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Continued exercises, training, capacity building, and mitigation of climate change are key planks in the United States’ relationship with ASEAN nations – but will a Pentagon under Pete Hegseth be willing to follow through?
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The United States Department of Defense (DOD) has released a first-of-its-kind “vision statement”, outlining its key goals in supporting nations in the Southeast Asia region.
The document – US Department of Defense Vision Statement for a Prosperous and Secure Southeast Asia – was released last week on 21 November and lays out a set of commitments and goals for a “Southeast Asian region free of coercion where safety, security, sovereignty, self-determination, and prosperity are shepherded by ASEAN centrality.”
Before going into detail about the DOD’s future plans, the document sums up previous achievements since the then-Secretary of Defence, Robert Gates, attended the first-ever ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting-Plus in 2010. In the 14 years since, the serving Secretary of Defense has attended every ADMM-Plus gathering.
It’s the upcoming 15th anniversary of the meeting – which could well see President-elect Donald Trump’s controversial pick for Secretary of Defence, Pete Hegsweth, attending – that inspired the DOD’s ruminations on ASEAN’s role in the defence and stability of the region.
Past partnerships
It’s worth noting that the US thinks it’s on a strong footing in the region, particularly since 2005, Since then, the US has delivered military sales in excess of US$17 billion, conducted 40 military exercises, educated more than 76,000 students, and boosted the maritime capabilities of ASEAN members to the tune of US$475 million.
According to the vision statement, the “United States’ vision for defence capacity building reflects the history of US investment in the Indo-Pacific’s regional security architecture, which has supported the sovereignty, self-determination, and defence capabilities of Southeast Asian countries.”
In addition, the US has trained alongside its allies and partners in the region and assisted in disaster relief.
Looking ahead, the DOD outlines several areas of what it calls “key lines of effort”.
Domain awareness
Top of these, perhaps unsurprisingly, is domain awareness and defence, which focus on three program streams concerning the air, cyber, and maritime domains.
For the air domain, the US intends to work with its ASEAN partners largely on improving detection and identification and securing sovereign airspace. At the same time, that detection capability will be increasingly fused with government IT systems to allow sharing of vital information across the region.
The cyber domain is obviously important in a region so hotly contested by Chinese influence and the US will continue to work with the Singapore-based ADMM Cybersecurity and Information Centre of Excellence, running tabletop simulations to help identify areas of improvement and boost capacity.
Given part of this program is to provide training courses for cyber security professionals, it could well assist in securing the wider region as well. Quite a lot of organised scam operations and other cyber gangs operated out of Southeast Asian nations, which commonly target victims far afield. Boosting the cyber capacity of ASEAN nations could well be a boon even here in Australia.
Lastly, the US intends to work on programs to build maritime capacity across the region, boosting awareness across the domain. The plan is to use a combination of off-the-shelf technologies – artificial intelligence, machine learning, and drones – to enhance research and provide a continuous presence in Southeast Asian waters.
According to the vision statement, “Experts on maritime domain awareness will identify opportunities to support regional cooperation and synergies in this area, enabling Southeast Asian partners to protect their maritime territories more effectively under international law.”
Again, saying the quiet part out loud, this is all clearly an attempt to provide a counterbalance to Chinese influence operations in the area, especially when it comes to some of the world’s most contested waterways.
Exercises, education, and training
The US will continue its annual exercises with ASEAN partners and allies in the region, such as Exercise Balikatan between the US and the Philippines – which saw 200 ADF personnel take part this year – while also adding a second ASEAN-US maritime exercise in the coming year, alongside active participation in ADMM-Plus Expert Working Groups and training exercises.
The US will also continue its Emerging Defense Leaders’ Program for young defence officials.
“These specialised courses exist in addition to long-standing International Military Education and Training (IMET) courses for Southeast Asian ally and partner military officers and defence civilians,” the statement said.
Industrial and institutional capacity building
Another aim of the US is to boost the industrial capacity of Southeast Asian partners to create a “more robust and integrated defence industrial base”. This will be through engagement with industry, government, and the academic sector via prize challenges, exchanges, and workshops.
US advisers from the Ministry of Defence will also continue their work to assist in the professional development of regional ministers, and was this year named co-chair of the Military Medicine Expert Working Group alongside Indonesia.
The US military, particularly the Army, has been putting in a lot of work preparing its own units for near-peer warfare and the pressures that will be placed on casualty treatment. The next conflicts are expected to be larger in scale, against near-peer opponents, so US knowledge in this area will be very useful for countries that may end up on the front lines of any future conflict in the region.
Given Australia’s position as a member of the ASEAN Plus Six group of countries, anything that strengthens our neighbours, in terms of industrial capacity, helps us too.
Climate change
This one’s worth quoting in full, as it may end up being one of the most contentious points come January 2025.
“With input from ASEAN member states, the United States will develop a series of workshops, technical demonstrations, and tabletop exercises to address climate resilience shortfalls and provide a platform for member states to share expertise in addressing climate change impacts to their respective defence organisations, readiness, and operational capacities.”
Pretty sensible stuff, especially given the particular impacts of climate change in a region of long coastlines and a reliance on maritime industries.
Trump is notoriously leery of climate change, and what’s more, his decision to increase oil drilling and take apart what he calls the “green new scam” may well ring some alarm bells in the region. In fact, his cabinet is full of climate change sceptics, particularly Trump’s nomination for energy secretary, ex-mining executive Chris Wright. Wright has said he believes “clean energy” and “carbon pollution” are simply made-up “nonsense terms”.
Perhaps more importantly, the man who will more than likely still be expected to attend next year’s ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting-Plus, Pete Hegsweth is another climate change denier. He feels it’s some kind of liberal conspiracy, saying on his Fox News program in 2019 that “It’s all about control for them”.
“That’s why climate change is the perfect enemy. They get to control your life to deal with it no matter what’s happening.”
Speaking to Politico’s E&E News, former deputy undersecretary of defence Sherri Goodman said Hegseth’s nomination and possible appointment could upend years of work at the Pentagon to factor climate change into defence policy and strategy.
“The Department of Defense work on climate is all about reducing risk from climate threats that our forces face around the world,” Goodman said.
“And that’s everything from infrastructure in Florida that’s more at risk from hurricanes and sea-level rise to our troops who have to operate in hotter temperatures, to an opening Arctic and a more aggressive China that is using climate as a wedge issue against our allies.”
Nowhere is that climate wedge being driven deeper than in the wider Asia-Pacific, where US defence interests are working closely not just with ASEAN, but any number of Pacific islands facing the very real threat of rising sea levels. Just this week, China’s president, Xi Jinping, met with his Samoan counterpart, Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa, in Beijing.
Climate change, and Chinese assistance in fighting it, was very definitely on that agenda, as it is for the US Department of Defense right now.
It’s highly unlikely that a Hegseth-run Pentagon would be willing to step entirely away from the DOD’s new vision statement, but it’s also very likely to be a source of significant friction if the man behind its implementation does not agree with one of its key planks.
