Nuclear weapons and the strategic environment in the Indo Asia-Pacific super-region

Nuclear explosion

Nuclear weapons do not make war between states impossible. They only make wars between Great Powers ‘cold’ rather than ‘hot’ shooting wars. Even if ‘cold’, a cold war is a war just the same. The Cold War of the 20th century between the USA and the USSR was fought through an extremely expensive and dangerous strategic arms race and conventional proxy wars. The Soviet Union could not match the US move to deploy strategic weapons in outer space. It lost the Cold War and had to disappear into the pages of history in the 1990s. The Soviet bloc also collapsed and a few of former Soviet allies are now members of the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev returns to Moscow after a coup against him fizzles out a few months before the Soviet Union gets dissolved as an independent state

 

Vestiges of the 20th century Cold War remain in the region and the focal point is the Korean peninsula.  The situation in Korea and the broader Northeast Asian strategic environment can change if the current US-North Korean rapprochment will eventually lead to a peace treaty between the two states and denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.

North Korean leader Kim Jung Un meets US President Donald Trump in Singapore

 

Northeast Asia

 

South Asia is also a potential trouble spot as nuclear weapons states India and Pakistan continue to face each other in hostile emnity.

South Asia

 

Since three-four years ago, two new Cold Wars commenced.  

The first is between frenemies US and China in the Indo Asia-Pacific theater.

The second is between the US and Russia (both are clearly enemies to each other notwithstanding President Donald Trump’s cozying up to Russian leader Vladimir Putin) in the European and Middle East- North Africa (MENA) theaters.

Eurasia and the Middle East

 

 

This means that the US is waging a two-front ‘cold’ war.

 

In the Indo Asia-Pacific theater, the US superiority in strategic and conventional weaponry does not guarantee regional hegemony.  For one, it does not have enough carrots to win and consolidate friendships and alliances.

 

In contrast, China has a lot of carrots (including the various connectivity schemes like the Belt and Road Initiative, the Asian Investment and Infrastructure Bank, and the readiness to bribe state leaders in exchange for contracts and friendly relations).

Through a classic carrots-and-sticks strategy, China has been balkanizing the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) with some degree of success.  The soft targets of China’s carrots are the poorer members of ASEAN like Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar as well as the next member of ASEAN–Timor Leste.

Southeast Asia

 

China is also actively pushing its lines of defense outward away from its coastlines through aggressive force projection platform building in the South China Sea/West Philippines and territorial claims in both Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia.  In response to Chinese activism ang aggressiveness, a broad anti-China alliance has formed in the region.  The US move to rename its former Asia Pacific (military) theater to the Indo Asia-Pacific theater is a recognition of the importance of the Indian Ocean and India in its bid to contain and engage China. The US effort to get India in its anti-China effort is stifled by US support for India’s enemy, Pakistan.

 

The US cannot successfully complete its rebalancing to Asia (clearly an anti-China strategy) as it is still embroiled in serious disputes in too many other places (Ukraine, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, etc) in the rest of the world.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and US President Donald Trump

 

 

For this reason, its Asian allies are rethinking their relations with the US and adopting independent strategies. Of course, the US had been exhorting its allies to spend more for their own defense, a call reiterated in so many ways by incumbent US President Donald Trump. The new South Korean leader is now keen to normalize relations with North Korea. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had been tyrying to change Japanese strategic doctrine so it becomes a normal power and its military forces shed its limited ‘self-defense’ role and assume full military capabilities and responsibilities. I believe that if the US under President Trump shirks on its responsibility to its Northeast Asian allies, given the rapproachment with North Korea, Japan will develop its own nuclear weaponry ala Charles de Gaulle’s force de frappe.

French nuclear submarine aptly named Le Terrible

 

We do indeed live in very interesting times specially since eccentric leaders like Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jung Un can really change the game!

That Singapore summit

 

 

Of course, I am referring to the unprecedented (and hilariously touchy-feely) meeting between US President Donald J. Trump (formerly known as ‘Dotard’ as far as the North Koreans were concerned) and North Korean leader Kim Jung-un (formerly known as ‘Rocketman’ according to Trump himself) in Singapore a few days ago.  And the simple and stark document (supposedly long on motherhood statements and short on details) regarding the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula signed by both leaders before they each left for different destinations.

 

The proverbial ink on the document was still wet yet complaints and sour-graping in many parts of the United States slowly rose in a crescendo.  A number complained that the US inexplicably backed down from its initial position of securing a complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization (aka CVID) commitment from Kim.  Others said meeting Kim on such a prominent world stage was a major win for the latter and his bid to legitimize his country and oppressive regime officiated by no less than the leader of the so-called free world.    In fact, Kim also secured an invitation from Trump to visit the White House very soon.  A few focused on Trump’s faux pas when he saluted a North Korean general after the latter saluted him rather than shake his proferred hand.  Before long, cable TV commentators started characterizing Trump no longer a bully but now a ‘pussy cat’.

 

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/06/12/politics/what-really-came-out-of-the-trump-kim-summit/index.html

 

As if that was not enough, many (specially in Seoul, Washington, and Tokyo) were alarmed by Trump’s unilateral cancellation of joint US-South Korean military exercises in his solo press conference after his meeting with Kim, ostensibly for economic reasons.  For this reason, newly-designated Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had to assure American allies that Trump did not give away too much to Kim and that sanctions will be lifted only after denuclearization had been completed ( See http://www.scmp.com/news/asia/diplomacy/article/2150404/mike-pompeo-calls-counterparts-japan-and-south-korea-brief-them and https://edition.cnn.com/2018/06/13/politics/pompeo-north-korea-verification/index.html).  

 

One must ask:  What can be reasonably expected from a five-hour meeting that was almost scuttled at the 11th hour?  

My answer:  what resulted!

President Trump, I believe, won’t get cheated of his media moment, by insisting on a long document that lists all the doables on both sides (more particularly by the North Koreans) and the corresponding detailed timetable.  Those particulars must be sweated out by diplomatic teams on both sides.  If and when such a detailed agreement is ready, expect another and a more spectacular summit between Trump and Kim.  Perhaps by that time, both may have been nominated for (or have even won) the Nobel Peace Prize.  For Trump, preferably that second summit will happen before the midterm elections or at least before his term ends.  Kim meanwhile is prepared for the long haul.

 

So, we just have to wait and see.  Who knows?  Drafts of that detailed agreement may be subject of talks between the two sides when Kim visits the White House soon.