The Pentagon’s top military command in the Asia-Pacific region is asking Congress to add nearly a billion dollars to its budget request to strengthen missile defences, bolster American allies and partners in the region, and to look at more robust forward bases for US troops to prepare for a possible military contingency in the region, according to internal budget documents obtained by Foreign Policy.
In total, US Indo-Pacific Command (Indopacom) is asking for almost US$890 million to be added to the Biden administration’s US$5.1 billion budget request for the Asia-focused command, including US$231 million in funding for air and missile defences at American military installations in Guam — within range of China’s improving rocket and missile forces — and US$114 million to improve robust US training ranges in Alaska and Hawaii in order to digitally link up with American forces conducting drills in the Western Pacific, which could someday extend to Washington’s allies in the region.
While the price tag for Indopacom’s request, known as an unfunded priority list, pales in comparison to what the military services put on their wish lists after the Biden administration’s budget drop, it would add back into the budget requests first made by outgoing Indopacom chief Admiral Philip Davidson, who spent his last days publicly pushing for a build-up of American assets west of the International Date Line to deal with a rapid Chinese military movement, such as against Taiwan.
“The requests listed in the enclosure set the conditions to ‘seize the initiative’ by providing a pragmatic and viable approach that deters potential adversaries from unilaterally attempting to change the international rules based order, reassures allies and partners, and shapes the security environment,” US Indo-Pacific Command chief Admiral John Aquilino wrote in a letter sent to House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith and other congressional leaders on Friday. “The investments are less than 1% of the DoD’s total obligating authority, and are critical for deterring China’s decision calculus.”
The new US administration used its first few months in office to signal that President Joe Biden would be the first American president to solidify a long-promised pivot to Asia, after former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump both ended up getting mired in the Middle East. But the push for additions to Indopacom’s budget is the latest sign that military officials and Congress are hoping to see the commander-in-chief do more to shift the focus of US foreign policy. The fear of another promised Asia pivot losing momentum has been made clear, current and former officials and congressional aides said, by the Pentagon’s decision to shift the USS Ronald Reagan carrier strike group from Japan to Afghanistan to aid in the US withdrawal, depriving American allies in China’s shadow of the lone carrier in the region.
The near-billion dollar request from Indopacom is also a sign that Aquilino will continue the tradition at the Hawaii-based military command of pushing the Pentagon for more military resources and US troops in the region if China makes a move against Taiwan, much to the delight of a bipartisan throng in Congress that has pushed Biden to give the command better radars, bases to disperse US forces, and more security assistance for American partners. Davidson, Aquilino’s predecessor in the job, had warned Congress that China could push to capture the island by 2027, the centennial of the People’s Liberation Army.
Congress designed the so-called Pacific Deterrence Initiative, known as PDI, last year in an effort to add more US firepower in the first island chain that borders China in the Western Pacific, from Japan to the Philippines, hardened and dispersed American naval and air posts, and the forward deployments of F-35 fighter jets on a permanent or rotational basis. It was designed to be roughly the Asia-Pacific’s equivalent of a fund arranged by the Obama administration to solidify European allies after Russia’s invasion of the Crimean peninsula in 2014. Yet the notion of moving more US forces forward has faced staunch opposition from the Pentagon’s analytical wing, which fears that American forces in the area would not survive a ranged missile attack from the PLA’s increasingly competent rocket and missile forces.
The European Defence Initiative “built the enabling infrastructure, the support infrastructure, to get us to a much, much better place in terms of maintaining deterrence against the Russians,” a congressional aide told Foreign Policy, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk candidly about ongoing budget negotiations. “And that’s what PDI was supposed to do for the Western Pacific.”
The Indopacom request also asks for US$88 million for new wargaming tools, US$60 million to build defence radars in Hawaii that could be operational as soon as 2023, US$68.2 million to build more forward US bases in the region, and US$130.6 million to build up allied US militaries in the region, the last of which only amounted to US$500,000 in Biden’s initial budget. That was to the chagrin of jilted congressional aides who saw efforts to build up US allies and partners as a key focus of the newly designed Asia fund, and expressed frustration that the request did not hew to what lawmakers asked for.
In a statement provided to Foreign Policy on Monday in response to questions about the PDI, Pentagon spokesman Chris Sherwood insisted that the Department of Defence’s ongoing review of the US military’s global footprint would include many of the requests that Davidson, the former Indopacom chief, made to Congress earlier this year.
But the brewing crisis over Taiwan has put renewed urgency on bringing more military might to bear for Biden’s Asia pivot, aides and officials said, as the administration has ramped up unofficial contacts with the island. China has sent fighter jets into Taiwan’s air defence identification zone on a daily basis for over a year in an effort to exhaust opposing pilots and aircraft, and the United States is carefully watching Chinese military drills get more coordinated and complex, such as by bringing in more naval and rocket forces.
“This is, at some level, rehearsing tactical strikes in and around Taiwan,” a senior defence official said.
Jack Detsch is Foreign Policy’s Pentagon and national security reporter. Find him on Twitter at @JackDetsch.
Can’t imagine why the Benighted States persists with the usage ‘Dept of Defense’ when all it has done since WWII (and arguably prior to that) is threaten, and often attack, other countries.
Over 57, last time I counted some years back, bombed, blockaded, invaded, destabilised, overthrown etc.
The entire history of the USA is war, coup, over throw, prop up regimes overseas. The most disturbing image I have ever seen was Trump nose kissing Morrison. We are in very dangerous waters, with sharks of our own making.
Brilliant strategy – talk-up a war then ask for more dough for more toys for the boys!!!! Eisenhower was right
Ahh yes the ‘credible, likely and imminent’ invasion of Taiwan. The narrative that leaves defence contractors salivating.
Not good news at all for Australia. Fraser was right. The Aust/US alliance is now the most dangerous alliance we have ever engaged in. Morrison is too stupid to see how the Americans pushed him to attack China & now have our export markets as well as a country to sacrifice in their planned war. The country on the sacrificial chopping block? That would be us.
If China attacks Taiwan and America responds, will it go nuclear ?
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Arm Taiwan with medium range nuclear missiles targeted at all of China’s southern cities. Put the missiles under under Taiwanese control. If China attacks Taiwan, the decision to use them would be Taiwanese. If China decided to invade Taiwan they could do it easily, but the price that China would pay would be way and above the gains they would make. Attacking Taiwan would be easy for China, but would have to be balanced against having nowhere to go home to after the conflict. Mutual assure destruction has stopped the US and Russia from lighting up against each other for 70 odd years. It would be a heavy price to pay for the military ambitions of Xi.
Taiwan is a very useful pot stirrer for the USA. There would be no need to put yet another military US base in the Pacific Ocean to threaten China. Since WWII the USA has established a continuous line of 17 bases off the east coasts of China and Russia and there are another 8 bases on Pacific islands further back towards the USA. All 25 bases have missiles pointing towards China and Russia. That China and Russia should be worried about this collosal armed threat on their doorsteps is not surprising. That China should want to establish some bases between its shore line and the American bases is also not surprising. I think the Americans would do well to step down from their bellicose attitude. And from their willingness to inflict wars on peoples and countries that have done it no harm. e.g. Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Afghanisatan, Iran (proxy war using Iraq, ironically),Iraq, Syria, Lybia. Not to forget the havoc it has caused on many South American peoples. War is destructive. Nor does it really resolve anything. Friendship and co-operation are far more successful methods of changing things if they need changing.
Have you heard of the soi disant Cuban Missile Crisis?
It was in all the papers, at the time.
Ancient history now but the casus belli was a foreign entity (allegedly) stationing missiles in a second country said to be a threat to a third.
Few Australians would want to be in Taiwan’s shoes when it is reunited with China under Beijing rule. But Taiwan is, and has long been recognised as, Chinese. The authority governing in Taipei is the Republic of China. Its few remaining embassies represent the Republic of China with (Taiwan) in brackets in case somebody thinks it’s the PRC. The Taipei authorities represented all of China in the UN from 1945 until 1971. For all of that time Taipei’s present allies recognised Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan, they just claimed that the legitimate government of all of China was the one in Taipei.
East Timor was recognised as Indonesian too. Morally, isn’t it a matter of what the population wants?
We might wish so. But no. Had Indonesia not been at a particularly weak point due to the economic collapse in Southeast Asia it’s unlikely the outcome in East Timor would have been separation from Indonesia. China, on the other hand, is stronger than it has ever been before. For historical reasons, also, Indonesia could let go since the incorporation of East Timor was by legislation in the Indonesian Parliament and its release only required that legislation to be repealed. In Taiwan’s case both sides agree, on paper at least, that Taiwan belongs to China and most of the world either recognises or at least “acknowledges” that status.
I was talking morality, not legality.
Yes. Morally we non-Indigenous Australians should be compensating the traditional owners of the land that is now legally ours. Hopefully that will eventually happen. But not much in international or even national power politics happens because of morality, however the politicians may try to justify their actions. I suppose Beijing could claim that it’s island province was morally as well as legally Chinese and those Taiwanese who favour reunification should not be denied. There are some – over 400,000 Taiwanese currently live on the mainland.
Should read “…its island province…” My predictive text did that and I noticed too late. Another point about the moral aspect: Considering that Chinese on the mainland and in Taiwan both considered themselves one Chinese nation and even in Taiwan many still do (KMT does), you could argue that a few million people in one province have no right to secede against the will of the rest of the Chinese nation. That would be our argument against a state of Australia seceding. It’s the argument of Western countries against the secession of Crimea from Ukraine and its accession to Russia, London’s argument against Scottish secession from the British union, Bangkok’s argument against secessionists in its three southern Malay-speaking provinces and Madrid’s argument against secession by Catalonia.
Just an additional point: I suspect that when the Taipei authorities realise, as they probably have, that the US will not risk likely defeat or at least severe losses to defend them they will possibly try to negotiate to obtain a continuation of the status quo on condition that they recognise Beijing’s suzerainty. Taiwan would have to stop using the title of Republic of China but remain functionally independent while Beijing would have the “reunification” it wants without hostilities. Mainland China has many investments in Taiwan and Taiwan-based corporations operate in a large scale on the mainland. Neither side would want to incur the losses involved in hostilities that can only have one possible outcome. One major obstacle to this would be Taiwan’s world domination in computer chip manufacture. The US would want to prevent that from going into Beijing’s hands but all sides would be concerned that the manufacturing facilities must not be destroyed.
I agree that a continuation of the status quo is the sensible way to go. I just hope Xi Jinping agrees with me.