On January 13, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Strategist website immediately published an article, “Declassification of secret document reveals US strategy in the Indo-Pacific,” on the implications of the declassification of “one of the most sensitive national security documents” (i.e., the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategic Framework).
China, which has been heavily involved in the Indo-Pacific region in recent years, is also paying close attention to the document, as reported in a Jan. 14 article in Beijing’s Dovetail News.
More notably, China’s recent large-scale hydrographic reconnaissance for strategic nuclear submarine operations off the coast of Indonesia reflects the implementation of China’s “three-pronged” plan to close in on Australia in order to open up the underwater southern route for strategic nuclear submarines.
Why is the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategic Framework declassified?
The U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategic Framework was developed in February 2018 and sets out the U.S. strategic approach in the Indian and Pacific Oceans from 2018 to 2020. It was originally a classified document, encrypted by Matthew Pottinger, then senior director for Asia at the National Security Council and later deputy national security adviser; it was declassified by White House national security adviser Robert O’Brien on Jan. 5 of this year before its release.
In terms of format and content, it is a draft working document on outlines and principles, 10 pages in length. It is not a separate document, but rather a component of a larger document.
The document reveals that in addition to the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategic Framework, the National Security Council has developed a parallel, but unclassified, U.S. Strategic Framework for Countering Chinese Economic Aggression. The U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategic Framework does not include the background, discussion process and implementation details of the development of the document, which was released with a few words blacked out from pages 4 to 9, but the vast majority of its contents were made available to the foreign public.
Why did the outgoing Trump administration suddenly declassify this document, which is classified as “Secret” and “not for foreign nationals”?
White House National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien released the document in a statement that said.
This document is being released to communicate to U.S. citizens and our allies and partners about America’s enduring commitment to keep the ‘Indo-Pacific’ region free and open for the future.
A key strategic goal the U.S. wants to achieve with China is to “deter (deter) China using military force for the United States and its allies and partners, while building the capabilities and concepts to defeat China in a variety of conflicts.”
Axios News reported that the release of the document “reveals the geopolitical and national security challenges that the Biden administration will inherit.
The author believes that the declassification of this document is intended to further stabilize the Indo-Pacific region; the Trump administration is aware that China poses a considerable threat to U.S. national security and stability in the Indo-Pacific region, and that the U.S. will need to continue to maintain appropriate diplomatic and military deployments in this region in the future.
After the declassification of this document, the relevant countries in the Indo-Pacific region can have a clearer understanding of the strategic guidelines already determined by the Trump administration, and the Biden administration’s future strategies should naturally maintain the necessary continuity.
II. What is the focus of the Indo-Pacific Strategic Framework?
The geographic scope of the Indo-Pacific region covered by the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategic Framework includes three parts, namely the Central Indo-Pacific region, the Eastern Indo-Pacific region and the Western Indo-Pacific region. The waters and countries that fall within the Central Indo-Pacific region are the South China Sea, the waters of the Indonesian archipelago, the northern coasts of the Philippines and Australia, and the surrounding waters of the islands of New Guinea, Micronesia, New Caledonia, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji, and Tonga.
Australia is very familiar with this area, and the battles in which Australian naval, land and air forces fought for home defense during the Pacific War were largely in this area. From the Marshall Islands to the southeastern portion of the Polynesian Islands and on to Hawaii, it falls within the Eastern Indo-Pacific region. And the Western Indo-Pacific region includes the western and central parts of the Indian Ocean, up to the east coast of Africa.
The strategic challengers mentioned in the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategic Framework are two main ones. The primary challenger is China, followed by North Korea, which is located outside the Indo-Pacific region. Since North Korea does not have the strength to enter the Indo-Pacific region, China is actually the only challenger to the security and stability of the Indo-Pacific region.
Although the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategic Framework covers the above three regions in the Indo-Pacific region, the Eastern and Western Indo-Pacific regions are not yet facing substantial threats from China, so the Central Indo-Pacific region is the focus of the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy, while northern Australia and the waters around Indonesia adjacent to Australia are a new focus of the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy.
The Central Indo-Pacific region was once one of the key combat zones in the Pacific War, when Australian naval, air and land forces fought bravely with the Allies against the fierce Japanese attack. Today, the Central Indo-Pacific region is once again a major area of international concern. China has shown a clear military challenge in the region over the past few years; and the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategic Framework shows that the United States has been concerned about the Chinese threat to the region for the past two years. In the Central Indo-Pacific region, Australia is the only country with defense strength and a major U.S. ally.
Interpreting the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategic Framework
The U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategic Framework begins with the question: How can the United States maintain its strategic advantage in the Indo-Pacific region and promote a liberal economic order, while preventing China from establishing new, illiberal spheres of influence and fostering areas of cooperation to promote peace and prosperity in the region?
This paper argues that because of the differences in the nature and goals of the political and economic systems between the United States and China, the strategic competition between the United States and China will continue, with China circumventing international rules and norms to gain an advantage; China’s economic, diplomatic, and military influence will continue to rise in the near term and challenge the ability of the United States to achieve its national interests in the Indo-Pacific region. Therefore, the United States needs to align its Indo-Pacific strategy with corresponding strategies in Australia, India, and Japan; and work closely with allies and related countries to prevent China from acquiring military and strategic capabilities.
The U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategic Framework states that the United States should deter China from using force against the United States and its allies and partners, and develop capabilities and methods to defeat Chinese actions in a variety of conflicts.
To this end, the U.S. is to strengthen a combat-ready military posture in the Indo-Pacific region to support U.S. national interests and security commitments. Under this strategy, the United States will deny China air and sea control in conflicts within the “first island chain”; defend the countries and regions of the first island chain, including Taiwan; and achieve dominance in all areas outside the first island chain.
This document was prepared 2 years ago, before the Chinese Communist Party’s military threat to the central Indo-Pacific region became apparent, so the U.S. document placed more emphasis on the security of the countries in the first island chain, and did not specifically outline the vision or layout of the strategic defense in the central Indo-Pacific region.
However, the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategic Framework is quite prescient and in fact anticipates China’s possible next military moves. Since China’s announcement in March 2020 that its strategic nuclear submarines had built a “deep sea fortress” in the international waters of the South China Sea, the Chinese Navy’s nuclear submarines have begun to explore the possibility of departing from the “deep sea fortress” to the Central Pacific in order to threaten U.S. military deployments with submarine-launched nuclear missiles (see my article last December). (See my Dec. 1 opinion, “China’s Economic Threat to Australia”). The situation in the Central Indo-Pacific region has suddenly become tense.
It was against this backdrop that the United States announced in early December last year the formation of the U.S. Navy’s First Fleet, as envisioned in the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategic Framework, with its area of deployment in the Central Indo-Pacific region (see my Dec. 16 opinion, “China’s Real Intentions in Pressuring Australia”).
For this third measure, China has not been subtle about its strategic intentions. Beijing’s Dovetail News published an article on January 11, “Chinese Underwater Vessel Intercepted by Indonesia, Expert: Secretly Charting Course for Chinese Submarines,” which publicly described this initiative. According to the article, Indonesia recently spotted an unmanned Chinese underwater vehicle near Selayar Island in South Sulawesi (South Sulawesi).
The unmanned underwater vehicles, whose labels read Shenyang Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, may be mapping the seabed to chart the course of secret Chinese submarine voyages, according to the Hong Kong-based English-language South China Morning Post on Jan. 10.
After looking for relevant information, I found that Indonesia has fished a total of three Chinese-made unmanned underwater vehicles near shore in different waters of the Java Sea in recent years, in March 2019 as well as on December 20 last year.
The earlier discoveries were made in the Sunda Strait (between Indonesia’s South Sumatra Island and Java, where the Indonesian capital is located) and the Lombok Strait in the middle of Indonesia’s territorial waters, while the waters of Seraya Island, where the most recent unmanned underwater vehicle was recovered, are located in the eastern section of Indonesia’s Java Sea, not far from Australia’s northern gate.
The information cited by the South China Morning Post about the mother ship of the Chinese unmanned underwater vehicle is outdated. According to Chinese information, the unmanned underwater vehicle may be one of a series of unmanned cableless submersibles called the “Submarine Dragon” in China, for which the Shenyang Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences is responsible for the overall technology. The mother ship of this unmanned underwater vehicle is the “Deep Sea 1” and “Ocean 1” integrated survey vessel, both of which have their home ports in Qingdao.
“Deep Ocean 1 is the largest underwater vehicle mothership in China and belongs to China Deep Sea Base Management Center; Ocean 1 belongs to China Ocean Minerals Association and its main activity area is the Indo-Pacific region. “Ocean 1 is a converted Soviet marine geological and geophysical research vessel with a deep-sea visual sampling system installed on its stern to collect real-time images of seafloor microtopography; it releases an unmanned underwater vehicle that can navigate automatically near the bottom of the water and uses hydroacoustic communication technology to transmit images from the seafloor at high speed.
This unmanned underwater vehicle uses oil-filled silver-zinc batteries for power, and each dive will not be too far from the mother ship; since this unmanned underwater vehicle has been retrieved by Indonesia three times, it means that it is more likely to lose power or lose contact with the mother ship during the dive.
Fourth, military experts’ caution
The U.S.-based World News Network pointed out that the unmanned underwater vehicle is a robot that can navigate underwater and collect ocean data such as seawater temperature, salinity, turbidity, chlorophyll and oxygen levels to understand the undersea environment, which is yet extremely valuable for naval deployments, especially for submarine ship operations, and “the more the Navy understands seawater, the better they can hide their submarine ships.”
According to the South China Morning Post, Malcolm Davis, a senior analyst of defense strategy at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, judged that the unmanned underwater vehicle found near Seraya Island “uses sonar to probe the seafloor to obtain an accurate bathymetric map of the seafloor and uses sensors to understand the thermal and acoustic conditions in the water, thus giving PLA Navy submarines the best chance of crossing the Sunda Strait without being detected.”
By doing so, he argued, China can ensure that submarines are deployed in the best way possible in the South China Sea, Indian Ocean and elsewhere. Davis added that “China sends submarines further out than the South China Sea or East China Sea – beyond the ‘first island chain’ – or in a way that enables the PLA Navy to gather intelligence and support covert operations or operations against Australia.”
Timothy Heath, a security expert at the Rand Corporation, a U.S. think tank, expressed a similar view. He believes that China’s move is likely an attempt to gather intelligence and, if necessary, improve the ability of its submarines to operate in these waters; China may be interested in patrolling waters off Indonesia as part of a broader effort to expand the operational reach of Chinese submarines.
While Australian and U.S. military experts are better informed about current Chinese strategic nuclear submarine movements, some U.S. foreign policy analysts do not have such insight.
On January 14 the Diplomat published an article by Abhijnan Rej, “U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategic Framework: Three Questions,” which reflects the stereotypical vision of typical continental geopolitical thinking. The author is not at all aware of China’s aggressive intentions toward the central Indo-Pacific waters and has no concept of a future Indo-Pacific-focused U.S.-China confrontation, instead harping on the paper’s neglect of the importance of Russia and Mongolia in the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy.
Whether the excessive focus on Russia by some policy analysts in the Biden administration will dilute future U.S. efforts to play a necessary role in the Central Indo-Pacific Sea deserves continued attention.
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