Blinken vows more military might in the Pacific
JAKARTA, Indonesia — The United States will expand its military and economic relationships with partners in Asia to push back against China’s increasing assertiveness in the Indo-pacific, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday.
Blinken said the Biden administration is committed to maintaining peace and prosperity in the region and will do that by boosting U.S. alliances, forging new relationships and ensuring that the U.S. military maintains “its competitive edge.”
“Threats are evolving, our security approach has to evolve with them. To do that, we will lean on our greatest strength: our alliances and partnerships,” Blinken said in a speech in Indonesia.
“We’ll adopt a strategy that more closely weaves together all our instruments of national power — diplomacy, military, intelligence — with those of our allies and partners,” he said. That will include linking U.S. and Asian defense industries, integrating supply chains and cooperating on technological innovation, he said.
Blinken insisted that the U.S. is not trying to force countries to choose between the United States and China, or seeking conflict with China. But he laid out a litany of complaints about “Beijing’s aggressive actions” from “Northeast Asia to Southeast Asia and from the Mekong River to the Pacific Islands.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said Blinken’s comments showed the U.S. was contradicting itself by “playing up the so-called China threat on the one hand while claiming that it has no intention to seek conflict with China on the other.” Wang criticized the U.S. for “frequently sending ships and aircraft to the the area to flex muscles and stir up trouble.”
Blinken is in Indonesia on the first leg of a weeklong, three-nation tour of Southeast Asia that will also take him to Malaysia and Thailand. Countering China’s growing aggressiveness in the region is prominent on his agenda.
“Countries across the region want this behavior to change,” he said. “We do too.”
Blinken said the U.S. “will forge stronger connections” with its five treaty allies in the region — Australia, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea and Thailand — boost ties between them and cultivate a stronger partnership with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, many of whose members feel threatened by China.