{"id":14075,"date":"2014-05-29T06:00:15","date_gmt":"2014-05-28T20:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=14075"},"modified":"2014-06-10T20:53:54","modified_gmt":"2014-06-10T10:53:54","slug":"a-fraying-asian-security-order","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/a-fraying-asian-security-order\/","title":{"rendered":"A fraying Asian security order?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Frayed\"<\/a>The Asian security architecture has long been defined by two sets of arrangements: a US-centred set of alliance arrangements, and an ASEAN-centred set of institutions. The conundrum of the modern Asian security environment is that both sets of arrangements\u2014devised during an era of relatively weak Asian powers\u2014are struggling for leverage in an era of stronger Asian powers.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s rise lies at the heart of the problem. While scholars debate the extent to which Beijing even has a deliberate grand strategy, I think China currently pursues two distinct objectives. It seeks a culture of deference towards China\u2019s interests among its neighbours, and a Great Wall at Sea to hold US naval power away from the Asian mainland. Those objectives are of course related: it\u2019s easier for China to create a deferential regional hierarchy if a maritime buffer zone makes a US naval presence in the western Pacific less assured. The Great Wall at Sea pursues that goal of a weakened US presence in the maritime domain, and President Xi Jinping\u2019s advocacy last week of a region free from US alliances<\/a> is intended to pursue it on the land.<\/p>\n

The problem for China, of course, and Brad Glosserman depicted it well in his recent National Interest article<\/a>, is that its pursuit of those objectives has generated a new wave of anxiety along the Asian rimlands. Countries large enough to respond to the Chinese challenge\u2014like Japan\u2014have begun to do so. Smaller countries, especially Vietnam and the Philippines, have indulged in some balancing behaviour. But Southeast Asia more generally is haunted by the concern that its classic preference in favour of rule-and-norm-generating institutions no longer seems an effective counter to growing Chinese power. For most ASEAN members, that haunted feeling hasn\u2019t yet translated into harder-edged strategic options. Nor has it translated into greater accommodation of Beijing.<\/p>\n

In both Northeast and Southeast Asia, demands for assurance from the US are climbing steeply\u2014more steeply, indeed, than Washington could hope to satisfy. US relations with its allies and partners are starting to be dominated by two questions: how much assurance is required, and how best might it be delivered? Such questions aren\u2019t easily answered at the best of times, since assurance is a much more difficult task than deterrence. The US alliance system seems unlikely to grow more spokes\u2014even if the administration were to offer new alliances, the US Senate might struggle to ratify them. And not all of the answer lies within Washington\u2019s gift. After all, exactly how close a relationship does a country like, say, Indonesia want with the US? We might well be looking at some form of more robust strategic partnership between the US and Indonesia. But how robust? How would that partnership mesh with ANZUS? Does ANZUS empower such a partnership, or distract from it?<\/p>\n

In today\u2019s circumstances of rapidly-shifting strategic relativities in Asia coupled with shrinking US defence budgets and President Obama\u2019s reluctance to become involved in new potential conflicts, the assurance task is daunting.<\/p>\n

That leaves Asian countries with a range of supplementary strategies. The easiest\u2014though probably the least effective\u2014might be an attempted revival of institutionalism. Harder options include modernising their own defence forces\u2014effectively a self-help strategy\u2014or cooperating more closely with each other on practical defence tasks. The self-help option is likely to pull some states down the gamechanger route<\/a>, in the search for asymmetric solutions to the problems of a fluid strategic environment. Greater defence cooperation is also a difficult choice. There\u2019s a good reason that US alliances in Asia tend to be bilateral: regional countries have only weak traditions of security cooperation. That\u2019s why we find it so hard to answer the questions above in relation to Indonesia.<\/p>\n

Australia isn\u2019t a front-line state in the shifting regional security environment. It has the luxury of standing back from the key friction points. But we have deep interests in how the regional future unfolds. At the recent Nikkei Conference in Tokyo, the Singaporean Prime Minister sketched two possible scenarios of that future<\/a>: a cooperative, prosperous, status quo future and a riven, competitive one, teetering on the brink of conflict or falling into it. His speech is an indicator that the region\u2019s senior statesmen are starting to focus on the possibility of more unpalatable futures.<\/p>\n

Rod Lyon is a fellow at ASPI and executive editor of\u00a0<\/em>The Strategist. Image courtesy of Flickr user Martin Kenny<\/a>.<\/em><\/em><\/em><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Asian security architecture has long been defined by two sets of arrangements: a US-centred set of alliance arrangements, and an ASEAN-centred set of institutions. The conundrum of the modern Asian security environment is that …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":14078,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[17,52,27,142,821,25,277,31],"class_list":["post-14075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-australia","tag-china","tag-northeast-asia","tag-regional-security","tag-security-cooperation","tag-southeast-asia","tag-strategic-partnership","tag-united-states"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nA fraying Asian security order? | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/a-fraying-asian-security-order\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A fraying Asian security order? | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Asian security architecture has long been defined by two sets of arrangements: a US-centred set of alliance arrangements, and an ASEAN-centred set of institutions. 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