America Adrift in the Indo-Pacific

Election season is officially underway in the United States. In early February, the U.S. states of Iowa and New Hampshire kicked off primary season, sparking a nine-month process that will culminate in a general election this fall. The November polls will either see U.S. President Donald J. Trump re-elected to a second term or supplanted by a rival from the Democratic Party. U.S. elections are normally a global event, but this year‘s electoral contest carries special importance for foreign countries. Trump’s re-election would mean four more years of a decidedly heterodox American grand strategy while his defeat, depending on which candidate is nominated by the Democratic Party, could mean a more conventional American foreign policy will re-emerge. 

Nowhere is this truer than in the Indo-Pacific region, where the Trump administration’s 2020 is off to a poor start. Three developments underscore the fact that, despite several policy pronouncements on the importance of the region, U.S. strategy in the Indo-Pacific is largely adrift. Between a deeply confused fiscal year 2021 budget request from the White House, continued cost negotiation malaise in the U.S.-South Korea alliance, and the start of what could lead to a total splintering of the U.S.-Philippines alliance, all is not well in the Trump administration’s Indo-Pacific. 

In Washington, budgets are policy and the Trump administration’s fiscal year 2021 budget for the U.S. Department of Defense, in particular, undercuts the declaration at the outset of last year’s inaugural Indo-Pacific Strategy Report that this region was the Pentagon’s “priority theater.” A quick look at the administration’s base and Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) budget divided up by combatant commands reveals that, like the Obama administration, any “rebalance” to the Indo-Pacific region is largely happening on paper. U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, or INDOPACOM, is third-to-last among combatant commands in its budget request, with only U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) and U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) faring worse. Meanwhile, indicating a major source of continuity with this administration’s foreign policy compared to its predecessors, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) continues to lead the way.

That’s just one example. Here’s another: The U.S. Navy, the force that is most relevant in Indo-Pacific Command’s area of responsibility (AOR), saw a dismal budget request, with serious slashes to proposed shipbuilding. Many of the proposed cuts would be felt in the U.S. Pacific Fleet, which has long demanded a serious effort to up its hull count. Even as the Trump administration has nominally pushed for a 355-ship Navy, the budget request makes clear that this is not in the offing. 

To be sure, budget requests are just that: requests. As the administration’s budget makes contact with Capitol Hill, legislative input and pushback are sure to result in a transformed overall budget. The tragedy of the latest budget request is that the Trump administration remains committed to overall militarism, with defense spending still coming in at $705.4 billion. But there are few indicators that maximizing this budget to best serve stated American policy objectives in documents like the Indo-Pacific Strategy Report or even the 2018 National Defense Strategy is a priority.

Beyond questions of funding and budgets, the software underlying U.S. alliances and partnerships in the region is also under deep strain. This is a problem of the administration's own making in the case of South Korea and due to other factors in the case of the Philippines. With South Korea, the core issue carries over from 2018 and 2019: the Trump administration continues to seek a vast increase in Seoul's contributions to host nation support payments as the two sides try to negotiate the next five-year Special Measures Agreement (SMA), the agreement that governs alliance cost-sharing.

The issue is quickly growing toxic. With no SMA in sight so far, the prospect of funding drying up for South Koreans working with U.S. Forces Korea, thereby forcing furloughs, looms large. On the Korean left, the cost-sharing debate is reinforcing notions that Washington is fundamentally exploitative of South Korea. While tensions with North Korea remain relatively low compared to their 2017 highs, it's no surprise that the Trump administration's attempts to shake down Seoul are leaving this decades-old alliance on thin ice. The way out in the short term would appear to be another one-year temporary SMA extension with a modest, inflation-adjusted increase as the two sides agreed in early 2019, but Trump appears determined.

All of this brings us to the Philippines, where likely any U.S. administration would have ended up facing what the Trump administration is now. In February, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who has long articulated anti-U.S. sentiments, formally issued a notice to the U.S. Department of State that Manila was beginning the 180-day process of ending the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), the status of forces agreement that governs the presence of U.S. troops in the country. The U.S.-Philippines alliance is no stranger to setbacks — American troops were evicted from the country in the early 1990s. The apparent end of the VFA comes after years of Duterte threatening to reduce Manila’s reliance on the United States under the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty, and it does not portend well in the short term for U.S. policy in the Indo-Pacific region.

Trump has reacted to the Philippine announcement with disinterest, commenting that the end of the VFA could actually save the U.S. money. This plays into the president’s longstanding view of alliances as transactional arrangements instead of constructs that benefit U.S. interests. Some analysts have suggested that Duterte’s move on the VFA is being done with the intention of renegotiating the terms of the U.S. presence in the country, but this is optimistic. Duterte himself has made no indication this is the case and there is no good reason to doubt that his action is born of anything but his inherent aversion to the Philippines’ perceived reliance on the United States. Either way, the move stands to seriously transform the nature of the Washington-Manila relationship in ways that could adversely affect the balance of power between the U.S. and China in Southeast Asia, dealing yet another blow to the broader U.S. presence in the Indo-Pacific.

Amid these developments — from how limited means are being leveraged to accomplish policy ends and malaise in two critical alliances — it’s impossible to view the U.S. position in Asia as being anything but in flux. Unfortunately, three years into office, the Trump administration’s penchant for implementing the guidance set out in multiple strategy documents has deteriorated instead of improved. As a result, the United States finds itself adrift in Asia.