FOR the United States, competing with China must now be our national priority, as indicated in multiple US high-level documents. But the US is not competing for its own sake.
Rather, the US is seeking to achieve specific goals that are of the utmost importance for Southeast Asia.
The US has a deep and abiding interest in the region’s fate. This is because the Indo-Pacific is more and more the world’s most important region, primarily because of the size and dynamism of its economy.
Any state that can set the terms of trade and write the rules of the road for the Indo-Pacific will do so for the world.
It is increasingly evident in Washington that China seeks to do just this by establishing its hegemony over the Indo-Pacific.
So empowered, Beijing would be able to shape trade and regional order to favour its prosperity, security, and political interests.
China does not seek to conquer territory for its own sake; rather, it seeks to have important decisions in the region be routed through Beijing.
This may be natural, as some argue, but it is also unacceptable for those who wish to preserve their freedom and autonomy.
It is sometimes put in general terms that China simply wants “a seat at the table” or to “have a share in writing the rules”.
But let us be concrete. Observe how China has used canola with Canada, bananas with the Philippines, tourism with South Korea, and rare earth metals with Japan to consider how a China that becomes the strongest in the region will treat subordinate countries, including in Southeast Asia.
In recent years, China has disregarded intellectual property protections, imposed unfair joint venture requirements, and held investment decisions over weaker countries’ heads.
Now consider how a stronger China will behave in the future if unchecked.
In practice, such a China would privilege its own prosperity and strength over others and would ensure that important decisions are made in Beijing, not locally.
This is of such gravity to the US because a China that dominated Asia could do the same to America, given the scale of the Indo-Pacific economy.
This is important because the US is the only state in the world that can plausibly match China in total power.
Yet already, some key Asian states are making clear that they do not want China to dominate Asia.
In particular, Japan and India are powerful states that have pushed back on Chinese assertiveness — in the case of Japan, especially over the Senkakus, and in India, over Doklam.
As a consequence, China has focused and will likely continue to focus on Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia is composed of a significant number of states, none as strong as Japan or India, and with many differences among them.
Unsurprisingly in this light, China has made tremendous strides in seizing disputed features in the South China Sea and turning them into massive military bases.
The military power these bases provide may not be much compared with that of the US military, but they certainly are compared with those of individual Southeast Asian states. At the same time, China is dispensing investment and access around the region to build leverage.
For many years, Southeast Asia has temporised, resisting going in one direction or another. But whether you like it or not, you, in the region, do face a choice.
You may not be interested in strategic reality, to paraphrase Russian intellectual Leon Trotsky, but it is interested in you. That choice is not between total affiliation with the United States or with China. But it is a choice as to whether you will preserve your sovereignty and national freedom.
The interests of the US are in preserving and protecting the sovereign freedom of nation states, so that we can trade and interact with them without undue encumbrance.
This interest goes back the “Open Door Policy” and our opening of Japan. We do not want to have to check with Beijing or anyone else to trade or interact with the states.
Our interest is therefore in strengthening the states and in their standing firm for their sovereign interests, including, but not limited, to claims in the South China Sea.
The US thus does not seek confrontation with China, let alone to dominate it; rather, we recognise that the only way we will get to a decent stability is through competing — building the strength together that we need to check any overweening Chinese ambitions.
Beijing’s interests are in the states’ lassitude. China is and will be so strong that it does not need them to do anything. Simply ignoring the problem is enough for it .
Thus, if the states “accept (Beijing’s) assurances at face value” about its commitment to “work together with all partners in the spirit of openness, inclusiveness, and transparency”, as Singapore Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan recommended recently — despite all evidence to the contrary — then that is enough for China.
Fundamentally, Southeast Asia must see strategic realities as they are, not as they might wish them to be.
We all will continue trading and interacting with China to some degree, but we must together build positions of strength to ensure that China will respect our common interests in national sovereignty and freedom.
The writer is the Director of the Defence Programme at the Centre for a New Security in Washington, D.C. He previously served in the Department of Defence as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Strategy and Force Development and lead official for the development of 2018 National Defence Strategy.