ST Deep Dive: Indo-Pacific grand strategy, P-8 incident rattles Australia
Here's a round-up of recent commentaries and more by think-tanks in the region and elsewhere that could be of interest to those who watch Asia.
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Indo-Pacific – IPEF
On May 23, United States President Joe Biden unveiled the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) in Japan.
Australia, Brunei, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam signed onto the launch.
Unsurprisingly, Washington has no plan to discuss market access under the four-pillared IPEF. As a result, its launch does not eliminate the criticism regarding the Biden administration’s trade policy stance exemplified by its maintenance of the Trump-era tariffs and hesitancy to ink new free trade agreements with other countries.
It should be noted that the 12 participants signed up merely to attending the consultations where they will discuss the scope of the negotiation. Without the US market access being used as an incentive, Washington will likely face difficulty advancing the IPEF substantively, says Assistant Professor Kaewkamol Pitakdumrongkit, head of the Centre for Multilateralism Studies, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.
In the coming months, the IPEF signatories will announce the pillars they intend to participate in and to negotiate. After the talks commence, a clearer picture will emerge and there should be a better appreciation on what is possible coming out of each of the four pillars.
Indo-Pacific – India
The idea of shared maritime domain awareness among like-minded countries and partners has emerged as a major focus in the Indo-Pacific engagement of all the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) partners.
Hence, one of the substantive new initiatives to emerge from the Quad summit in Tokyo in April 2022 was the plan to build an Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness (IPMDA).
The objective is to develop and disseminate real-time information on activity, especially dark shipping in the Indian Ocean, South-east Asia and the Pacific Islands, that will help the littoral states gain greater control over their waters.
Professor C. Raja Mohan, visiting research professor at the Institute of South Asian Studies, argues here that the Donald Trump administration had sought to develop the Quad as an explicit military coalition against China.
But India resisted that proposal and insisted on keeping the Quad a non-military formation. The Biden administration readily accepted the Indian argument and sought to widen the broader public goods agenda of the Quad.
"Non-military" does not mean "non-strategic", though, he notes.
In fact, the focus on dark-shipping will inevitably make China an important focus of the IPMDA.
According to American officials cited by Western media, China is said to account for nearly 95 per cent of illegal fishing in the Indo-Pacific that has caused havoc across the region. It was no surprise that Chinese media reacted sharply against the IPMDA.
This Indian effort will contribute significantly to the development of the Quad initiative on maritime domain awareness.
The IPMDA, in turn, will strengthen India’s technical and institutional capabilities to shape the regional environment in association with the Quad.
The P-8 intercept – an Australian view
Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles revealed that a “very dangerous” intercept by a People’s Liberation Army Air Force’s fighter of an Australian P-8 maritime patrol aircraft took place on 26 May over the South China Sea.
The P-8 aircraft was flying in international airspace at the time, well outside territorial waters.
Australia’s 2020 Defence Strategic Update earlier fretted about China’s grey zone activities. This intercept suggests the Chinese Communist Party is now escalating these, with a possibility of another collision as occurred in 2001 with a US Navy aircraft, says Dr Peter Layton, visiting fellow at Griffith Asia Institute, in The Lowy Interpreter.
China is now “pushing the envelope” in keeping with being a part of a long-term plan.
Dr Layton suggests that other aggressive actions may now be undertaken. They could include regularly crowding disputed areas of the South China Sea with massed naval forces, declaring Air Defence Identification Zones across specific grey zone areas, radar targeting other nation’s naval warships and military aircraft, and periodically electronically jamming civil and military radars.
Ukraine and Asian food security
Russia and Ukraine account for 25 per cent to 30 per cent of the world’s wheat exports, 15 per cent of corn exports and 2.1 per cent of soybean exports.
For this reason, the impact of the Russia-Ukraine war on the global food situation continues to reverberate around the world, including in Asia.
The worst is yet to come as exports of vital livestock feed from Russia and Ukraine are severely affected, causing spikes in retail meat prices, from pork to chicken and fish. Can Asia cope?
Dr Paul Teng, adjunct senior fellow at the Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS Centre), S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, and Ms Genevieve Donnellon-May, a master’s student in Water Science, Policy and Management at Oxford University, say that prolonging the Russia-Ukraine crisis will inevitably destabilise production and cause ripple effects throughout the Asian region.
For the longer term, Asia needs to redress the large yield gaps in its production of wheat, corn and soybean to ensure that its reliance on imports is lessened.
This will require renewed efforts at improving crop yields using modern breeding technologies (like gene editing), improved water and fertiliser supplies, and improving farmer management skills.
Meanwhile the Thai government is seeking to profit from the 45 per cent increase in the cost of rice, says former Australian diplomat and long-time Thailand watcher Craig Keating in this commentary for The Lowy Interpreter.
On May 27, a government spokesman said Bangkok was talking to Vietnam to “raise rice prices… and increase bargaining power in the global market”, in other words, create a cartel.
Thailand and Vietnam are, respectively, the world’s second and third biggest rice exporters after India.
It could not have come at a worse time for the world’s poor, adds Ambassador Keating.
The more things change...
Of all departing Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s foreign policy "adventures", his apparent pivot to China is considered the major change in the country’s international position.
The populist President expressed confidence and trust in China despite lingering maritime and territorial disputes in the South China Sea and his country’s victory in the Permanent Court of Arbitration against China
Yet, after almost six years of propping China to his domestic audience, Mr Duterte was unable to convince the Filipino public to trust China.
In a July 2020 survey, Filipinos’ trust towards China was at its lowest since 2016, the year that Mr Duterte became president. China’s net trust of minus 37 points is far from how the public positively views the US at 42 net trust rating.
Foreign policy positions of presidential candidates were not a major determinant of how the Filipinos voted in the 2022 presidential elections, says Professor Aries A. Arugay, visiting fellow at the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute where he manages its Philippine Studies Project.
The landslide victory of Mr Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and Ms Sara Duterte as president and vice-president respectively, however, opens questions about the future of Philippine foreign policy under their government.
As the new chief architect of foreign policy, Mr Marcos Jr. will now have to decide on whether to continue the path of Mr Duterte or recalibrate the country’s foreign relations back to its more traditional and predictable mode.
If recent history is a reliable indicator, all previous Philippine presidents except Mr Duterte initially attempted to strike a balance in its foreign policy towards the US and China, he notes.
