Irony watch

I couldn't resist linking to this item at Foreign Policy's Passport, which notes that Australia's navy is struggling for recruits.

Why?

It can't compete with Western Australian mining companies that are expanding operations to take advantage of growing Chinese demand (and accordingly, rising prices) for commodities.

This may be the single best illustration of why the simplistic, "arc of democracies" model of dealing with China favored by former prime minister Abe Shinzo and some conservatives in Washington is wholly inappropriate for Asia in the twenty-first century.

The three stooges

At the tail end of the APEC summit, Messrs. Abe, Bush, and Howard met for a much-vaunted security summit that came in the wake of the US-India-Australia-Japan-Singapore exercises in the Indian Ocean (the "quad" + one?).

Commentator Richard Halloran believes that the quad is shaping up to be a "informal defensive pact based on shared national interests and democratic values."

But how durable is the quad? India, for one, remains as committed to pursuing an independent course as ever, maybe even more so as it becomes a political and economic giant. (India has just announced naval exercises with China and Russia — why do exercises with the democracies mean India is joining an informal grouping, but exercises with China and Russia lack larger significance?)

Beyond India, whose commitment to the quad is the weakest, what of the "emerging" US-Japan-Australia triangle? I think things would look considerably different under different political leadership in each member state.

Indeed, it is hard to imagine a group of leaders more harried at home than Bush, Abe, and Howard. Mr. Bush (30% approval, 64% disapproval), of course, has been universally recognized as a lame duck — a lame duck choking on the sands of Iraq — for months. Mr. Abe (negatives in the sixties) has been more or less written off, holding on to power simply because no one is in a position to force him out of office (or no one wants to). Mr. Howard, meanwhile, might be headed for an election defeat at the hands of Kevin Rudd's Labor Party, which has just widened its lead in public opinion polls in advance of the general election expected for later this year.

Would the quad look the same if it was, for example, a meeting between Mr. Rudd, Mr. Ozawa, and Mrs. Clinton (or substitute a Democrat of your choice)? Would these leaders pursue integrated cooperation with the same gusto as the current trio? Would they place the same emphasis on shared values, which serves little other purpose other than to separate them from China?

That's my problem with this whole project. If it is just an "open network" that recognizes the important ties each member has with China, what values does it add? Is Japan's security improved all that much by new security ties with Australia? What can Australia contribute that isn't already provided by the US, if not pressure on China? The same is the reverse, even more so, for Australia — what can Japan possibly contribute to Australia's security? I fear that, intentionally or unintentionally, this arrangement subordinates regional objectives to Japan's needs, given that Japan is perhaps the most insecure of the participating countries. As Halloran writes, "In Japan, strategic thinkers have pointed to open hostility from North Korea, barely concealed hostility from South Korea, and anxiety over long-term threats from China despite recent moves by Beijing to reduce the antagonism."

But why risk raising tensions with China now when the arrangement provides so little in practical terms?

So I remain dubious that this meeting was "historic," as the Sankei Shimbun writes in an editorial today. More like one last caper for a group of leaders facing the ends of their political careers.

In Asia's future, flexibility first

In the week since Prime Minister Abe called for an organization of democracies that would implicitly encircle China, his proposal has been met with deafening silence from the capitals of the countries that would be involved, illustrating just how out of touch with new realities the prime minister's foreign policy thinking is.

As I've argued before, the future of Asia is flexibility: each power in the region will work to expand its options, constantly hedging (even with allies) and looking to secure interests by whatever means necessary. In the four countries that would Abe would like to include in his community — India, Australia, Japan, and the US — there are manifold signs that these governments are interested in expanding their options and thus are less than willing to be bound to an organization like that proposed by Mr. Abe.

In Australia, for example, a recent poll by the Lowy Institute recorded declining support for the ANZUS treaty, driven perhaps by fears of entrapment in the wake of the Iraq war. It is difficult to conceive of hostility between the US and Australia, but perhaps the ANZUS treaty should be included in any discussion of the end of alliances, as Australians begin to question whether the alliance with the US still serves their interests.

India, meanwhile, has long distrusted its neighbors and fears encirclement and international ostracism. While American commentators tend to view the pending US-India civilian nuclear agreement as the doorway to a strategic partnership in Asia, this editorial in the Times of India argues that the agreement could result in India's playing a more active role in the regional balance of power. That would facilitate greater cooperation between the US and India, as well as India and Japan, but it would be opportunistic cooperation, dependent on the vicissitudes of the regional balance — hardly the great alliance of democracies envisioned by Mr. Abe.

And the US? Washington has given no signs that it is on board with Mr. Abe's scheme, and the to do over Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte's criticism of the planned Taiwanese referendum on UN membership suggests that stability, as ever, remains Washington's primary interest in Asia.

Even the feared partnership between China and Russia is exaggerated, as argued by the Eurasia Group's Ian Bremmer. While I disagree with Bremmer's conclusion that "China is well on its way to becoming a status-quo power" — unless "well on its way" means decades — his assessment that Russia's and China's strategic interests over the long term are at odds is spot on.

China, in particular, knows that its interests demand cooperation with the region's powers, which makes it, if not a status quo power, than at least a pragmatic power. Hence the Sino-Japanese defense summit, in which the Chinese and Japanese defense ministers concluded final agreements on exchanging port visits for warships and setting up a Sino-Japanese hot line.

Even if existing alliances persist, it is unlikely that new exclusionary organizations and partnerships will be established within the region. The US hub-and-spoke alliance system, established in the early years of the cold war, will not be transformed into the kind of organization envisioned by Mr. Abe.

Does an "Asian NATO" serve US interests?

Prime Minister Abe has made his speech in New Delhi, visited the descendants of Subhas Chandra Bose and Radhabinod Pal (the judge who criticized the Tokyo tribunal from before it began, making him a favorite of Japan's right), and is now off to Malaysia on the last leg of his Asian tour.

But what of the consequences of his flighty rhetoric at the Indian Parliament, in which he spoke "on behalf of the citizens of another democracy that is equally representing Asia" and called for an Indo-Japan "Strategic Global Partnership" that will be embedded in "an immense network spanning the entirety of the Pacific Ocean, incorporating the United States of America and Australia. Open and transparent, this network will allow people, goods, capital, and knowledge to flow freely." The partnership will also, of course, "carry out the pursuit of freedom and prosperity in the region" and will serve as a basis for both to defend "vital interests in the security of sea lanes."

Both Asahi and Yomiuri editorialize on Mr. Abe's address today. Yomiuri, of course, is full of praise for the young prime minister and the multi-faceted agreements reached in discussions with Prime Minister Singh, encapsulated in the massive joint statement they released. Asahi, however, refuses to take the prime minister's rhetoric at face value, suggesting that for all the glories of the "confluence of the two seas" the partnership might not be nearly the confluence of national interests that the prime minister thinks.

Asahi also pauses to consider what impact the deepening ties between India, Japan, Australia, and the US — set to deepen further with a US-Japan-Australia security summit scheduled for September 8th in Sydney — will have on each country's relations with China. Prime Minister Abe and Foreign Minister Aso have been enthusiastic supporters of deeper relations among the region's democracy, perhaps more enthusiastic than any of their counterparts. But Asahi has the prime minister's number: "From the first, Prime Minister Abe's values diplomacy has been tinged with the color of encirclement of China."

This is my concern.

It has become increasingly popular to look at East Asia as the equivalent of Europe in the decades leading up to World War I, characterized by increasingly prosperous, nationalistic states channeling more of their wealth into their militaries, with numerous potential conflict points. (Former Australian prime minister Paul Keating has essentially just made this argument to demand that next month's Australia APEC summit address the Northeast Asian arms race.) But the World War I analogy is too facile. Of course there are similarities, not least in the form of China, in which the PLA, like the Imperial German Army in Wilhelmine Germany, has an unknown but in all likelihood outsized and unconstrained role in national policy making. But that similarity should give pause to supporters of a community of Asian democracies that has a significant security component. As in prewar Europe, military cooperation that appears to encircle China will bolster the more hawkish elements of the PLA, potentially leading Chinese foreign policy down a dangerously confrontational path. The US, Australia, and Japan must do everything in their power to avoid giving the impression of forming a coalition to contain China.

The reality is that wise and prudent leadership in the region, not least by the US, can greatly diminish the potential for conflict in the region. For all the concerns raised by the ongoing Asian arms race — it's by no means just China and Japan — the region's flashpoints, most significantly the Taiwan Straits and the Korean Peninsula, are manageable, and may even resolve themselves over the long term. But all powers must recognize the role the US has played in the post-cold war era in dampening security tensions throughout the region, in spite of growing arms expenditures. With the end of the cold war the US transitioned relatively smoothly from focusing on containment to focusing on its role as a security provider for the whole region. While many have suspected that the US Military's post-cold war Asian presence was based on the idea of China has a replacement for the Soviet Union, the PLA is to this day a poor substitute for the Red Army — and China's heady embrace of capitalism and pronounced aspirations to become a responsible great power suggest that the (tacit or overt) containment of China would be a futile mission.

But now it seems that Mr. Abe would rather the US "choose sides" in Asia, converting the US military presence from the ultimate guarantor of peace and stability to the core of an Asian NATO that will fight for freedom and democracy in Asia. (Of course, he has sympathizers in Washington and Canberra.)

The US must above all be on the side of stability, and its alliances are useful only insofar as they stabilize the region.

Admittedly, part of the problem is that technological change has had political consequences. With the US Military's growing sophistication, even NATO allies have had a hard time fighting alongside the US. Imagine the US trying to achieve interoperability on the fly with ad-hoc allies (like India) in the event of the worst-case scenarios coming to pass in East Asia — for which the US would be irresponsible not to prepare. But it's a thin line between conducting exercises to enhance military-to-military cooperation and assembling what looks an awful lot like a coalition to contain China, as USPACOM is discovering in the run-up to its planned exercises with Indian Navy. I give Admiral Keating credit for trying to dispel the impression of a balancing coalition, but his efforts need more backing from Washington.

The US must step back and consider its Asian vocation. What role should the US play in the region over the coming decades? Is a militarized community of Asian democracies in the interests of the US? Or should the US be ramping up its efforts as a dispassionate offshore balancer that abjures from causes and crusades and makes the maintenance of a stable security environment its profession?