America's Pacific allies and friends need confidence in American power to stand up to a common enemy.
Exactly!
If China can gain sufficient military advantage over its neighbors, it may convince them to accept its hegemony given the plausible alternatives they will face. And the best way for Beijing to operationalize such advantage is not to fight all its potential opponents at once, but to pursue a focused and sequential strategy against the antihegemonic coalition arraying against it, seeking to pick it apart or short-circuit it.
The key for Beijing is to strike at the coalition’s center of gravity: perceptions of Washington’s willingness to come to the stout defense of those to which it has committed. Only if they believe Washington can and will stand with them will Asian countries judge it prudent to take the risks necessary to check Beijing’s ambitions. If they do not have this confidence, they will fear being isolated and punished by China and thus will likely cut a deal with Beijing. If Beijing can pick off enough countries in this fashion, it could achieve regional hegemony without having to fight World War III.
As I've long held, American military power is key to stopping that kind of Chinese divide and conquer strategy against countries that don't want China to dominate them:
But for all those neighbors to be willing to stand up to China's power, they have to be confident that we have the power and determination to use it against China and to be confident that other potential partners won't stop absorbing some of China's power by making deals with China to ally with Peking. If these countries don't have confidence that we will help them, they'll cut a deal with China to protect themselves and turn away from us.
So we have to be careful about maintaining our power in the Pacific and maintaining our reputation for supporting allies and fighting until we win. If any nation, like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Australia, or Vietnam think that they can't count on us for effective military support, they'll withdraw from the potential balancing coalition against China. And once one country defects, the power potential arrayed against China will drop enough to perhaps push another country to defect and align with China rather than with us.
America's efforts to herd the cats have been working even as China's power grows:
The Pentagon’s efforts to improve U.S. force posture in the Pacific have yielded a flurry of major agreements in recent months, with allies motivated by China’s aggressive behavior to embrace the U.S. With new arrangements, the Pentagon aims to spread what it calls “combat credible” forces closer to Taiwan as a way to deter China from invading the island and ― if deterrence fails ― win any resulting fight.
Some people who urge America to pull back argue that China's neighbors would naturally arm up and contain China without America. Win-win! But that is incorrect. America is the indispensable nation in the western Pacific:
America's military power and geographic reach are the factor that can weave the separate power capabilities of nations around the perimeter of China into an effective proto-alliance.
Our absence from the region will allow China to divide and conquer.
But it could accelerate defection if America puts too many assets forward, if that tempts China into conducting a theater-wide Pearl Harbor attack to destroy our best military forces at the onset of a war.
That sort of defeat can demoralize allies and get them looking for the exits.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 continues here.
