On May 30th, Secretary of Defense James Mattis announced a momentous shift in American global strategic policy. From now on, he decreed, the U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM), which oversees all U.S. military forces in Asia, will be called the Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM). The name change, Mattis expliqué, reflète « la connectivité croissante entre les océans Indien et Pacifique », ainsi que la détermination de Washington à rester la puissance dominante dans les deux.
What? You didn’t hear about this anywhere? And even now, you’re not exactly blown away, right? Well, such a name change may not sound like much, but someday you may look back and realize that it couldn’t have been more consequential or ominous. Think of it as a signal that the U.S. military is already setting the stage for an eventual confrontation with China.
If, until now, you hadn’t read about Mattis’s decision anywhere, I’m not surprised since the media gave it virtually no attention — less certainly than would have been accorded the least significant tweet Donald Trump ever dispatched. What coverage it did receive treated the name change as no more than a passing “symbolic” gesture, a Pentagon ploy to encourage India to join Japan, Australia, and other U.S. allies in America’s Pacific alliance system. “In Symbolic Nod to India, U.S. Pacific Command Changes Name” was the titre d'un article de Reuters sur le sujet et, dans la mesure où on y a prêté attention, c'était typique.
That the media’s military analysts failed to notice anything more than symbolism in the deep-sixing of PACOM shouldn’t be surprising, given all the attention being paid to other major international developments — the pyrotechnics of the Korean summit in Singapore, the insults traded at and after the G7 meeting in Canada, or the ominous gathering storm over Iran. Add to this the poor grasp so many journalists have of the nature of the U.S. military’s strategic thinking. Still, Mattis himself has not been shy about the geopolitical significance of linking the Indian and Pacific Oceans in such planning. In fact, it represents a fundamental shift in U.S. military thinking with potentially far-reaching consequences.
Considérez le contexte du changement de nom : ces derniers mois, les États-Unis ont intensifié leurs patrouilles navales dans les eaux adjacentes aux îles occupées par la Chine en mer de Chine méridionale (tout comme la Chine), ce qui soulève la perspective de futurs affrontements entre les navires de guerre des États-Unis. deux pays. De telles mesures ont été accompagnées par des propos encore plus menaçants de la part du ministère de la Défense (DoD), indiquant une intention de rien moins que d'engager militairement la Chine si la montée en puissance de ce pays dans la région se poursuit. "Quand il s'agit d'introduire ce qu'ils ont fait en mer de Chine méridionale, il y a des conséquences", dit Mattis. a déclaré au Dialogue Stratégique Shangri La à Singapour le 2 juin.
Comme indication préliminaire de ce qu'il entendait par là, Mattis désinvité les Chinois du plus grand exercice naval multinational au monde, le Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC), mené chaque année sous les auspices américains. "Mais c'est une conséquence relativement minime", a-t-il ajouté d'un ton menaçant, "et je pense qu'il y aura des conséquences bien plus importantes à l'avenir". Dans cet esprit, il bientôt annoncé que le Pentagone envisage de mener « un rythme régulier » d’opérations navales dans les eaux adjacentes aux îles occupées par la Chine, ce qui devrait faire monter la tension entre les deux pays et pourrait créer les conditions d’un mauvais calcul, d’une erreur, voire d’un accident à mer qui pourrait conduire à bien pire.
In addition to its plans to heighten naval tensions in seas adjacent to China, the Pentagon has been laboring to strengthen its military ties with U.S.-friendly states on China’s perimeter, all clearly part of a long-term drive to — in Cold War fashion — “contain” Chinese power in Asia. On June 8th, for example, the DoD lancé Malabar 2018, un exercice naval conjoint dans l'océan Pacifique impliquant des forces indiennes, japonaises et américaines. Intégrer l’Inde, autrefois neutre, dans le système d’alliance anti-chinois du « Pacifique » de cette manière et d’autres, est en fait devenu un objectif majeur du Pentagone au XXIe siècle, posant une nouvelle menace importante pour la Chine.
Pendant des décennies, l’objectif principal de la stratégie américaine en Asie a été de renforcer les principaux alliés du Pacifique, le Japon, la Corée du Sud, Taiwan et les Philippines, tout en contenant la puissance chinoise dans les eaux adjacentes, y compris les mers de Chine orientale et méridionale. Cependant, ces derniers temps, la Chine a cherché à étendre son influence en Asie du Sud-Est et dans la région de l’océan Indien, en partie en vantant son ambition incroyablement ambitieuse.One Belt, One Road” trade and infrastructure initiative for the Eurasian continent and Africa. That vast project is clearly meant both as a unique vehicle for cooperation and a way to tie much of Eurasia into a future China-centered economic and energy system. Threatened by visions of such a future, American strategists have moved ever more decisively to constrain Chinese outreach in those very areas. That, then, is the context for the sudden concerted drive by U.S. military strategists to link the Indian and Pacific Oceans and so encircle China with pro-American, anti-Chinese alliance systems. The name change on May 30th is a formal acknowledgement of an encirclement strategy that couldn’t, in the long run, be more dangerous.
Girding for War with China
Pour saisir les ramifications de telles démarches, quelques informations sur l’ancien PACOM pourraient s’avérer utiles. Initialement connu sous le nom de Far East Command, le PACOM était établies in 1947 and has been headquartered at U.S. bases near Honolulu, Hawaii, ever since. As now constituted, its “domaine de responsabilité” encompasses a mind-boggling expanse: all of East, South, and Southeast Asia, as well as Australia, New Zealand, and the waters of the Indian and Pacific Oceans — in other words, an area covering about 50% of the Earth’s surface and incorporating more than half of the global population. Though the Pentagon divides the whole planet like a giant pie into a set of “unified commands,” none of them is larger than the newly expansive, newly named Indo-Pacific Command, with its 375,000 military and civilian personnel.
Before the Indian Ocean was explicitly incorporated into its fold, PACOM mainly focused on maintaining control of the western Pacific, especially in waters around a number of friendly island and peninsula states like Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines. Its force structure has largely been composed of air and naval squadrons, along with a large Marine Corps presence on the Japanese island of Okinawa. Its most powerful combat unit is the Flotte américaine du Pacifique — à l’image de la superficie qu’il couvre aujourd’hui, la plus grande du monde. Il est composé des 3e et 7e flottes, qui comptent ensemble environ 200 navires et sous-marins, près de 1,200 130,000 avions et plus de XNUMX XNUMX marins, pilotes, Marines et civils.
On a day-to-day basis, until recently, the biggest worry confronting the command was the possibility of a conflict with nuclear-armed North Korea. During the late fall of 2017 and the winter of 2018, PACOM engaged in a continuing series of exercises designed to test its forces’ ability to overcome North Korean defenses and destroy its major military assets, including nuclear and missile facilities. These were undoubtedly intended, above all, as a avertissement au dirigeant nord-coréen Kim Jong-un sur ce à quoi il pourrait s'attendre s'il poursuivait sur la voie d'essais provocateurs de missiles et nucléaires sans fin. Il semble que, du moins pour le moment, le président Trump ait suspendu de tels exercices à la suite de sa réunion au sommet avec Kim.
North Korea aside, the principal preoccupation of PACOM commanders has long been the rising power of China and how to contain it. This was evident at the May 30th ceremony in Hawaii at which Mattis announced that expansive name change and presided over a changement de commandement cérémonie, au cours de laquelle le commandant sortant, l'amiral Harry Harris Jr., a été remplacé par l'amiral Phil Davidson. (Compte tenu de la nature navale de sa mission, le commandement est presque invariablement dirigé par un amiral.)
Tout en évitant toute mention directe de la Chine dans son discours d'ouverture, Mattis n'a laissé aucune incertitude sur le fait que le nouveau nom du commandement était un défi et un appel à la mobilisation future de l'opposition régionale sur une vaste partie de la planète aux rêves et aux désirs de la Chine. D'autres pays apprécient le soutien américain, dit-il insisté, car ils préfèrent un environnement de « commerce libre, équitable et réciproque, non lié par l’économie prédatrice ou la menace de coercition d’une quelconque nation, car l’Indo-Pacifique compte de nombreuses ceintures et de nombreuses routes ». Personne ne pourrait se méprendre sur le sens de cela.
L'amiral Harris au départ était encore plus direct. Même si « la Corée du Nord demeure notre menace la plus immédiate », il a déclaré, “China remains our biggest long-term challenge.” He then offered a warning: without the stepped-up efforts of the U.S. and its allies to constrain Beijing, “China will realize its dream of hegemony in Asia.” Yes, he admitted, it was still possible to cooperate with the Chinese on limited issues, but we should “stand ready to confront them when we must.” (On May 18th, Admiral Harris was nommé par le président Trump en tant que futur ambassadeur des États-Unis en Corée du Sud, ce qui placera un ancien militaire à l'ambassade américaine à Séoul.)
Harris’s successor, Admiral Davidson, seems, if anything, even more determined to put confronting China atop the command’s agenda. During his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee on April 17th, he repeatedly mis en évidence the threat posed by Chinese military activities in the South China Sea and promised to resist them vigorously. “Once [the South China Sea islands are] occupied, China will be able to extend its influence thousands of miles to the south and project power deep into Oceania,” he averti. « L'APL [Armée populaire de libération] sera en mesure d'utiliser ces bases pour défier la présence américaine dans la région, et toute force déployée dans les îles submergerait facilement les forces militaires de tout autre prétendant en mer de Chine méridionale. En bref, la Chine est désormais capable de contrôler la mer de Chine méridionale dans tous les scénarios, sauf une guerre avec les États-Unis. »
Is that, then, what Admiral Davidson sees in our future? War with China in those waters? His testimony made it crystal clear that his primary objective as head of the Indo-Pacific Command will be nothing less than training and equipping the forces under him for just such a future war, while enlisting the militaries of as many allies as possible in the Pentagon’s campaign to encircle that country. “To prevent a situation where China is more likely to win a conflict,” he affirmed in his version of Pentagonese, “we must resource high-end capabilities in a timely fashion, preserve our network of allies and partners, and continue to recruit and train the best soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and coastguardsmen in the world.”
Davidson’s first priority is to procure advanced weaponry and integrate it into the command’s force structure, ensuring that American combatants will always enjoy a technological advantage over their Chinese counterparts in any future confrontation. Almost as important, he, like his predecessors, seeks to bolster America’s military ties with other members of the contain-China club. This is where India comes in. Like the United States, its leadership is deeply concerné avec la présence croissante de la Chine dans la région de l'océan Indien, y compris l'ouverture d'un futur port/base navale à Gwadar, au Pakistan, et un autre potentiel sur l'île de Sri Lanka, both in the Indian Ocean. Not surprisingly, given the affrontements périodiques entre les forces chinoises et indiennes le long de leurs frontières himalayennes communes et déploiement permanent of Chinese warships in the Indian Ocean, India’s prime minister Narendra Modi has shown himself to be increasingly disposed to join Washington in military arrangements aimed at limiting China’s geopolitical reach. “An enduring strategic partnership with India comports with U.S. goals and objectives in the Indo-Pacific,” Admiral Davidson said in his recent congressional testimony. Once installed as commander, he continued, “I will maintain the positive momentum and trajectory of our burgeoning strategic partnership.” His particular goal: to “increase maritime security cooperation.”
Nous arrivons ainsi au Commandement Indo-Pacifique et à un avenir assombri par le potentiel d’une guerre entre grandes puissances.
La vue de Pékin
The way the name change at PACOM was covered in the U.S., you would think it reflected, at most, a benign wish for greater economic connections between the Indian and Pacific Ocean regions, as well, perhaps, as a nod to America’s growing relationship with India. Nowhere was there any hint that what might lie behind it was a hostile and potentially threatening new approach to China — or that it could conceivably be perceived that way in Beijing. But there can be no doubt that the Chinese view such moves, including recent provocative naval operations in the disputed Paracel Islands of the South China Sea, as significant perils.
Quand, fin mai, le Pentagone a dépêché deux navires de guerre, l'USS Higgins, un destroyer et l'USS Antietam, a cruiser — into the waters near one of those newly fortified islands, the Chinese responded by sending in some of their own warships while issuing a statement condemning the provocative American naval patrols. The U.S. action, a affirmé Valérie Plante. un porte-parole militaire chinois, « a gravement violé la souveraineté de la Chine [et] a miné la confiance stratégique mutuelle ». Décrite par le Pentagone sous le nom d’« opérations de liberté de navigation » (FRONOP), ces patrouilles devraient être augmentées à la demande de Mattis.
Bien entendu, les Chinois ne sont pas innocents dans l’escalade des tensions dans la région. Ils ont continué à militariser Îles de la mer de Chine méridionale dont la propriété est contestée, malgré une PROMETTONS que le président chinois Xi Jinping a demandé au président Obama en 2015 de ne pas le faire. Certaines de ces îles des archipels des Spratly et des Paracels sont également revendiquées par le Vietnam, les Philippines et d'autres pays de la région et ont fait l'objet d'une intensification, souvent amère désaccords among them about where rightful ownership really lies. Beijing has simply claimed sovereignty over all of them and refuses to compromise on the issue. By fortifying them — which American military commanders see as a latent military threat to U.S. forces in the region — Beijing has provoked a particularly fierce U.S. reaction, though these are obviously waters relatively close to China, but many thousands of miles from the continental United States.
From Beijing, the strategic outlook articulated by Secretary Mattis, as well as Admirals Harris and Davidson, is clearly viewed — and not without reason — as threatening and as evidence of Washington’s master plan to surround China, confine it, and prevent it from ever achieving the regional dominance its leaders CROYONS is its due as the rising great power on the planet. To the Chinese leadership, changing PACOM’s name to the Indo-Pacific Command will just be another signal of Washington’s determination to extend its unprecedented military presence westward from the Pacific around Southeast Asia into the Indian Ocean and so further restrain the attainment of what it sees as China’s legitimate destiny.
However Chinese leaders end up responding to such strategic moves, one thing is certain: they will not view them with indifference. On the contrary, as challenged great powers have always done, they will undoubtedly seek ways to counter America’s containment strategy by whatever means are at hand. These may not initially be overtly military or even obvious, but in the long run they will certainly be vigorous and persistent. They will include efforts to compete with Washington in pursuit of Asian allies — as seen in Beijing’s fervent cour du président Rodrigo Duterte des Philippines – et pour obtenir nouvelles dispositions de base abroad, possibly under the pretext, as in Pakistan and Sri Lanka, of establishing commercial shipping terminals. All of this will only add new tensions to an already anxiety-inducing relationship with the United States. As ever more warships from both countries patrol the region, the likelihood that accidents will occur, mistakes will be made, and future military clashes will result can only increase.
With the possibility of war with North Korea fading in the wake of the recent Singapore summit, one thing is guaranteed: the new U.S. Indo-Pacific Command will only devote itself ever more fervently to what is already its one overriding priority: preparing for a conflict with China. Its commanders insist that they do not seek such a war, and believe that their preparations — by demonstrating America’s strength and resolve — will deter the Chinese from ever challenging American supremacy. That, however, is a fantasy. In reality, a strategy that calls for a “steady drumbeat” of naval operations aimed at intimidating China in waters near that country will create ever more possibilities, however unintended, of sparking the very conflagration that it is, at least theoretically, designed to prevent.
Right now, a Sino-American war sounds like the plotline of some half-baked dystopian novel. Unfortunately, given the direction in which both countries (and their militaries) are heading, it could, in the relatively near future, become a grim reality.
Michael T. Klare, un TomDispatch Standard, est professeur d'études sur la paix et la sécurité mondiale au Hampshire College et auteur, plus récemment, de La course pour ce qui reste. Une version cinématographique documentaire de son livre Sang et huile est disponible auprès de la Media Education Foundation. Suivez-le sur Twitter à @mklare1.
Cet article a été publié pour la première fois sur TomDispatch.com, un blog du Nation Institute, qui propose un flux constant de sources alternatives, d'actualités et d'opinions de Tom Engelhardt, rédacteur en chef de longue date dans l'édition, co-fondateur de l'American Empire Project, auteur de La culture de la fin de la victoire, comme d'un roman, Les derniers jours de l'édition. Son dernier livre est Une nation détruite par la guerre (Livres Haymarket).
ZNetwork est financé uniquement grâce à la générosité de ses lecteurs.
Faire un don