Indo-Pacific Biden’s imp, least talked about success: Blinken, Austin, Sullivan
The US administration’s approach to the Indo-Pacific, in terms of creating an integrated network of relationships, deepening partnerships, and connecting allies in the European and Indo-Pacific theatres, is one of the “most important and least told stories” of the Joe Biden presidency, America’s three senior-most national security officials have argued.
In a rare joint piece in The Washington Post, the US secretary of state Antony J Blinken, secretary of defence Lloyd Austin, and national security advisor Jake Sullivan, also cited, among other achievements, the elevation of Quad and the US and India “investing together across the sectors that will shape the future — from semiconductors, to artificial intelligence, to clean energy”.
The piece “Biden’s Indo-Pacific diplomacy has made America’s future more secure” was published late Monday. All the achievements that the three top policymakers of the administration cited have a clear subtext — of building deterrence against China, reducing economic dependence on China, and ensuring that the US and its friends have a technological edge over China.
After outlining the importance of the region, Blinken, Austin and Sullivan claimed that when Biden took office, American standing was among the lowest in the region, with allies and partners “fearing” that US was becoming an “unreliable friend”, and China was stepping in to take advantage of US absence and advance its own vision of the world, “a vision hostile to US interests”.
The piece then outlines three core achievements of the Biden presidency, as its top architects see it. The first, they claimed, was upgrading the “hub and spoke” model of diplomacy with an “integrated, interconnected network of partnerships”, which meant moving from separate bilateral relationships to bringing partners together.
Offering concrete examples, Blinken, Austin, and Sullivan cited the Australia-United Kingdom-US (AUKUS) security partnership; the Camp David trilateral bringing Japan and South Korea, two historical antagonists, together; and the first US-Japan-Philippines trilateral.
“We elevated the regional grouping known as the Quad — Australia, India, Japan, and the United States — to deliver hundreds of millions of lifesaving coronavirus vaccines, mobilize millions of dollars in digital-infrastructure investments, and advance the global clean energy transition. We created the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity with 13 other partners to ensure we are meeting the economic challenges of today and not two decades ago, such as building secure supply chains and protecting our critical technologies,” the three officials wrote. India is also a member of IPEF. They also cited the hosting of ASEAN and Pacific Islands Forum as instances of this integrated partnership model.
The second achievement they claimed revolved around deepening partnerships to “confront shared challenges”. To substantiate this argument, Blinken, Austin, and Sullivan cited Japan’s decision to modernise its defence which they said will help US and regional security; South Korea’s decision to step up investment in Southeast Asia that will help supply chains; Australia’s decision to help Pacific Islands become more resilient (“both to climate change and to economic coercion from China”); Philippines’ decision to modernise and integrate its military with US (“making them more capable of standing up to bullying from China in the South China Sea”); and the decision to modernise the US command in Japan.
It was against this backdrop that the officials mentioned ties with India. “India and the United States are investing together across the sectors that will shape the future — from semiconductors, to artificial intelligence, to clean energy.”
And finally, Blinken, Austin, and Sullivan cited connecting US allies in Europe and Indo-Pacific as a major achievement, citing the support of Asian allies for Ukraine and European allies increasingly “standing together to hold China accountable for supporting Vladimir Putin’s war machine and undermining the international rules-based order”.
The piece comes even as the US faces continued setbacks in its diplomacy in West Asia as the Israeli brutality against Palestinians in Gaza continues and the conflict threats to assume a wider regional dimension with an imminent Iranian offensive against Israel in some form, in response to Israel’s offensive action of assassinating a Hamas leader in Tehran.
It also comes at a time when the fate of Ukraine, another key Biden administration priority, remains uncertain as Russia consolidates its gains and waits for a possible change in administration in Washington given Donald Trump’s seeming willingness to do a deal. While tensions in the Indo-Pacific have deepened, the Biden administration’s top policy minds clearly see their China strategy as a big success at a time when Biden is slowly beginning to mark the end of his presidency.