During United States Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton's recent regional tour, America's
top diplomat acknowledged the crucial role
economic aid will play in the US's "pivot" towards
Asia. Despite that recognition, Clinton failed to
present concrete plans for a significant boost in
non-military aid to allies in Southeast Asia,
underscoring the US's fiscal straits and future
ability to project financial power.
As the
US bids to recalibrate its foreign policy more
towards Asia, the world's lone superpower faces
the dual challenge of China's growing military
muscle and stores of soft power accumulated
through years of checkbook diplomacy in the
region. Unless the US is able to match or exceed
China's economic and financial sweeteners, its
"pivot" policy will come under rising criticism
for its emphasis on strategic affairs.
China owes much of its power and influence
in the region to
generous hand outs and a
fast growing economy, both of which have propelled
economic growth across much of Southeast Asia
during the wider global slowdown. While recent
confrontations with the Philippines and Vietnam
over contested territories in the South China Sea
have raised concerns about China's long term
intentions, its growing economic clout in the
region has so far helped to cap those anxieties.
Nonetheless, Southeast Asia is poised to
become more militarized as the US and China jockey
for regional position. Earlier this year, the US
announced that 60% of the US Navy will be
re-deployed to Asia, part of its so-called
strategic "pivot". The US maintains many strong
alliances in Southeast Asia, including with
Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore
and Thailand.
Over the past decade,
American aid in the form of military and
counter-terrorism training and weaponry were
poured into all five countries. According to a
Congressional Service Report (CRS) issued in
August 2008, Indonesia led the US list of
counter-terrorism aide recipients with an average
of US$150 million in annual aid between 2006-2008.
It was followed by the Philippines, which received
an annual average of $119 million over the same
period. The bulk of that assistance was earmarked
for counter-terrorism training, according to CRS.
Yet many analysts felt the disbursements
served a dual purpose of indirectly checking
China's rising regional power. American forces
have in recent months ramped up joint military
exercises with Australia, Indonesia, the
Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia, all staged
under strategic pretenses ranging from
counter-terrorism, to natural disaster relief to
search and rescue missions. China's
assertiveness over contested maritime territories
has intensified in the past year, with numerous
incidents involving both civilian fishing boats
and military warships with the Philippines and
Vietnam. Some analysts believe China aims to
dominate the South China Sea's potential rich
stores of oil and natural gas, providing an
important strategic hedge to its current
dependency on fuel shipments from the Middle East.
Strategic analysts believe that in a
potential conflict the US would leverage its naval
superiority to block China's fuel shipments,
including around the Malacca Strait in Indonesia.
China has attempted to circumvent that risk
through planned new pipelines in Myanmar, designed
to extend from the Indian Ocean to China's
landlocked southwestern region. But the warming
trend underway between the US and Myanmar has cast
new doubts on the future reliability of that
alternative route.
While Washington has
avoided direct confrontation with China by
insisting that it is only interested in assuring
freedom of navigation in the South China Sea and
that claimant countries should use peaceful means
to resolve their differences, the US has
simultaneously provided new military assistance to
regional allies to build up their capabilities
vis-เ-vis China.
Weak strategic
link That is most evident in the
Philippines, considered by many the weakest link
among the US's Southeast Asian allies. Last year
the US tripled its Foreign Military Financing,
financial assistance granted to US allies to
procure excess American military hardware, to $30
million for the Philippines.
Last year the
US also facilitated the Philippine government's
$13 million purchase of the recently retired US
Coast Guard cutter Hamilton. Its sister ship, the
Dallas, was turned over to the Philippine Navy in
May this year; a third ship purchase is currently
under negotiation.
Though Washington has
remained non-committal about its mutual defense
treaty obligations to the Philippines in relation
to disputed territories in the South China Sea,
the US has said it will assist in building coast
watch facilities, including installation of
powerful land-based radars that can be used to
monitor China's naval movements in the disputed
area.
While the US is helping the
Philippines and strengthening strategic links with
Vietnam, China has also recruited strong allies in
the region through its economic diplomacy.
Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar are among the top three
regional countries to receive financial aid from
Beijing in the form of grants, soft loans and
infrastructure projects, not to mention trade
agreements and private investments.
China
has leveraged this soft power to play divide and
rule politics inside the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN), seen in Cambodia's
stonewalling of the Philippines' and Vietnam's
attempts to include its South China Sea grievances
against China in a joint ASEAN communique.
Cambodia's stand came soon after Chinese President
Hu Jintao's promised to double bilateral annual
trade with Cambodia to $5 billion.
China
has pledged more than $2 billion in aid, mostly in
soft loans, to Cambodia since 1992, according to
Cambodian government statistics. Beijing's total
foreign direct investment in the underdeveloped
country, meanwhile, reached $1.2 billion in 2011.
Beijing is gradually parlaying that economic power
into strategic alliances, seen in a $20 million
defense agreement signed with Cambodia in May this
year.
US economic and financial aid to the
region pales in comparison. According to a CRS
report released in July, no Southeast Asian
country will be among the top ten global
recipients of US aid for fiscal year 2013. Israel
topped the list with $3 billion, while Tanzania
held down the tenth spot with $531 million.
The CRS report noted that the Obama
administration's request for aid for the East Asia
and Pacific region for 2013 remained pegged below
$1 billion, nearly the same amount earmarked
before the announcement of its strategic "pivot".
South and Central Asia, where the US is bogged
down in military conflict in Afghanistan, received
$5 billion in aid this year.
The same CRS
report noted that foreign aid is "an attractive
target for significant spending cuts in order to
reduce deficit spending." House Foreign Affairs
Committee Chairman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen earlier
this year told US Agency for International
Development head Rajiv Shah during a congressional
hearing that his aid agency should consider
cutting back on certain countries "that no longer
need support." Southeast Asian allies such as
Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia arguably fall
into that category.
Although US officials
like Clinton have spoken to the need to put more
economic largesse behind its "pivot" policy,
fiscal belt-tightening motivated by the recent
financial crisis and costly wars will likely
constrain Washington's ability to offer any time
soon richer economic aid packages to its regional
partners and allies. As long as that is the case,
the US's strategic pivot will lack economic
ballast and will likely be overshadowed by China's
comparatively more generous mix of soft and hard
power.
George Amurao, a former
journalist in Manila, until recently worked for
the Southeast Asian Press Alliance. He is now with
Mahidol University International College in
Bangkok, Thailand.
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