助成Institute forInternational Policy Studies
・Tokyo・IIPS International Conference“A New Horizon for Japan’s Security Policy—Basic Concept and Framework”
Tokyo, November 30 and December 1, 2004

“US Security Strategy in Asia andProspects for an Asian Regional Security Regime”
By
Dr. Masashi Nishihara
President
National Defense AcademyJapanIIPS Conference on “A New Horizon for Japan’s Security Policy,”
Tokyo ANA Hotel, November 30-December 1, 2004

SESSION 2
US Security Strategy in Asia andProspects for an Asian Regional Security Regime

Masashi Nishihara
National Defense Academy”Asia Shift” and the Second Term of the Bush Administration
Common wisdom may suggest that the reelection of President George
Bush in November this year is likely to reinforce the general trend of “Asiashift” in the US global security policy, which has been taking place during his
first term. This is because sources of security threats are considered to begreater in Asia than in Europe. The region may increasingly face two major
security issues, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) andthe spread of terrorism instigated by radical Moslems, not to mention
regional ethnic and religious conflicts.
Yet it is too early to say with certainty that the United States will
move toward that direction, because the resignation of Colin Powell as
secretary of state and James Kelly as assistant secretary of state for East
Asia and the Pacific leaves uncertain how the second-term Bushadministration will deal with the region. The newly nominated secretary ofstate, Condoleezza Rice, has had longer experiences with European affairs
than Asian affairs. How President Bush will compose a security policy teamfor Asia in the White House, the State Department and the Defense
Department will be an important factor. Asian specialists such as Torkel
Patterson and Michael Green will no doubt play an important role, but they
are today in the White House. It will be interesting to see who will support
Rice in the State Department as Asian affairs experts.

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The other reason why the Bush administration’s Asia shift is
uncertain is that during his second term President Bush may be forced topay greater attention than before to European and Eurasian affairs in viewof the fact that terrorism by radical Moslems has surged there in recentmonths. The Chechen massacre in September and religious tensions in theNetherlands instigated by the murder of a prominent anti-Islam Dutch
film-maker are rising concerns for the United States. The current politicalturmoil in Ukraine is an added strategic concern for the European Union andthe United States. Bush will also find political benefits in seeking to restore
his relations with Europe, notably with France and Germany, which weredamaged over the Iraq war.
The US Strategic Tradition: the Balance of PowerThe traditional security strategy by the United States is to deter any
hegemonic power from emerging to threaten the US position in the worldand certain strategic regions, notably Asia. When Japan became a dominant
power during the 1930s and the first half of the 1940s, Washington crashed itby overwhelming force, even atomic bombs. When the Soviet Union andChina formed a dominant alliance during the first half of the Cold War,Washington beefed up Japan as its key fortress in the Pacific. When theSoviet Union severed its political relations with China in late 1960s, theUnited States built a grand coalition with Japan and China to balance theSoviet power. These historical moves suggest that if China becomes a strong
military power, the United States is likely to build up ways to balance China.
It is difficult to see the United States today actually attempting tobalance China. The Bush administration, which started to regard China as“a strategic competitor,” has since moved to mend relations with China andsought cooperation from it on war on terrorism. Beijing gave tacit
endorsement of the US war against Iraq. The United States also depends
upon China for the management of the Six-Party Talks, although it is notsatisfied with China’s reluctance to press Pyongyang harder than before.
Yet today, the way in which the United States has built security ties
and deployed its own troops in Central, South, and Southeast Asia since 9.11
looks a little bit like a strategy to encircle China, although Washington has
explicitly pronounced no such intention at the moment. Washington has built

2close security ties with Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Mongolia, andIndia. According to the London-based IISS (International Institute forStrategic Studies) report, The Military Balance 2004-2005, the United Stateshas 950 troops in Kyrgyzstan, 14 in Tajikistan, and 900 in Uzbekistan. TheUS bases in these countries are primarily to help fight terrorism there and inAfghanistan. The United States has worked with Mongolia to modernize thelatter’s armed forces and to conduct bilateral and multilateral exercises withMongolian forces. Washington has also established significant naval
cooperation with India. India has approved of letting the US navy use its
naval yards in the Arabian Sea. It has also provided escorts for US ships
sailing through the Malacca Strait. The armed forces of the two countries
have conducted joint exercises.
The United States Navy and Air Force now enjoy access to
Singapore’s facilities. Singapore has made one of its special piers available toAmerican aircraft carriers. Perhaps the US-Vietnam military relations arestill embryonic but Vietnam’s defense minister has visited Hawaii andWashington, while the commander of the US Pacific Command has called onHanoi. That commander, Admiral Thomas Fargo, proposed a Regional
Maritime Security Initiative (RMSI) in Vancouver in May 2004. Thisinitiative is intended to protect concerned states against “illicit maritime
activities” in Southeast Asian waters. Singapore has expressed concern
about possible future links between pirates and Al Qaeda-connected
terrorists.
As was mentioned earlier, these security relations being forged
between the United States and many countries around China do not target
at balancing China but aim at building a network of counter-terrorist
operations. However, the military relations between the United States andTaiwan are clearly intended to balance China’s power. Both Washington andTaipei are concerned about China’s growing military capabilities. The former
is supporting the latter with advanced weapons, including Patriot PAC 3missiles, so that China will not resort to force in “liberating” Taiwan.
Japan plans to introduce in the near future US-supported advanced
defense missile systems, including PAC3 (for Ground Self-Defense Forces)
and SM3 (for Maritime SDF) missiles, against North Korea’s missile attacks.
However, once the systems are deployed, they can also watch China’s missile
attacks as well.

3More Immediate US Concerns: North Korea and Taiwan
More immediate US concerns are, however, about the Korean
peninsula. Having run on the platform of tough counter-terrorist measures,
President Bush will probably push harder the policy to deter North Korea’s
production of nuclear weapons and prevent North Korea from proliferating
nuclear and other sensitive technologies to other aspiring “rogue states.” For
this purpose, the United States wants to see successful work at the Six Party
Talks (SPT). Newspaper reports indicate that there may be another meetingof SPT before the end of 2004. However, North Korea’s agreement to themeeting in the near future is questionable. Pyongyang probably wants towait until the second-term Bush administration comes up with any new
policy statements. It is likely to postpone the next meeting until afterJanuary 20, 2005. North Korea seems to think that time is on its side, that
prolonged talks will give an opportunity to develop nuclear bombs, and thatonce they are made the United States would be forced to accept them. This is
like the case with Pakistan.
Taiwan is another problem for the United States. President Chen
Shui-bian has announced plans to adopt by 2008 a new constitution, which
will prescribe the island as an independent state, signifying the explicit
recognition of Taiwan’s national sovereignty. This will create a new tension
across the Strait of Taiwan. Washington would not support Taiwan’s efforts
for such constitution, although it will continue to provide military support forTaipei.
Both the problems of North Korea and Taiwan will affect the security
environment of Northeast Asia, which naturally influences Japanese
security policy. The security environment for Japan has worsened due to thepolitical tensions between Tokyo and Beijing and the recent incident inwhich a Chinese nuclear submarine intruded into Japanese waters.
A full picture of the US military transformation program is yet to beseen. The Pentagon reportedly plans to take out some 60,000 troops fromEurope and send them back home or to relocate some of them to “the arc ofinstability,” covering the Middle East, Central and South Asia, and East Asia.
The proposed relocation of the 5th Army headquarters from the State ofWashington to Zama outside of Tokyo will help strengthen the US position

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vis-à-vis the Korean peninsula, in case the United States should want toreduce its troop level in South Korea. The Pentagon has announced plans toreduce the current strength of 37,000 troops on the peninsula to 25,000 by
2005. It also plans to relocate its troops from their present bases north of theHan River to the south of the Han River, terminating the “tripwire” strategy.
Reportedly the Pentagon is considering to relocate the US air force
headquarters from Fussa outside of Tokyo down to Guam. This way the US
air force can stay safely outside of North Korea’s missile range.
The military transformation plan is designed to relocate US troops tosafer sites in the Western Pacific and yet to be able to meet enemy attacks
with mobile and effective troops. This transformation will probably prepare
the Pentagon to cope with rising Chinese power as well. It is to reinforce theUS plan for Asia shift.
An Asian Regional Security Regime
Since the 1990s, those nations concerned of the Asia-Pacific region
have introduced several region-wide frameworks for regional security. Yet allof them are only useful to the extent that they provide venues forconsultation and confidence-building. They have not operated to solve
specific security issues. These frameworks include the ASEAN Regional
Forum (AFR), Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), ASEAN plus
Three and a proposed East Asian Community. Other similar efforts arealso made to promote regional dialogues at Track II or Track One and Halflevel. They are, for instance, the Council on Security and Cooperation for theAsia and Pacific (CSCAP), which is composed of “member committees” of theregion, and the Shangri-La Dialogue, which the IISS organizes annually inSingapore.
Any regional security regime will be unsuccessful without theparticipation of the United States, as it plays a predominant role for regional
security. In this sense, groupings such as the ASEAN plus Three and a
proposed East Asian Community will not able to accomplish much on
security matters. The ASEAN has strengthened its Treaty of Amity andCooperation (TAC) by inviting China, India, Russia, and Japan to join it. The
ASEAN is seeking outside powers to join its Treaty of Southeast Asia
Nuclear Weapons Free Zone (SEANWFZ). These treaties become more5

significant if they are joined by the United States.
ARF meetings are primarily composed of foreign ministry officials
and thus weak in military debates. If ARF should adopt a scheme that has
military representatives at SOM (senior officials meeting) level, it will
improve the quality of consultations. Yet formal frameworks such as ARF
tend to constrain the exchange of candid views. The Shangri-La Dialogue, on
the other hand, whose first meeting took place in May 2002, is a highly
useful scheme in that about twenty defense ministers or their equivalents
attend, allows for more free exchange of views than ARF.
While a region-wide security regime is not fruitful, subregional,frameworks will be more productive. They include the Five Power Defense
Agreement, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and the ASEAN
Security Community, and the Six-Party Talks. Many of the institutionalarrangements whose initiatives have been taken by the United States andits like-minded nations suggest more action-oriented devices for the Asia
Pacific region. They are the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), theProliferation Security Initiative (PSI), and a proposed Regional Maritime
Security Initiative.
Still the most reliable security schemes in the region are the networkof bilateral alliances which the United States have nurtured since 1951, withthe participation of South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, the Thailand, andAustralia. The US-Singapore security agreement should also be added here.
A New Horizon for Japan’s Security Policy
To sum up, the United States under the Bush Administration of thesecond term will pursue complex security policies toward East Asia: to use
Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Russian powers to seek a non-nuclear or
denuclearized North Korea, while balancing a powerful China against
Taiwan and maintaining the security of Asia-Pacific sealanes.
President Bush and the new Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
may have to pay greater attention to European affairs and to continue tomaintain a strong grip on Iraq and Palestine, but he nevertheless is likely toreinforce the Asia shift. There are sufficient sources of security threat in Asia,including the proliferation of WMD, Islamic terrorism, inter-Korean tensions,
China-Taiwan disputes, surging pirates, and so forth.

6There is no regional security regime that is action-oriented, andformal regional security frameworks such as ARF that do exist today are lessproductive than the Track II framework for security talks such as theShangri-La Dialogue. Specific issue-oriented schemes in which the UnitedStates play a strong role seem to work better.
President Bush may take a bolder attitude toward North Korea’s
nuclear issues and send a strong message to China that it is concerned about
China’s growing military power. These postures will serve as a new horizon
for Japan’s security policy. Japan will have to respond to the newenvironment.

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