As Prepared:
9TH ANNUAL IISS GLOBAL STRATEGIC REVIEW
PLENARY SESSION 4, 11 SEPTEMBER 2011
RISE OF A MILITARISED ASIA – GLOBAL IMPLICATIONS
I’d like to thank you all for joining us this morning, and to thank IISS for their hard work in pulling this panel together. Before I start, I’d like to note the 10th Anniversary of the 9-11 attacks, and ask that we take a moment of silence to remember the victims.
I appreciate the opportunity to talk from the perspective of the Obama Administration and the Department of Defense regarding defense and security trends in Asia. While I have been asked to address the rise of a militarized Asia, I think it is important to begin by highlighting the extent to which the Asia Pacific region has evolved over the past sixty years. Despite lingering territorial disputes and political differences, the Asia Pacific region is integrated in a way that would have been hard for most observers to imagine a generation ago. With the exception of a few states, economic growth and integration has been the dominant theme in the region in recent decades.
This dramatic growth of the Asia-Pacific region constitutes one of the most important geostrategic developments of our time. Consider that the region boasts 15 of the world's 20 largest ports, with nine located in China alone, yet also claims several of the largest standing armies in the world. China, now with the world’s second largest economy, sits at the fulcrum of these developments. As much as any other nation, it will help define if the region’s future holds continued stability and growth, or, uncertainty.
The region’s unprecedented economic success and dynamism in recent decades was not a foregone conclusion. Rather, it was enabled by clear choices about the enduring principles and concomitant security architecture that are essential to peace, prosperity, and stability. These include:
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free and open commerce;
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a just international order that emphasizes the rights and responsibilities of all nations and of fidelity to the rule of law;
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open access by all to the global commons of sea, air, space, and now, cyberspace; and,
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the principle of resolving conflict through peaceful dialogue and diplomacy.
Certainly there have been some disruptions to that peace since the end of the Second World War, but on balance, it has been an era of remarkable stability and prosperity in Asia, facilitated in large part by a sustained U.S. presence in the region and our engagement with Allies and partners.
Remarkable as this period of growth and transformation has been, historical lessons provide us with some cause for concern. Periods of major power transition, much like what we are currently experiencing, have tended to be accompanied by discord, uncertainty, instability, or conflict.
Sources of potential friction in the region are many. Achieving a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula remains a critical challenge for the United States and for the international community. Pyongyang’s efforts to develop a nuclear and advanced missile capability and its aggressive provocations pose not just an existential threat to South Korea, but to the stability of the entire region. The 2010 Cheonan and YP-do incidents underscore the potential for volatility.
Turning to China’s military modernization, I want to stress at the outset that the United States does not view China as an adversary. It is natural for a rising power, even a peacefully rising power, to expand its military capability. The United States has stated repeatedly that we welcome the rise of a strong, prosperous and successful China that reinforces international rules and enhances security and peace both regionally and globally. Indeed, China’s steady integration into the global economy creates new incentives for partnership and security cooperation, as we are seeing in the anti-piracy efforts in the Gulf of Aden.
However, China’s rapidly expanding capabilities can also increase the risk of misunderstanding and miscalculation, and without careful management, hold the potential for the sort of regional instability which can fuel regional militarization. That is not an outcome any of us—the U.S., China, or others in the region seek, I believe.
Last month, the Defense Department released its Annual Report to Congress on Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China. We noted China’s March 2011 announcement of a 12.7 percent increase in military expenditures, sustaining more than two decades of robust military investment. China’s ambitious pursuit of modern platforms and weapons including aircraft carriers, long-range missiles, as well as modern surface ships and submarines, captures growing international attention. In recent years, China’s Navy has been operating at greater distances from the mainland, including a more routine presence in the heavily disputed South China Sea and in the East China Sea. These developments tend to elicit concern and anxiety in the international community, particularly among China’s neighbors. Without greater transparency, China's neighbors can only try to infer China's strategic intent from the capabilities that it develops. That sort of strategic guesswork is not a recipe for regional stability.
The United States is concerned that these uncertainties could catalyze regional or global balancing efforts. In fact, we have already begun seeing some of China's neighbors increasing investments in their own navies, including acquisition of modern submarines. While we believe it is reasonable for states in the region to seek to develop adequate and appropriate military and security capacity—and we are committed to working with our allies and partners as they do so, it is neither in China’s interest, nor that of the international community to see Asia engaging in a cycle of escalating military competition. Both President Obama and President Hu have spoken of building a relationship than can generate non-zero-sum outcomes, and that is what we seek.
China’s sustained modernization also has important implications for Taiwan, as the cross-Strait military balance continues to shift in the mainland’s favor. While we welcome the improvements in economic and political ties across the Strait since 2008, we have yet to see similar progress from Beijing in approaching the cross-Strait security sphere.
So while we understand that China's military modernization is in part a natural function of its growth, and while we seek to encourage China’s positive engagement in the region and around the globe, the lack of transparency with which China has pursued its rapid military modernization has raised questions in Washington, and in the region. As long as observers perceive a gap between China's stated intentions, its growing capabilities, and its actions, it will be difficult for China to convince the international community that its intentions are completely benign.
We recognize that this is a remarkably complex moment in history for China as it acquires new capabilities and begins to play a greater role in regional and global economic and security affairs. And it is this very uncertainty about China’s future capabilities and intentions that makes the military component of the bilateral relationship so extraordinarily challenging and so extraordinarily important to “get right.” In fact our approach towards China, based on efforts to expand bilateral cooperation, a region-wide commitment to strengthen Alliances and partnerships, and a firm insistence on global norms and international rules and institutions—is aimed precisely at getting things right.
Both President Obama and President Hu have recognized the need to strengthen the U.S.-China military-to-military relationship, expressing that sustained and reliable military-to-military contacts at all levels can help reduce miscommunication, misunderstanding, and the risks of miscalculation and can build the sort of mutual understanding and trust necessary for strategic stability. Without a stable and reliable military-to-military relationship between the U.S. and China, the peace and prosperity we've achieved over the past six decades may quickly erode.
At the Department of Defense, we have a special responsibility to monitor military developments throughout the Asia pacific region and to ensure that no actor or actors upend the regional security balance.
We recognize that an effective, affordable, and sustainable U.S. defense posture—allowing us to meet our obligations to allies and partners and to regional security and stability—requires a broad portfolio of military capabilities with maximum versatility across the widest possible spectrum of scenarios. Fielding these capabilities and demonstrating the resolve to use them, if necessary, assures friends and potential adversaries alike of the credibility of U.S. security commitments. There should be no doubt about the U.S. commitment to an effective and enduring presence in the Asia Pacific region.
Confronting these challenges and promoting sustained regional stability is not the task of any one nation acting alone. In this, all of us have responsibilities we must fulfill, since all will bear the costs of instability as well as the rewards of international cooperation. Our principal task is to continue to develop and nurture the norms, the institutions, the infrastructure, and the architecture that have facilitated security in region. And as I am speaking today in my childhood home of Geneva, I’ll add that this is an obligation of Europe and the entire international community as well.
Although Asia’s transformation holds great promise, the future is far from certain. The size and complexity of the Asia-Pacific region, and the realities of the new patterns of the distribution and diffusion of power in the region across virtually every dimension – economic, military, diplomatic, political, cultural—you name it—makes the course of regional events inherently difficult to predict.
It is understandable under these circumstances that mistrust and anxiety would lead to a militarization of relations and an arms race dynamic. Such a future would be a loss for all. In anticipation of potential challenges, the time to build habits of trust and cooperation is now. These behaviors cannot be switched on only during times of ease, if we are to be certain they won’t be switched off during times of difficulty. It is precisely when our differences seem greatest—when trust and cooperation are most difficult to maintain—that we must resist the temptation to assume the worst of each other and work even harder to maintain open and continuous communication. Not only will this commitment maximize our mutual interests and mitigate our differences but, moreover, it will gradually forge common bonds and solidify common interests that will serve as the basis for a new era of peace, stability, and prosperity in Asia.
