August 21, 2015 — The United States has spelled out its maritime security strategy so that all nations understand the American position, David Shear, the assistant secretary of defense for Asian-Pacific security affairs, said during a Pentagon news conference today.Pentagon releases Asia-Pacific maritime security strategy ChinaDaily Updated: 2015-08-22
The U.S. will continue to use diplomacy, multilateral institutions and continued engagement to protect free and open access to maritime Asia, while focusing on safeguarding the freedom of the seas, deterring conflict and coercion, and promoting adherence to international law and standards, Shear said. And he reemphasized previous statements by U.S. officials that the United States takes no position over competing claims for land claims in the South China Sea and the East China Sea.
“DoD is investing a new cutting-edge capability, deploying our finest maritime capabilities forward, and distributing these capabilities more widely across the region,” he said. As Defense Secretary Ash Carter has said, “the United States will continue to fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows, as U.S. forces do all around the world,” Shear said.
“We’re building greater interoperability and developing more integrated operations with our allies and partners.” U.S. officials are leveraging defense diplomacy to build greater transparency, reduce the risk of miscalculation or conflict and promote shared maritime rules of the road, Shear said. The United States is working to strengthen regional security institutions and encourage development of an open and effective security architecture, Shear said.
China has long opposed the US of hyping the tensions in the South China Sea and regarded the US government as biased in looking at China's maritime territorial disputes with US allies in order to achieve the US rebalance to Asia strategy.The document is available here.
At the Foreign Ministers' Meeting of the East Asia Summit and ASEAN Regional Forum held early this month in Malaysia, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi emphasized that the situation in the South China Sea is stable on the whole and there is no possibility of major conflicts. He said China objects to any non-constructive words or deeds that attempt to exaggerate the disagreements, hype up confrontation and heat up tensions, which do not conform to reality. Wang noted that China also has a stake in the freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, adding that up to now, there has not been a single case in which freedom of navigation in the South China Sea is impeded. "China stands ready to work with other parties to continue to ensure freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea," he said.
The foreign minister said China is a victim on the South China Sea issue, citing the fact how the Philippines illegally occupied a Chinese island there. He said China has exercised utmost restraint in order to uphold peace and stability there. Wang reiterated China position of seeking to peacefully resolve disputes through negotiation and consultation on the basis of respecting historical facts and in accordance with international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
China announced the completion of land reclamation at the end of June. But it will build facilities mainly for public good purposes, including multi-functional lighthouse, search and rescue facilities for maritime emergencies, meteorological observatory station, maritime scientific and research center, as well as medical and first aid facilities, according to Wang. "China stands ready to open these facilities to other countries upon completion. As the largest littoral state in the South China Sea, China has the capability and obligation to provide regional countries with these much needed public goods at sea," he said.
Recognizing the growing complexity of the Asia-Pacific maritime domain, this report outlines four lines of effort the Department is employing in order to preserve security in this vital region. First, we are strengthening our military capacity to ensure the United States can successfully deter conflict and coercion and respond decisively when needed. Second, we are working together with our allies and partners from Northeast Asia to the Indian Ocean to build their capacity to address potential challenges in their waters and across the region. Third, we are leveraging military diplomacy to build greater transparency, reduce the risk of miscalculation or conflict, and promote shared maritime rules of the road. Finally, we are working to strengthen regional security institutions and encourage the development of an open and effective regional security architecture. Together with our inter-agency colleagues and regional allies and partners, the Department is focused on ensuring that maritime Asia remains open, free, and secure in the decades ahead.Among other statements made in the nearly 40 page document are these capriciously organized excerpts:
Maritime Asia is a vital thruway for global commerce, and it will be a critical part of the region’s expected economic growth. The importance of Asia-Pacific sea lanes for global trade cannot be overstated. Eight of the world’s 10 busiest container ports are in the Asia-Pacific region, and almost 30 percent of the world’s maritime trade transits the South China Sea annually, including approximately $1.2 trillion in ship-borne trade bound for the United States. Approximately two-thirds of the world’s oil shipments transit through the Indian Ocean to the Pacific, and in 2014, more than 15 million barrels of oil passed through the Malacca Strait per day.
Freedom of the seas, however, includes more than the mere freedom of commercial vessels to transit through international waterways. While not a defined term under international law, the Department uses “freedom of the seas” to mean all of the rights, freedoms, and lawful uses of the sea and airspace, including for military ships and aircraft, recognized under international law. Freedom of the seas is thus also essential to ensure access in the event of a crisis. Conflicts and disasters can threaten U.S. interests and those of our regional allies and partners. The Department of Defense is therefore committed to ensuring free and open maritime access to protect the stable economic order that has served all Asia-Pacific nations so well for so long, and to maintain the ability of U.S. forces to respond as needed.
The Department is enhancing U.S. capabilities to project power from the sea, in the air, and under the water. In addition to enhancing our power projection capabilities, the Department is investing in flexible capabilities that will allow us to respond more rapidly and effectively to a wider range of potential maritime challenges. Finally, the Department of Defense is investing in critical enabling capabilities, including persistent, deep-look ISR platforms that will provide us with greater situational awareness and early warning of potential crises in the maritime domain. Over the longer-term, the Department of Defense is also developing a suite of innovative ideas and capabilities – known as the third offset – to advance U.S. military dominance in the 21st century and ensure the United States can deter adversaries and prevail in conflict, including in maritime Asia. To offset advances in anti-access and area-denial (A2/AD) weapons that we see proliferating in maritime Asia and beyond, the Department will identify, develop, and field breakthroughs in cutting-edge technologies and systems – especially in the fields of robotics, autonomous systems, miniaturization, big data, and additive manufacturing, and will draw these together in innovative operational and organizational constructs to ensure freedom of access for United States’ forces in a contested A2/AD
environment.
Enhancing our forward presence also involves using existing assets in new ways, across the entire region, with an emphasis on operational flexibility and maximizing the value of U.S. assets despite the tyranny of distance. The cornerstone of our forward presence will continue to be our presence in Japan, where the United States maintains approximately 50,000 military personnel, including the U.S. Navy Seventh Fleet and the only forward-stationed Carrier Strike Group in the world, as well as U.S. Marine Corps III Marine Expeditionary Force and significant Air Force assets. Through the bilateral Force Posture Agreement (FPA) with Australia and the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) with the Philippines, the Department will be able to increase our routine and persistent rotational presence in Southeast Asia for expanded training with regional partners.
DoD is also modernizing our maritime presence in Guam, as part of our efforts to develop Guam into a strategic hub for our joint military presence in the region. This includes forward-stationing a fourth attack submarine to Guam this year and deploying the Joint High Speed Vessel by 2018, while making investments in the resilience of the infrastructure supporting these capabilities. Guam is the regional hub for Air Force’s Global Hawk fleet and the Navy will operate the MQ-4C Triton unmanned aerial reconnaissance vehicle from Andersen Air Base by 2017. The Air Force continues a program to modernize hangars and other support structures to augment those and other U.S. military capabilities.
U.S. Pacific Command maintains a robust shaping presence in and around the South China Sea, with activities ranging from training and exercises with allies and partners to port calls to Freedom of Navigation Operations and other routine operations. They are central to our efforts. The Department is also pursuing a robust slate of training exercises and engagements with our allies and partners that will allow us to explore new areas of practical bilateral and multilateral maritime security cooperation, build the necessary interoperability to execute multilateral operations, and promote regional trust and transparency. We are increasing the size, frequency, and sophistication of our regional exercise program, with a particular focus on developing new exercises with Southeast Asian partners and expanding our multilateral exercise program.As part of this program, the Department will develop new training ranges in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands to enhance the readiness of our forward forces to respond to regional crises. The footprint associated with this laydown will support the arrival of next-generation capabilities and joint training and readiness in the USPACOM AOR.
In Northeast Asia, the Department conducts several regular maritime exercises with Japan and South Korea focusing on enhancing our combined capabilities. In Southeast Asia, the Department is honing an already robust bilateral exercise program with our treaty ally, the Republic of the Philippines, to assist it with establishing a minimum credible defense more effectively. We are also expanding our maritime engagements with partners like Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam. DoD is working closely with partners in the Asia-Pacific region to encourage greater information sharing and the establishment of a regional maritime domain awareness network that could provide a common operating picture and real-time dissemination of data. Singapore has been a leading partner in this effort. The Department is particularly focused on helping our partners enhance their maritime domain awareness and establish a common maritime operating picture that would facilitate more timely and effective regional responses to maritime challenges.
In South Asia, the Department sees a strategic convergence between India’s “Act East” policy and the U.S. rebalance to the Asia-Pacific region, and we are seeking to reinforce India’s maritime capabilities as a net provider of security in the Indian Ocean region and beyond. Given our broad shared interests in maritime security, the Department has developed a three-pronged approach to maritime cooperation with India: maintaining a shared vision on maritime security issues; upgrading the bilateral maritime security partnership; and collaborating to both build regional partner capacity and improve regional maritime domain awareness.
In addition to building maritime capabilities of allies and partners to deter and address regional threats, the Department is actively seeking to mitigate risk in maritime Asia. The Department is pursuing a two-pronged approach to achieve this objective, one focusing on our bilateral relationship with China, and the other addressing region-wide risk reduction measures. The combination of these two approaches will reduce the likelihood of miscalculation and conflict, which would have a detrimental effect on the United States and the region.
Reaching agreement on bilateral risk reduction measures with China is necessary, but not sufficient. The Department is also focused in the near term on encouraging the development of practical risk reduction and confidence-building mechanisms across the entire Asia-Pacific maritime domain. The U.S. Government urges States to not implement unilateral actions that undermine regional stability and trust. ASEAN is an increasingly important DoD partner, and the Department is working to bolster its engagement with and support of ASEAN’s efforts to promote peace, stability, and prosperity in the region. DoD actively supports the ADMM-Plus Experts Working Group (EWG) on Maritime Security, which seeks to facilitate information sharing, establish best practices, and build standard maritime operating procedures among participating nations in order to reinforce norms of behavior and reduce the risk of conflict. We are also leveraging informal opportunities to strengthen regional cooperation, such as the first U.S.-ASEAN Defense Forum then-Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel hosted in Hawaii in April 2014. This dialogue provided an informal opportunity for candid discussion with our ASEAN counterparts about shared challenges in the maritime domain and the need for greater information sharing among ASEAN States.
Finally, the Department fully supports countries pursuing multilateral agreements and arrangements to enhance security in maritime Asia. From the Indian Ocean to Northeast Asia, we are
strengthening our military capability to promote stability and respond decisively to threats; enabling our network of allies and partners to address challenges in the maritime areas of the region; leveraging military diplomacy to promote trust, stability, and standards of behavior; and bolstering the ability of regional organizations to address shared maritime security concerns.
