Brain Booster for UPSC & State PCS Examination (Topic: Secret Indo-Pacific Strategy: US Perception of China)

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Secret Indo-Pacific Strategy: US Perception of China

The document, declassified by the outgoing Trump administration’s National Security Adviser, states that China’s influence will “continue to increase in the near-term and challenge the US ability to achieve its national interests in the Indo-Pacific”
The document made it clear that the US administration under President Donald Trump intended to maintain America’s primacy against an “illiberal” and increasingly powerful China.

The ‘US Strategic Framework for the Indo-Pacific’ is essentially one of the operational policy documents that follows the overarching strategy laid out in ‘National Security Strategy (NSS) 2017’.
While the NSS mentioned China 33 times, it did not call Beijing out as a threat to US preeminence in the Indo-Pacific, and US interests globally, which the Framework document clearly does. It foresees that ‘strategic competition’ between the US and China will persist, given systemic divergence and opposite goals.
The US sees China as a strategic competitor bent on circumventing international rules and norms and a key security concern across the Indo-Pacific region, where Beijing wants to establish “new, illiberal spheres of influence”, according to a newly declassified strategy document.

The strategy document states that China “seeks to dominate cutting-edge technologies, including artificial intelligence and bio-genetics”, and use them in the “service of authoritarianism”.
China’s dominance in these technologies poses “profound challenges to free societies”, and China’s proliferation of “digital surveillance, information controls, and influence operations will damage US efforts to promote our values and national interests in the Indo-Pacific region” and even in the Western hemisphere, the document adds.
The strategy also envisages China taking “increasingly assertive steps to compel unification with Taiwan”.

New Delhi might also be thankful that the document is out in public, because it means the incoming Joe Biden administration won’t find it easy to backslide on any of its commitments.
The strategy is based on the assumption that a “strong India, in cooperation with likeminded countries, would act as a counterbalance to China”, and that New Delhi’s “preferred partner on security issues” is Washington.
Among the “desired end states” or goals of the strategy is India-US cooperation to “preserve maritime security and counter Chinese influence in South and Southeast Asia and other regions of mutual concern”, and India maintaining “the capacity to counter border provocations by China”.

The strategy also sets the goal of ensuring that India remains “preeminent in South Asia and takes the leading role in maintaining Indian Ocean security, increases engagement with Southeast Asia, and expands its economic, defense, and diplomatic cooperation with other US allies and partners in the region”.
The strategy states that the US will take action on several fronts, including diplomatic, military and intelligence, to “accelerate India’s rise and capacity to serve as a net provider of security and Major Defense Partner” and to address challenges emanating from China, including the border dispute.
Among the actions the US will take in this regard is offering “support to India – through diplomatic, military, and intelligence channels – to help address continental challenges such as the border dispute with China and access to water, including the Brahmaputra and other rivers facing diversion by China”.

Over the past three years, the US has signed three key defence agreements, one at each of the 2+2 ministerial meetings, to facilitate the real-time sharing of sensitive military information and transfer of sophisticated technology.
These agreements are the Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA), the Industrial Security Annex to the General Security of Military Information Agreement, and the Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA).
The four members of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or Quad – India, Australia, Japan and the US – elevated the body to the ministerial level in 2019 and the second ministerial meeting was held in Tokyo last year.