U.S. Boosts Asian Defense Ties Amid Growing Challenge From China Military
Defense Secretary Robert Gates restored ties with Indonesia’s special forces after a 12-year gap as the U.S. strengthened military cooperation across Asia and expressed concern at China’s expanding armed forces.
The U.S. will begin a “measured and gradual” relationship with the elite troops, Gates said today in Jakarta, where he met his counterpart Purnomo Yusgiantoro and President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today discussed defense cooperation with Vietnam a day after she and Gates affirmed their military support for South Korea in Seoul ahead of joint naval drills starting July 25.
“China’s assertiveness has caused anxieties in the region,” Carlyle A. Thayer, professor of politics at the Australian Defense Force Academy in Canberra, said by phone. Countries around Asia “are quite happy the U.S. is doing the heavy lifting,” he said.
Clinton may meet China’s Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi tomorrow in Hanoi, where both are attending the 27-member Asean Regional Forum, Asia’s biggest security gathering. China considers the entire South China Sea as its own, dismissing rival claims, and is building a blue-water fleet to project power beyond its own borders.
China cut off high-level military exchanges with the U.S. in January over arms sales to Taiwan and has declined to join the Obama administration in blaming North Korea for the sinking of a South Korean warship in March that killed 46 sailors.
Shrouded in Secrecy
Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, yesterday told U.S. troops in South Korea that the inability to speak directly with Chinese military leaders was a cause for concern.
“I’ve moved from being curious about what they’re doing to being concerned about what they’re doing,” Mullen said. “I see a fairly significant investment in high-end equipment, satellites, ships, anti-ship missiles, high-end aircraft.”
The U.S. regards Indonesia and Vietnam as increasingly important strategic allies in the region, the Pentagon said in a February report. Both countries border the South China Sea, which contains sea corridors vital to world trade, and where U.S. officials say China has become more assertive.
The Paracel and Spratly islands, groups of rocky outcrops with unproven oil and gas deposits that are claimed in part or in full by China, Vietnam, Taiwan, Brunei, the Philippines and Malaysia, have been at the center of tensions.
‘More Oil Than Iran’
Estimates of oil and gas reserves vary, with some Chinese studies suggesting the waters contain more oil than Iran and more natural gas than Saudi Arabia, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. China told some international oil and gas companies to halt exploration in offshore areas that Vietnam considers part of its territory, a U.S. official told Congress last year.
The South China Sea, stretching from Singapore to the Strait of Taiwan, is an “area of growing concern,” Gates said in Singapore last month. Exxon Mobil Corp. and BP Plc are among companies that have halted projects in the sea because of China’s objections, according to U.S. government agencies.
Gates and Clinton stressed how relationships with Vietnam and Indonesia were improving. The decision to restore links with Indonesian forces was possible due to Indonesia’s progress in professionalizing the military since the fall of the dictator Suharto, Gates said.
Vietnam is on the verge of becoming a “great nation” and the U.S. wants to take its relationship to a “new level,” Clinton told reporters in Hanoi. She met Vietnam’s Deputy Prime Minister Pham Gia Khiem, who said they discussed defense links and were “leaving the past behind.”
Deterrent
In contrast, Clinton said her presence with Gates in Seoul and the new sanctions they announced sought to send a clear deterrent to North Korea after the warship sinking that an international panel blamed on a torpedo from one of the North’s mini-submarines.
The USS George Washington and three destroyers called into South Korean ports the same day in a show of U.S. commitment to the region. The ships arrived ahead of planned military maneuvers off South Korea’s coast next week.
China has beefed up its military over the past decade, enhancing the capability to deter U.S. ships and enforce territorial claims off its shores. Last year, Chinese fishing boats harassed two U.S. naval vessels in the South China Sea, where American forces have patrolled since World War II.
“It is the transparency with respect to China that is probably most vexing because it’s difficult to figure out where they are headed,” Mullen said yesterday.
Asean ministers invited the U.S. and Russia to join the East Asia Summit, which includes the 10-member bloc, China, South Korea, Japan, India, Australia and New Zealand. That would provide another forum where Chinese and American presidents meet face to face.
“The U.S. is very important to the whole Asia-Pacific,” Thai Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya told reporters in Hanoi. “Their presence here with the Seventh fleet guarantees peace and security and the safety of sea lanes.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Daniel Ten Kate in Bangkok at dtenkate@bloomberg.net
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