FEBRUARY
2021

The Biden Administration’s Chance toGet Asia Policy Right—
A View from Japan
Hitoshi Tanaka, Senior Fellow, JCIEW

hen Joe Biden was inaugurated as the46th President of the United States, US alliance managers around Asia breathed a sigh of relief. From Japan’s perspective, while former Prime
Minister Shinzo Abe had developed close personal
relations with President Donald Trump to maintain a strong alliance with the United States, it wasclear that the US retreat from East Asia was harming
crucial Japanese interests. Now, liberated from having to cope with Trump’s chaotic and transactional“America First” approach to foreign policy, there ishope that attention can be turned to deepening joint
cooperation and tackling critical regional challenges.
Initial steps by the Biden administration to return
the United States to multilateral diplomacy are being
welcomed with optimism.
Yet it would be a mistake to think that the world
will easily return to normal. The region faces a number of complex challenges—including the intensification of the US-China rivalry, climate change, andNorth Korea’s nuclear weapons—that increasingly
undermine shared peace, stability, and prosperity.
Even with the return of professionalism to the WhiteHouse, these challenges cannot be unilaterally resolved by the United States.
To overcome these challenges, the United States
must keep two key concepts in mind. First, the criticalnature of the US-China rivalry means that US policyon Asia needs to take a whole-of-theater approach.
This involves identifying areas of common interest andof disagreement and developing policies that are predicated on a clear understanding of how those issues intersect with the need to manage the US-China rivalry.
Second, the United States needs to develop a multilayered, functional approach to deepening cooperation inAsia. This entails pursuing cooperation through bilateral, trilateral, and multilateral means where interests
converge while avoiding negative spillovers.

The New US-China Power Balance

The shifting balance of power between the UnitedStates and China highlights the need for intensified
cooperation with US allies and friends to best manage China’s rise and protect shared regional stability and prosperity. While the United States remains
the world’s leading military and economic power,

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the global and regional order has gradually become
more multipolar.
China’s rising power is evident across a numberof key dimensions. At the end of Barack Obama’s
first term as president in 2012, China’s GDP was 50
percent of US GDP, compared to 70 percent in 2020.
The COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated thistrend. Seen from overseas, the United States has been
the country hit hardest by the virus, accounting forover a quarter of all infections globally, while suffering
one of its worst economic contractions ever. Although
China was the first country affected by the pandemic,
it has recovered quickly by contrast, and was one of
the few countries in the world to post positive growthin 2020.
At the same time, after four years of the Trump
presidency, US moral leadership has been severely
damaged. Under Trump, the United States retreatedfrom multilateralism, became a disruptor in key institutions of global governance, violated fundamental
principles of free trade, and became mired in threats
to its own democracy. As such, the Biden administration will need to engage in intensified consultations
with US allies and friends both to resurrect its leadership credentials and to lay the foundation for co­operative approaches to manage the rise of China andtackle regional challenges.

A Whole-of Theater Approach to Asia

Against the backdrop of China’s continued rise, theBiden administration has come into office inheriting a
number of complex challenges. This includes the needto manage the rivalry between the United States andChina in a way that does not fatally undermine sharedregional stability and prosperity. Under the Trumpadministration, the US-China rivalry escalated andunderwent three significant shifts: the intensificationof competition for high-tech hegemony, a US retreat
from championing democracy and human rights, anda change in the US treatment of Taiwan. A whole-oftheater approach is needed to carefully manage thesedisagreements and prevent escalation and spillovers
so that we can move forward with cooperation in areas of common interest, such as mitigating climatechange and denuclearizing North Korea.

US-China High-Tech Competition

As competition between the United States and China
over high-tech supremacy intensified, the Trumpadministration moved toward economic decouplingin an effort to avoid transferring critical cutting-edgetechnologies and big data access to China that could
undermine military and economic security. China isalready responding by pursuing the domestic production of critical high-tech components, such as
semiconductors. While we need to avoid the transfer
of certain sensitive technologies to China, the issue
should rather be dealt with as a question of rulemaking so as not to stifle growth, cooperation, and innovation. If current trends continue, they could lead tosevere economic bottlenecks worldwide.
It is clear that rules are needed globally, or at least
regionally, to establish a level playing field and set
standards for intellectual property law and acceptable
limits on the role of the state and state-owned enterprises. Assuming it may not be politically feasible
for the Biden Administration to return to the TransPacific Partnership (TPP), it should consider how theUnited States can engage in a regional agreement thatbuilds on the TPP, advancing economic rulemaking
while leaving the door open for China to eventually
join as well.

Human Rights and Democracy

While President Trump sought to be tough on China,
he also retreated from traditional advocacy of US values. Actions to defend the human rights of Uighurs
in Xinjiang or to halt crackdowns on democratic protesters in Hong Kong were not given high priority.
US allies and friends welcome the renewed emphasis the Biden administration will bring to democracy
and human rights, and Japan would welcome efforts
by the United States to work in greater partnershipwith likeminded countries to strengthen democratic
norms and institutions in Asia. However, an overly
forceful US approach on these issues, such as throughunilateral sanctions, is unlikely to sway China, whichtakes the position that these are internal matters.

The Status of Taiwan

The Trump administration made significant shifts
on policy toward Taiwan. Former Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo cast doubt on the “one China” policy
when he declared in the last months of the Trump
presidency that he was throwing out the rule book regarding self-imposed restraints on US relations withTaiwan. Such statements seemed almost designed toprovoke China.

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It is imperative to avoid an unnecessary conflictover Taiwan. Such a conflict could potentially entangle Japan, as the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) wouldbe expected to support the US military under theSeptember 2015 security-related legislation that recognizes the right of the SDF to engage in limited forms ofcollective self-defense. Indeed, US policy and rhetoricon Taiwan has the capacity to affect Japan’s confidence
in the US-Japan alliance. The United States and its regional allies should work together to deter any possibility of military misadventures by China. However, thesituation also needs to be carefully managed to avoid
a downward spiral stemming from the Trump administration’s last-minute poison pill on the “one China”
policy and to avoid calls for Taiwanese independence
that might push China toward military misadventures.

Climate Change

Irrespective of disagreements with China on otherissues, cooperation on climate change is crucial.
Given that climate change is an existential threat,co­operation on this common interest should bea no-brainer. As such, the Biden administration’s
moves to establish a Special Presidential Envoy for
Climate, to appoint John Kerry to serve in that position, and to re-enter the Paris Climate agreement
are welcome steps.
China and the United States are the two biggest
carbon polluters in the world in absolute terms. The
European Union has already developed ambitious
policies, while Japan and South Korea have committed to carbon neutrality by 2050 and China by 2060.
However, international consensus is needed to ensurethat these commitments are met. Only the UnitedStates has the capacity to carry the nascent consensus
forward and bring the rest of the world along.

North Korea

A negotiated settlement with North Korea is also acommon regional interest, including for both Chinaand North Korea. Any settlement will require paralleland synchronized roadmaps that set out a step-by-stepprocess on denuclearization and the establishment ofa permanent peace treaty. This is the only realistic approach given that North Korea is fearful for its survival post-denuclearization, while the United States isconcerned that any premature relaxation of sanctions
would allow North Korea to bank those concessions
while retaining nuclear weapons.

The Trump administration seemed to be making
some sort of progress with its summits, but it madetwo key mistakes. First, it failed to delegate sufficientauthority to negotiators and in effect skipped over thegroundwork negotiations. The only way to establish
the roadmaps toward a settlement is through dedicated, professional, considered, and patient negotiations. The Biden administration’s picks on foreign
policy show it has the necessary professionalism tobegin this hard work.
Second, the Trump administration focused on
bilateral negotiations. Denuclearizing North Korea
will require not only bilateral US–North Korea negotiations but also a broader international approach,which entails building US-ROK-Japan unity and thenreconvening the Six-Party Talks. President Biden
seems to recognize this point given that, in recent
phone calls with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide
Suga and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, he encouraged them to put their differences aside in orderto advance trilateral cooperation. But it must not be
forgotten that cooperation with China is indispensable in advancing North Korea’s denuclearization,
given its role as the North Korea’s only significant
economic partner, as well as its desire to maintainstability on its border. It would therefore be advisable
to adopt a two-plus-three-plus-six approach—bilateral dialogues with North Korea, US-Japan-ROK andChina-Japan-ROK trilaterals, and the Six-Party Talks.

Multilayered Functional Cooperation

Multilayered and functional cooperation is neededto advance a whole-of-theater approach to Asian foreign policy; to best manage US-China rivalry overhigh-technology, human rights and democracy, andthe status of Taiwan; and to advance cooperation
on shared issues such as climate change and North
Korea. This means leveraging the regional institutional architecture to develop regionwide cooperation across the bilateral, trilateral, quadrilateral, andmultilateral levels to enhance security in the region.
This approach is born out of the recognition that therange of diverse values, political systems, and levels of
economic development across the region necessitatesa practical focus on functions to deepen cooperation
on areas of common interest while managing areas ofdisagreement to prevent escalation and spillovers.
At the bilateral level, the US-Japan alliance continues to be the cornerstone of regional security. To

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ensure the continuing stability of the alliance, theUnited States and Japan have approved a one-yearextension of the current arrangement on host-nation
support, which had been set to expire at the end ofMarch. The demands by the Trump administrationthat Japan quadruple its support were bizarrely unrealistic. Looking beyond next year, Japan may consider reasonable increases in the name of deepening
security cooperation related to maintaining facilities
in Japan and paying the salaries of Japanese on-basepersonnel. However, any demands to bear the costsof US soldiers’ salaries would be akin to hiring mercenaries and would undermine alliance credibility.
At the minilateral level, the Quadrilateral Security
Dialogue (the Quad) between the United States,
Japan, Australia, and India may be a useful mechanism to develop interoperability. However, while its
proponents champion the Quad as an instrument tobuild a free and open rules-based order, care needs tobe taken to avoid framing the Quad as an anti-China
mechanism, which could entrench bloc-to-bloc rivalry. Rather, cooperation among the four Quad nations should be developed in a natural and low-key
manner to bolster deterrence.
Multilaterally, the region has an abundance ofinstitutional arrangements including the East Asia
Summit, APEC, the ASEAN Defense Ministers’Meeting Plus, and the Regional Comprehensive
Economic Partnership. The United States and its allies
and friends should seek to engage China in functional
cooperation through these arrangements, for example encouraging non-traditional security cooperationin such areas as the battle against COVID-19, pandemic
preparedness, disaster relief, energy security, healthy
aging, and the implementation of the UN Sustainable
Development Goals.
China’s rise makes it harder to budge on its coreinterests and issues it considers internal matters.

However, the interface of the region’s engagementwith China is negotiable. Regional institutions shouldbe leveraged to their full potential to manage foreignand economic policy with China, to steer it away fromaggressive technology policies and inflammatory approaches on Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, toengage it in cooperation on regional rulemaking, andto promote cooperation on shared interests such as
climate change and North Korea.

■■■
Asia faces a number of increasingly daunting challenges, including the intensification of the USChina rivalry, the impact of climate change, and theneed to address North Korea’s nuclear arsenal. The
region enthusiastically welcomes the Biden administration’s initial steps to return the United States
to multilateral diplomacy. Yet the changing times
call for new modes of deeper cooperation. In thecontext of the US-China rivalry, a whole-of-theaterapproach toward Asia is needed to identify challenges that represent common interests while carefully managing and avoiding spillovers into areasof disagreement. This is best implemented throughmultilayered, functional cooperation that leverages
bilateral, trilateral, and multilateral mechanisms thatcan effectively facilitate cooperation with willing
partners. In this way, we can jointly address urgent
and common regional challenges, manage stability
in areas of disagreement, avoid entrenching a divided geopolitical order, and maintain shared peace
and prosperity into the future.
Hitoshi Tanaka is a senior fellow at JCIE and chairmanof the Institute for International Strategy at the Japan
Research Institute, Ltd. He previously served as Japan’s
deputy minister for foreign affairs.

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