Biden’s Military-First Posture in the East Is a Problem
A singular focus on countering the threat of Chinese aggression made America neglect economic ties in the Indo-Pacific.
Changi Naval Base, which sits on the east coast of Singapore near the busy shipping lanes of the Singapore Strait, has in the first months of 2023 been welcoming well-armed American visitors. Less than two weeks into the new year came a visit from the USS Makin Island, an amphibious assault ship. Days later, the USS Nimitz, an aircraft carrier with a small city’s worth of crew members, made a port call—accompanied by three destroyers.
These types of visits are the most visible aspect of the increased military cooperation that is characteristic of President Joe Biden’s strategy for the Indo-Pacific, the region that encompasses the expanse of sea and nations from America’s Pacific coast to the Indian Ocean. U.S. troops have access to five military bases in the Philippines, which is a former U.S. colony and America’s oldest treaty ally in Asia. Earlier this month, the two countries reached an agreement that gives U.S. forces access to four more. That announcement followed a decision by American and Japanese officials to enhance their military cooperation.
The aim—sometimes spoken, other times left unsaid—of such developments is to counter China’s more assertive presence in the region. Washington now views Beijing as a growing threat to America and its partners and allies there. These concerns have only intensified since a spy balloon launched by China was shot down two weeks ago. Hence the Biden administration’s focus on defense and security in the Indo-Pacific.
That focus, however, means that the administration has failed to advance a strong economic policy to match the military buildup. A remarkably broad-based consensus that this is a problem has coalesced both in D.C. foreign-policy circles and among political leaders in regional capitals. President Biden’s one significant gesture in this direction, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity, was met with near-universal disappointment when it was unveiled last year.
Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore’s prime minister, diplomatically referred to the short, buzzword-filled document as “baby steps”—and that was one of the most optimistic takes on the plan. Inu Manak, a trade-policy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote that it would “likely be a missed opportunity to deepen economic ties across the Pacific.” Van Jackson, a former Pentagon official who now lectures on international relations at Victoria University of Wellington, was more blunt—“no substance” was his verdict—when we spoke recently. “It exists to say they are doing something on political economy,” he said. But “just because they put the words there doesn’t mean it amounts to anything.”
The origins of this situation can be traced in part to Biden’s years as vice president in the Obama administration. Barack Obama’s “pivot to Asia” was much hyped at the time. Although this supposed strategic realignment of U.S. foreign policy looked promising on paper, it largely failed to materialize. Amid the challenges of other domestic and international developments, the plan languished, with few accomplishments other than, eventually, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. This major trade agreement encompassing 12 Pacific Rim countries, including the U.S., and comprising about 40 percent of the global economy was finalized in early 2016.
By then, the deal had come under intense criticism in the U.S. Disliked by labor unions, it also faced bipartisan opposition in Congress and was never ratified. Donald Trump, who was highly critical of the agreement on the campaign trail, pulled the U.S. out of it on his first day in office, in 2017. (Hillary Clinton, who had earlier cheered the deal as secretary of state, also turned against it.) The countries involved moved on without the United States, signing an alternative deal in 2018; China applied to join it in 2021.
Trump himself obsessed over striking a trade deal with China and attempting to improve relations with North Korea. Yet he largely shunned Southeast Asia during his presidency, never bothering to show up at regional meetings.
Since taking office, Biden deserves credit for “not doing anything egregiously bad” in the Indo-Pacific, according to Blake Herzinger, a nonresident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. But this is more by default than design, as two major foreign-policy challenges have drawn the White House’s attention away from the region: first, the withdrawal from Afghanistan; second, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The U.S. has cut the number of its naval transits through the Taiwan Strait, which have elicited furious reactions from Beijing in recent years. The frequency of “freedom-of-navigation operations,” as the U.S. calls passages through the South China Sea to challenge unlawful territorial claims, has also gone down. These changes were welcome in the region because they helped “cool down things with China,” Herzinger told me.
Although these more high-profile maneuvers have been reduced, Biden’s approach remains one that “prioritizes, very openly, [America’s] relationship with allies and partners,” according to Collin Koh, a research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore who specializes in maritime security and naval affairs. The White House’s focus is on more low-key military bilateral engagements with other partners and countries, as well as larger multicountry exercises. “These are often overlooked,” Koh told me, “but might be more useful in building those relationships to begin with.”
Still glaringly absent, two years into Biden’s presidency, is a cohesive economic vision that could advance American interests. Missing from the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, most notably, was any mention of tariff reductions or addressing other market-access issues.
Katherine Tai, the U.S. trade representative, has acknowledged “a lot of swirl about the fact that there is not tariff liberalization” in the framework. But she has defended this omission as a necessary step away from “traditional” trade deals that have contributed to the current “fragility” of economic ties in the region. This pitch has made few converts. A recent survey conducted across Southeast Asia by the ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute, a Singapore-based think tank, found that 42 percent of respondents were uncertain about the effectiveness of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. Some 47 percent believed that it would have a positive impact in the region. Negotiations over the framework continue.
According to Herzinger, people like the United States not “because it is a democracy” but “because it is a powerful market and drives innovation.” Ideally, he said, countries in the region “want to see Washington get into trade agreements.” In his view, it is “likely to our detriment” that the U.S. is failing to participate.
Fundamentally, the U.S. still labors under a belief that “our military commitments are the oxygen that makes everything else in Asia possible,” Jackson, the Victoria University of Wellington lecturer, told me. “And it is security that underwrites everything.” Although the U.S. is focused on trying to contain and challenge China through sanctions, tariffs, and economic blacklists, he said, Washington appears to have given little, if any, thought to the effect of these measures in a region where China is the dominant economic force.
“The national securitization of the Asian political economy threatens the actual lifeblood of the region,” he said. “There seems to be no appreciation of that, because China remains 10 feet tall in the imagination of everybody in the Beltway.”
Jackson has laid out a number of progressive measures he believes could improve the political economy not just in the Indo-Pacific but across the global South, including trade agreements that incorporate measures to protect labor rights and improve supply chains, as well as reforms to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
If the U.S. were to offer debt restructuring for countries in the region, which some experts have warned faces a mounting indebtedness crisis, that would be a bold way for the U.S. to reposition itself. Cambodia, where the U.S. is critical of expanding Chinese influence, owes the U.S. hundreds of millions of dollars for a loan the country took in the early 1970s. Its longtime leader, Hun Sen, has called the debt “dirty” and appealed to multiple administrations to clear the obligation to repay it in full.
If the U.S. fails to act on that, Jackson told me, it will be helping fuel a “perverse cycle,” in which countries burdened by debt have little option but to seek additional capital from China. A concerted economic initiative from the U.S. could begin to address the problem, but “it is not possible to do that and chase shadows around the world.”
The first line of Biden’s Indo-Pacific strategy is succinct and clear: “The United States is an Indo-Pacific power,” the document released last year reads. There are, it boasts, more members of the U.S. military based in the region than in any other outside the U.S. itself. But if the U.S. wishes to maintain the lofty position in which it sees itself, an economic policy that complements its military presence appears to very much be needed.