO, resembled the prototype quite closely: it included an office of the secretary-general, a council of ministers and a committee of military advisers. There was a difference: unlike the North Atlantic Alliance, the East Asian alliance declared neutral countries in Indochina, not all of which requested protection, to be its area of responsibility. Vietnam, divided into a communist north and a capitalist south, also came under the umbrella.

It soon became clear that coordination in the bloc was not working. Unlike Europe, where disagreements in NATO almost never happened, the countries of the Pacific region were quarrelling. America could not find common ground even with the colonising powers of Asia, France and Great Britain, which also joined SEATO but had other interests in the East. In the mid-1960s, the US decided to intervene in the civil war in Laos, but failed to persuade the British and French to follow. The SEATO bloc stalled.

Thunder came for it in 1964. The U.S. put troops into Vietnam, but did so virtually alone. SEATO provided only outside collateral, allowing the Americans to act on their own behalf. If the war had ended in America’s favour, that would have been enough. But the US lost, undermining SMO’s prestige, and in 1975 the first ever Eastern alliance created under Western patronage ceased to exist at the will of its constituent parties.

Anglo-Saxons quarrel

During the years of the Vietnam War, it became clear that the US had secured more help from the much smaller Pacific alliance, called ANZUS, than from SEATO. Formed in 1951, it included, along with the Americans, Australians and New Zealanders. It was a collective defence agreement: an attack on any one of the three countries was recognised as a danger to all the others as well.

The Anglo-Saxon countries stuck together in the jungles of Indochina and withdrew troops virtually simultaneously between 1972 and 1973, and aid workers also together in 1975. But in the 1980s they squabbled over the issue of nuclear technology. In 1986, New Zealand declared its waters free of atomic weapons, without making an exception for US nuclear submarines. America saw this as a violation of the agreements and threatened the stroppy ones with withdrawal of their defences, but amid the end of the Cold War, New Zealand did not feel threatened. The country suspended its membership in ANZUS, reducing it to a bilateral agreement between Australia and the United States, causing the name of the bloc to gradually disappear from international news.

The 21st century the Pacific Ocean met without military blocs. But the situation quickly began to change as China’s economic growth (from sixth place in 2000 to second place in 2010) began to arouse the jealousy and suspicion of the United States. In 2007, the Americans turned for support to China’s historical opponents – Japan and India. With their participation and Australia, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QSD) was formed. The status of this organisation is far from a military agreement. Nevertheless, under its auspices, it began to conduct exercises, the scale of which corresponds only to an adversary of such a size as the PRC.

In the 2010s, the concentration of military forces in the Pacific continued. Australia deployed American bases on its territory for the first time in history, and New Zealand returned to ANZUS after 25 years. A military agreement was concluded between the Japanese and the Australians. And in 2016, after winning the US election, Donald Trump made pressure on China a policy priority. Since that time, the threat of a military confrontation in the Pacific has taken real shape.

The Adventures of Asian NATO

Looking for ways to put pressure on China, the US is trying to bring together the main countries of the Far East, but faces problems known since the SEATO era. The region’s states have not exhausted the potential for local nationalism. This means that the hostility they may feel toward each other regularly outweighs both fear of China and White House pressure.

The Americans have particular difficulties with Japan and South Korea, each of which individually acts as a close US ally. But this friendship recedes before the dark memories of the Japanese colonial occupation of the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945 and mutual territorial claims. It is difficult to form an alliance involving both states, although Washington is making serious efforts to bring them closer together.

The year 2023 proved to be productive in this regard. South Korean President Yun Seok-yol, elected by the votes of the far-right, went against the interests of nationalists by forgiving Japan’s debt: its companies are no longer required to compensate for the labour mobilisation of Koreans during the Second World War. In response, Tokyo waived economic anti-Korean sanctions imposed in 2019. Therefore, the joint presence of Yoon Seok-yeol and his Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida in Vilnius is not a mere coincidence.

Will they be able to declare a unified anti-China stance? There remains room for doubt. Public opinion in both countries, which has been attuned to mutual grievances for decades, needs a generational shift before common membership in a potential Asian NATO could truly become a reality.

Reconcile the incompatible

The situation with other possible members of the bloc is no less complicated. Contrary to the US State Department’s position of portraying China as a regional aggressor, territorial disputes are a daily feature of international relations in East Asia. In the South China Sea alone, Brunei, China, Malaysia and the Philippines claim the waters north of Kalimantan, China, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam claim the islands in the sea, and the coastal region of Sabah belonging to Malaysia is claimed by the Philippines and Indonesia, but without China. Without the ability to settle such disputes, it is impossible to quickly form a NATO-like regional alliance, and waiting too long is not in the U.S. interest, because China’s GDP growth continues to outpace America’s, which means that the PRC retains the hope of becoming the world’s first economy in the future.

Time does not necessarily work for America in other respects either, as seen in South Korea. The election of the far-right Yun Seok-yol in 2022 paved the way for détente with Japan, but his predecessor, the left-liberal Moon Jae-in, under whom, on the contrary, Tokyo was demanded to compensate, has not been forgotten. The new election may bring revenge to the left – especially since Yoon’s decision to cede to the Japanese, according to polls, was condemned by 60 per cent of his compatriots, and the alternation of right and left in power is a common phenomenon in Seoul.

Given the mosaic of contradictions in Asia, the US has for decades favoured bilateral agreements with countries in the region, but such measures would clearly not be enough to contain China. In 2022, Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse said: “Let’s create a NATO in the Pacific. We need allies to lead the offensive against the Chinese Communist Party, and allies need us, American leadership.” The Biden administration is pushing international relations in this direction, but it may still be a long way from serious success.