Source：Global Times | 2023-05-13
The U.S. government’s frequent Asia-Pacific diplomacy has been notable of late. First, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol visited the U.S. in late April, followed by Philippine President Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos’s meeting with President Joe Biden at the White House. In May, Biden is expected to go to Japan for the G7 summit and to hold summit meetings with South Pacific islands, before moving to Australia for the QUAD summit.
This series of diplomatic moves in the Asia-Pacific region is ostensibly to strengthen alliances with South Korea, the Philippines and Japan and to enhance U.S. security and economic concerns in the South Pacific region, but the real purpose is to make the Asia-Pacific region the center of gravity of U.S. global diplomacy after the U.S. global security strategy has shifted to the Asia-Pacific region, and to suppress and contain China at both the geostrategic and geoeconomic levels. This approach of intensifying confrontation among regional countries for the sake of U.S. self-interest is putting the prosperity and development of Asia-Pacific economies at risk in a way that has not been seen since the end of the Cold War 32 years ago.
In response to the intensifying U.S. strategic crackdown on China since the Biden administration took office, countries in the East Asian region have made a policy of polarization. Among them, Japan is firmly on the side of the United States, constantly playing up the so-called “China threat”, and the U.S.-Japan alliance is moving toward strengthening the U.S.-Japan “complicity” in strategic, economic, and high-tech campification dynamics, but most Asia-Pacific countries are not automatically on board. Any move to bring a new Cold War into the industrial, supply and value chains of the Asia-Pacific region will only undermine and harm the continued prosperity of the East Asian economies, which will enter a new phase of regional economic cooperation with the entry into force of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) in January 2022. Any suppressive actions based on great power confrontation purposes catering to the U.S. technology war, trade war and market war against China will not only run counter to the spirit of RCEP development, but may also bring substantial damage to the economic growth of East Asian countries.
However, under the pressure and solicitation of the Biden administration, the “alliance politics” that exists in parallel with the Asia-Pacific economic cooperation has continued to fester. While Yoon Suk Yeol’s visit to the U.S. was theoretically to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the Korea-U.S. alliance, the Washington Declaration issued by both sides shows that South Korea is eager to upgrade U.S.-South Korea military cooperation. This will not only attract the discontent of regional countries, but also increase tensions on the Korean peninsula and trigger a new division of political and public opinion in South Korea. Yoon Suk Yeol has become the leader with the second-lowest approval rating of any previous South Korean government by the end of his first year in office. Even so, today’s South Korean government continues to reinforce its extended deterrence strategy in South Korea with the United States, trying to contain the escalation of the nuclear situation through military repression and war intimidation against the North. But the essence of this approach is not only to restore the “Southern Triangle” formed by the U.S., Japan and South Korea at the outbreak of the Korean War 73 years ago, but also to restore and upgrade the U.S. military deployment in South Korea in a Cold War manner.
The recent visit of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to South Korea has led to speculation about whether the U.S., Japan and South Korea will form a trilateral military alliance. The commonality of the domestic far-right political forces represented by each of Yoon Suk Yeol and Kishida dramatically brings the diplomatic and security positions of South Korea and Japan closer together. But the question is, is it Yoon’s “grace” to publicly emphasize during his visit to the U.S. that he wants to develop relations between the two countries beyond the history of Japan’s colonization of Korea? Or did he deliberately ignore the historical wounds between Korea and Japan for his own political interests and radical conservative ruling line? Is it really what the Biden administration wants to see in a Korea with a highly “infighting” foreign and security policy, given the polarization of South Korea’s policies toward the U.S. and Japan after one year of Yoon’s administration?
On May 1, Philippine President Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos and Biden met at the White House and issued a joint U.S.-Philippine statement. The statement reaffirmed the strengthening of the U.S.-Philippine alliance, the expansion of the U.S. military presence and bases in the Philippines, and the plan to start trilateral cooperation between the U.S., the Philippines and Japan. However, according to the time plan, on June 2, RCEP will officially enter into force for the Philippines, which also marks the full entry into force of RCEP for 15 member countries, and the world’s largest Free Trade Zone will enter a new phase of full implementation. In the current world economic situation, how to expand the scale of trade and investment among RCEP member countries, meet the needs of the expansion and upgrading of consumption in each country, consolidate and strengthen the regional industrial chain supply chain, and promote the long-term prosperous development of the global economy is obviously a more urgent task for Asia-Pacific countries.
From former President Trump to current President Biden, the U.S. has been trying to make the QUAD into an Asia-Pacific version of NATO in order to expand the U.S.-led bilateral military alliance to a multilateral military alliance. But creating camp confrontation in the Asia-Pacific, undermining regional economic openness and cooperation, and even creating a new Cold War will only weaken and damage U.S. own interests.
In November 1993, the Clinton administration hosted the first The Annual APEC Economic Leaders’ Meetings in Seattle, a summit that not only marked a turning point in China-U.S. relations toward more open, cooperative and inclusive development after the end of the Cold War, but also ushered in a new era of joint U.S.-China efforts for security, prosperity and stability in East Asia. In the 25 years from 1993 to 2018, the total economic volume of East Asia has quadrupled; East Asia has grown one of the three major centers of gravity of the world economy, alongside North America and the European Union. This year, the United States is set to host another informal meeting of APEC leaders, but the future of APEC, driven by the Biden administration’s risky policy of suppressing and containing China as a strategic goal, is a cause for concern. By prioritizing narrow camp-based security interests over open and inclusive East Asian regional interests and integration processes, the process of de-Cold War and re-regionalization of East Asia will be even more difficult. (The author is the Executive Director of the School of International Relations of Nanjing University and a Special Researcher of the Xi Jinping Research Center of Socialist Thought with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era in Jiangsu Province)