"Indo-Pacific strategy" good for America or Asia?

BEIJING, June 15 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken delivered a speech on May 26 on the Biden administration's China policy. Not surprisingly, Blinken talked about America's vision for its "Indo-Pacific strategy" to build an "open, connected, prosperous, resilient, and secure Indo-Pacific region." However, this strategy will hardly get anywhere because it is defined by bloc confrontation, a Cold War mentality and selfish geopolitical calculation.

First, the strategy will not make the region free and open because the United States itself is the biggest obstacle to the realization of this vision. The fact sheet of the strategy published on the White House website reads: "A free and open Indo-Pacific requires that governments can make their own choices," which sounds hypocritical for a country that interferes in the domestic affairs of Asian countries from time to time. Good at beautifying its own intention, the United States is not letting other countries in the region "make their own choices," but imposing its view and will on regional countries.

Second, it's hard to believe that the United States will make the Indo-Pacific more connected, given its record of dividing and destabilizing the region. It is trying to shape the international and regional order through the binary "us versus them" world view.

At the beginning of the Cold War, the United States used the excuse of "combating Communism." And now it has come up with a new phrase: threats from "authoritarianism." Through AUKUS, Quad, the "Five Eyes" and other alliances, the United States is in essence dividing the region into confrontational camps and trying to build an "Asian NATO" against China.

To exclude China from regional trading systems and supply chains, the United States created the "Indo-Pacific Economic Framework" (IPEF) to persuade regional economies to "decouple" from the Chinese market and turn to alternative supply chains. U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai openly described the IPEF as an "arrangement independent of China." The United States is advocating "connection" only to serve its own interests rather than regional unity and prosperity.

Third, the United States has been trumpeting that the "Indo-Pacific strategy" will bring prosperity to the region, as President Joe Biden said that the IPEF, the economic arm of the "Indo-Pacific strategy," will help all countries' economies grow faster and fairer. However, the United States is actually using the IPEF to establish a unilaterally dominant economic cooperation arrangement, rather than a true free trade agreement with mutual open market access or tariff exemption as desired by regional countries. Some are doubtful whether the framework will even survive the Biden presidency.

James Crabtree, a columnist at Foreign Policy, pointed out that the IPEF "offers no U.S. market access" and therefore would "do little to slow down most Asian nations' ever deeper economic integration with China." Sooner or later, nations would find that the IPEF is an "all-pain, no-gain economic deal," Crabtree said.

Fourth, a "secure" region as championed in the "Indo-Pacific strategy" is the least convincing in U.S.-made promises. Since the end of World War II, the United States has launched numerous wars including the ones in the Korean Peninsula, Southeast Asia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria. Just as Peter T. C. Chang commented in his article in the South China Morning Post, "the horrors of war in Vietnam are still fresh in the region's collective memory. Would Southeast Asia suffer the same fate as Ukraine if the Quad transforms into an Asian NATO?"

The answer is obvious: the Cold War and confrontational approach will only bring about conflicts and suffering for Asian countries and their peoples. AUKUS and Quad led by the United States would only trigger a new round of arms race, and seriously aggravate tensions and confrontations in the region.

Suffering from centuries of colonial plunder and oppression, the people of Asia are yearning for peace, cooperation and development, rather than bloc confrontation and a zero-sum game. Southeast Asian countries have been asserting the principle of ASEAN centrality and trying to be the master of their own destiny.

Running counter to what Asian countries really want and sticking to the old delusion of seeking hegemony in the region, it is hard to see how the U.S. "Indo-Pacific strategy" would end well.