. There are doubts over long-term US foreign policy direction and what Washington could offer economically against China’s trade and investment inducements
. An Asian Nato is becoming more likely, but the future of the Asian order is still up for grabs
“The more things change, the more they remain the same,” French writer Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr once observed. In many ways, a similar dynamic governs US policy in Asia, especially on China.
Despite the rhetoric of change and avowed rejection of Trumpian populism, the Biden administration is largely building on its predecessor’s superpower rivalry with China.
If anything, the fresh commitment to multilateralism and alliance-driven foreign policy could accelerate the crystallisation of a de facto Asian Nato with profound implications for 21st-century geopolitics.
It is within the context of what US President Joe Biden calls “extreme competition”with China that one should understand the first-ever formal Quad summit, which brought together the leaders of Japan, Australia, India and the US in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue.
Biden aims to create a robust coalition of deterrence to constrain China’s ambitions in the Indo-Pacific and beyond. But despite shared anxieties over China’s rise, the success of this burgeoning Asian Nato is far from assured.
Over the past two decades, the Quad has transformed from an ad hoc response to the 2004 Asian tsunami to an increasingly institutionalised alliance resembling former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe’s vision of a “democratic security diamond ”.
After informal meetings in the mid-2000s, the Quad was seemingly relegated to the dustbin of history as Australia and India courted economic relations with a rising China. But it revived under the Trump administration as Washington scrambled to enlist like-minded powers in its cold war with Beijing.
The rise of hawkish leadership in Japan (Abe), Australia (Scott Morrison) and, above all, India (Narendra Modi) paved the way for accelerated Quad defence and security cooperation.
From 2017-2020, high-level meetings took place: informally between heads of state on the sidelines of the Asean summit in Manila, and between foreign ministers in Tokyo at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Soon, joint naval drills and tighter military cooperation followed.
But the Trump administration’s Quad strategy of promoting a free and open Indo-Pacific suffered from fatal flaws: Donald Trump proved too economically protectionist, strategically incoherent and diplomatically toxic.
Viewing China as an indispensable stakeholder in regional affairs, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, for instance, politely rejected the Quad by adopting its own Asean Outlook on the Indo-Pacific in 2019.
This is where Biden comes into the picture, adopting Trumpian strategy against China but with Democratic finesse.
Officially, the inaugural Quad summit and, a few weeks earlier, the Quad foreign ministers’ meeting hardly mentioned China in their joint statements. In all ways, however, the Asian powerhouse is the definitive driver of the undeclared alliance.
There are also growing indications that the Quad could soon expand into a transcontinental coalition with Britain, France and Germany, all of which have rapidly expanded their strategic footprint in Asia.
What sets Biden’s approach apart is the confluence of three factors. First, Biden’s leadership recognises the country’s vulnerable position, namely its decline after decades of unwinnable wars, toxic partisan politics and successive financial shocks.
The Covid-19 pandemic has accentuated these vulnerabilities, paving the way for a post-American global order : China is set to become the world’s largest economy before the end of the decade.
Thus, the Biden administration’s almost desperate need for strong alliances to share the costs of preserving the US-built liberal international order.
The second factor is the dramatic uptick in anti-China sentiment not only in the US but also in other major Western capitals, driven by long-simmering geopolitical anxieties and pandemic-era animosities against Beijing.
According to the latest Pew Research Centre survey
, nine out of 10 Americans see China as a rival, rather than a partner, hence the bipartisan consensus
on a tougher policy against Beijing. Rising territorial and geopolitical tensions with China have also made the public and the political leadership in India and Australia more hawkish.
Even the notoriously diplomatese European Union now describes China, its largest trading partner, as a “systemic rival ”, as Britain, France and Germany augment their naval and strategic initiatives in Asia.
Third, there is a strong ideological tinge in the Biden administration’s China policy, harking back to the heady days of the Reagan administration’s intensified Cold War with the Soviet Union.
In stark contrast to Obama and Trump’s administrations, Biden has publicly taken up the cudgel for global democracy.
As the new US president put it : “We must speak up for human rights. It’s who we are”, underscoring his commitment to “reassert our role as spokespersons for human rights at the UN and other agencies that have an impact on [China’s] attitude”.
At the heart of Biden’s Quad strategy is the undeclared assumption that like-minded powers should strike at China before it is too powerful to contain. After all, Trump-era sanctions revealed Chinese vulnerabilities, for instance, in cutting-edge technology.
An Asian Nato is becoming more likely than ever, but the future of the Asian order is still up for grabs. To begin with, there are lingering doubts as to the trajectory of American foreign policy, especially if Biden ends up as a single-term president and Washington reverts to Trumpian unilateralism.
Moreover, it is far from clear if the US is in a position to provide any significant economic initiative, beyond temporary pandemic-related help for Asean, and expanded naval deployments in Asian waters – thanks to a deepening protectionist mood at home.
There is also China’s ability to entice US allies with massive trade and investment initiatives, especially amid the post-pandemic economic fallout. This is why, at least for now, the Quad’s ultimate utility is in strengthening the US’ position ahead of direct negotiations with China.
Why Joe Biden’s Quad summit is unlikely to find consensus on containing China
Domestic sociopolitical imperatives and pandemic recovery will blunt Quad members’ larger strategic choices in relation to dealing with the China challenge
Engagement with China in certain domains, while offering resistance in others, requires a policy suppleness that might prove elusive
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| Illustration: Craig Stephens |
The first virtual summit of the Quad nations will take place on March 12, bringing together the leaders of four democracies: the United States, Japan, India and Australia.
This will also be the first summit meeting for US President Joe Biden, who is less than two months into his term, and indicative of the importance being accorded to the Indo-Pacific by the new White House inhabitant.
Biden will engage with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison. It is instructive, given the complex geopolitics of the region, that the Quad summit follows China’s annual “two sessions”
parliamentary meetings, which began in Beijing on March 4 and ended on March 11.
In the run-up to the meetings, President Xi Jinping asserted that “the biggest source of chaos in the present-day world is the United States” and added that the US “is the biggest threat to our country’s development and security”.
