Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

The Australia-based Lowy Institute for International Policy has issued a report warning of potential conflict in the Western Pacific.  The report titled Crisis and confidence: major powers and maritime security in Indo-Pacific Asia argues that the sea lanes of Indo-Pacific Asia are becoming “more crowded, contested and vulnerable to armed strife”.  It says naval and air forces are being strengthened “amid shifting balances of economic and strategic weight” and that the changing deterrence and war-fighting strategies of China, the United States, and Japan “involving expanded maritime patrolling and intrusive surveillance” are bringing “an uncertain mix of stabilising and destabilising effects”.  It concludes: “As the number and tempo of incidents increases, so does the likelihood that an episode will escalate to armed confrontation, diplomatic crisis or possibly even conflict.”

This is, of course, exactly in line with the concerns we have been expressing for months, and two incidents in the past week have once again illustrated how far away key protagonists are from defusing the growing tensions.

The first development was Japan’s warning to China on 23 June not to conduct marine research within Japan’s 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) after a Chinese marine vessel apparently conducted exploration activities off the north-eastern Tohoku region without Japan’s permission.

The second development was China’s response to the latest US-Japan security talks.  China’s foreign ministry issued a statement on 23 June saying: “Japan-US alliance is a bilateral arrangement created under special historical conditions and should not go beyond its bilateral scope.”

What China is getting at here is that the US-Japan alliance should not become the core of any wider ‘contain China’ alignment involving other Asian countries.  In effect, however, the US is achieving this through its network of bilateral agreements in the region.  The point was made explicitly last month by South Korean presidential adviser Dr Lee Chung-min who told the South China Morning Post: “China’s basically pushing us all closer...It is too big to contain, yet somehow we at times have to act to constrain China...It’s about understanding , support, and leverage.”

If China needed any further confirmation that the Japan-US alliance is indeed evolving “beyond its bilateral scope”, then it should refer to the latest US Congressional Research Service backgrounder on The U.S.-Japan Alliance (dated 18 January 2011).

The report notes that the focus of the US-Japan alliance “appears squarely set on the changing security contours of the region, with an explicit attention to China’s activities”.  And it says that after Japan’s release of new defence guidelines in late 2010, US defence planners “were pleased with some aspects, such as the explicit identification of concern with China’s activities and pledge to develop more elaborate defence cooperation with several other countries such as Australia, South Korea, India, and Southeast Asian and NATO states”.