Tuesday, July 18, 2017

US-Europe rift highlights Asia's security concerns

July 16, 2017 11:44 am JST
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US-Europe rift highlights Asia's security concerns

Worries about America's reliability prompting rethink of defense measures
HIROYUKI AKITA, Nikkei commentator
What epitomized this was seen on May 25, at the first NATO summit in which Trump was present. The European side limited the time for each participant's speech to several minutes so that he might not be displeased, in an effort to maintain solidarity between the U.S. and Europe.
However, Trump did not commit himself in his speech to fulfilling his country's obligation to defend Europe. According to a European diplomatic source with inside knowledge of the summit, Trump behaved even more rudely at a dinner party, giving the impression that the U.S. was unreliable.
Early last month, Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, said at a conference that "the protection of Europe can no longer be outsourced." A European Union official said the EU would deepen security cooperation among its members in the future to become less dependent on the U.S. for its defense.
Implications for Asia 
What should Asia see in the weakening of the U.S.-Europe alliance? There are two opposing views to consider.
One is that similar problems would not occur in the U.S.-Japan and the U.S.-South Korea alliances because Europe and Asia are in very different geo-strategic situations. Speaking with Japanese politicians and bureaucrats, I felt they were more inclined to hold this optimistic view.
In fact, Trump has stopped his criticism of the alliances with Japan and South Korea. In Asia, North Korea is running wild and China is expanding its influence. He has to be considerate of the Asian allies to deal advantageously with China, whose gross domestic product is more than five times that of Russia.
However, we can consider a very different view. This holds that the phenomenon in the U.S.-Europe alliance is a "leading indicator" for Asia and will spread to the U.S. alliances with Japan and South Korea in varying degrees.
I think this view is more reasonable. Discord between the U.S. and Europe is nothing new but arose in earnest when the George W. Bush administration started the Iraq War in 2003.
It was the subsequent Barack Obama administration that complained that Europe was enjoying free defense by the U.S. and urged Europe to bear its share of the burden. Obama got all NATO members to promise to raise defense spending to 2% of GDP by 2024.
A former senior European government official who was long engaged in diplomacy noted that the discord with the U.S. began in the Bush era, but Bush and Obama could at least be trusted. The question about Trump is his reliability.
That is, Trump did not cause the rift between the U.S. and Europe but he has exacerbated it. The principal cause is that the U.S. is tired of playing the role of policeman for the world, partly as a result of more than 10 years of war in Afghanistan and the Middle East.
If so, the problem also applies to Asia. Though Trump is restraining himself at present, he may direct his free-defense criticism to Japan and South Korea sooner or later.
Actually, Trump is believed to have quietly urged South Korea to bear more of the stationing costs of the U.S. forces in that country at a bilateral summit on June 30.
However, South Korea's defense spending amounts to 2.6% of GDP, the highest among major U.S. allies. Japan's percentage stands lowest, at 0.9%.
The South China Sea issue? Japan will do something about it, Trump was reportedly saying to people around him before taking office. There is no assurance that he has changed this view.
Germany and France have friendly nations around them and they can help one another even if a hollow grows in their alliance with the U.S.
There are few such options for Japan, which lives in a dangerous neighborhood including North Korea, China and Russia, countries with nuclear weapons, and remains on bad terms with South Korea. The distress for Europe is thus seen as more serious for Japan.

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