Solidarity key to Asian security

Russia’s campaign against Ukraine has prompted people across the Indo-Pacific region to ask if hidden or openly festering problems here could also lead to open warfare.
Following China’s response to US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August, the answer seems all too clear. From the Hindu Kush to the South China Sea and the Korean Peninsula’s 38th parallel, the Indo-Pacific has no shortage of deep historical antagonisms and false claims to sovereignty that could explode into conflict without warning. The real question facing leaders across the Indo-Pacific, then, is whether the region can build a structure of peace to prevent national ambitions and hostilities from escalating to open warfare. Much will depend on whether the region’s democratic powers — Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea and the US — can forge the type of strategic trust needed to make any potential disturber of the peace think twice before initiating hostilities.
In pursuing this objective, the Indo-Pacific has been set back by one of the great political and human tragedies of 2022: Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s assassination by a lone gunman. Abe had spent the nine years of his two premierships — and the year left to him after he retired from office — contemplating the types of alliances, treaties and institutional structures that would be needed to provide guideposts and guardrails within which Asia’s inescapable dynamism could be peacefully channeled. He recognized that Asia is not nearly as dense with multilateral organizations and alliances as Europe is, and that such bodies are fundamental to the maintenance of peace and prosperity.
Acting on this insight, Abe became the architect of two key structures that, one hopes, will become the building blocks of a stable pan-Indo-Pacific peace: The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, a grouping of Australia, India, Japan and the US known as the Quad; and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is the successor to the Trans-Pacific Partnership that Donald Trump scuttled at the outset of his isolationist presidency. The new agreement brings together 11 Pacific Rim countries — Canada, Mexico, Peru, Chile, New Zealand, Australia, Brunei, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and Japan — in the world’s largest trading bloc.
By kick-starting the Quad and salvaging the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Abe helped create two institutions with the potential to establish the rules of the road for the entire Indo-Pacific. The Quad is leading the way on security by deepening the ties among its four core members, each of which is also strengthening other strategic partnerships, such as those between the US and South Korea, India and Vietnam, and Australia and a proudly nonaligned Indonesia. As amorphous as many of these security ties are, the Quad nonetheless is helping to create a network of countries determined to maintain peace and security across the region. And other ties, such as the frequent joint military exercises that Japan and India now hold with Vietnam, are anything but amorphous.
In spearheading the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, Abe understood that Asia’s leaders could act effectively on their own even when the US chose to stand on the sidelines. He and the other Asian leaders who signed the deal understood that it would prevent China from achieving overwhelming economic dominance in Asia through its own trade agreement, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. Now in its fourth year, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership is creating myriad opportunities for regional leaders to cooperate in a coherent, collective manner.
Such cooperation must be nurtured further. A core lesson in building durable structures of peace and security in the post-Second World War era is that solidarity among participating countries is indispensable. The rock-solid solidarity within NATO has dissuaded, at least thus far, Russia from broadening its war beyond Ukraine. The sense of security that NATO provides its members has even convinced Sweden and Finland — countries with a long history of neutrality — to seek to join the alliance.
Of course, solidarity is easier to build when the issues are economic or when there is an existential threat of the kind that Europe faced when NATO was founded at the height of the Cold War. Few will be surprised that the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership has been adopted and implemented so smoothly even without a US imprimatur.
By contrast, a genuine sense of solidarity is lacking within the Quad, as demonstrated by India’s response to the Russian campaign against Ukraine. Since it gained independence in 1947, India has long thought that it could assure its security through nonalignment and its own bilateral efforts. While border clashes with China in the Himalayas, together with Abe’s strong ties with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, helped convince India that it could no longer ensure its security by always going it alone, Modi, like most of his fellow countrymen, has found it hard to break with old habits. Moreover, a major factor in India’s national security strategy has long been its heavy reliance on Russia for military equipment and training. A legacy from the years when the US had tied its regional fortunes to Pakistan, this dependency long made sense for India. The Soviet Union was willing to back India in the 1971 Bangladesh War of Independence, supply it with modern fighter aircraft and apply diplomatic pressure on Mao Zedong’s China during the Sino-Indian War of 1962. A core lesson in building durable structures of peace and security is that solidarity among participating countries is indispensable.
As a free agent with a foot in both Cold War camps, India figured it was living in the best of all possible worlds in security terms. But times have changed and India’s old dependency on Russia is now pulling it toward the wrong side of history and increasing its vulnerability.
We in Japan have long understood the critical role that India can and should play in creating a framework for peace and security encompassing the Indian and Pacific Oceans. As Japan’s defense minister, I visited India back in 2007, when the seeds of our countries’ first joint naval exercises were planted. The relationship has since blossomed into an ever more dynamic form of military and intelligence cooperation.
As the Quad entrenches itself to become Asia’s premier security organization, one hopes that India will recognize that maintaining an equal distance between its Quad partners and Russia is no longer a viable policy. In any conflict between India and China, Indians should not be surprised if Beijing prevails upon Russia to stop supplying it with military hardware, energy or other critical imports. No Indian government should be willing to bear such an intolerable risk going forward.
Modern India’s architects, from Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru to Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, saw national independence as a moral and a cultural triumph, as well as a political one. Today, insistence on the principle of territorial integrity everywhere is the only way for India to ensure that its borders will always be respected. That principle is now on trial in Ukraine. Were Abe still alive, I have no doubt that he would be quietly persuading Modi to recognize what is at stake and fully embrace India’s Quad partners.
Old habits are also jeopardizing security on the Korean Peninsula. Nearly eight decades after the end of the Pacific War, disputes over its history still too often impede effective security cooperation between the South Korean and Japanese governments, despite North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s relentless drive to develop his nuclear arsenal.
Over the decades, the US has tried time and again to bridge this divide. But, ultimately, only South Korea and Japan can do that. They should recognize that their differences pale in comparison to the very real security threat they both face. It is encouraging to see that both countries are now heavily involved in assisting Ukraine, providing weapons and real-time intelligence analysis. Let us hope that the war will convince both countries’.
political leaders to abandon fruitless historical debates and start focusing on joint national security initiatives.
Great and aspiring powers abhor a geopolitical vacuum. Putin saw Ukraine’s isolation outside of NATO and the EU as just such a void to be exploited. In Asia, there is a similar dynamic.
Fortunately, today’s search for solidarity and security is beginning to fill the region’s institutional vacuum in a way that will enhance the security of large and small countries alike. This evolving regional unity means that any power that seeks to alter the map of Asia unilaterally will be certain to meet staunch and unified opposition.