Politics and Governance

Since the start of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, a myriad of books, articles, and speeches have examined the creeping militarization of American foreign policy. In 2008, then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates publicly lamented the reliance on military tools over civilian diplomacy, advocated a major increase in the State Department budget, and emphasized the importance of the military being—and being seen to be—subordinate to civilian agencies and departments. After staying on at the start of the Obama administration, Secretary Gates testified and appeared together with then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to advocate for a stronger State Department, better integration of their departments’ efforts and to emphasize the State Department’s primacy in U.S. foreign policy.

Despite these efforts, the militarization of U.S. foreign policy appears to be expanding. Why is this the case?

It would be wrong to assume individual or bureaucratic ambition is responsible. Any activity, initiative, or plan the military undertakes derives from an assigned task or responsibility, and their conduct is institutionally constrained by official guidance and doctrine; the military’s foreign engagement and policy advocacy is no different. The military defines diplomacy and engagement as part of its organizational mission and requires it by operational doctrine. In essence, the military orders itself to pursue its own foreign engagement in ways that can bleed over into broader U.S. foreign policy.

The U.S. military’s stated purpose is “to protect our Nation and win our wars.” It may be a surprise, then, that the National Military Strategy’s vision for achieving that warfighting function includes “support[ing] diplomatic, informational, and economic activities that promote our enduring national interests.” Some of the formal military objectives that result have clear foreign policy overlap like deterring aggression and supporting global partners and allies. As the military defines it, even “winning wars” has a substantial diplomatic component that is separate from, and sometimes larger than, (though notionally complementary with) the State Department’s efforts.

The key to understanding the military’s foreign policy activity is its operational Phasing Model. The model conceives a six-phase spectrum of military operations:

• phase 0 – shape, includes peacetime operations and engagement to both prevent the conditions for crisis and enable the success of potential combat operations;
• phase 1 – deter, includes specific, targeted deterrence activity to prevent the outbreak of hostilities;
• phase 2 – seize initiative, is the transition to combat if deterrence fails;
• phase 3 – dominate, is the conduct of major combat operations;
• phase 4 – stabilize, is instituting post-combat political and civil services and stability; and
• phase 5 – enable civil authority, transitions military administration back to civilian or local authorities.

Fully, four of these phases drive the military’s foreign policy activity: the two phases that precede conflict, ‘Shape’ and ‘Deter,’ and the two phases that follow conflict, ‘Stabilize’ and ‘Enable Civil Authority.’

Shaping and Deterring

The military sees a variety of engagement activities—what one might call military diplomacy—as crucial to the shaping and deterring phases of a conflict. Joint military doctrine states: “Maintaining peace and preventing conflict/crises are as important as waging major combat operations. Consequently, in addition to crisis response, the future joint force must be more involved in proactive engagement/crisis prevention.” Such operations and foreign engagement activities could be aimed at spreading democracy, promoting peace, stability, and goodwill, or even destabilizing adversarial regimes.  Ideally, this effort would prevent crises from emerging through peaceful resolution, or by building a willing and capable network of regional partners and allies to deter aggression (and who would also meaningfully participate in any potential operation).

In the event military conflict becomes necessary, combat forces require “operational access” to the crisis region. Access permits forces to rapidly and safely deploy, including a base of operations, transit permissions and logistical support. Waiting to establish partner relationships and negotiate access at the outset of a crisis is extremely risky. Thus, the military recognizes that “success in combat often will depend on efforts to shape favorable access conditions in advance, which in turn requires a coordinated interagency approach.”

The military achieves those ‘access conditions’ by engaging with partner countries and establishing “forward” presence in the region of interest. Activities like building relationships with key foreign leadership or policy institutions, conducting exercises with foreign militaries, and providing training and equipment to partners helps ensure that the U.S. military can rely on access to conduct combat operations in the region, and ideally secure an effective partner.

Military access and partnership requirements all require engagement beyond the parameters of the Department of Defense (the aforementioned “interagency approach”). The military nominally sees itself as “supporting” other agencies and departments in national foreign policy during peacetime. However, the need to pursue “access” and prepare for potential conflict before the fact means the military, in practice, not only conducts its own independent foreign engagement, but also needs the diplomatic services of the State Department for its own ends.

Stabilization and Enabling Civil Authority

National strategic objectives are not met if battlefield victories do not subsequently produce a safe and functioning political environment. To that end, phases 4 and 5 require the military to “provide security, initial humanitarian assistance, limited governance, restoration of essential public services, and similar types of assistance” after combat operations are complete. As the post-conflict insurgency and violence in Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrate, these phases can be even more complex, costly, or even more dangerous than the initial combat operations themselves.

Meeting post-conflict civic needs means the military must have a stable of ostensibly non-combat capabilities that were more traditionally the province of the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). Rosa Brooks, a former Counselor to the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, is the author of a new book about the problem of the blurring definitions of war and peace, and describes her experience at the Pentagon discovering the extraordinary range of civil functions the military fills: programs to prevent sexual violence in the Congolese military, instituting agricultural reform in Afghanistan, promoting micro-enterprise for women, and helping contain the Ebola outbreak in Africa and providing healthcare in Malaysia, among other examples.

The military has thus defined the scope of its mission and responsibilities in ways that require deep foreign engagement and the tailoring of national foreign policy to achieve success.

Subsequent posts will examine how the military’s advocacy for conducting “shaping” operations, engaging and building up desired foreign partners, and preparing to conduct post-conflict civil functions affects the national foreign policy conversation, and how the weight of the military’s efforts and capacity influences the de facto conduct of that policy.

Steven Stashwick is a writer and analyst based in New York City. He spent ten years on active duty as a U.S. naval officer with multiple deployments to the Western Pacific. He writes about maritime and security affairs in East Asia and serves in the U.S. Navy Reserve. 

The views expressed in this post reflect those of the author and not that of the EastWest Institute.​

Your country has sent you, an American envoy, to advance relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China. On the surface, this intrigues you, although you may have little if any experience dealing with representatives of the Communist Party of China. Will you meet with humorless apparatchiks? Battle-hardened cadres? Disciples of Mao? The answer to that is simple: you will mostly engage with skilled technocrats who adhere closely to the Party’s line.

The more interesting question is how you intend to do it. Because while it is simple enough to visit Beijing and deliver some talking points (and make no mistake, this is precisely the goal), an appreciation of how your predecessors tackled this problem will not only inform and enrich your engagement, but also help to ensure that disagreements will center on issues, not personalities. Reading Jonathan Spence’s book The Chan’s Great Continent, I was struck by how much Western engagement with China fit the model of a few archetypes, styles of interaction which continue today. Figure out where you fit in and you will understand how to put your best foot forward while getting your message across.

The Dragon Slayer

In 1743, British Commodore George Anson commanded a flotilla on a Pacific expedition which, after many misadventures and great loss, managed at last to capture a Spanish treasure ship. Limping into the port of Canton in July of that year, prize in tow, he was dismayed to have the Chinese refuse his demands for a harbor navigator, exemption from duties and an audience with the viceroy.

Not to be bested, Anson kidnapped a Chinese navigator and forced his way upriver, determined to keep his lucre out of Chinese hands. He eventually secured the required support and returned home a rich man, but left a poisoned relationship in his wake.

Effectively, Anson showed up begging with one hand while holding a bag of gold in the other. No grievance was too small to quibble over. Echoes of Anson’s style are apparent in the varying treatment Rumsfeld and Powell received as they negotiated respectively for the release of a downed U.S. EP-3 aircraft and its crew in 2001. Powell’s willingness to issue a “vague statement of sorrow” apparently secured an early release for the crew while the plane languished in China.

The Diplomat

Commissioned by the British crown as an embassy to China, in 1793 George Macartney was sent to lower trade barriers for Britons and establish permanent relations. Attempting to bypass Chinese government-sanctioned middlemen by negotiating direct access to the Chinese market is a perennial Western tactic. Considering that we are still attempting it today, one can surmise it not too effective. Home court advantage simply makes it too easy for China to throw up new barriers.

Lord Macartney made a deliberate effort to awe Emperor Qianlong with numerous gifts displaying Britain’s technological prowess. It is often said that Qianlong rebuffed the gifts with a claim that China had no use for foreign knowledge, but I wonder if this refusal wasn’t simply a face saving measure to lessen the sting of the implied inferiority of Chinese manufactures.

Much of the embassy’s time seems to have been spent negotiating whether and how Macartney would kowtow to Qianlong. He might have spared himself much trouble by either agreeing at once (perhaps with certain conditions) or simply packing up and going home. As it happened, Macartney left having spent much time and treasure without accomplishing (or even really discussing) his objectives. Though Macartney was a proven diplomat, he failed to grasp the importance of the procedures involved in dealing with the Chinese government, causing him to lose focus and continue his futile efforts to the bitter end.

The Sinologist

The Jesuit Matteo Ricci arrived in China in 1582 with a commitment to form the relationships needed for his mission to take root there. Like Macartney 200 years later, Ricci also brought gifts of European technology. Unlike Macartney, his clocks and other articles helped him to gain status among China’s important Confucian elite and eventually in Emperor Kangxi’s court. This was likely by sparking Chinese interlocutors’ own interest to ask about the items rather than as a display of Western superiority.

To ingratiate himself further with his hosts, Ricci took up the robes of a Buddhist monk, switching later to those of the Confucian scholars on the advice of a Chinese friend. Beyond outward adornments, Ricci also made allowance for local ancestral veneration as being compatible with Catholic teaching, easing conversion by allowing Chinese converts to retain important spiritual and social practices. After winning allies among those who could advance his goals, learning Chinese, and writing several books introducing the best of his own culture, Ricci crowned his success with permission to enter the capital in 1601.

Finally, a quick note on the Panda Hugger. This epithet is most often used to cow those deemed too soft on China, nearly always a falsehood in this context. The real Panda Huggers are those foreigners who subordinate their own beliefs for those of the Chinese government, and that doesn’t help anyone in the end.

Americans believe that if the right two people simply sit down and talk, they can work anything out. While this may be true in some places, it is not so with the Chinese government. The first step is to offer a suggestion quietly, work out the details behind the scenes, and finally present the result as a shared success.

Expect Chinese leaders to do their homework, remain cool in the face of inevitable mishaps, uphold their interests, and be friendly if formal hosts. American leaders should reciprocate each of these qualities in the American fashion, maintaining the wariness of a dragon slayer, the finesse of a diplomat, and the commitment of a China hand. As President Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis, respond first with a rock-hard commitment to American interests and then with a subtle eye toward finding areas of common interest. Only when you are neither too eager nor too cynical can you find the happy medium in which personal issues give way to the common public good. Do that and you will stand tall among those explorers, missionaries, statesmen and students who came seeking the open door to China.

Ben Lowsen is a specialist in Chinese political and security affairs working as a program analyst for the U.S. Navy. He tweets at @lowsen88.

The views expressed in this post reflect those of the author and not that of the U.S. Navy, Department of Defense, U.S. Government, or EastWest Institute.

Below are some of Firestein's comments:

Donald Trump is now the president of the United States. What will his presidency mean for U.S.-China relations? Given that Trump was elected with a mandate to “do things differently,” predictions of sharp, decisive changes in U.S. policy toward China – and growing difficulties in this most consequential bilateral relationship – abound. I think we will see both change and continuity – and probably more continuity than generally anticipated.

On trade, the Trump administration will likely adopt a tougher course in a number of ways, but I don’t think it will change the foundational architecture of the commercial relationship. Within the WTO framework, the United States will likely press China harder on trade cases, IPR infringement, and the exfiltration of commercially valuable proprietary data (aka, cyber-enabled economic espionage); and it may continue to make noise about China’s currency policy (read:  “manipulation,” in the view of some in the administration). But I don’t think the fundamental dynamics of the trade relationship will or can change quickly. If President Trump manages merely to slow the growth of the massive U.S. annual trade deficit with China – a deficit that reached a billion dollars a day in 2015 – that will be a laudable achievement in itself. This won’t be as easy a nut to crack as it might have seemed to some during the campaign.

President Trump’s main specific goal as president is to “bring back” (or, in any case, create) millions of good-paying blue-collar jobs, particularly in the American heartland. The infrastructure sector, which figured unusually prominently in President Trump’s inaugural address, can be the key to that. And herein lies a real opportunity to transform the U.S.-China relationship, and U.S. perceptions thereof, in a fairly fundamental way. Specific ideas that I would encourage the Trump administration to consider are a possible bilateral infrastructure investment treaty (BIIT) with China; or more generally, a multilateral infrastructure investment liberalization agreement for the global economy (MIILAGE) and legislation aimed at streamlining foreign investment in U.S. infrastructure (e.g., a “Streamlining International Investment in U.S. Infrastructure Act,” or SIIUSIA).

Many are pessimistic about the prospects for U.S.-China relations under President Trump; at a minimum, I am more “cautiously pessimistic.” But actually, I would go even further: I think there is genuine upside potential in this relationship that can be realized under the new U.S. president and his Chinese counterpart. I am hopeful that, for the sake of our two peoples and the world, that potential will be recognized – and realized.

Read the full article here.

Seeking to turn geopolitical risk and political uncertainty into a strategic opportunity to demonstrate Japan’s role as regional leader, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe kicked off 2017 with a two-day trip to the Philippines. Notably, Abe announced a five-year, one trillion yen (8.66 billion USD) aid package, consisting of both public and private sector funding, targeting infrastructure development. That this marks Japan’s largest aid package to a single country, compared to 800 billion yen (7.7 billion USD package) to Myanmar, signals the focus of Japan’s strategic competition with China in Southeast Asia has shifted to the Philippines. The two leaders also signed five bilateral agreements, including a 5.2 million USD grant for high-speed patrol boats for the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) and a Memorandum of Cooperation (MOC) between the PCG and Japanese Coast Guard on maritime security. Abe also pledged cooperation in countering the country’s illegal drug epidemic, a priority for Manila.

Abe’s visit should be seen as follow-up to President Rodrigo Duterte’s trip to Tokyo in October 2016 where Japan offered a 48 million USD government loan package along with 1.85 billion USD in private sector Memorandum of Understandings (MOU) and Letters of Intent (LOI) from such companies such as Toyota and Mitsubishi, in addition to a verbal pledge by Marubeni to invest 17.2 billion USD over the long-term. Without specifically mentioning China, the two leaders issued a joint statement recognizing the two maritime nations’ shared interest in maintaining freedom of navigation in the South China Sea and application of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to peacefully resolve maritime territorial disputes.

More to the point, Abe’s outreach to the mercurial Philippine President is driven by Tokyo’s strategy to forge a closer strategic partnership with Manila in order to balance a resurgent and assertive China that is challenging the regional status quo and destabilizing regional security. Viewed from Tokyo, China’s militarization in the East China and South China Sea directly threatens Japan’s territorial integrity and sea lines of communications (SLOCs), which are vital to its national economic survival. Japan also seeks to defend its political influence with Manila as well as its long-established network of finance and trade ties against Chinese encroachment. These geopolitical and geo-economic drivers are highlighted by the fact that Abe’s trip to Philippines was part of a six-day tour that included Australia, Indonesia and Vietnam—all key nodes in Japan’s regional strategy.

Although Japan is the Philippines’ largest trade partner and source of foreign investment, China has begun to make significant inroads. When Duterte visited Beijing in October 2016, he was welcomed with 24 billion USD in pledges that included 9 billion USD in loans and Memorandum of Understandings (MOU) worth 13.5 billion USD. While Japan cannot afford to quantitatively outspend China, it retains a qualitative advantage of being a proven long-term investor that is more likely to implement aid and investment pledges fully. However, in December 2016, Manila opted to join the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which has less rigorous risk controls than the Japan-led Asian Development Bank (ADB) headquartered in Manila.

Another major strategic concern in Tokyo is the populist Philippine leader’s notoriously confrontational stance toward Washington. In response, Duterte has downgraded defense cooperation, restricted joint military exercises with U.S. forces, solicited China and Russia as alternative weapons suppliers and raised uncertainties about his commitment to implement the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA). Signed in 2014, the EDCA grants U.S. forces access to five bases on a rotational basis that elevated bilateral defense cooperation to its highest levels since the U.S. withdrew from Clark Air Base in 1991 and Subic Bay Naval Base in 1992.

Although Manila is unlikely to abrogate its 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty with the United States to align with China and Russia, one purpose behind Abe’s visit was to press Duterte for clarification and reassurance about his foreign policy priorities and intentions. It is uncertain whether U.S. President Donald Trump—who has vowed to take a hardline toward China, demanding more from U.S. allies—will “hit it off” with his Philippine counterpart and work to rehabilitate bilateral relations. While Trump is not expected to pressure Duterte over his bloody war on drugs, asking the Philippines to increase its “burden sharing” is probably a non-starter. Rather, Duterte may demand that Washington do more for the Philippines while seeking to maintain an omnidirectional state of equilibrium between the major powers. If so, then the bilateral relationship is unlikely to return the level of solidarity under former President Benigno Aquino III.

Duterte’s push for a more “independent” foreign policy—aimed at extracting maximum economic and financial concessions from his geopolitical suitors—presents both opportunities and risks for Japan. On the downside, a potential surge of Chinese capital and trade expansion could disrupt Japan’s longstanding trade and investment networks and displace Japan’s political influence with Philippine elites. Furthermore, Duterte’s strategy of distancing from the United States and rapprochement with China risks undermining emerging U.S.-Japan-Philippine security cooperation.

On the upside, these developments provide Abe with the domestic political justification to boost state-backed funding to the Philippines, while pressuring and incentivizing Japanese companies to double-down on investment. More importantly, the current rift and future uncertainty over U.S.-Philippine relations presents Tokyo with an opportunity to exercise leadership in the ongoing effort to evolve the U.S. hub-and-spoke security alliance in Asia into a more multilateral and interoperable system with increasing spoke-to-spoke linkages.

If the Trump administration turns inward and withdraws from upholding the rules-based order in the Asia-Pacific, Japan will need to become more self-reliant and take on a leadership role and increased burden-sharing. However, without decisive U.S. leadership and commitment (the “hub”), U.S. allies and partners (the “spokes”) will be limited in what they can accomplish alone or among themselves in the face of a resurgent and assertive China.

Jeremy Maxie is an Associate at Strategika Group Asia Pacific. He tweets at @jeremy_maxie. 

The views expressed in this post reflect those of the author and not that of the EastWest Institute.

EWI Chief Operating Officer, Dr. William J. Parker III, appeared on The David Webb Show on Monday, discussing U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's cabinet picks, most notably his choice for secretary of defense, General James Mattis.

General Mattis—who has had a 41-year career in the Marine Corps leading troops in Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq—“is known as a very cerebral guy who just happens to be a pure war-fighter at the same time,” said Parker.

Mattis, who headed the U.S. Central Command until retiring in 2013, "will be a rock solid secretary of defense," Parker added.

"Secretary of Defense is one of the key positions that they cannot afford to get wrong and I commend the President-elect for his selection." 

Click here to listen to the full interview. 

President-elect Donald Trump has so far been ambiguous regarding how he plans to deal with the volatile security situation in Afghanistan and the sensitive geopolitical balance in the region.

In an interview in 2012, Trump argued the U.S. should withdraw its troops from Afghanistan and use aid dollars to rebuild the U.S. instead. Recently, mounting costs have led analysts to question whether Trump would withdraw the remaining 8,500 American security forces. Nevertheless, Trump called Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on December 2, reportedly reaffirming the U.S. commitment to Afghanistan. This apparent shift in Trump’s position, along with the recent deployment by the current administration of 300 U.S. Marines to Afghanistan’s Helmand province, is a positive indication that Washington is set to sustain its commitment to see through the stabilization of the country.

There remains a great deal at stake and when Trump takes office on January 20, he will inherit an immensely problematic country and region, which he will have little choice but deal with effectively if he is to stay true to his word and continue the war on terror.

Assessing Current Factor Conditions

Over a decade and a half of efforts to stabilize Afghanistan, with seemingly little reward, has induced a sense of weariness. Conservative estimates in 2014 placed the cost of U.S. military involvement at $1 trillion alone, while nearly 7,000 coalition forces, 23,000 Afghan military and 26,000 civilians have lost their lives since 2001. In its latest report, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) stated, “Afghanistan remains one of the most dangerous, and most violent, crisis ridden countries in the world.” It further reported the conflict has led to “unprecedented levels of displacement,” with half a million cases recorded in November 2016 alone.

To inject fresh impetus into current stabilization efforts, the political and security interests of other major stakeholders and regional powers should be given serious consideration. Important regional players such as Russia, Iran and India are currently excluded from the formal peace process (such as the U.S.-China led Quadrilateral Coordination Group of Afghanistan as well as the emerging possibility of additional Saudi-hosted talks). Each of the aforementioned actors has its own, often unacknowledged interests and influences in the region, which could stand to make or break the precarious security situation.

Despite being the primary international actor in the country, the U.S. represents only a portion of the geopolitical interests tied to Afghanistan’s future security. The engagement of other concerned actors—notably immediate neighbors and regional and global powers, both emerging and established—could potentially mitigate Western costs and open up new opportunities and perspectives. In contrast, failure to incorporate these actors into the peace process could prove short-sighted and lead to potentially over-looking key strategic issues, interests and relationships.

This complex myriad of bilateral, regional and international relations must be assessed in order to effectively solve the Afghan security puzzle. As the human and financial costs of Afghanistan continue to soar, it is little wonder the initial enthusiasm behind the securitization effort in 2001 is beginning to fade. Yet, Washington has little choice but to continue its commitment to Afghanistan. With the Taliban controlling more territory than it has at any time since 2001, it remains imperative that new avenues for peace be explored, otherwise violence and instability are poised to spill over and destabilize the wider region.

It goes without saying that incorporating various actors into formal proceedings is easier said than done considering, among many other things, the complicated relationships between the U.S. and Iran, Pakistan and India, as well as Russia’s cautious “once bitten, twice shy” approach to Afghanistan. The reality is that the future of Afghanistan holds special significance for many beyond just the U.S. and its Western allies. Others with a stake in the future of the country must be taken on board in order to build on the uneasy progress made to date and break the current deadlock. The challenge for U.S. diplomacy is to form a true coalition of those who want to see Afghanistan emerge as a secure, stabilized state, capable of defending and governing itself.

Ambassador Martin Fleischer is EWI’s Vice President for Regional Security and head of its Brussels Center. Charles Elkins is an intern with the Regional Security team.

Photo: "Day or night, air support aids operation" (CC BY 2.0) by DVIDSHUB

On December 15, 2016 EWI Senior Fellow J. Berkshire Miller discussed Sino-American relations with Voice Of America. Miller delved into the reasons and implications for President-elect Donald Trump’s increased dialogue with Taiwan, putting into question the historic U.S. “One China” policy. Miller professed that Trump is “seemingly bartering the ‘One China’ policy, dangling it as something that could be bartered for economic concessions.”

The interview can be accessed here.