MANAGING THE GLOBAL IMPACT TO ASIA Charles M. Perry Bobby Andersen Published by The Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis MANAGING THE GLOBAL IMPACT TO ASIA Charles M. Perry Bobby Andersen December 2014 Published by The Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis Contents Chapter One Introduction 1 Chapter Two The Pivot in Review 10 The Rationale for the Pivot and Its Policy Roots 11 Update on the Pivot’s Progress 23 The FY 2015 Budget, the QDR, Russia, and 47 Other Potential Complications Conclusion 62 Chapter Three European Views on the Pivot and Asian Security 65 European Economic and Strategic Interests in Asia 71 European Schools of Thought on Asian Security 84 and the Rebalance European Security Concerns Regarding 108 the Asia-Pacific Region Possible New Roles for Europe in Asia-Pacific Security 118 Russian Reponses to the Rebalance 129 Conclusion 138 Chapter Four Security Trends in Other Key Regions and 142 Their Implications for the Pivot Security Trends and Developments in the Middle East 143 Security Trends and Developments in Africa 177 Security Trends and Developments in Latin America 190 Conclusion 200 iii Managing the Global Impact of America’s Rebalance to Asia Chapter Five Conclusions and Recommendations 202 Acknowledgments 215 About the Authors 217 iv Chapter One Introduction SOME THREE YEARS after President Obama announced in a November 2011 speech to the Australian parliament that he had made a “deliberate and strategic decision” for the United States to “play a larger and long-term role in shaping [the Asia-Pacific] region” and to make the U.S. “presence and mission in the Asia-Pacific a top priority,”1 the Pacific “pivot,” as it was initially dubbed, remains very much a work in progress. It is a work in progress, moreover, that has been much slower to develop than many expected, composed, in the words of one longtime Asia hand, of a “[few] positive steps forward, a lot of standing in place, and some unfortunate steps back.”2 A senior American diplomat with extensive experience in the Asia-Pacific region has complained even more bluntly, arguing that the entire piv- ot concept was “ill-conceived and bungled in its implementation… [setting] up expectations that we would have a hard time fulfilling.”3 1 “Remarks by President Obama to the Australian Parliament,” the White House, Office of the Press Secretary, November 17, 2011. 2 Mr. Pacific, “The Real Rebalance of Power”,PacNet , no. 41A, June 13, 2014. Mr. Pacific is a pseudonym for a former U.S. government official and current consultant to se- nior U.S. officials responsible for Asia-Pacific policy. 3 These comments have been attributed to Ambassador Stephen W. Bosworth, U.S. special representative for North Korean policy in the first Obama administration; he has also served as U.S. ambassador to South Korea and the Philippines and as ex- ecutive director of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO), established in 1995 to implement the 1994 U.S.-North Korea Framework Agreement that was aimed, among other things, at freezing the North’s weapons-relevant nu- clear activities. See David E. Sanger and Mark Landler, “Obama’s Strategic Shift to 1 Managing the Global Impact of America’s Rebalance to Asia In recent months, critics of the pivot – now commonly referred to as the rebalance to Asia – have pointed in particular to defense budget cuts (and to the prospect of more to come) as proof that the financial resources needed to underwrite the all-important military compo- nent of the rebalance are unlikely to be approved, leading in time to a hollowing-out of military units and capabilities that would be essen- tial for a successful strategic shift toward Asia. Perhaps fearing such a turn of events, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for Acquisition Katrina McFarland sparked considerable controversy when she re- marked rather pointedly in early March 2014, just prior to the release of the Obama administration’s fiscal year (FY) 2015 defense budget request, that the pivot “is being looked at again because, candidly, it can’t happen” in the current budgetary environment.4 Not surprisingly, McFarland and various Department of Defense (DoD) spokesmen were quick to offer a clarification to the effect that she simply meant to reinforce U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel’s earlier comments that hard choices would soon have to be made about defense modernization and acquisition priorities (including as they relate to the rebalance) “to ensure that our military remains ready and capable,”5 and that the FY 2015 budget request was a serious effort to do just that in the midst of sequestration-imposed funding cuts.6 At the same time, it was also noted that while the military component of the rebalance was perhaps the most visible and easiest to set in mo- tion in the short run, it was not really meant to be the most central or far-reaching element of the initiative. Indeed, the architects of the rebalance within the Obama administration, so the argument went, Asia Is Hobbled by Pressure at Home and Crises Abroad,” New York Times, April 21, 2014. 4 Bill Gertz, “Inside the Ring: Pentagon Reevaluating Obama’s Pivot to Asia,” Washington Times, March 5, 2014. 5 Ibid. 6 Simply put, sequestration is the imposition of automatic, mandatory, across-the- board spending cuts in the federal budget in the face of annual budget deficits. Toward that end, the Budget Control Act passed by the U.S. Congress in 2011called for some $500 million in defense budget cuts over ten years beginning on March 1, 2013, if Congress failed to reach an acceptable deficit reduction plan. It failed to do so, and the cuts began as required. 2 Introduction always viewed it as a multidimensional, whole-of-government effort, in which the diplomatic, economic, and civil society aspects of Amer- ica’s engagement with individual countries and various multilateral institutions in the The military Asia-Pacific region would eventually pre- dominate. Viewed from this angle, a more component of the accurate assessment of the overall sustain- ability of the pivot, it was further suggest- rebalance was the ed, would have to consider progress made toward these non-military goals, most of most visible and which were less obvious to the eye and likely to take considerably more time to bear fruit easiest to set in motion than their more military-focused counter- parts. Harping on what was or was not hap- in the short run pening – or likely to happen – with regard to U.S. force posture in the region painted, it was said, a very mis- leading picture of the overall status and fate of the pivot. Unfortunately for this particular line of reasoning, an April 2014 report on “re-balancing the rebalance” prepared by the majority staff of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations made it crystal clear that key civilian components of the rebalance were also signifi- cantly under-resourced and likely to remain so without a far more concerted effort by Congress and the administration to provide ad- ditional funding.7 According to the report, the U.S. Department of State, for example, had “not substantially increased the diplomatic resources [available] to its Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs” to help advance the pivot, U.S. development assistance to the region remains below the levels achieved several years ago, and inadequate staffing levels at the U.S. Department of Commerce limited that -de partment’s ability to promote trade and business opportunities in Asia to the degree expected.8 Ongoing and at times unexpected crises 7 See U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Re-Balancing the Rebalance: Resourcing U.S. Diplomatic Strategy in the Asia-Pacific Region, 113th Congress, Second Session, April 17, 2014. 8 Ibid., 2. 3 Managing the Global Impact of America’s Rebalance to Asia elsewhere in the world – such as civil war in Syria, sectarian violence in Iraq, renewed Israeli-Hamas conflict in Gaza, a worsening securi- ty situation in and around Ukraine, and the spread of Ebola in West Africa – made it extremely difficult as well, the report went on to stress, to shift monies from activities in other regions of the world to the Asia-Pacific. As a result, the rebalance, whatever its merits, was in danger of becoming, the report implied, yet another “sweeping policy pronouncement unsupported by concrete deliverables,” there- by creating “a large gap between expectations and reality.”9 It is for precisely this reason, one might reasonably surmise, that a slew of Obama administration spokesmen have spent so much time lately repeating the message that the pivot, contrary to what may appear to be the case, is “alive and well, if just a bit delayed,” and that it re- mains a centerpiece of President Obama’s foreign policy.10 All that said, and worries about a lack of funding for the pivot not- withstanding, it remains the case that the Asia-Pacific region ex- erts, as former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Asian-Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell has put it, “an inexorable gravitational pull”11 on American national security and foreign policy planning. Campbell has also argued that “the lion’s share of the political and economic history of the 21st century will be written in the Asia-Pacific region,”12 which is the primary reason why he and other top officials in Presi- dent Obama’s first term pressed so hard for a rebalancing of strate- gic priorities toward Asia in 2011 and 2012. Given the challenges to implementation noted above, therefore, the real question, Campbell has concluded, “is not whether the United States will focus more on 9 Ibid., 4.