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.