China’s recent incursions into Japan’s airspace and territorial waters materially escalate Beijing’s efforts to intimidate and dominate nations in the Indo-Pacific. Tokyo responded by announcing a multibillion-dollar satellite program to bolster detection capabilities against such intrusions.
Chinese “fishing vessels” have in the past periodically sailed near the Senkaku islands, which are claimed by Japan, Taiwan and China. Chinese coast guard ships and military vessels later began to appear, ratcheting up Beijing’s aggressiveness. Washington doesn’t explicitly recognize Tokyo’s sovereignty over the Senkakus but has committed to defend the islands under the U.S.-Japan mutual cooperation and security treaty.
These escalating forays follow Chinese interference in Taiwan’s airspace and waters, and its efforts to assert sovereignty over most of the South China Sea. Chinese naval encounters with the Philippines over disputed islands, shoals and reefs have made headlines. Vietnam and others have often faced Chinese challenges.
None of this is coincidental. Beijing is unmistakably contesting control of the First Island Chain. This variously described topography extends from the Kamchatka Peninsula to the Kuril islands, through Japan and the Senkakus to Taiwan, on to the Philippines and then Borneo and the Malay Peninsula.
America’s next president will have to face the strategic consequences of this belligerence. Climate-change negotiations with Beijing should no longer top Washington’s East Asia agenda. Tweets suggesting China consult Google Maps won’t suffice, though they at least show someone on Team Biden understands the problem.
With China pressing all along the First Island Chain, existing U.S. bilateral cooperation with affected states like Japan and Taiwan has plainly become insufficient. Finding seams in the intelligence or defense capabilities across the chain is far easier for Beijing when such efforts among the targets are absent. If China breaks through the First Island Chain at one place, other states in the chain and the Pacific would be at greater risk. Washington should recognize that the integrity of each nation’s air and maritime spaces requires multilateral cooperation, especially among air and naval forces and the intelligence communities of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand. Given the high stakes, involving other Asian and Pacific states, along with key European allies like Britain, could be critical.
Such cooperation doesn’t require creating an East Asian North Atlantic Treaty Organization or accepting a decision to contain China—at least not yet. More-robust multistate activities are nevertheless urgently needed across the island chain. Several areas of multilateral cooperation are already under way, but if much more isn’t done, Beijing will play one nation against another, calibrating belligerent activities along its periphery to advance its interests. If the affected nations don’t hang together, to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, China may well hang them all separately.
A possible model is George W. Bush’s Proliferation Security Initiative against trafficking in weapons of mass destruction. A British diplomat described PSI as “an activity, not an organization,” almost entirely operational and not overtly political. Its success rested on military and intelligence exchanges and exercises, only rarely involving diplomatic palavering among foreign ministries. What worked for PSI on a global basis can work in Asia and the Pacific.
The elephant in the room is Taiwan. Without it, there is little chance other concerned countries can effectively thwart China’s destabilizing efforts. This time it isn’t Taipei asking for help, but other regional capitals that need help as much as Taipei. Losing effective control over what Douglas MacArthur labeled an “unsinkable aircraft carrier”—much less actual Chinese annexation—would fatally breach the First Island Chain. There are ways around the Taiwan dilemma that would irritate Beijing. But that need not precipitate a political crisis unless China is resolved to have one, which in itself would reveal Beijing’s hostile intent.
Long before the Abraham Accords established full diplomatic relations among Israel and several Arab states, they were working together. Wide-ranging intelligence cooperation, especially over the common threat of Iran, stimulated creative, mutually advantageous ways to do business. In another context, West Germany’s somewhat anomalous status didn’t prevent its full integration into NATO. Instead of hypothesizing about obstacles to closer cooperation with Taiwan, Asian and U.S. diplomats should emulate their predecessors and include Taiwan in collective security.
More Chinese air and sea incursions are coming, along with increased influence operations in Asian and Pacific countries and more intelligence-gathering efforts. Beijing is dictating the pace and scope of its intrusions, underscoring the need for closer cooperation among its targets. That alone would augment deterrence, but we haven’t got time to waste.
Mr. Bolton served as White House national security adviser, 2018-19, and ambassador to the United Nations, 2005-06. He is author of “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir.”
This article was first published in the Wall Street Journal on September 10, 2024. Click here to read the original article.
