Current U.S. defense policy: Continuity or change?

Current U.S. defense policy: Continuity or change?

By Anak Agung Banyu Perwita

BANDUNG (JP): A combination of political, military and economic factors make the Asia Pacific important in world politics and U.S. foreign and defense policy. In world politics, it is one region where vital interests of all major powers overlap. Since the turn of the century, the U.S. has pursued three fundamental objectives in the region. Those objectives have been to promote stability, to encourage the development of democratic institutions, and to encourage responsive elected governments.

In the economic field, the region has become an economic powerhouse. In many respects it supplants the Atlantic as the center of world economic affairs. In international trade, moreover, Asia Pacific symbolizes the explosion that has characterized the world economy since the 1960s. The U.S. now trades much more with Pacific rim countries than with Europe. The shift began in 1980 and the gap has been widening each year.

The Asia Pacific region's economic importance to the U.S. is reflected not only in its growing trade but also in the region's critical strategic resources, among which are oil, minerals and rubber. The ever increasing demand for these resources, in combination with Asia Pacific's refined marketing skills, new manufacturing capacities, and high technology products, ensures that U.S. economic interest will continue to grow.

However, the U.S. economic aim in this region has been the establishment and preservation of an open market and free trade. To protect and nurture this web of region economic activities requires the maintenance of international movement across the sea-lanes of communications (SLOC). Washington's primary strategic goal for the Asia Pacific region is therefore to ensure sufficient U.S. and friendly states' naval and air power is available to keep the SLOCs open and to monitor the activities of states with the potential capacity and possible motivation to disrupt the sea lanes.

In other words, the U.S. military aim has focused on the avoidance of a prolonged presence on the Asia Pacific mainland and ocean and the preservation of a balanced regional stability that is not dominated by any one nation.

Since the World War II, the main objective of America's grand strategy has been to prevent territorial expansion by the Soviet Union while avoiding a major war. Although both the ends and the means have varied over time, the central elements of this strategy -- commonly known as containment -- have been military alliances with Western Europe and Japan and the deployment of U.S. armed forces in Europe and the Asia Pacific.

The strategy, as expressed in the 1993 Bottom-Up Defense Review, can be divided into several schools of thought. The first strategy is "World Order Idealist". This strategy argues that the main threat to the U.S. arises not from other states but from collective global problems such as the threat of nuclear war, ecological decay and poverty.

The second strategy is "Neo-Isolation". This assumes that the U.S. has few security interest beyond its borders, that threats to these interests are modest, and that very limited means (a small navy, a coastal navy and a modest nuclear deterrent) are sufficient to protect them.

A third school favors disengagement from the traditional U.S. commitment to Western Europe, although most of the experts do not want to eliminate it entirely. Some favor reducing the U.S. role in Europe in order to devote greater effort to the Third World or the Pacific rim. Others favor withdrawal in order to reduce the U.S. defense budget.

The fourth strategy is "global containment", which would maintain or expand commitments. This strategy seeks to contain Russian or communist expansion on a global basis. It assumes that the emergence of pro-communist regimes anywhere in the world is a positive addition to communist power.

The last strategy is "rollback", which seeks to eliminate communist influence worldwide. Although is resembles global containment, this strategy rests on ideological preference rather than an overriding concern for military security. The objective of this strategy is not the simple containment of communist powers but their elimination. Thus, rollback also prescribes active U.S. support for anti-communist forces and pushes democracy even if U.S. security interests are not involved.

A basic consideration of the security environment in the Asia Pacific region is that it is not one dimensional. Unlike the situation in Europe -- in which the Soviet Union was the single focus of the American containment strategy -- the threat in this region has varied throughout the post-war period and numerous tensions remain that could affect regional stability. The conflict situation on the Korean peninsula and around the Spratly Islands provide examples of the multidimensional aspect of Asia Pacific stability. North Korea and China remain security concerns to many Asian nations.

There have been three U.S. containment strategies in the Asia Pacific region since World War II. The first, sustained throughout the early 1970s, based U.S. security interests on bilateral ties with non-communist allies -- Japan, South Korea, the countries belonging to SEATO and Taiwan. It was aimed against China. This strategy essentially ignored the social and economic inequalities within the allied states. Under this strategy, the U.S. fought two wars in Asia and froze its relations with China for more than twenty years.

The second containment doctrine lasted until the early 1980s. It floundered on China's fear of excessive dependence on another great power as well as the friction created in U.S. relations with Indonesia and Malaysia, two members of ASEAN which viewed China more than the USSR as the long term security threat in the region.

The third doctrine was the desire to maintain a strong U.S. military presence in the Pacific. Without it, U.S. allies in the region would not have had sufficient forces to deter Vietnam, North Korea, China or the USSR.

Challenges to U.S. interests in the region today are a matter of definition as a new security environment takes shape. As a global war fades as the rationale for an American presence in the Pacific, regional threats to international commerce, and access to natural resources and markets might take its place.

Even though there have been fundamental changes in the global security environment and in U.S.- Russian relations, the Pentagon stresses America's determination to maintain a substantial presence in the region, and reaffirmed existing U.S. defense commitments.

It firmly shifted the principle focus of the U.S. security concern from the Soviet Union to preserving a general balance in the region, reassuring friends, and deterring threats that include internal instability in countries or a military build-up in the region.

The writer is a graduate from Lancaster University, England and a lecturer at the Department of International Relations, Parahyangan Catholic University, Bandung.