Indo-Pacific is focus of Washington's diplomatic strategy, US official says
Washington has placed the Indo-Pacific as the focus of its overall diplomatic strategy, and connected it to alliances in Europe, because the region is "central" to US prosperity, a senior State Department official said on Tuesday.
While US President Joe Biden's administration prioritises "flexible partnerships" like the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue - better known as the Quad - and Partners in the Blue Pacific (PBP), efforts to bring European influence to the region, as with the US-EU Dialogue on China, are part of the strategy, said Daniel Kritenbrink, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs.
"At the core of our Indo-Pacific strategy is building connections with allies, partners and friends within and beyond the region to create and support what we call a latticework of strong and mutually reinforcing coalitions to build collective capacity," he said in an address at the Washington campus of the East-West Centre think tank.
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Biden has overseen fast-paced US efforts to bolster existing alliances in the region like the Quad and to build new ones, including the US-EU dialogue, PBP and the Aukus military technology-sharing partnership with Australia and Britain.
Prime ministers Rishi Sunak of Britain and Anthony Albanese of Australia appeared with Biden on Monday in California to unveil details of the Aukus plan. Canberra will start by purchasing nuclear-powered US submarines in a bid to counter China's growing navy.
Aukus leaders assert that the plan seeks to ensure the stability of trade flows in the region, including through the Taiwan Strait.
But Beijing has decried it as a move that will achieve the opposite by torquing up cold-war rivalries. And some Southeast Asian countries, including Malaysia, have expressed concern about an arms race in their midst.
Even so, Kritenbrink insisted that America's economic ties to a region anchored by the 10 member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations means that the US future is staked to stability there. He cited annual US-Asia trade flows at "more than US$2 trillion" and US investment in the region at upwards of $1 trillion.
The future of "the next 50 years is going to be written in Southeast Asia and our relationship with Asean will shape the future that we all want to see," he said.
"So whatever one says about America's economic engagement, it's clear that we are central to the Indo-Pacific economic future and it's clear that the region will be central to our prosperity as well."
Kritenbrink also signalled that more diplomatic outposts are in the works in Pacific island nations after Washington opened a new embassy in the Solomon Islands, which became a new flashpoint in the US effort to counter Beijing's influence in the region.
In September, Solomons Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare told the United Nations General Assembly that his country had been maligned over its closer relationship with China - to the point, he said, of "intimidation" when it established formal diplomatic relations with Beijing.
Sogavare also contended that Aukus was a violation of a UN-registered agreement among 13 nations, including Australia, that bans the use, possession and testing of nuclear weapons. That agreement, though, makes no mention of nuclear power generation.
Kritenbrink said that US was finalising plans to establish a new embassy in the Maldives and "initiating discussions about opening new embassies in the Pacific islands, including in Tonga and in Kiribati".
"Watch this space because we intend to continue expanding our presence across the region, including in the vitally important Pacific islands," he said.
This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
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