Christian Le Miere

Opinion | With the new US defence bill, Donald Trump is finally standing up to China in the Indo-Pacific

Under the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, the US aims to increase its bases in Asia and make them harder for China to target in a missile attack, to show Beijing – and US allies – that America is ‘deeply committed’ to defending its interests in the region

Reading Time:3 minutes

Why you can trust SCMP

Christian Le Miere

Published: 3:00am, 26 Jun 2020Updated: 5:21am, 26 Jun 2020

The Donald Trump administration is finally being forced to confront China militarily. Despite often intense anti-China rhetoric over the past three years, the US president has actually done little to deploy forces to the Pacific theatre.

Despite designating the Indo-Pacific the defence department’s “priority theatre”, the Pentagon has not shifted its overall posture. In fact, tensions in the Middle East have forced the US to maintain a greater presence there, rather than move troops to East Asia to confront what it perceives as a threat from China.

But now, in the wake of the coronavirus, the US political elite has found bipartisan consensus on the need to confront China. Recently, the US Senate Armed Services Committee approved a National Defence Authorisation Act for 2021. The bill effectively outlines what the Senate would like to see the government spend on defence.

An important addition was included this year: funding for a Pacific Deterrence Initiative, which will “send a strong signal to the Chinese Communist Party that America is deeply committed to defending our interests in the Indo-Pacific”. The bill authorises US$1.4 billion for financial year 2021-22, and a further US$5.5 billion for the next year.

These figures are a pittance in the overall scheme of US defence spending. The defence budget for 2020 stands at US$738 billion, so the Pacific Deterrence Initiative next year is just 0.2 per cent of the overall budget. But the creation of the scheme is an important recognition that the US has a new-found resolve and political unity in its China policy.

02:13

Chinese veterans of Korean War call for peace as tensions with US mount

What will the initiative do? Its name reflects its provenance as it mirrors the European Deterrence Initiative created by the Obama administration.