by James E. Fanell and Bradley A. Thayer
China's aggression in the Indo-Pacific and weak U.S. responses threaten American security, requiring stronger support for allies and a tougher stance from the incoming Trump administration.
The election of President Donald Trump is welcome news. Yet, while Americans have rightly been focused on the election and its aftermath, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has not been idle. The hyper-aggression of the PRC has continued unabated against the U.S. and its allies and partners.
During this election season, the PRC’s hyper-aggression has been predominantly directed against our treaty ally, the Republic of the Philippines. Our mutual defense treaty with the Philippines is important from an America First perspective because of the strategic location it provides to our forward-deployed military forces in the Far East. Thus, Beijing’s ongoing aggression against Manila, which has been occurring for years, is not just a threat to the Philippines, but also to America’s national security.
The loss of access to bases in the Philippines puts the safety of our commerce, naval, and other military forces in the South China Sea at greater risk. With one-third, or approximately $5 trillion, worth of goods transiting the South China Sea each year, this is a strategic channel for the U.S. and allies like Japan. Given the actions by the PRC in the last few weeks, Beijing understands this well. The PRC has intensified its campaign of coercion, which is directed at compelling the Philippines to acknowledge and accept the PRC’s illegitimate claims in the South China Sea.
Manila has been pressured by the PRC to concede its sovereign rights by accepting changes to the “code of conduct” that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been manipulating in its favor. In the last week, the PRC publicly announced that it had released its delimitation and demarcation “baselines” of what it purports to be its “territorial waters” around Scarborough Shoal, which it illegally seized in 2012. Beijing made this announcement in response to Manila’s approval of two laws, the Maritime Zones Act and the Archipelagic Sea Lanes Act, that define the Philippines’ sea lanes and maritime zones, to strengthen its alleged “claims” to what are its recognized territorial waters and exclusive economic zones, which have already been formally rejected by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in 2016. In addition to Beijing’s political warfare, the CCP continues its aggression against Philippine territory in the kinetic arena, with the ramping up of Chinese Coast Guard and PLA Navy patrols at Sabina and Second Thomas Shoals.
The PRC has also expanded its agenda in the South China Sea against Indonesia, where the PRC is pressuring Jakarta over the Natuna Islands and the North Natuna Sea, where the PRC’s disgraced “nine-dash line” violates Indonesia’s sovereignty over its Exclusive Economic Zone.
This month President Prabowo Subianto met with Xi Jinping in Beijing, where an agreement was signed on fisheries and oil and gas exploration around the Natuna Islands. This agreement risks implicitly validating the PRC’s illegitimate claims in the South China Sea. Actions taken by Indonesia to reach agreements that normalize the PRC’s presence can further undermine other states, like the Philippines and Vietnam, thus effectively impacting America’s long-term national security interests for freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. Due to Beijing’s relentless aggression and lack of a demonstrated American commitment to the region, Jakarta is hoping that the PRC crocodile will eat Indonesia last among the nations of the South China Sea.
Small and medium states are tempted to yield to the PRC in the face of its bullying, but this simply ensures that the CCP will be emboldened and will escalate its demands. The fact is that Indonesia and other nations will lose their sovereign territory if they appease the PRC through agreements like this. Again, the impact to the America First agenda from Beijing’s expansionism will be to push America out of the South China Sea and thus weaken our economy and military security. As such, the incoming Trump administration should be strongly encouraging the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) states to hang together, or they will hang separately in the face of the PRC’s aggression.
Likewise, Beijing’s agenda has not spared Taiwan. On the contrary, the PRC’s coercive efforts are multiplying against the new administration in Taipei. For example, violations of Taiwanese airspace have increased by more than 300 percent since May 2024, according to U.S. Commander of Pacific Air Forces General Kevin Schneider. In an interview this month, Gen. Schneider said that whether it is violations of the Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) or crossing the center line with Taiwan since the inauguration of Taiwanese President William Lai. Moreover, that 300 percent increase was based on numbers that were already elevated.
The Biden-Harris administration’s damage to the U.S. posture in the Indo-Pacific has been considerable. It failed to repair U.S. force posture in the region or to back the Philippines as it confronted the PRC. The U.S. could break the PRC’s efforts to strangle the Philippines’ presence at Sabina Shoal and Second Thomas Shoal by harassing operations, but it has not done so out of an irrational fear of “provoking” Beijing. To its great credit, Manila is doing what it can, for example, purchasing 49 vessels from France and Japan to strengthen its Coast Guard and adding 7,000 personnel to that service. However, the Philippines alone cannot match the PRC’s maritime power and presence in the South China Sea.
Now is the time for Manila to receive tangible and overt support from a new administration in Washington. The U.S. Navy can aid the Philippines in breaking the de facto blockade that Beijing is imposing by showing its presence in the face of the PRC’s aggression to convey to PRC forces that the U.S. stands with its treaty ally. That is going to take a larger surface and subsurface U.S. Navy presence to convey the right signals to Beijing and to deter escalation. The U.S. Navy may also conduct vertical replenishment operations to meet the logistical demands of the Filipino military as they defend their sovereignty.
The PRC’s actions ensure that it will be the foremost threat faced by the new Trump administration. That threat is immediate. It has expanded due to the inaction of the Biden-Harris administration to address the threat directly in favor of continuing neo-Engagement policies. The damage done by Biden-Harris in terms of its overall and opportunity costs will be acutely felt by the Trump administration as it repairs the damage.
Of most immediate concern is just how precarious the security environment in Asia will be until January 20. Given the CCP’s established pattern of testing new American administrations, the incoming Trump administration must anticipate that Xi will use this window of opportunity to turn the screws on the Philippines and Taiwan—and thus degrade the America First agenda.
Nonetheless, help is on the way for U.S. allies and partners. The early appointments made by President Trump demonstrate that the strategic focus of the Trump administration will inspire ASEAN nations to resist the PRC’s hyper-aggression because they are cognizant that the U.S. sees the PRC as they do, a supremely belligerent and existential enemy.
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James E. Fanell and Bradley A. Thayer are authors of Embracing Communist China: America’s Greatest Strategic Failure. The views expressed are their own.
James E. Fanell and Bradley A. Thayer
Source: https://amgreatness.com/2024/11/17/communist-china-has-not-been-idle-while-the-u-s-has-focused-on-the-election/
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