U.S. engages in 'admiral diplomacy'

U.S. engages in 'admiral diplomacy'

Is Washington trying to make up for its lack of political attention towards Southeast Asia by sending admirals to do its work? Derek da Cunha examines the issue.

In recent months, increasing doubts have been cast about the credibility of the United States security commitment to the Asia- Pacific region in general, and Southeast Asia in particular. Those doubts, raised in significant part by Asian analysts, have somewhat rattled the Americans.

This is because, in the realm of defense and security, the U.S. has, for the better part of 20 years, been given due deference and respect by its Asian friends and allies. During that period, U.S. policies and strategic initiatives went largely unchallenged by those who were tied to or benefited from Washington's regional military presence.

Now, however, some of America's Asian friends and allies are unveiling apparent flaws in U.S. security strategy in the Asia- Pacific like the fact that the U.S. forward-deployed presence, concentrated in Northeast Asia, is weighted towards ground forces which have little relevance to Southeast Asian security, that the U.S. has cutback its surveillance of the South China Sea, and that senior U.S. officials have sent out wrong signals whose effect has merely been to encourage Chinese regional assertiveness, and so on and so forth. U.S. officials are not used to this pointed criticism by Asian friends, and have reacted rather defensively.

The Asian criticism and the attendant American defensiveness is illustrative of two phenomena. First, there is now a small but growing core of Asian defense analysts well-versed in various aspects of military strategy, from rudimentary policy planning, to rigorous hardware analysis, to the operating doctrines of specific armed forces. These analysts have demonstrated that they are not credulous in their approach to official U.S. statements. Rather, they do their own analysis and come up with their own conclusions.

The second of the two phenomena has to do with the fact that the Americans have been slow on the uptake. The advent of straight-talking Asian defense analysts picking holes in U.S. security policy have caught the Americans by surprise, and they have failed to reconcile themselves to this new feature in the Asian strategic landscape.

American surprise at the new ground rules of the regional security discourse, is only surpassed by its surprise at Chinese strategic moves in the region. The U.S. was caught out in two ways by China's move onto Mischief Reef in the South China Sea. One, by not knowing about the move until the Philippines had found out about it through one of its fishermen. And two, by the fact that a U.S. Defense Department official made the blunder of confirming that the U.S. had indeed been caught unawares, thereby hanging out to dry the unpalatable truth -- the low priority accorded to Southeast Asia in the hierarchy of U.S. global security interests.

Faced with perturbed friends and allies in the region, Washington embarked on a damage-limitation exercise. This was done through what this writer calls "admiral diplomacy". Within the space of about four weeks, from late February to late March, three four-star admirals coasted through the region, ostensibly on familiarization visits, but really in an attempt to provide some reassurance to the locals.

The visits were kicked off by the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, Admiral Ronald Zlatoper. In Singapore, on Feb. 23, Adm. Zlatoper rebutted criticism that the U.S. was not committed to a strong presence in the Asia-Pacific. To support his rebuttal, he asserted that there were now more U.S. Pacific Fleet ships forward-deployed in the region than five years ago.

Two weeks later, Admiral Richard Macke, the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, made a swing through Southeast Asia. In Indonesia, Adm. Macke seemed to contradict his Pacific Fleet chief when, in response to a question from the Far East Economic Review, he said: "Any reduction we have in this region has nothing to do with the Philippines. Any reduction in activity has to do with a reduction in overall force levels and with commitments in other places." The Admiral's comment went up like a lead balloon.

That the two most senior U.S. military officers responsible for the Asia-Pacific region could not get their stories straight only added to the general regional perception of American disarray in, and policy drift towards, the Asia-Pacific.

To cap a less than successful spurt of U.S. "admiral diplomacy", the Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral William Owens visited ASEAN capitals in the second half of March. He was to drop a bit of a bombshell.

On that trip, Adm. Owens said, among other things, that the U.S. no longer wanted to be treated as a superpower but, instead, as a "Super Partner" in the region. He did not quite elaborate on what he meant by the new label. But the connotation, of a switch from super power to Super Partner status, tended to indicate the prospect of reduced U.S. regional responsibilities.

Therefore, by the end of March, the damage-limitation exercise, pursued under the ambit of "admiral diplomacy", turned out to have the opposite effect.

But beyond the verbal slip-ups, America's four-star admirals just could not make up for one important fact - Washington's apparent political inattention towards Southeast Asia. And this is something which the Americans continue to display a lack of interest in redressing.

Dr. Derek da Cunha is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies and is Editor of Trends.