U.S. Indo-Pacific Diplomacy Seeks to Preserve the Status Quo
U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM)
Centered in Hawaii on the island of Oahu in Honolulu County is a little sliver of a town known as Aiea. Overlooking Pearl Harbor, Aiea is home to Camp H.M. (“Howling Mad”) Smith, a U.S. Marine Corps. installation. The military base is also the headquarters for the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (USINDOPACOM).
According to USINDOPACOM’s website, the Indo-Pacific region is one of six geographical subsections of the globe “defined by the Department of Defense’s United Command Plan (UCP)”. Territory under the watchful eye of USINDOPACOM stretches from the western coast of the U.S. all the way to the western coast of India. North and south, it covers the Arctic all the way down to Antarctica.
Thus, comprising 36 nations and just over 50% of the Earth’s surface, INDOPACOM is one of the largest contingency forces that the world has ever seen.
Rebranded in May 2018, under the Trump administration, INDOPACOM would also get another upgrade in the following year when the administration derailed three decades of foreign policy under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force (INF) Treaty by withdrawing from the agreement.
Previously, the Obama administration decried the Russian government wasn’t complying with the treaty which banned land-based missiles between the two military superpowers. Trump had taken that position a step further. A secondary reason given by the Trump administration for leaving the treaty was due to the Chinese military expansion in the Pacific. China had never been a signatory to the INF Treaty.
Now the U.S. and Russia were no longer officially barred from using land-based missiles with ranges from 500-5,500 km (300-3,400 miles). INDOPACOM would have some catching up to do.
As one of its first publicized command operations under the new Biden administration, the U.S. contingency of INDOPACOM authored a Pacific Deterrence Initiative, submitting the report to Congress last month. The PDI requested $27.4 billion over the next six years which includes the formation of a “network of precision-strike missiles” across Okinawa, the Philippines, and Taiwan.
The six-year budget request would be a 36% increase, as of fiscal 2020, on military spending in the Pacific region, making it on par with how much the U.S. spends on “dealing with Russia” each year.
In wake of the report, INDOPACOM’s top commander, Adm. Philip Davidson, gave remarks at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, stating his concerns at preserving the status quo in the Indo-Pacific region.
“With a valid and convincing conventional deterrent, China is emboldened to take action in the region and globally to supplant U.S. interests. As the Indo-Pacific's military balance becomes more unfavorable, the U.S. accumulates additional risk that may embolden adversaries to unilaterally attempt to change the status quo.”
Adm. Davidson echoed these sentiments in his speech, claiming:
“...the period between now and 2026, this decade, is the time horizon in which China is positioned to achieve overmatch in its capability, and when Beijing could … widely choose to forcibly change the status quo in the region. … And I would say the change in that status quo could be permanent.”
One question for the Biden administration and liberals in America might be: Why is a foreign policy shift that would encompass half of the globe being decided and directed by a military commander who should have been disgraced last year?
The New York Times reported, in April 2020, that Adm. Davidson had ordered a March 5 port call in Da Nang, Vietnam, for the USS Roosevelt, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Although Vietnam had a very low number of COVID-19 cases at the time, the U.S. government was certainly aware of the risks involved. Especially after the recent coronavirus outbreak on the Diamond Princess, which had been docked in Taiwan and woefully quarantined off the coast in southern Japan, a month beforehand.
At the same time, the Navy had ordered all ships in the Indo-Pacific that had made port calls to quarantine in the sea for at least two weeks. A port call in Da Nang would have been only the second time a U.S. aircraft carrier had been there since the Vietnam (American) War. The NY Times story said the port call would be “an important show of American military strength in a region increasingly unnerved by Beijing’s growing territorial claims in the South China Sea.”
A previous show of force in the region, relatively-speaking, might have been the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis, between 1995-1996, when China launched missiles to intimidate democracy in Taiwan, leading former U.S. President Bill Clinton to send additional warships to the area, including two aircraft carrier battle groups and an amphibious assault ship. That demonstration of force had been the largest of its kind in Asia since the Vietnam War.
So, is the U.S. currently at war with China? Or is preference being given to ensuring the preservation of the status quo rather than protecting the well-being of U.S. soldiers, the citizens of Da Nang, and the rest of the inhabitants in the Indo-Pacific region?
During the USS Roosevelt’s port call, some of the ship’s 5,000 sailors came into close contact with British citizens who were possibly carriers of the coronavirus staying at the same hotel. Those sailors were ordered back to the ship and isolated. Eventually, the ship’s Captain, Brett Crozier, requested assistance to help stave off a potential outbreak among his staff and crew who had begun showing signs and symptoms of coronavirus.
Those requests for assistance were denied.
When some sailors with the worst symptoms were evacuated to Guam, Capt. Crozier, on March 30, wrote a letter to nearly two dozen Navy personnel in the Pacific that would likely end his military career. Although he showed the letter to his superiors aboard the ship, he didn’t allow them to sign onto the memo for fear of widespread repercussions.
Instead, Crozier sent the letter himself, going against the typical chain-of-command military policy, condemning his superiors by saying that sailors didn’t need to die. Ultimately, the letter led to his dismissal by the then-acting Navy secretary, Thomas B. Modly.
Not long after, the memo was leaked to the press, about 600 sailors aboard the ship had contracted the virus (including Crozier), one sailor had died in an IC unit in Guam, and Modly eventually resigned after taking a nearly $300,000 taxpayer-funded trip, halfway across the globe, to get aboard the Roosevelt just to harangue Crozier directly to his sailors on the ship.
Why didn’t Adm. Davidson, the top commander of INDOPACOM, also resign? Seemingly, he wasn’t even reprimanded. And his name has hardly been mentioned by any English language media outlets regarding his brash, hoary decision-making skills.
Instead, one year later, under a new administration, he’s the one leading the charge, to decide the fate of U.S. Indo-Pacific diplomacy that seeks to preserve the status quo.
The rest of everyone else be damned.
Originally written on March 10, 2021 — from Da Nang, Vietnam.
Submitted to: The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Global Times, Apple Daily (Hong Kong), Hong Kong Free Press, East Asia Forum, The Diplomat, the LA Times, Slate, South China Morning Post.
