United States Destabilizing East Asia: A Regional Perspective
by Dae-Han Song
To maintain its dominance and contain China’s rise, the United States is exploiting the regional infrastructure of military alliances it laid at the end of World War II. US actions are destabilizing East Asia by triggering the consolidation of an opposing China-Russia-North Korea bloc. These issues were explored in an Aug. 18 No Cold War webinar, “United States Destabilizing East Asia”, which brought together activists from the region to discuss their peace movements and how the situation is affecting their countries and the region.
The webinar was inspired by the Tricontinental Institute for Social Change dossier—”The New Cold War is Sending Tremors Through Northeast Asia”—created in collaboration with the International Strategy Center. Dossier author Dae-Han Song of the International Strategy Center and No Cold War explained how following World War II, the United States created the San Francisco System, which is a set of bilateral treaties that divided East Asia across the Korean Peninsula and through the Taiwan Strait to contain the emerging “Communist threat” from the Soviet Union and China. The US built this system by propping up the warmongers that had led Japan’s imperialist expansion and war; supplanting South Korean grassroots democracy with (formerly) pro-Japanese governments and, thus, setting the stage for the destructive Korean War; and enabling the nationalist KMT party to establish control over Taiwan through its repressive White Terror.
1951. Signing of the San Francisco Peace Treaty at the
heart of the SF System (Source: APJFF.org)
Even after the fall of the Soviet Union and China’s integration into the global economy, the US continues to use regional hotspots (in the Taiwan Strait, the Korean Peninsula, and the South China Sea) as a fig leaf for its military domination. Today, one of the most active hotspots is the maritime territorial disputes between the Philippines and China. The International Peace Bureau’s Corazon Fabros explained how—contrary to the Philippine Constitution’s opposition to foreign military presence and nuclear weapons—the Marcos administration has established defense agreements like the SQUAD. These “groom” the Philippines to be “the next focal point” in the US containment of China and pave the way towards “greater involvement of NATO allies in the region,” Fabros said. More specifically, the US-Philippines 2024 Balikatan joint military exercises involved the US, Australia, France and 14 other countries. In addition, the US deployed mobile missile systems in the northern Philippines capable of reaching the South China Sea, southern China and the Taiwan Strait.
US mid-range missile system in the Philippines (Source: SCMP.com)
If the Philippines is, as speaker Max Leane said, the “safer trigger spot” for the US containment of China, then Taiwan is China’s red line. Understanding the situation in the Taiwan strait involves not only understanding its strategic significance to China’s defense and to the US’s offense, but also involves understanding the historical origin of the division and its significance to mainland China.
Tsang Ju-hsing of the Labor Party in Taiwan explained that Taiwanese separatism emerged from Japanese colonialism and was consolidated through US intervention. The movement was made up of “landowners displaced by land reform, anti-communists, and Taiwan’s unique regionalists.” Their political party, the Democratic Progressive Party, came into power in 2016 and “repudiated the One China principle.” As the relationship between mainland and island crumbled, the DPP attempted to consolidate its electoral position through a “return to the old Cold War system” by banning civilian exchanges,criminalizing those seeking “peace across the Taiwan Strait,” increasing military spending, and increasing conscription to one year. The US is pushing Taiwan “to prepare for a war of attrition” that would exhaust China. Elected in 2024, Lai Ching-te has an even “harder separatist stance than his predecessor Tsai Ing-wen.”
A conflict over Taiwan would not only kill and inflict destruction upon China, the US, and Taiwan, but could also entangle US allies South Korea and Japan, and even Hawai’i. Shin Jaewook from Civilian Military Watch explained that South Korea could become entangled through the deployment of US Forces in Korea (USFK) during a Taiwan contingency and the South Korean Yoon administration’s support of the US Indo-Pacific Strategy. The USFK commander General Paul LaCamera’s comments during his confirmation revealed that the USFK could support “out-of-area contingencies and responses to regional threats.” A conflict in Taiwan would fall under such “out-of-area contingencies.” Furthermore, South Korean entanglement is more likely given the Yoon administration’s involvement in consolidating the trilateral JAKUS (Japan, South Korea, US) security cooperation. In July, the JAKUS governments adopted a Memorandum of Cooperation on the Trilateral Security Cooperation Framework, which experts believe “basically consolidated the trilateral military alliance” said Shin. Despite its potential to “provoke strong reactions from China, Russia, and North Korea,” the document has “neither been approved by the [South Korean] National Assembly nor has its full text been revealed,” added Shin.
Furthermore, US forces in Okinawa would also be drawn in, entangling Okinawans and mainland Japan into the conflict. As Hideki Yoshikawa of the Okinawa Environmental Justice Project explained, the concentrated US military presence in Okinawa makes them a target for Chinese counterattack if these forces are deployed in a Taiwan contingency. Furthermore, the Okinawa Prefecture’s islands closest to Taiwan are being equipped with “surface-to-air missile units” and radar to “monitor Chinese military movements.”
If South Korea, Japan, Okinawa, and Taiwan are US regional outposts, then Hawai’i is its largest launching pad. Kawenaʻulaokalā Kapalua of Hui Aloha Aina (the Hawaiian Liberation Organization) explains how such strategic necessity led to the “illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom in 1893.” Today, Hawaii houses the headquarters of the Indo-Pacific Command, as well as the largest training facility in the Pacific, along with radars and missile defense stations. It also hosts the world’s “largest [multinational] war games on the planet, the RIM of the Pacific (RIMPAC).” This heavy militarization not only occupies the sacred lands of its indigenous population, it also pollutes its water and destroys its islands and surrounding marine flora and fauna.
RIMPAC exercises off the waters of Hawai’i
(Source: PH2 Gabriel Wilson – Public Domain)
Regionally, Australia is a junior partner. As Max Lane of Red Ant explains, “Australia is a full member of the global imperialist club.” Its foreign and security policy has been aligned with the strategic interests of the imperialist bloc and with those of the US since World War II. Recently, it signed the AUKUS agreement to increase interoperability with the US and its allies as well as opening up its northern bases to US planes carrying nuclear weapons.
The solution echoed by all the webinar speakers was to strengthen peace movements through inter-regional solidarity and exchange. More specifically, Kapalua highlighted a concrete strategic moment: actively fighting the renewal of the US military’s $1 lease for 40,000 acres, which expires on Aug. 16, 2029. Yoshikawa pointed out how existing agreements like the 1978 Treaty of Peace and Friendship between Japan and China could provide a vehicle for campaigning for both countries to “settle disputes peacefully and refrain from using or threatening force.” Ultimately, peace movements in the region must come together to build a movement for de-escalating tensions and resolving regional problems rather than transforming them into regional and, potentially, global conflicts. To do so, we must oppose the US’s destabilization of East Asia.