With Two Wars Raging, China Tests America in Asia

Already facing wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, U.S. President Joe Biden can ill afford a third geopolitical crisis. Yet, in late October, he was forced to warn China not to attack the Philippines after Beijing initiated a series of dangerous maritime incidents that escalated tensions in the South China Sea—raising the prospect of Washington having to fulfill its treaty commitments to come to Manila’s aid. “The United States defense commitment to the Philippines is ironclad,” Biden said. “Any attack on Filipino aircraft, vessels, or armed forces will invoke our mutual defense treaty.”

Biden’s pledge illustrates a growing tension in U.S. foreign policy—a tension that is felt keenly among nations in the Indo-Pacific. Biden has lately reinvigorated important alliances. In Europe, NATO has become more potent through its response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In Asia and the Pacific, U.S. alliances with Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea have been deepened. In the context of Biden’s Indo-Pacific strategy, administration officials often emphasize the importance of strengthening ties with “allies and partners.”

The problem is that Washington is now asking these relationships to bear more geopolitical weight. The United States needs stronger alliances precisely because it can no longer manage the many global problems it faces alone. This is especially true for the rise of China. Yet this leaves Biden’s team in a double bind. First, vulnerable allies, such as the Philippines, need ever more reassurance, given their entirely reasonable worries about U.S. overstretch. Second, the United States’ adversaries will increasingly seek opportunities to test alliance commitments, just as China is doing now with the Philippines, and sow doubt about U.S. reliability.

Rising tensions in the South China Sea have focused in particular on Philippine attempts to resupply the BRP Sierra Madre, a World War II-era ship deliberately grounded on Second Thomas Shoal in 1999. Manila maintains a garrison of Marines on the rusting vessel to underline its sovereignty over an area that lies within the Philippines’s internationally recognized exclusive economic zone but which China claims as historically Chinese. There have been other incidents elsewhere, including China’s installation in September of a floating barrier at Scarborough Shoal, another disputed area, which the Philippine Coast Guard subsequently removed.

The Philippines is proving more combative, too. Its Coast Guard has been canny at public communication, producing compelling images and videos of aggressive Chinese behavior. In October, Manila revealed footage of a Chinese ship ramming a smaller Philippine vessel during an attempted resupply mission. In February, China deployed a military-grade laser against the crew of another Philippine ship.

For its part, Beijing’s behavior reflects unhappiness over Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and his moves to draw closer to Washington, effectively abandoning the pro-Beijing policies of his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte. In February, Marcos greenlit plans to give the United States access to four military bases in the Philippines. In April, Manila and Washington staged their largest-ever joint military exercises. Shortly after the base deal, Chinese President Xi Jinping assailed the United States for pursuing a policy of “containment, encirclement, and suppression of China”—a process in which he now sees Manila playing an increasingly important role.

Strengthening ties with the Philippines is part of a broader push to bolster relationships across the Indo-Pacific. Under former President Donald Trump, the United States often cajoled allies to shoulder more of the burden of regional security. Under Biden, it has followed a generally more effective courtship policy. “The president’s efforts to strengthen alliances are also contributing to the greatest amount of burden sharing in decades,” U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan wrote in Foreign Affairs last month. “The United States is asking its allies to step up while also offering more itself.”

Herein lies the problem: The more weight these alliances have to bear, the greater the incentive for Washington’s adversaries to test them and the greater the demand for reassurance during moments of rising geopolitical tension. Marcos traveled to Washington in May, returning with a joint statement that underlined specific U.S. commitments. “An armed attack on Philippine armed forces, public vessels, or aircraft in the Pacific, including in the South China Sea, would invoke U.S. mutual defense commitments,” the statement noted. The specific inclusion of the South China Sea and mention of “public vessels” like the Sierra Madre followed lobbying from Manila to spell out clearly what Washington was prepared to do.

China’s behavior signals displeasure to the Philippines while also imposing costs on the latter’s military. Beijing’s tough line with Manila in the South China Sea also acts as a warning to Marcos not to do more to help Washington as it plans for contingencies involving nearby Taiwan. But Beijing’s most strategic aim is to test the alliance itself. Second Thomas Shoal is a useful place to do so, precisely because the Sierra Madre is a “public vessel” that the United States is clearly obligated to defend. In effect, Beijing is posing a question to Manila: Are you sure Washington will be there to help you when you really need it?

All of this creates dilemmas for the United States, too. Doing too little to support its allies in Asia undermines credibility and deterrence. Doing too much allows Beijing to portray Washington as a destabilizing and threatening force in the region. Calibrating this balance is complex, especially at a time in which multiple U.S. alliance relationships are being tested in Europe and the Middle East. Critics worry that the Biden administration is struggling to get this balance right. The United States finds itself in a “uniquely treacherous position,” former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote in Foreign Affairs recently. “Dysfunction has made American power erratic and unreliable, practically inviting risk-prone autocrats to place dangerous bets.”

The pattern of autocratic regimes seeking to test U.S. alliances is only likely to grow more intense. Kurt Campbell, the Indo-Pacific affairs coordinator on the White House National Security Council and likely next deputy secretary of state, noted this during Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s recent visit to Washington. Other U.S. allies share a common interest in pushing back against Chinese expansion and aggression in the South China Sea, which is why Washington not only made a formal démarche to Beijing but coordinated its response to the Second Thomas Shoal incident with Canberra and Tokyo. “I think we’ve sent the clear message—do not test us,” Campbell said. Yet that is exactly what China will continue to do.

Even if the critics are wrong and Biden has managed this balancing act well so far, that does not mean doubts among U.S. allies will go away. In fact, they are likely to grow as the global order continues to fray. Historian Paul Kennedy, the author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, noted recently that an increasingly multipolar world would likely be one in which the United States is forced to focus its commitments on a narrower range of partners. “The American security blanket will be tighter, smaller, limited to those well-known places such as NATO-Europe, Japan, Australia, Israel, Korea, maybe Taiwan, and not much else,” he wrote in the New Statesman in September. But that only makes each of those alliances more important. As China and Russia probe for weaknesses, the United States’ ability to offer allies the reassurances they need will remain the ultimate test.