Security Convergence

FORUM Staff

Mutual security interests are aligning in the Indo-Pacific to form a shared security capacity that continues to grow.

Although the region is not ready for an elaborate series of treaties or agreements that bind nations in defense commitments, multiple countries are coalescing around common security threats to informally strengthen bonds and improve military cooperation and interoperability, defense analysts said.

The increasing number of multilateral military exercises represents the most visible hallmark of this trend. Cobra Gold, which began in 1982 as a bilateral drill between Thailand and the United States, has evolved into one of the world’s largest multinational exercises, involving 20 countries across the Indo-Pacific, including Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea. Garuda Shield, traditionally a bilateral exercise, went multilateral in 2022 to include 12 nations along with its original partners Indonesia and the U.S. Similarly, Malabar, which started between India and the U.S., now regularly includes Australia and Japan. The massive Rim of the Pacific exercise, conducted in and around the Hawaiian Islands and Southern California, epitomized the multilateral movement in 2022 with 26 participating nations: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, Ecuador, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Peru, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tonga, the United Kingdom and the U.S.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida discussed the security trend during his keynote address at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore in June 2022: “Looking around the world, a variety of actors, including Australia, the European Union, France, Germany, India, Italy, the Netherlands, the U.S. and the United Kingdom, have all laid out visions for the Indo-Pacific, sharing a common grand vision,” he said at the annual forum, which is sponsored by the International Institute for Strategic Studies and is in its 19th iteration. “Like-minded partners are each taking action on their own initiative, not at the behest of others. This is the very concept of a Free and Open Indo-Pacific, which is based on inclusiveness.”

More multinational presence and cooperative exercises in the Indo-Pacific also demonstrate the coalescence among nations seeking peace and stability. Australia, France, Germany, Japan, the U.K. and the U.S. all participated in such operations in the past year.

Expanding Bilateralism

At the core of this collective security convergence, Indo-Pacific nations have been enhancing an array of bilateral relations at the ground level, engaging in military exercises, trainings and other exchanges. For example, Japan and Singapore traded port visits. Relations between Japan and South Korea are also strengthening. In June 2022, South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin moved to normalize security cooperation with Japan, according to The Korea Herald newspaper. Meanwhile, Australia and Japan deepened their practical defense engagement with plans announced in June 2022 to “step up the sophistication” of their joint exercises and activities, according to the Kyodo News agency.

A few days after the Shangri-La Dialogue, then-Japanese Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi met with new Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles in Tokyo. “It is clear that our region faces the most complex set of strategic circumstances we have had since the end of World War II, and what the region does matters,” Marles told a joint news conference, according to The Associated Press (AP). “Only by working together can we uphold the rules-based international order, contribute to an effective balance of military power, and ensure our region remains stable, peaceful and prosperous.”

In addition to discussing their concerns about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the ministers said they opposed any unilateral change of the status quo in the East and South China seas and remained committed to a shared vision of “a free and open” international order of the seas. “It is important to strengthen our cooperation with our regional partners, especially with ASEAN [Association of Southeast Asian Nations] and the Pacific Islands, to maintain and reinforce the Free and Open Indo-Pacific,” Kishi said.

Later in June 2022, Marles met with Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh in New Delhi for the nations’ first bilateral defense ministers’ meeting and to strengthen security cooperation. “The rules-based international order that has brought peace and prosperity to the Indo-Pacific for decades is experiencing pressure, as we face shifts in the geostrategic order. Australia stands ready to work closer with India in support of an open, inclusive and resilient Indo-Pacific,” Marles said. 

Indian defense leaders also held similar talks with their counterparts from Japan and the U.S. around the same time. In the past year, leaders from Australia and Indonesia, Australia and South Korea, India and South Korea, and Indonesia and South Korea have taken similar action, evidence of a growing list of Indo-Pacific nations seeking to strengthen bilateral relations.

Security-minded nations are also increasing involvement with ASEAN-led defense and security initiatives, including the ASEAN Regional Forum and the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting-Plus. In mid-June 2022, foreign ministers from India and ASEAN convened a special meeting to strengthen ties amid increasing stresses on food and energy security, prices and supply chains that have been exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and tensions between the U.S. and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), according to AP.

“India fully supports a strong, unified, prosperous ASEAN whose centrality in the Indo-Pacific is fully recognized,” Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said. India and ASEAN have been dialogue partners for more than 30 years. Jaishankar pushed for enhancing land and sea connectivity among ASEAN members; the ASEAN-India Connectivity initiative includes upgrading the India-Myanmar-Thailand highway, AP reported.

Trilateral relations are also proving pivotal for building collective security. Uniting around the Indo-Pacific flashpoints, security leaders of Australia, Japan and the U.S., for example, have held talks each year for more than a decade, and the three nations regularly conduct joint exercises such as Southern Jackaroo and Cope North. “On the stability of the Korean Peninsula, the U.S., Australia and Japan have a shared history of active military commitments to South Korea — as recently as last year Australia had peacekeepers deployed to the United Nations Command on the Demilitarized Zone. Any military confrontation on the peninsula would activate U.S., Japanese, and Australian forces immediately and cause those countries direct consequences,” Hayley Channer, a senior policy fellow with the Perth USAsia Centre, an independent, foreign affairs think tank based in Australia, wrote in the online magazine The Diplomat in June 2022.

Trilateral initiatives to foster ties beyond the Indo-Pacific are also materializing, such as the recent creation of AUKUS, a security alliance among Australia, the U.K. and the U.S.

Shared Visions

Collective action also underpins the updated U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy unveiled in February 2022 by U.S. President Joe Biden. Under the strategy, the U.S. will tap the collective capacity of regional countries and its five treaty partners through a broad range of formal and informal relationships and organizations to build collective capacity. Dr. Joshy M. Paul, research fellow at the Centre for Air Power Studies in New Delhi, wrote in an essay on the think tank’s website. “Instead of depending on the U.S.’s sole material capability to ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific, it seeks the material capability of regional countries to contribute to regional security. It also shows that it is not the U.S.’s unilateral vision enforcing upon the regional countries, rather the U.S. attaches considerable importance to the choices of regional countries such as India’s strategic autonomy, Japan’s economic priority over security, ASEAN’s centrality in Asian multilateralism, and Australia’s balancing acts between the U.S. and China.”

To enhance regional security, the U.S. is also deepening its engagement with Pacific Island Countries (PICs), according to Kurt Campbell, deputy assistant to the president and Indo-Pacific affairs coordinator on the National Security Council. “We do not take these bonds for granted,” he told participants at a June 2022 Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Pacific Partners Initiative event in Washington, D.C. “What we also think is important is protecting sovereignty. Sovereignty is central in terms of how we see the Pacific overall. Any initiative that compromises or calls into question that sovereignty, I think we would have concerns with,” Campbell said, according to a transcript of the event, titled “Building a Blue Pacific Agenda for the 21st Century.”

“Our mantra will be, nothing in the Pacific without the Pacific. We are not going to be taking decisions or engagements without the closest possible engagement with Pacific partners,” he said. “We will do this in the most open, transparent manner. And our focus is, again, going to be on dealing with the issues where the Pacific Islanders live, trying to address those key issues — from COVID to recovery, enhanced tourism, trade, across the board — that we believe will be animating in the 21st century.”

“Pacific people and their governments would welcome an enduring partnership with the U.S. that is there for the long term,” Fiji’s ambassador to the U.N., Satyendra Prasad, told event participants, calling for “a highly stepped-up and broader relationship between the U.S. and the Pacific. And that there’s great predictability across the areas that we are engaging with deeply.”

Fatumanava-o-Upolu III Pa’olelei Luteru, Samoa’s ambassador to the U.N., advocated during the CSIS event for the U.S. to help island nations access concessional financing and encouraged expanding a U.S. treaty with PICs concerning tuna catches.

Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the U.K. also demonstrated their intent to strengthen bonds with PICs in 2022 amid the PRC’s push to increase its economic, military and police links with the region, Reuters reported. 

Without naming the PRC, Luteru noted that “in the context of our Pacific countries, we’re fully aware of what we’re dealing with.”

In late September 2022, the U.S. strengthened its commitment to PICs thorough the first U.S.-Pacific Island summit held in Washington, D.C., at which U.S. President Joe Biden announced more than U.S. $810 million in expanded programs. The U.S. has provided over U.S. $1.5 billion for the Pacific Islands over the past decade.

Global Cooperation

Like-minded Indo-Pacific nations are also increasingly looking to international forums to help counter emerging security threats. For example, Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol attended the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit in Madrid in late June 2022, signifying their intentions to expand cooperation with the transatlantic group. “Russia’s invasion [of Ukraine] violates the peace and order of the world and can never be tolerated,” Kishida said in announcing plans to attend the summit, according to Bloomberg. South Korean officials, meanwhile, said they aspire to increase information sharing, combined exercises and research cooperation with NATO.

NATO, for its part, said bolstering its relations with Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea is a priority, and it’s also increasing cooperation with Indo-Pacific partners on cyberspace, technology and maritime security, among other challenges, according to a June 2022 NATO news release. “In today’s complex environment, relations with like-minded partners across the globe are increasingly important to address cross-cutting security issues and global challenges, as well as to defend the rules-based international order,” the release said.

“The security of Europe and Asia are closely intertwined, especially now with the international community facing serious challenges,” Kishi, Japan’s then-defense minister, said.

Economic Security

Enhanced security relations are increasingly interlaced with the economic sphere. Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong encouraged more inclusive collaboration in security and the economy to mitigate risks of hostilities by giving countries a stake in each other’s economic success during his keynote speech at the 27th International Conference on the Future of Asia in late May 2022 in Tokyo.

“Security is not just (about) an individual country, because they will each do what we are trying to do to make ourselves safe,” he said, according to The Straits Times newspaper. “Collectively, we may all make others feel unsafe, and then we may all end up worse off. So, we also have to work together with other countries to secure collective security.”

For this reason, Singapore is participating in both the U.S. Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), which launched in May 2022, and PRC development initiatives such as One Belt, One Road (OBOR), Lee explained. IPEF will help participants strengthen relationships and engage in economic and trade matters crucial to the region. “I do not see that the two are mutually exclusive or just because one side is deepening its cooperation that means it is bad for the other side,” Lee told reporters.

Many countries continue to hedge their bets on the PRC’s infrastructure scheme regardless of the financial and security pitfalls evident in OBOR projects worldwide. However, others are acting on lessons learned by nations that succumbed to the PRC’s predatory lending practices and others that were economically vulnerable during the COVID-19 pandemic. Allies and partner nations continue to offer alternatives to Chinese investment, which is closely tied to the Chinese Communist Party. In 2019, Australia, Japan and the U.S. launched the Blue Dot Network to promote infrastructure development. In collaboration with countries such as India, the network is promoting sustainable projects, including through a planned Blue Dot Marketplace to assist countries in creating infrastructure by factoring food security, health and natural disasters. The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, also is focused on ensuring prosperity across the Indo-Pacific region by promoting cooperation in areas ranging from developing critical technologies and materials to building reliable supply chains to cybersecurity response.

Supply chain cooperation has become a focus of collective security activities among like-minded nations. “The stability and resilience of the supply chain cannot be achieved by a single country alone,” Wang Yunjong, South Korea’s secretary to the president for economic security, said during his keynote address at the seventh annual Republic of Korea-U.S. Strategic Forum in early June  2022, sponsored by CSIS. “In addition to reshoring, which relocates the overseas production facilities to the homeland, friend-shoring, which strengthens cooperation in supply and demand over strategic materials and technologies among like-minded countries, is becoming more and more important,” Yunjong said. “The key is trust. We can enhance supply chain security by promoting mutual trust.”

Comfortable Cooperation

Across the Indo-Pacific, this largely uncodified security convergence is moving at a comfortable pace for the participating nations, given it is built on a foundation of shared values, analysts said. In the meantime, the region’s existing mutual defense treaties provide a framework to move forward. The overall structure of the emerging matrix of security cooperation is flexible and likely will remain so for now, analysts said. The movement is unlikely to crystalize into a U.N.-type organization any time soon in the Indo-Pacific, although some policymakers have advocated creating a formal collective security body in the region.

In 1954, Australia, France, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, the U.K. and the U.S. formed the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), largely to stop the spread of communism in the region, according to the U.S. State Department. Unlike NATO, however, SEATO had a limited ability to muster collective security action.  The organization also had no mechanism for obtaining intelligence or deploying military forces, and it was formally dissolved in 1977, two years after the Vietnam War ended, according to the U.S. State Department.

Today, Indo-Pacific nations are making defense moves that align with their individual national interests but also with their interests to collectively counter mutual security challenges and threats. The resulting security convergence is a positive shift in the outlook for regional prosperity and stability, analysts said.

Nations must continually consider the quality of their security and defense relationships and the benefits that such arrangements bring, not only in terms of regional stability but also in realms ranging from sharing information and technology to protecting human rights and freedoms. Such reflection and strategic calculations are in keeping with the time-honored definitions of sovereignty on which like-minded nations intend a Free and Open Indo-Pacific to be built.