Biden’s efforts to build alliances against China are bearing fruit
President Joe Biden has focused his foreign policy on strengthening an alliance of democracies in the Pacific to counter China’s rise. That effort is now bearing fruit.
Two U.S. allies, Australia and Japan, recently signed a defense agreement that tightly binds the nations together. The pact allows detachments of each nation’s military to freely enter the other country for joint training exercises, a measure that allows for further integration of their fighting capabilities. This is the first such treaty that Japan has signed with a nation besides the United States and shows that the mighty Asian nation is beginning to flex its considerable muscles to protect itself from Chinese aggression.
Japan is strengthening itself in other historic ways, too. The nation’s defeat in World War II shackled it with a constitution that enshrined pacifism, resulting in a self-imposed limit on the size of its military. Japan has traditionally spent no more than 1% of gross domestic product on its self-defense forces, preventing one of the world’s largest economies to project its power. But that is beginning to change.
The new conservative Japanese government recently introduced a defense budget that would hike spending to 1.09% of GDP, the first time in decades that the nation has breached its informal limit. New Prime Minister Fumio Kishida stated during this past year’s election campaign that he intended to raise military spending to 2% of GDP.
This increase allows Japan to significantly modernize and expand its military, especially its navy. Japan is beefing up its maritime capabilities across the board, but especially important is its decision to retrofit two helicopter carriers into small aircraft carriers that will carry the state-of-the-art F-35. When those ships are complete, Japan will be able to project power well south of its island bases, including contesting Chinese influence in the waters around Taiwan. They could also be used to protect Japan’s claims to the Senkaku Islands, a chain in the East China Sea that sits astride the sea lanes that Japan uses to import oil and natural gas from the Middle East.
These uninhabited islands are about 100 or so kilometers from Taiwan, and fortifying them would allow Japan to protect Taiwan, too, should China choose to retake what it regards as a rebellious province by force. The Japanese Ministry of Defense made news this past year when it made clear in a white paper that Japan considered Taiwan a strategically important country, implying that Japan could come to its defense if attacked. This declaration comes along with other statements that constitute a dramatic shift for Japanese foreign policy, moving from a position of indifference about Chinese claims to one that forcefully puts Japan on Taiwan’s side.
None of this is happening by accident. While Japan’s rearmament began years ago, its quickening pace comes alongside increased U.S. focus on containing China. The Trump administration was working along these lines, too, but its efforts were frequently complicated by the former president’s myopic focus on other issues. Too often, he threw obstacles in front of efforts to build a strong alliance to contain China, such as his demand that South Korea quintuple its annual payment for U.S. bases. Biden quickly put an end to that dispute, agreeing to a five-year deal in early March that fixed South Korean payments at dramatically lower levels than Donald Trump sought.
The Biden administration also sought increased ties with other nations in the region. Vice President Harris visited Vietnam this past summer in an effort to push the former U.S. enemy toward open cooperation. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin visited the Philippines this past year, too, and that country’s mercurial leader, Rodrigo Duterte, subsequently authorized more extensive ties with the U.S. military. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s December trip to Southeast Asia continued the U.S. diplomatic offensive in this region. His speech in Indonesia took direct aim at China, calling on the communist nation to stop its “aggressive actions.” Indonesia, the world’s fourth-most populous country, is yet another place where China and the United States are engaged in a behind-the-scenes battle for influence.
The year 2021 was not kind to Biden, as he too often proved to be either wrong or incompetent, from the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal to his failure in passing his domestic agenda. His policy toward China, however, appears refreshingly coherent and competent. Confronting China’s rise is the biggest policy challenge for the United States. If Biden proves up to the task, both parties should be thankful.
––Henry Olsen is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.