Imagining an Indo-Pacific Treaty Organization
Imagining an Indo-Pacific Treaty Organization
WRITTEN BY GOKUL SAHNI
21 May 2020
As the world continues to be battling the COVID-19 pandemic that has infected over 4.5 million people globally, global geopolitics appears to be moving towards a more combative rather than collaborative direction. Battle lines are beginning to be drawn on two sides: those who see China as being culpable for the spread of the virus on one hand, with China and its network of friends on the other.
While news headlines are dominated by a variety of stories around the origin of the virus, aggressive legislative actions being taken on sensitive topics, and debates over the participation of Taiwan in the World Health Assembly as an observer, there is a broader strategic trend visible - the increasing strategic rivalry between the United States, the world’s pre-eminent power, and its challenger, China.
Enough has been written about the prospects of a Cold War 2.0, substantiated in theory by the Thucydides Trap and in practice by the US-China trade war since late 2018. It is time to begin preparing contingency plans in event the US-China relationship moves from competition towards confrontation. The US is unlikely to be alone in this endeavour, as Beijing has become increasingly assertive towards several countries of late. In May alone, China has increased its aggression in the South China Sea against Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam, clashed with India in two separate theatres of their shared border, cut beef imports from Australia in a bid to punish Canberra for its calls of an independent inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus, and is even planning to conduct a large-scale military exercise in August ‘to simulate the possible seizure of Taiwanese-held Pratas Island in the future’.
Despite the numerous countries involved, it will still fall on Washington as the preeminent power to chart a way forward to construct a global response against China’s rising assertiveness. The US hub and spoke strategy for Asia was designed for the Cold War, with treaties signed several decades ago - Australia and New Zealand (1951), the Philippines (1951), South Korea (1953), Thailand (1954) and Japan (1960), well before Washington recognized the People’s Republic of China.
The security calculus at the time of entering these alliances was more focused on preventing the global spread of communism, rather than conventional military balancing against the Soviet Union. It remains unclear whether these treaty allies will be willing to support the US against China in a future conflict. The Philippines, under President Rodrigo Duterte, is a well-known case of a US treaty ally increasingly drifting into the Chinese sphere of influence. Even countries like South Korea and Thailand may find their economic interests outweighing strategic considerations, especially based on treaties that were entered in the 1950s, a very different era. The established hub and spoke model would likely be ineffective for the US to meet its recently advanced strategic objectives of a ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’. New models, therefore, will need to be explored.
The building blocks: The Quad
The most obvious attempt that brings the US together with other like-minded nations in the region is the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, along with Australia, India and Japan. The grouping came together originally in 2004 to respond to the Indian Ocean tsunami, but soon found itself entangled in growing strategic competition across Asia and was disbanded in 2008. It was revived in 2017, and has steadily grown in stature, with a ministerial-level meeting held for the first time in 2019.
Would the UK be ready to antagonize China and join the IPTO? Would other US allies such as Israel and South Korea join the IPTO? How would most ASEAN countries, notably Indonesia, react to the IPTO?
The Quad, which has been dismissed by Beijing as a ‘headline grabbing’ idea which will ‘dissipate like sea foam’, continues to not have overt military links despite the Malabar naval exercises conducted by India, Japan and the US, with Australia very keen to participate.
Quad ‘plus’ arrangements have appeared in recent weeks, indicating that the four member-states have become confident enough in reaching out to like-minded countries, implying that they share a common approach to various issues. The Quad countries, along with New Zealand, South Korea and Vietnam had a vice-ministerial level meeting on March 28th to discuss ‘areas of convergence’ around handling the coronavirus pandemic and managing its aftermath.
A more recent ministerial-level meeting on May 12th saw Brazil and Israel join the Quad countries and South Korea in discussing ‘the importance of international cooperation, transparency, and accountability in combating the COVID-19 pandemic and in addressing its causes’. A recent editorial by the Indian newspaper Hindustan Times notes that while New Delhi would be ‘least interested in talk of an alliance’ due to it reasonable working relationship with China and its lack of a formal military relationship with the US, ‘this is a foursome that has begun to evolve rapidly into something larger than the sum of its parts and, rightly, is being kept on the top of the stack of geopolitical options’. The Quad looks set to strengthen with time.
Looking ahead: an Indo-Pacific Treaty Organization
While the Quad gains momentum, it is important to imagine its future in a world where China becomes more aggressive and ultimately is willing to use force to achieve its goals of controlling the South China Sea or even reclaiming Taiwan. To prevent this becoming a fait accompli, policymakers - located across Quad and non-Quad countries - should consider the idea of collective security in the Indo-Pacific region, and set up a more formal construct, like a potential Indo-Pacific Treaty Organization (IPTO).
The grouping would in theory attract those countries which want a ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’, with freedoms of navigation and overflight, essentially protecting the status quo around the South China Sea and Taiwan. The grouping would look to constrain, and ultimately, contain China and prevent Beijing from establishing regional hegemony.
Such an organization would of course inherently provoke China and would undoubtedly increase tensions in the region. But the counter to this is that such an organization should only be set up when it is evident that China’s rise will not be peaceful and it poses a significant threat to other nation-states. If there are strategic red lines that are crossed by China, the US and like-minded countries should have a contingency plan of coordinating a multilateral response.
What would the IPTO look like? It would undoubtedly begin with the Quad, the large liberal democracies of the region which would have a reasonably common view of an ultra-aggressive China which has no qualms about using force to achieve its strategic objectives. In terms of additional members, Vietnam could be a candidate given it's growing antagonist strategic relationship with China. France, with its territories spread across the Indian and Pacific Oceans, could be another to join. Motives for additional countries to join are less clear. Would the ‘special relationship’ make the UK, still a strong security player, ready to antagonize China and join the IPTO? Would other US allies such as Israel and South Korea join the IPTO? How would most ASEAN countries, notably Indonesia, react to the IPTO?
The answers essentially lie in how events unfurl themselves in the future, with a lot to be decided by Beijing. A major naval push by China across the South China Sea may draw Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest state, towards the IPTO to balance against Chinese maritime expansionism.
If China and Russia look towards an even closer security relationship than currently, NATO member-states would feel more secure with the IPTO, perhaps even allying with it. If China establishes a major military relationship with Iran, countries such as Israel and Saudi Arabia would almost immediately look towards the IPTO as their ideological grouping of choice. And if international norms such as freedom of navigation are swept aside by the PLA Navy across the first, and even second, island chains, could smaller countries like Singapore be forced to give up their balancing strategy and join the side that calls for respecting these norms?
While there are several variables that make forecasting potential members a challenging exercise, there are some merits in establishing a broad roadmap for such a grouping. The starting point would be the need to agree on the exact purpose of the organization. Would it be a collective defence organization like NATO where its Article 5 states that members agree that an attack against one or several of its members is considered as an attack against all?
In an era where many view NATO as obsolete, there would be limited appetite even in the US for another alliance which could get Washington entangled in existing disputes of other IPTO members with China.
At first glance, this seems unlikely given the wide variety of disputes that even member states of the Quad have against China. Japan, for example, has the issue of the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands with China, which are uninhabited and have a total area of 7 square kilometers. India, on the other hand, shares a 2,167-mile border with China, termed as the longest disputed border in the world. But perhaps, there is something useful that NATO provides: a geographic limitation around the North Atlantic ‘area’. Could the IPTO be set up to cover only the Indo-Pacific area? Further, would it be more prudent to limit it to maritime disputes which conceivably could require multi-national responses rather than land-based military conflicts which are inherently bilateral?
Or could the IPTO go the way of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO)? Formed in 1954 by Australia, France, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, the UK and the US, and headquartered in Bangkok, the organization was set up to prevent communism from spreading in the region and was even used as justification by the US to enter the Vietnam War.
While a lack of institutional structure and disparate aims of the member states, led to the SEATO being disbanded in 1977, it had certain modalities worth examining for a future IPTO. It maintained no military forces, but instead hosted annual joint military exercises for member states. It also focused on economic development, ostensibly to counter the spread of communism, by looking to ‘strengthen the economic foundations and living standards’ in the region. SEATO signatories pledged to ‘act to meet the common danger’ in the event of aggression of aggression against any member-state, with a focus on consultations before any combined actions were initiated against the aggressor. Unlike NATO, SEATO also included countries as observers (in this case, Cambodia, Laos and South Vietnam), which ‘fell under the organization’s protection’. Could the IPTO consider having areas such as the South China Sea or Taiwan that fall under its protection?
A NATO-like structure may ultimately prove to be politically impossible for some countries: India, for example, would be loath to give up its cherished foreign policy history of strategic autonomy and aversion to alliance politics. Likewise, in an era where many view NATO as obsolete, there would be limited appetite even in the US for another alliance which could get Washington entangled in existing disputes of other IPTO members with China. A SEATO-like structure, on the other hand, would be far more politically palatable.
A treaty organization that contains no direct military forces, but which focuses as a coordinating mechanism against Chinese aggression in Indo-Pacific and actively promotes its own economic strategy in competition with the Belt & Road Initiative would not be a bridge too far. There are already some elements of this strategy that are beginning to come together: from the Malabar annual naval exercises to the Blue Dot Network for infrastructure, both which already involve three of the four Quad members each. Bringing this together in a formalized approach may not be as difficult as some think.
Not a certainty but a contingency
There is no certainty as yet that such an organization will need to be formed, just as there is no certainty that there will be an inevitable clash between China and the US. Peaceful negotiation over disputed regions of the South China Sea should continue to be actively encouraged as the basis for moving forward. As Fareed Zakaria notes in Foreign Affairs, in comparison with the Mao era where Beijing ‘was the world’s greatest rogue regime’ obsessed with funding and fermenting revolutions, ‘today’s China is a remarkably responsible nation on the geopolitical and military front’.
And as M. Tayor Fravel has pointed out, China has been involved in 23 territorial disputes with land and maritime neighbours since 1949, and has settled 17 of them, usually through some compromise. Yet as we enter the third decade of the 21st century, it is appearing less and less likely that China will compromise on its ‘core’ interests as it marches towards the Chinese Dream by 2049. The increasingly assertive, and even aggressive, ‘Wolf Warrior’ diplomacy being displayed by China in recent weeks shows that Beijing is willing to challenge existing shibboleths. John Mearsheimier’s famous musings of China being unable to rise peacefully may prove to be a prescient take. Prudency, therefore, requires that the US and other like-minded nations begin a contingency planning exercise like considering an Indo-Pacific Treaty Organization, well before it is too late.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Gokul Sahni is based in Singapore and writes on geopolitics and geoeconomics, with a particular focus on Indian foreign policy. He holds an MSc in International Relations from the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) and an MBA from the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. All views and opinions expressed are personal. Image credit: CC BY-NC 4.0/US Pacific Fleet/Flickr.