An American Strategy for Southeast Asia

An American Strategy for Southeast Asia Embargoed until Tuesday, August 7, 2018, at 9:00 a.m. MICHAEL MAZZA AUGUST 2018 AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE An American Strategy for Southeast Asia MICHAEL MAZZA AUGUST 2018 AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE Cover photo: Malaysia’s former Prime Minister Najib Razak, Myanmar’s State Counsellor and Foreign Minister Aung San Suu Kyi, Thailand’s Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-Cha, Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, US President Donald Trump, Philippine’s President Rodrigo Duterte, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, Brunei’s Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, Laos’ Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith, Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo, and Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen pose for a family photo during the ASEAN-US 40th Anniversary Commemorative Summit in Manila, Philippines, on November 13, 2017. Reuters/Manan Vatsyayana/Pool © 2018 by the American Enterprise Institute. All rights reserved. The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit, 501(c)(3) educational organization and does not take institutional positions on any issues. The views expressed here are those of the author(s). Contents Executive Summary .......................................................................................................................... 1 I. Why Southeast Asia Matters .................................................................................................... 3 II. An American Vision for Southeast Asia .............................................................................. 11 III. Security in Southeast Asia.................................................................................................... 17 IV. Prosperity and Good Governance: Advancing Political and Economic Development in Southeast Asia ..................................................................... 42 V. Conclusion: Lessons from the Pacific War ...................................................................... 56 Notes .................................................................................................................................................. 59 About the Author .......................................................................................................................... 67 Acknowledgments ......................................................................................................................... 68 iii Executive Summary outheast Asia’s geostrategic centrality in Asia is These challenges—and opportunities—are local S often underappreciated. But the region is cen- but have global implications. Given the region’s tral. In short, Southeast Asia has been geopolitically importance and its complexity, it behooves the important due to the sea lanes that pass through it, United States to design and implement a compre- its proximity to and abutment of India and China, hensive strategy for Southeast Asia. Any discussion and the resources which it hosts. In addition to of strategy should begin with a discussion of ultimate these factors, the resilience of illiberal, unaccount- ends. To wit, the United States should strive to shape able regimes in the region has long drawn American a Southeast Asia that: attention. Southeast Asia is a place of not only great oppor- • Is at peace with its neighbors, in which states tunity for the United States but also significant risk. interact peacefully with one another, and in Latent economic dynamism could help drive global which open access to the global commons is growth, but illiberalism and domestic security chal- assured; lenges such as terrorism and insurgency could prevent the region from meeting its potential. A majority • Embraces free-market economics, is more of the region’s 635 million residents live in democ- deeply integrated with global trade and financial racies, but democratic consolidation is an ongo- flows, and prospers as a result; and ing and uncertain process, democratic backsliding has stricken the region, and countries such as Viet- • Hosts resilient, responsive, and accountable nam and Laos are still markedly unfree. Indeed, governments and is, over the longer term, free China’s brand of authoritarian state capitalism may and democratic. find favor in the region if it is seen as doing a better job than democracy at delivering economic results To achieve those ends, the United States should without sacrificing order. Equally troublingly, the implement a strategy with security, economic, and American-led liberal international order, which has governance pillars. Should the United States succeed, created the conditions in which a number of South- it will ensure a regional balance of power favorable to east Asian states have thrived, is now under threat the United States and its friends and allies, shore up with China acting assertively in nearby waters and the liberal international order, deepen prosperity at challenging commonly held notions of freedom of home and in Southeast Asia, and advance freedom in the seas. the region. 1 I. Why Southeast Asia Matters he Trump administration’s National Secu- In his 1999 book, Vietnam: The Necessary War, Trity Strategy (NSS), released in December Michael Lind argues that Korea, Taiwan, and Indochina 2017, marks an important step in aligning Amer- “were not contested because they were important. ican strategy with the world as it is in Asia. The They were important because they were contested.” NSS describes “a geopolitical competition between Lind is half right. Because the “three fronts,” as Mao free and repressive visions of world order” in the Zedong called them, hosted contests of will between Indo-Pacific region. China (and Russia) “challenge the communist and noncommunist blocs, they American power, influence, and interests, attempt- became symbolically important. Lind posits that “the ing to erode American security and prosperity.” chief purpose of the United States in Vietnam was to Meanwhile, North Korea (and Iran) “are determined demonstrate America’s credibility as a military power to destabilize regions, threaten Americans and our and a reliable ally to its enemies and its allies around allies, and brutalize their own people.” As a result, the world.”4 “the United States must marshal the will and capa- But geography, and not simply the peculiar logic of bilities to compete and prevent unfavorable shifts the Cold War, rendered the fate of Vietnam (and of in the Indo-Pacific” and to keep the region “free Korea and Taiwan) important to the great powers. Con- and open.”1 sider a map of the region (Figure 1). Southeast Asia— The NSS correctly identifies the region’s primary typically considered to include Burma, Thailand, challenges from state actors and rightly emphasizes Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Indo- US alliance relationships. The South China Sea is nesia, Brunei, the Philippines, and East Timor—can prominently mentioned in the context of a discus- act either as a land barrier dividing the Indian Ocean sion about the Chinese challenge, but Southeast from the Pacific Ocean or as a series of bridges and Asia otherwise seems an afterthought. It earns a short canals connecting them. It is the region where the civ- paragraph in the regional overview, but how it fits ilizational empires of India and China, divided by the into the administration’s broader thinking on Asia Himalayas, have met and interacted. Southeast Asia is is unclear. Reading the NSS, one does not glean an rich in natural resources, from fish and energy to wood appreciation for the region’s geostrategic centrality. and gemstones. Today, it is home to some 635 mil- And the region is central. Lyndon Johnson, the lion people, has a combined gross domestic product president who escalated the American war in Indo- (GDP) slightly larger than India’s, is responsible for china, may have described Vietnam as a “damn lit- 41 percent of the world’s tin production and 75 percent tle pissant country,”2 but that country might fairly be of global rubber production, and (in 2010) accounted described as playing host to the world’s most recent for nearly one-third of US seafood imports.5 great-power war. Yes, the United States, North Viet- American strategists have long recognized these nam, and South Vietnam were the main actors, but features. In his famous “United Action Speech” in there were some 170,000 Chinese soldiers on the 1954, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles described ground in North Vietnam, some of whom were man- the region thusly: ning antiaircraft batteries and shooting down Ameri- can pilots.3 Soviet pilots were engaged in air combat The propagandists of Red China and Russia make with their American counterparts. it apparent that their purpose is to dominate all of 3 150 120 90 60 30 0306090 120 150 180 ARCTIC OCEAN ARCTIC OCEAN ARCTIC OCEAN Franz Josef Land (RUSSIA) Svalbard Novaya (NORWAY Zemlya LAPTEV SEA Greenland KARA SEA BAFFIN BAY (DENMARK) BARENTS SEA EAST SIBERIAN SEA BEAUFORT SEA NORWEGIAN SEA RUSSIA Alaska (U.S.) ICELAND SWEDEN Faroe Islands BERING SEA (DENMARK) FINLAND RUSSIA 60 HUDSON BAY NORWA 60 LABRADOR SEA ESTONIA BALTI NORTH SEA C LATVIA UNITED DENMARK LITHUANIA SEA OF OKHOTSK CANADA KINGDOM RUSSIA IRELAND NETHERLANDS POLAND BELARUS BELGIUM GERMANY CZECH LUXEMBOURG REP. SLOVAKIA UKRAINE FRANCELIECH.AUSTRIA MOLDOVA SWITZERLAND HUNGARY NORTH PACIFIC OCEAN SL. AN AMERICAN STRATEGY FOR SOUTHEASTMONGOLIA ASIA MICHAEL MAZZA CRO. ROMANIA Aral SAN B.H. Sea MONACO MARINO YUGOSLAVIA NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN BLACK SEA CASPIAN NORTH ANDORRA BULGARIA

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