Yves here. Maybe we’ll see some nice surprises for some much-needed change in the coming weeks, but the consensus so far on the Xi-Trump summit has been that the Chinese have been unfailingly polite but not much of an outcome has been settled. That includes the US stance on Taiwan. Keep in mind that Biden, who was less reliable than Trump, invited top Chinese officials to a summit in Alaska shortly after taking office and the US side seemed defiant. After repeated incidents of Biden lashing out at Xi and reaffirming US support for the “one China” policy and quickly backing them back, Xi called Biden a liar in one phone call. So as Brian Berletic would say, we have a policy continuum and that includes South Korea as a major part of US containment policy.
Admittedly, the US is too weak and too far away to protect Taiwan in the unlikely event that China felt it necessary to go the kinetic route in response to US interference. The gap between US power projection dreams and means is widening every day. But having South Korea as a fan is hope among US hawks that we can do something.
By Andrew Korybko, an American political analyst based in Moscow who focuses on the transition of the global system to multipolarity in the New Cold War. He has a PhD from MGIMO, which is under the umbrella of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Originally published on his website
The Sino-Russo Entente may evolve into a de facto alliance if South Korea and Japan join AUKUS+, the US’ de facto “NATO for Asia”, but that risks putting India in a de facto alliance with the US to curb perceived Chinese influence over Russia and thus further the collapse of Eurasia.
Trump’s meeting with Xi raised hopes that progress could be made in managing Sino-US tensions, but many of these same observers missed a meeting in DC earlier in the week between the US and South Korean (ROK) Defense Ministers, casting doubt on these hopes. Part of the agenda concerns an agreement reached during Trump’s visit last year for the US to help the ROK build a nuclear-powered submarine, which was assessed here as facilitating its integration with AUKUS+.
China strongly opposed the 2021 AUKUS agreement in which the UK and US agreed to help Australia build a nuclear-powered submarine. Although China’s reaction to the same agreement between the ROK and the US last year was greatly reduced due to the development of bilateral relations, its threat assessment is very high because the ROK is closer to China than Australia. It also represents the depth of US military strategic influence that can be used for deterrence purposes.
Not only will South Korea join the regional military network centered on AUKUS that informally involves Japan, the Philippines, and Taiwan, but China’s rival Japan has already expressed interest in reaching its nuclear submarine agreement with the US. Given that the ROK and Japan are “conflicting” for reasons beyond the scope of this analysis to explain, it is possible that the US will decide to reach a similar agreement with Japan, thus strengthening China’s threat perception of AUKUS+.
To make matters worse, US and ROK nuclear submarine cooperation (and possibly soon with Japan as well) could easily evolve into nuclear cooperation, which is a plausible scenario after the expiration of New START each of Trump’s 2.0 ambitions has increased the risk of a global nuclear arms race. The ROK and Japan both have what is known as nuclear latency, or the ability to build nukes when a decision is made, which more than 75% of South Koreans support but more than 60% of Japanese oppose.
Under Secretary of Defense Elbridge Colby has previously announced that the US will “resolutely resist” many European countries that are developing nukes, perhaps for the purposes of controlling the rise of Russia, so the same calculation with China can be used in East Asia. However, such figures can always change, and the US may also secretly support such plans or at least ignore France and/or the UK helping them. So China has reason to worry.
At the very least, the US is expected to use the status of the ROK and/or Japan going nuclear as a sword of Damocles over China in an attempt to prevent it from repeatedly escalating Sino-US tensions amid the inevitable integration of AUKUS+, the de facto “NATO of Asia”. Seeing how the US will continue to contain China even in the event of a major trade deal, China may be more receptive to Russian hardliners’ proposals to fully deepen cooperation, thereby building a true alliance.
The trade-off is that India may be hampered in aligning its close military relationship with the US for fear that China will become a major ally of Russia and be forced to cut arms and metal supplies to India, which will allow China to unfairly include India in their border disputes. This series of tit-for-tat alliances promoted by AUKUS+ would further destabilize Eurasia, facilitate US isolation and dominance, and make Sino-US bi-multipolarity inevitable, but it also cannot be ruled out.
