The Asia Pacific Cauldron

At the annual meeting of China’s Parliament and its top political advisory body in March, Xi Jinping said he is preparing for war in one of his speeches and told his generals to “dare to fight.” His government also announced a 7.2 percent increase in China’s defense budget, which has doubled over the last decade, as well as plans to make the country less dependent on foreign grain imports.

In recent months, Beijing has unveiled new military readiness laws, new air-raid shelters in cities across the strait from Taiwan, and new “National Defence Mobilisation” offices countrywide.

Asia and the Pacific are steering into an anxious, well-armed moment with echoes of old conflicts and immediate risks. China’s military build-up and territorial threats — along with Russia -Ukraine War has heightened the anxiety. Nations across the region are bolstering defence budgets, joint training, weapons manufacturing and combat-ready infrastructure.

For the last few decades, Asia’s rise made it an economic engine for the world, tying China, India and other regional manufacturing hubs to other continents and between them. The focus was trade. Now, with the ongoing war, the sudden USA’s exit from Afghanistan and Taliban in control of Afghanistan with cascading impact on the neighbouring region and with China and the United States locked in a volatile strategic contest, fear is setting in with diplomatic relations between some at their worst in decades.

Russia’s Ukraine war, waning EU influence and doubts about U.S. resolve in the region and alarmed by China’s military build-up, countries across the region are bolstering their defence budgets. In response, many of the countries, while continuing to pursue diplomacy and soft power are turning to hard power, accelerating the most significant arms race in Asia since World War II.

In the past month, North Korea launched cruise missiles from a submarine for the first time and Australia unveiled a $200 billion plan to build nuclear-propelled submarines. Japan, after decades of pacifism, is gaining new offensive capabilities with U.S. Tomahawk missiles. American officials are trying to amass a giant weapons stockpile in Taiwan. And India has conducted joint training exercises with Japan and Vietnam.

India and Japan have signed several agreements that typify the region’s interlocking defence plans. Both countries are also expanding cooperation with other countries and the U.S., which is focusing on coordinated regional interdependence, while ensuring they are not too dependent on Washington.

In flashpoint after flashpoint over the past year, China’s military has also engaged in provocative, aggressive and dangerous behaviour: sending soldiers with spiked batons to dislodge an Indian Army outpost in December in Arunachal Pradesh, escalating situation over the 2,100-mile border between the two countries, despite the simmering tensions since the Galwan crisis of May 2020 in Ladakh Region.

The heightened build up by China along the Indo-China border and construction of habitations in the disputed territory has only brought the two neighbours to a confrontationist approach, rather than a reconciliatory one.

In other parts, deploying a record number of military aircraft to threaten Taiwan, and firing missiles into the waters of Japan’s exclusive economic zone for the first-time last August; and last month, temporarily blinding the crew of a Filipino patrol boat with a laser and other actions as part of its aggressive push to claim authority in the South China Sea has pushed these countries to look for hard military solutions.

Asia’s security calculations ultimately point to an unsettled and ill-tempered global order, shaped by multiple factors some of these of recent occurrence; the Russia-Ukraine war, one-man rule in a more militarised China with slowing economic growth, polarised politics being played by America, the aggression from North Korea, and justified demands for greater influence from the developing giant India.

“The balance of power is shifting so rapidly, and it’s not just China,” said Shivashankar Menon, India’s national security adviser from 2010 to 2014. “There will be higher risks,” he added, “in a time of change”.

Beyond raw capacity, Xi’s willingness to brandish the People’s Liberation Army on disputed borderlands from northern India to the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea has magnified anxieties, as has China’s new Naval Base in Cambodia and a recent security agreement with the Solomon Island.

India and Japan were among the first to sound the alarm. In 2006, they started sharing security assessments over concerns about China’s efforts to expand airstrips and ports across South and East Asia, an effort that would later include building military bases on islands and reefs that other nations claim as their own.

India and Japan have since signed several agreements that typify the region’s interlocking defence plans. One deal granted access to each other’s bases for supplies and services; another eased regulations to encourage cooperation in military manufacturing. So far this year, the two countries have conducted naval training together and their first-ever joint fighter exercise.

Both countries are also expanding cooperation with the United States, and Australia, QUAD being one, while ensuring they are not too dependent. As quoted by ‘The New York Times’, Shiv Shankar Menon, a former Indian diplomat, called it a natural “balancing reaction” — signalling resistance to China, stopping short of collective defence.

To counter the threat from many missiles from North Korea and China which can hit United States’ bases, while the U.S. is hunting for more real estate and bases in the Asia-Asia Pacific. Many countries also worry that working with the U.S. could make them targets of Chinese military or economic punishment. Hence, in exchange they are requesting more arms, defence trade and training from Washington — demands that the U.S. has failed to address.

Consequently, Japan is moving faster to fill gaps and pull allies along. Japan is now the largest bilateral donor of aid in Asia. More significantly, the country’s government is pushing to reinterpret the Constitution it adopted in 1947. Japan, who embraced pacifism after losing World War II, but now, like Germany, the country is rearming. Japan recently agreed to raise military spending to 2 percent of GDP, or by 60 percent, over the next five years, which would give it the third-largest defence budget in the world.

Japan’s assertiveness has already stirred up old animosities. China, North Korea and Russia have criticised its increased military spending. South Korea, which endured brutal Japanese colonisation from 1910 to 1945, has its own concerns, with some analysts in Seoul warning against allowing Japan to set the regional agenda even as the two countries’ leaders have been seeking to repair relations.

Further south, Australia’s AUKUS deal with the United States and Britain to acquire nuclear-powered submarines has also angered Indonesia, which has concerns about proliferation, and has increased the closeness of its military ties to China.

China’s increased territorial threats are a major factor in its neighbours’ turn toward military power. President Xi Jinping has made it clear that China wants to control access to the South China Sea and bring Taiwan under Beijing’s control. He aims to achieve a “national rejuvenation” that would include displacing the United States as the dominant rule-setter in the region, controlling access to the South China Sea, and bringing Taiwan — that China sees as lost territory.

Such rhetoric, the Russia-Ukraine war, and what started as a grand strategy during the presidency of Obama as “Pivot to Asia”, now seen as an unfinished legacy and rather as a becoming an endearing perception of the US as a missing power does not behove well for peaceful development in Asia.

Lt General JK Sharma (AVSM) PhD (Retired) is Chief Defence Advisor Govt of Uttar Pradesh and Chair of Excellence DRDO. Views expressed are the writer’s own.