282 - Dueling with China to Secure Southeast Asia
As the wars grind on in Ukraine and Gaza, much-traveled Secretary of State Antony Blinken must also worry about the stability and maturing development of several of our sometime allies in ASEAN – the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The threat of an overweening and assertive China compromises and threatens the region; its objectives are many, but China certainly seeks to impress upon its neighbors and trading partners that Beijing feels excessively hegemonic about its backyard. It wants this bundle of nearby small and larger nations to heed President Xi Jinping’s wishes, and to identify themselves narrowly with the “core” interests of China. The U.S., accordingly, is playing catchup.
ASEAN comprises ten countries and 647 million people spread over the vast Indonesian and Filipino archipelagos, mainland Malaysia and Vietnam, and on to Myanmar. That is, ASEAN spreads from deep in the Pacific Ocean to the easternmost shores of the Andaman Sea. It includes conformist and competitive democracies, Marxist autocracies, dictatorships, monarchies, city-states, and sprawling difficult-to-govern combinations of cultures. Corruption is rife.
ASEAN is Muslim, Christian, and traditional in its animated religious professions. War tears apart Myanmar. China bullies the Philippines. China and the West want Indonesia’s nickel and buy palm oil from several sectors of the region. ASEAN is the U.S.’ fourth largest trading partner – a $3 trillion market. Two-thirds of that total trade is imports, predominantly of electronic and nuclear equipment and machinery, apparel, and minerals.
Strategically, ASEAN is also of enormous concern to Washington. President Biden’s administration wants to ensure peace and prosperity in the region. But it also wants to reduce China’s influence and to prevent China from imposing its dominance over countries that produce so many essential technological exports to the U.S. and also could assist in any defense of Taiwan.
The official State Department pronouncement about Blinken’s weekend visit to an ASEAN conclave in Laos said that the American government had stressed its “shared vision of an Indo-Pacific that is free, open, connected, prosperous, secure, and resilient.” In other words, Washington and Blinken continued to object strongly to China’s aggressive territorial claims to every square kilometer of the South China and East China Seas. They particularly oppose attacks on Filipino and Vietnamese islands and sand strips across those maritime reaches.
The Hague based Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled in 2016 that China has no sovereignty over those seas and that its reclamation and other activities there were unlawful. Yet China, ignoring the Permanent Court, systematically harasses Filipino fishing and naval vessels close to the official borders of the Philippines, and also tries to assert itself on and near Japanese-controlled and Vietnamese offshore islands. The U.S. flies over such international waters to maintain free passage rights, as it does in the Taiwanese Straits.
Although just last week the Philippines and China struck some kind of agreement that may lower tensions on the eastern edge of the South China Sea, especially at the Second Thomas Shoal where Philippine marines are trying to secure the Shoal against China, U.S. backing for the Philippines may still lead to flag waving and more. Mishaps could easily engage the U.S. navy.
Blinken went to Laos last weekend at the start of a rapid six-nation tour to re-establish Washington’s friendship and interest, to reassure several of ASEAN’s key members; to gather intelligence about Chinese political and military initiatives in Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar, and Vietnam; and to tell China through side meetings with its foreign minister that the U.S. wants Beijing to throttle back its support for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Much of Russia’s import of sanctioned computer chips and other critical war materiel items is smuggled to Moscow via Beijing and Hong Kong – a huge hole in the sanctions web. President Biden and his aides have recently accused China of helping Russia rebuild its defense industrial sector, mainly through the export to Russia by Chinese companies of machine tools and microelectronics that have helped the Russian army persist in its war in Ukraine.
In addition to worrying about China’s rebuilding of Russia’s defense industrial capability, its air sorties near Taiwan, and its naval blockades of Filipino offshore outposts, Blinken and the Pentagon have to be concerned about the naval bases and ports that China is building in Cambodia and Myanmar. The latter endeavor will enable China to import oil via the Indian Ocean, considerably shortening sailing times from the Middle East and avoiding the bothersome strategic shipping choke point between Malaysia and Sumatra. The former, on the Gulf of Thailand, leading to the South China Sea, gives China another outpost from which to project its power and influence into the heart of the ASEAN region.
Cambodia, a family dictatorship controlled still by President Hun Sen, whose son now holds the official title, is a problem in its own right; increasingly it has fallen fully into China’s pocket. Where once Cambodia tried to assert its independence, now it exclusively hums China’s tune.
Another critical problem for Washington and all of ASEAN is Myanmar. Ever since a military junta reasserted itself and removed a democratically elected government under Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021, the country has been engulfed in civil war. The once formidable Myanmar army, called the Tatmadaw, is in the throes of steady losses to a collection of ethnic and hastily raised civilian soldieries. The Tatmadaw’s latest defeat occurred last week, when the Mandalay National Democratic Alliance Army and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army surrounded Lashio, headquarters of the Tatmadaw’s northeastern military command. Lashio nestles up against the borders of China, Laos, and Thailand in northern Shan State, one of Myanmar’s most powerful ethnic enclaves.
Since early July, the Mandalay Alliance and its ethnic allies have seized five military battalion headquarters and other bases in northern Myanmar. Earlier, the Karen National Army had captured an army outpost on the Thai border, but the Tatmadaw retaliated.
Within the last twelve months, the freedom fighters of Myanmar have made startling gains in their battle to reverse the 2021 coup and restore democracy to Myanmar. The armies of the major ethnic states — Chin, Kachin, Kayah, Karen, Mon, Rakhine, Shan, and Wa -- have joined forces for the first time in Myanmar with students and professionals turned combatants. Together they threaten the 62-year grip of the Myanmar junta. The new militants are mostly Bamar, representatives of the nation’s historic majority Burmese-speaking Buddhist population, now allied with Christian and Muslim historic antagonists of the rulers of central Myanmar.
Total victory and a reversal of the 2021 coup is not immediately at hand, but the ethnic-civilian partnership has made reclaiming freedom in Myanmar much more likely, especially if Blinken and others can persuade the Chinese to withdraw their military and financial backing of the junta. China has several initiatives at play in the region, however, and influence over Myanmar now and forever is a consideration.
Myanmar is but one part of Southeast Asia where Washington seeks to counter China and extend our own hard and soft power. What the U. S. needs to accomplish such a goal are beefed up embassies, more high-level visits, close attention from the Pentagon and USAID, and renewed cooperation with Australia. Washington has fallen behind China in competition for influence but must now catch up as best it can.