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Asia security needs cooperation not competition
The Jakarta Post , Jakarta | Fri, 09/14/2007 2:36 PM | Opinion
Michael Richardson, Singapore
Are the warships from the United States, India, Japan, Australia and Singapore that are exercising together recently off the east coast of India harbingers of a new military alliance in Asia to contain China? Beijing may suspect they are, despite assurances from participants that the aim is sealane security not alliance building.
Led by the U.S. and India, the countries taking part in the training have assembled an impressive array of naval power: over two dozen ships, including three aircraft carriers. By the time the multinational flotilla disperses next weekend, it will have practiced maritime interdiction, taking control of suspect vessels at sea, and air combat exercises as well as surface and anti-submarine warfare.
The maneuvers, which begin/began on last week are an extension of long-running bilateral naval exercises between India and the U.S., known as the Malabar series. They have been expanded for the first time to include Australia, Japan and Singapore. While the U.S. will contribute 13 warships and India seven, Australia will be represented by a frigate and a tanker, Japan by two destroyers and Singapore by a frigate. It is also the first time that the drill will be held off India's eastern seaboard.
The operational zone for the training stretches from the Indian mainland to India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands guarding the western approaches to the Malacca and Singapore straits, one of the world's busiest waterways and a vital artery for many Asian nations. Some 60 percent of China's foreign trade and 75 percent of its oil imports pass through these straits.
The formation of a ""quadrilateral dialogue"" between the U.S., Japan, Australia and India is being pushed by Tokyo and Washington on the basis that the four share common values of freedom and democracy, and should cooperate in the region to advance other shared interests. Australia and Japan are allies of the U.S. Last March, Canberra and Tokyo signed a Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation. Their foreign ministers hold a regular trilateral strategic dialogue with the U.S. to coordinate approaches to regional security and stability.
When the U.S. and Japanese foreign and defense ministers met in Washington in early May, they made a direct reference for the first time to the importance of engaging India. The statement said it was their ""common strategic objective"" to continue to ""build upon partnerships with India to advance areas of common interests and increase cooperation, recognizing that India's continued growth is inextricably tied to the prosperity, freedom, and security of the region.""
For Japan, India is a key part of the ""Arc of Prosperity and Freedom"" that the Abe government is trying to build around the outer rim of the Eurasian continent skirting the borders of China and Russia. The ""Arc"" partnership appears to exclude Beijing and Moscow.
When senior officials of the U.S., Japan, India and Australia arranged an inaugural meeting on the sidelines of a meeting in Manila in May of the ASEAN Regional Forum on security to discuss how to take the four power relationship forward, China pointedly sent diplomatic notes to each of them requesting an explanation.
Since then, Beijing has indicated that if the Quad is formed, it will be divisive, destabilizing and risk plunging Asia into another Cold War. Partly for this reason, Australia and India are wary of giving the group a strategic shape. As if to emphasize that China was not being isolated, Canberra announced in July that Australia, China and New Zealand would hold their first-ever tri-nation naval exercise later this month near Australia. China may hope that elections and political change in Quad countries over the next few years will bring different parties to the fore that will veto moves to form the four-nation association.
Yet the Quad -- if it were to emerge in future as a security partnership -- could well develop as a counterpart to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The SCO has been stitched together by China and Russia, along with four Central Asian states. They say it is not aimed at third countries or groups but is intended to maintain security and stability in the region while building cooperation among its members.
However, the Quad alongside the SCO would look suspiciously like an Asian version of NATO confronting a Warsaw Pact-style bloc in the region, with non-members coming under pressure to take sides. Or would it? It is too early to tell. China and Russia may want to draw India, a founding member of the non-aligned movement, into the SCO as a full member.
It is already an observer. The other four participants in last week's naval exercises in the Bay of Bengal -- the U.S., Japan, Australia and Singapore -- all have strong economic and other ties to China and do not want to disrupt them.
In the longer term, if the Quad takes shape the trick may be for it and the SCO to act transparently, while developing mutual linkages and confidence, so that cooperative security replaces competitive security in Asia.
The writer, a former Asia editor of the International Herald Tribune, is a security specialist at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore.
