President Barack Obama has announced that the US armed forces — smaller, leaner and arguably more lethal — will henceforth focus on Asia-Pacific and, by implication, less on the Middle East and counter-terrorism. It was a question of time that containment of China would become a major plank of the American security architecture.
During the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and with Al Qaida, the world did not always concentrate on how the US had been strengthening its Pacific Command — more bases, more naval and air-borne assets, training of special forces that could conceivably go in and out of China's long coastal belt, and sustained diplomacy to convince the states on China's periphery that the US was back in earnest.
Ten years ago the US seemed to be able to upgrade its posture anywhere without compromising its capability in any other theatre, i.e maintain its global network of more than 750 forward bases and engage with multiple situations. Afghanistan and Iraq have all but hollowed out that global capability, especially in the economic sense and the rest of the world should make a cold assessment of the implications of the new Pacific strategy in more constrained parameters.
The Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, says that all the trends — demography, geopolitics, economic growth, military potential — were shifting towards the Pacific and therefore "our strategic challenges in the future will largely emanate out of the Pacific region". Obama has declared that notwithstanding the hefty $450 billion (Dh1.65 trillion) Pentagon budget cuts over the next ten years, the US military in the Pacific will grow.
China, which is the raison d'etre for this policy shift, has indicated that it would meet the new situation cautiously but with undiminished resolve to assert its interests and rights in the South China Sea and also pursue its projects for enhanced economic and military power, including naval capabilities that Washington seeks to restrict. India has not generated much public discourse — Nehru, the hero of non-alignment, would have been at his oratorical best — simply because it is the intended pillar of what US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called America's "forward-deployed diplomacy". A major objective of this diplomacy is to reverse what is perceived as an ominous trend towards ‘Finlandisation' of China's neighbours, viewed as rather overawed by China's power. Arguably, a more robust American diplomatic, economic and military presence would enable them to resist the Chinese ‘pressure' for a Finland-like accommodation to their purported agenda.
There is a deluge of documents on the emergence of this Asia-centred policy but the document that stands out is the essay Hillary Clinton wrote in Foreign Policy in November 2011. "The Asia-Pacific", she observed, "has become a key driver of global politics", the Pacific and the Indian Oceans "are increasingly linked by shipping and strategy" and it was time for the "United States to make similar investments [similar to other theatres] as a Pacific power".
The budgetary constraints alone would ensure that the prioritisation of the Pacific dilutes American focus on some regions. The role that Washington wants to carve out for India was seen in the extraordinary effort that Bush made to reach the Indo-US civil nuclear accord. The states stretching from Pakistan and Afghanistan to the Mediterranean would, however, do well to factor the new Pacific doctrine into their own strategic planning.
Internal conflicts
Pakistan would almost cease to be a recipient of any major military assistance from the US. It would be lucky if it can salvage its troubled relations with it enough to retain the goodwill of international financial institutions that it needs. Afghanistan's hopes of getting $10 billion annually from the international community through 2025 — $140 billion expected from Washington — may receive a setback, putting at risk the post-conflict state-building and the raising of a huge army that Afghanistan would not be able to self-finance for at least half a century. Accordingly, it will still be at risk of internal conflicts inviting interference from its neighbours. Iran may conclude that the new American priority reduces the military threat to it.
In Libya, Obama "led from behind by delivering a crippling initial blow and leaving the longish campaign to France and the UK. A similar arrangement for Iran would not be viable, particularly if Israel is to figure in it. More importantly, the Middle East may witness a serious further erosion of American interest in promoting a just and equitable solution to the Palestinian issue. As Washington shifts to the Pacific basin with China as the centrepiece of its Asian policy, the states of the Middle East, including Iran and the neighbouring non-Arab states of Turkey, Afghanistan and Pakistan should improve regional consultations and look for solutions that are less dependent on American power.
Obama has said that the tide of war (in the region) is receding and therefore he can turn to the Pacific. Regional countries too should give dialogues for peace and conciliation a chance. In Pakistan's own case, it has to be with India and for the Arab states with an insecure Iran.
Tanvir Ahmad Khan is a former foreign secretary of Pakistan who also served as ambassador to several states.
