As part of reinforcing President Trump’s political legacy of a historic shift in policy toward the Chinese Communist Party, the Trump White House declassified the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategic Framework developed in 2018 on Jan. 12, just eight days before he left office. The Australian media, which was the first to receive the news at the time, reported that the Trump administration’s decision was highly unusual, as such “classified” and “closed to foreigners” documents as the Indo-Pacific Strategic Framework should normally be made available decades later, that is, as early as 2043. The earliest it would be declassified would be 2043.
Although parts of the 10-page document remain “blacked out” and classified, according to Rory Medcalf, dean of the National Security Institute at the Australian National University, “This is a very important document. It’s unusual to release it decades in advance.” He said, “I think it’s a signal about what kind of continuity the permanent U.S. government, or you could say, officials would like to see in the U.S. relationship with the Indo-Pacific region, including in managing Chinese power.”
According to a new book by Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin, “Chaos Under Heaven: Trump, Xi Jinping and the Battle for the 21st Century,” while the document could not have been developed without the efforts of officials from all levels of the Trump White House National Security Council (NSC) The document was conceived by Matt Pottinger, a former Wall Street Journal reporter in China who later became known for his fluent Chinese speeches commemorating the spirit of the May Fourth Movement.
At the call of his old boss, Bo Ming was called to Trump Tower on a bicycle
In fact, after Trump’s 2016 victory, not many people on his team were familiar with China issues, especially those with in-depth knowledge or origins in Asia on a national security and geopolitical level. That is why when Trump’s champion General Michael Flynn was nominated as the U.S. national security adviser, he first thought of Bomen, who had worked under him during his time in Afghanistan, to join the White House staff. During his tenure as chief of intelligence for the international peacekeeping force in Afghanistan from June 2009 to October 2010, Flynn met Bomen, then a military intelligence officer on his second tour of duty in Afghanistan, and the two co-authored a think tank report on how to improve U.S. military intelligence gathering in Afghanistan. In August 2014, Flynn was relieved of his duties as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and retired with the rank of lieutenant general. Differences of opinion and personal feuds with several key members of the Obama administration also made him a key supporter and security policy adviser to Trump during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.
After Trump’s victory, faced with the need for talent on his team-in-waiting at the time on Communist issues, Flynn quickly came up with the idea of Bo Ming, who had worked as a journalist in China for seven years before returning to the military, to join the White House staff. Although Flynn proved to step down less than a month after taking office because of his involvement in the “Russiagate” scandal, Bomen would play an important role in shaping the Trump administration’s China policy and Indo-Pacific strategy. Regardless of his top lieutenants, such as H.R. McMaster, John R. Bolton and Robert C. O’Brien, who were replaced like a walking light, Bomen eventually made it to the position of deputy national security adviser and resigned on Jan. 6 after Trump’s radical supporters stormed Capitol Hill. He resigned with a clear conscience. He is one of the few senior officials in the Trump administration who can stick around in the White House for the next four years. This shows that although Flynn is one of the few highly controversial figures in American politics in recent years, his decision to bring Booming into the White House can be considered a wise man’s performance. Summoned by his old boss, Bomen, then still working for an investment advisory firm in lower Manhattan, rode his New York City city share bike, Citi Bike, to the Trump Tower at 725 Fifth Avenue to meet with Flynn, who was part of the Trump transition team.
“American hegemony as we know it no longer exists in East Asia.”
According to the book, with the White House officially changing hands on Jan. 20, 2017, Bomen was appointed to head Asian affairs at the NSC he clearly came prepared. He wrote a paper analyzing U.S. policy toward China and Asian strategy specifically in November 2016, the month of Trump’s election victory. In order not to draw too much attention to the 12-page paper, Bomen deliberately stored it on his computer under the name “Bill’s Paper. The content is neither written by Bill nor is it a general document. According to the book’s author, Rogin, the paper will develop over the next few years into part of the Trump administration’s two classified domestic and diplomatic strategies, as well as the publicly available U.S. National Security Strategy Report on China. One of the derivative documents is the aforementioned U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategic Framework. Bill’s document, subtitled “Balancing Power,” is said to set out the urgent need for and ways in which the United States should adopt a new strategy toward China and related concepts. The paper suggests that the peace and prosperity Asia has enjoyed for more than 70 years since World War II has been underpinned by U.S. hegemony.
But this situation is threatened by the rise of the People’s Republic of China, its replacement of the U.S. in Asia and its efforts to dismantle U.S. alliances in Asia, according to Bomen. Two other major factors that also threaten this situation include North Korea’s spectacular development in nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, and the concern of U.S. Asian allies that the U.S. is shrinking from the region and no longer guarantees their security and freedom. . In the paper, Bomen noted that China’s economy has grown fivefold while the U.S. has focused its efforts on the war in the Middle East and the Great Recession at home over the past 20 years. The Communist authorities have also built a world-class military without compromising the authoritarian political system and state-controlled economic system they have maintained, he continued. According to Bomen, “Because of this, what we perceive as American hegemony no longer exists in East Asia. He concludes that “what we have now against China is a dynamic, unbalanced balance of power.” He argues that the United States has the military advantage, the Chinese Communist Party has the economic advantage, and the two sides are about evenly balanced politically. He writes, “The CCP’s desire is clearly not to be satisfied with a balance of power with the United States. Beijing’s medium-term goal is to achieve hegemony over its neighbors and the Western Pacific.”
Boming said this analysis of his is not an empty one, and that “such a conclusion is inevitable if one observes the behavior of the Chinese Communist Party and listens to its messages to the country in Chinese.” He writes, “The CCP’s goal of hemispheric hegemony is not a whim of President Xi Jinping; it stems from a decades-long party ambition. Xi is simply accelerating the timetable. But the United States has a large vote in the CCP’s ability to achieve this aspiration.” In the face of this historic challenge, Bomen argues that the United States should strengthen the balance of power with the CCP in Asia to get it back on track. One of the ways he proposes to do this is to fix the structural problems of the post-World War II international order, the very opportunity that he sees the CCP abusing after being welcomed into it. In this document, Bomen does not advocate decoupling from the CCP, but rather wants to negotiate a solution to the many economic and trade problems that exist between the two sides. He warns that achieving this goal will depend in large part on how the United States treats its relationship with its allies. He called for a strategy that would allow both the U.S. and the Chinese Communist Party to succeed, but not on Beijing’s terms.
Communist China is “Jupiter” and the Indo-Pacific is “the solar system.
According to Bomen, “This strategy, therefore, if implemented, will result in a viable and sustainable understanding with the CCP that will bring benefits to both sides. Whether our strategy succeeds or not, the CCP can thrive. If we fail, the United States will be in trouble.” He also suggested that U.S. policymakers should look at the CCP not as the “sun” but as the “Jupiter in the solar system” of the U.S.-China rivalry on the Indo-Pacific front. He noted that other countries in the region are more vulnerable and therefore need special attention from the U.S. because they are on the front lines of the U.S.-China competition. In terms of relations with Beijing, Bomen writes, “the CCP should not be the sun around which our regional diplomacy revolves; it should be seen as a planet, albeit a huge one, in the solar system of governments with which we are in constant contact.” The paper calls for the expansion of Chinese Communist influence and intervention within the United States to be targeted and stopped.
Bomen advocates a broad reset of the U.S.-China relationship based on the fundamental principle that the United States cannot fundamentally change the nature of the CCP system and should not try to do so. His idea is to deal with the realities of the CCP, focusing on stopping the worst of Chinese behavior and building resilience to the rest, while protecting U.S. values and interests. China’s strategy, he said, “is to incrementally push the strategic environment in its favor, sometimes acting overtly to raise alarms in the region, but without provoking significant countermeasures from its neighbors and the United States.” He argues that “only by recognizing this and changing U.S. behavior to stop the erosion of relative U.S. power and influence in Asia can the U.S.-China relationship be put on a track that avoids confrontation without losing strategic competition altogether.” In this “Bill’s paper,” Bomen also borrows from a 2001 statement by former Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji that “U.S.-China relations will never be good, but they need not be bad either. —— This goal is not so much a romantic one as a sensible one to which both sides should aspire “.
“Bill’s Papers” and the Trump White House’s Indo-Pacific Strategy
It is understood that on his first day in the White House, Bomen shared the “Bill’s Papers” with the NSC team he inherited, made up mostly of officials left over from the previous dynasty. This team was next involved in the development of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategic Framework document. They focused their attention on the so-called “frontline states” of the U.S.-China rivalry in the Indo-Pacific region, those stakeholders who are geographically closest to China and therefore most affected by its rise. He believes that the strategic competition between the U.S. and China will be spearheaded in this region, and therefore requires more U.S. attention and resources on the ground. The “Jupiter-Solar System” theory, as articulated in Bill’s paper, addresses not only thinking about the China approach, but also the “solar system” construct for Asia and the Indo-Pacific region as a whole. The “Jupiter-Solar System” thesis, as articulated in The U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategic Framework was subsequently presented to President Trump by then National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster and signed by the latter in January 2018.
Another document, also influenced by “Bill’s paper” and endorsed by Trump in October 2017, was the U.S. Strategic Framework for Countering China’s Economic Aggression, also authored by the National Security Council. Both of these documents were developed in the summer and fall of 2017. Moreover, as mentioned above, the U.S. National Security Strategy Report launched by the Trump administration in December 2017 strives to emphasize the importance of the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy, with the intention of reversing the negative perception of the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy as empty, especially among allies such as Japan. The report suggests that “China and Russia want to shape a world that runs counter to U.S. values and interests. China seeks to displace the United States in the Indo-Pacific region, expand the reach of its ‘state-driven’ economic model, and reconfigure the regional order in its favor.” In line with the idea of rebuilding allies’ trust in the United States as proposed in “Bill’s paper,” the report emphasizes that “the United States must mobilize the will and capacity to compete to prevent adverse changes in the Indo-Pacific, Europe and the Middle East. To maintain a favorable balance of power, the United States needs to make a strong commitment to and work closely with allies and partner nations as they expand U.S. power and influence.”
The concrete implementation of the strategy once it is in place will not be simple
Still, Bomen and the NSC are clearly not the only officials or agencies in the Trump administration thinking and developing policy in this way. For example, the U.S. Department of Defense’s U.S. Defense Strategy Report, released in January 2018, suggests that “China is using military modernization, influence, and predatory economics to force its neighbors to reorder the Indo-Pacific region to its advantage. As China continues to rise economically and militarily and assert power through a long-term strategy under a ‘nation-building system,’ it will continue to pursue a military modernization program that seeks Indo-Pacific regional hegemony in the short term and displaces the United States as the global hegemon in the future.” To counter China, the U.S. proposes that enduring alliances and long-term security partnerships need to be underpinned by core U.S. alliances and complemented and reinforced by a network of alliance-owned security relationships; the U.S. will strengthen its alliances and partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region to build a netted security architecture capable of deterring aggression, maintaining stability, and ensuring free access to the common domain.
On May 30 of the same year, the U.S. Pacific Command (Pacific Command) was officially renamed the Indo-Pacific Command (Indo-Pacific Command), with Phil Davidson replacing Harry Harris at the helm of the new Indo-Pacific Command. However, despite the existence of several guiding documents, the Trump administration’s China policy is not a step-by-step strategy, but is affected by the lingering U.S.-China trade negotiations and Trump’s personal and intra-White House rivalries, and therefore lacks continuity and clarity.
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