Kerry’s Asia Trip: Positive Moves Toward Needed “Rebalancing”

Yesterday, Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in South Korea to begin his fifth trip to the Asia-Pacific. Now in China, Kerry will also travel to Indonesia. Notable on the agenda are issues relating to North Korea, maritime security as overlapping claims between China and other nations continue to generate tension in the South and East China Sea, climate change and U.S. engagement with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). As a part of the not yet fully realized policy of U.S. strategic rebalancing to Asia, these and other matters will require increasing attention and follow-through to ensure American interests in the Asia-Pacific, a region of growing but already of central importance to global affairs.  In particular, the United States would be well served by intensifying efforts towards negotiations with North Korea, deeper engagement with ASEAN as a bulwark for regional stability, more robust engagement with the Chinese with respect to maritime tensions and cooperation on climate change.

With foundation laid for strategic rebalance, the challenge now is to ensure follow-through with sufficient attention, resources. Shawn Brimley, former Director of Strategic Planning at the NSC and now of CNAS, and Ely Ratner, veteran of the China Desk at the State Department and also now of CNAS, explain: “Now that the foundation of the strategic shift to Asia has been laid, the main challenge for U.S. policymakers will be to secure the resources necessary to continue it. The United States will find it difficult to advance its interests in the region if its allies, partners, and potential adversaries doubt that its commitments will be upheld. Locking in the new approach will require Washington to set aside money and personnel and to ensure that agencies are mobilized across the U.S. government in ways that reflect an institutional commitment to its Asia policy.” They add, “In an era of fiscal tightening, coming up with the necessary resources for such an ambitious program will not be easy.” To help this task, and to further develop and help implement strategic rebalancing across government, they recommend that, “the White House should explic­itly articulate the rebalancing strategy, perhaps in the form of a presidential policy directive, outlining its near- to long-term priorities and coming up with specific metrics that departments and agencies can use to track their progress in executing it.” [Shawn Brimley and Ely Ratner, 2/13/14]

Need to intensify efforts towards negotiations with North Korea – a difficult task, but not talking carries greater risks. Stephen Bosworth and Robert Gallucci, each responsible for negotiations with North Korea under the Obama and Clinton administrations, respectively, explain: “The United States government has not had direct contact with a senior North Korean official for more than a year. Our private and unofficial meetings were an important opportunity to review the state of the regime’s thinking on bilateral relations and its willingness to give up its nuclear weapons program. The North Koreans — who are longtime participants in government-to-government talks and well plugged-in to their country’s leadership — stated that if dialogue were to resume, their nuclear weapons program would be on the negotiating table. They provided preliminary thinking on a phased approach that would start with a freeze of their program and end with denuclearization.” While Bosworth and Gallucci note diverging perceptions of the preconditions for talks, they continue, “Whatever risks might be associated with new talks, they are less than those that come with doing nothing. Pyongyang’s nuclear stockpile will continue to expand, the North will continue to perfect its missile delivery systems, the danger of weapons-of-mass-destruction exports will grow, and the threat to U.S. allies will increase.” [Stephen Bosworth and Robert Gallucci, 10/28/13]

Deeper engagement with ASEAN and members nations is critical to U.S. strategy, regional stability. In a major report on the changing power dynamics in Asia, Patrick Cronin and Richard Fontaine et al. of CNAS assess that whether the changes in the region “contribute positively towards regional security or, alternatively, create greater discord will be in part determined by the relative strength of regional institutions…ASEAN and its related institutions and meetings have served as vital venues for managing competition between great powers while providing platforms for increasingly substantive confidence-building measures…To serve this function, however, ASEAN needs to maintain a relatively high degree of cohesion and capacity. Political fissures have at times derailed ASEAN’s effectiveness and rendered moot its ability to manage competition…With this approach in mind, the United States should seek ways to harness the deepening of bilateral security ties [emerging between ASEAN states] to strengthen the regional security architecture in Asia. ASEAN and its related institutions and meetings provide ample foundation on which to build.” [Patrick Cronin and Richard Fontaine, 6/13]

Effective engagement with China crucial for U.S. regional and global interests as uncertainties about China’s future role in the region persist:

U.S. signals a tougher line on maritime disputes in the South China Sea just before Kerry’s trip: Jeffery Bader of the Brookings Institution and former director of East Asian affairs on the NSC explains, “For the first time, the United States government has come out publicly with an explicit statement that the so-called ‘nine-dash line,’ which the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan assert delineates their claims in the South China Sea, is contrary to international law. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Danny Russel, in testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on February 5, said, ‘Under international law, maritime claims in the South China Sea must be derived from land features. Any use of the ‘nine-dash line’ by China to claim maritime rights not based on claimed land features would be inconsistent with international law. The international community would welcome China to clarify or adjust its nine-dash line claim to bring it in accordance with the international law of the sea.’” Additionally, in his meetings with Chinese officials, Secretary Kerry warned China about establishing an Air Defense Identification Zone in the South China Sea following China’s creation of such a zone in the East China Sea last November. [Jeffery Bader, 2/6/14]

As maritime tensions persist, greater steps towards institutionalized crisis management mechanisms are a must: As China and its neighbors in the East China Sea and South China Sea continue to experience high tensions over competing maritime and territorial claims, there is a very real risk of crisis or accidental conflict. To mitigate these risks, Margaret K. Lewis, Associate Professor at Seton Hall Law School, explains the need for conflict avoidance measures between Pacific nations, including China and the United States: “concrete measures are needed both to forestall conflicts and to create channels to promptly address confrontations before they balloon into crises. Given persisting legal ambiguities about military activities at sea, as well as the increasing frequency of encounters due to assertive U.S. maneuvers and growing Chinese military might, the two countries should take the lead in establishing specific, practical ‘rules of the road’ for use when their military forces encounter each other to lessen the chance of future incidents.” [Margaret K. Lewis, 12/2/13]

Climate change cooperation can benefit the global community and form a cornerstone of cooperation in the Sino-American relationship: During the U.S.-China Summit in June, 2013, China and the United States pledged to work together to reduce hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) – a greenhouse gas that contributes to global climate change. Ensuring the full implementation of this agreement as an initial step towards U.S.-China climate cooperation and cooperation generally has massive benefits. Melanie Hart of the Center for American Progress explains that if China and the U.S. can insert measures to limit HFC the Montreal Protocols, a key international climate treaty, then “curbs on the production and use of HFCs would eliminate the equivalent of 90 billion tons of carbon dioxide by 2050 and avoid half a degree Celsius of warming by the end of the century.” This is an area of special responsibility for both China and the United States. According to the World Resources Institute, “The U.S. and China’s combined carbon emissions account for over 40% of the world’s total. With the U.S., China, and other countries such as Germany and India, as leaders in clean energy markets, there are big new opportunities for jobs and economic growth from competition, cooperation and expanding markets.” [Melanie Hart, 6/12/13. World Resources Institute, 1/13/14]