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US military in East Asia: Winds of
change
By Ralph A Cossa
SINGAPORE - There was a time when the Pentagon
saw "relieving regional anxiety" as one of its primary
alliance maintenance tasks in East Asia. Today, it seems
more adept at creating this anxiety, rather than
providing the reassurance that lies at the heart of
sustaining America's critical alliance relationships in
East Asia.
I'm talking about the now infamous
(and frequently misquoted) Los Angeles Times story about
US military force restructuring in East Asia, built
around an on-the-record interview with US Under
Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J Feith, in
which he is quoted as saying that "Everything is going
to move everywhere ... There is not going to be a place
in the world where it's going to be the same as it used
to be ... We're going to rationalize our posture
everywhere - in Korea, in Japan, everywhere."
The Los Angeles Times article also cites other
(unnamed) senior Pentagon officials as stating that
plans were "on the table" to move the bulk of marine
forces currently based in Okinawa to Australia, and that
Washington was "seeking agreements to base navy ships in
Vietnamese waters and ground troops in the Philippines".
Malaysia was also mentioned as one of the places where
Washington wanted to establish a "network of small
bases", which would reportedly serve as "launching pads
for moving US forces quickly and clandestinely to future
areas of conflict".
A reduction in Korea-based
forces "is probably in the cards" as well, according to
these unnamed sources, although plans have not yet been
made "for fear of sending a signal of lack of resolve to
North Korea". The latter is an important consideration,
given the current nuclear crisis on the Peninsula, but
one wishes that the Pentagon spent more time worrying
about the signals it was sending to South Korea as well.
Of course, it is possible that these officials
are in fact trying to send a signal to the South. There
seems to be an attitude among some in the Pentagon that
Seoul needs to be "taken to the woodshed" and punished
for its anti-American attitudes during the last
election. This simplistic view overlooks the fact that
South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun has demonstrated
great political courage since his election by strongly
supporting the alliance and US troop presence (not to
mention the Bush administration's tougher approach
toward Pyongyang), despite intense criticism from his
own core supporters. Feeding South Korean suspicions
about US intentions undermines this effort and
diminishes President George W Bush's pledge to Roh to
coordinate with South Korea closely on any force
reductions or relocations.
As regards other
projected movements, defense establishments in most of
the countries named have been quick to point out that
they have agreed to no such thing. This is not
surprising. Largely overlooked in much of the frantic
reporting on this story has been its very last sentence
- "Pentagon officials say such options are still being
discussed and stress that no final decisions have been
made" - a point reinforced by Deputy Secretary of
Defense Paul Wolfowitz during a press conference in
Singapore, in which he singled out reports about troop
movements to Australia and the Philippines in particular
as being inaccurate.
"Many studies have been
done and many ideas have been presented," Wolfowitz
acknowledged, "but no decisions have yet been made" and
none would be made without close consultation with
Congress and with "affected friends and allies in the
region". But if this is so, then why is Feith talking
about "everything moving everywhere" and, more
important, why do officials below him feel compelled to
start filling in the details Feith deliberately left
blank, immediately before their boss began a high
profile trip to East Asia presumably aimed at conducting
such consultations?
To his credit, Wolfowitz, in
his prepared remarks to many of his counterparts at the
Asia Security Conference in Singapore, actually tried to
lay out the broader rationale behind Washington's
"fundamental look at our military posture worldwide"
while addressing the issue of "how best to sustain the
US commitment to this region in the face of the global
demands on our defense resources". Yes, changes in force
structure were inevitable, he seemed to be saying, but
they would not be made at the expense of the region's
security: Washington would still maintain "the same
basic commitment to stability and deterrence in this
region that we have had all along". Unfortunately, this
was page 2 news. The front page of the region's
newspapers was filled with reports of the (real and
imagined) restructuring plans, forcing Wolfowitz on the
defensive from the moment he arrived in Asia.
I
am not suggesting that Feith was trying to undercut his
boss, although some of the unnamed officials leaking
details were no doubt playing the time-honored
Washington game of "death by leak" - trying to improve
the prospects of their own preferred options by
prematurely leaking or distorting those preferred by
others. But even if everyone's intentions were
honorable, the comments reveal a glaring lack of
sensitivity to growing regional concerns about US
unilateralism. The story lends added credence to the
regional definition of "consultations", US-style; ie,
"Americans come in and tell us what they are going to do
and we are expected to agree."
The truth about
the story is that there is really less there than meets
the eye. Troop consolidation in Korea has been talked
about for some time and the effort to move US forces out
of the middle of Seoul is 10 years old. So too is the
idea about placing more focus on access and mobility:
remember "places not bases", the old Pacific Command
strategy?
What is new and potentially
significant, but largely overlooked, is the reported
change in attitude toward China. In the past, most
statements coming from the Pentagon seemed to focus on
the need to counter a potential peer competitor. If it
is true that, "in the post-September 11 world, the
threat from China is believed by Bush administration
policymakers to pale beside that posed by unstable
countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East that are
viewed as breeding grounds for terrorists", this would
bring the Pentagon more in line with the point of view
that has prevailed in the State Department and was
embedded in last autumn's National Security Strategy,
which stresses cooperation rather than competition with
China and the other great powers.
Ralph A
Cossa is president of the Pacific Forum CSIS
(e-mail pacforum@hawaii.rr.com),
a Honolulu-based non-profit research institute
affiliated with the Center for Strategic and
International Studies in Washington, and senior editor
of Comparative Connections, a
quarterly electronic journal.
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