The Lies and Truth Politics of the US Indo Pacific Strategy | Discourse | The United States

The "Indo Pacific Strategy" of the United States, as a containment strategy aimed at China, is also an official political discourse. It is the geopolitical manipulation of the United States over a wide range of geographical regions such as East Asia, South Asia, the Western Pacific, and the Indian Ocean, as well as a narrative that carries the individual political goals of the United States. Due to the fact that many elements of this strategy are built on the basis of inconsistency between words and facts, it is necessary to dispel the fog of American discourse and recognize the hidden behaviors of the United States in exercising hegemony, creating opposition, and disrupting regional situations behind rhetoric such as "freedom," "openness," "peace," and "prosperity.".

Since the Biden administration fully inherited Trump's version of the Indo Pacific Strategy and released a new version of the US Indo Pacific Strategy in February 2022, the United States has continuously upgraded its Indo Pacific strategy, attracting more allies and partners, building institutional systems, expanding agenda areas, revitalizing narrative discourse, creating factional confrontations, and imposing a temporal and spatial blockade on China's peaceful development. During this process, the United States manipulated its words recklessly, confusing the public and concealing lies, revealing its hypocritical face and true strategic intentions.

Masquerading hegemony and implementing exclusive and divisive regional policies

The United States is committed to building a free, open, interconnected, prosperous, secure, and resilient Indo Pacific region, and has maintained a strong defense presence here for 75 years to support peace, security, stability, and prosperity in the region. These statements have become catchphrases repeatedly used by American decision-makers in various occasions. They seem to have forgotten the history of the United States brutally suppressing national liberation movements in the Asia Pacific region, pursuing anti communist policies, subverting legitimate governments, launching aggressive wars, and creating humanitarian disasters since the end of World War II. The United States falsely claims its forced hegemony as the "freedom of choice" of other countries and disguises seeking personal gain as selflessness, which is fundamentally different from the spirit of seeking common ground while reserving differences and the principle of harmonious coexistence among neighboring countries.

The fact is clear that the most important aspect of the "Indo Pacific strategy" is to mobilize the security alliance and partnership network of the United States both inside and outside the region, encourage allies to fulfill their loyalty to the United States, and pressure these countries to demonstrate their willingness to fight against China together with the United States, neither "free" nor "open". Under the framework of the Indo Pacific strategy, the United States has set aside the existing political, economic, and security cooperation processes in the Asia Pacific region and created a different set of institutional platforms led by the United States, disrupting and tearing apart the regional cooperation agenda. For example, it claims to "support the central position of ASEAN" and "strengthen the strength and unity of ASEAN", but regards the "Four sided Security Dialogue" mechanism of the United States, Japan, India, and Australia as the core platform of the "Indo Pacific Strategy", excluding ASEAN as a whole, and exploring ways to divide and attract individual ASEAN member countries through "QUAD+", weakening the regional cooperation structure centered on ASEAN, and strengthening the regional pattern led by the United States.

Creating cognitive illusions and creating alliance combat advantages

The United States portrays the increasing challenges in the Indo Pacific region, especially those from China, stating that if these forces are not contained, they will undermine regional stability. But the fact is, since the 1980s, the Asia Pacific region has maintained overall peace and stability for more than 40 years and has become a true engine of world economic growth. One prerequisite for the US Indo Pacific strategy is to have a positive outlook on the enormous growth and development potential of the region. History has shown that although there are various disputes and sometimes heated arguments among countries in the Asia Pacific region, they generally value peace and development, enjoy cooperation and win-win among major powers, and abandon the use or threat of use of force. On the contrary, countries and regimes with US military intervention often experience turmoil and disasters.

The United States, disregarding the overall trend of peace and stability in the Asia Pacific region, has listed the Indo Pacific region as a "priority theater of war" and the situation on the Korean Peninsula, East China Sea, Taiwan Strait, and South China Sea as its "primary security concern". It has proposed an "integrated deterrence" policy, seeking to deepen its collaborative combat capabilities with its allies and strengthen its operational advantages. As a result, the United States has increased its investment in military resources in the region, accelerated the implementation of the Pacific Threat Initiative, vigorously promoted the Indo Pacific Ocean Situation Awareness Partnership, and strengthened its military layout through signing base access agreements, increasing rotation and dynamic deployment, and other means.After the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the United States accelerated NATO's eastward entry into the Asia Pacific, forming offshore checks and balances against China. The United States continues to create conflicts and tensions, disrupt regional stability, and strengthen the perception of "threat" and "crisis" among relevant countries, thereby maintaining its military leadership.

Implementing strategic deception to seize regional economic leadership

The United States promotes "promoting Indo Pacific prosperity," stating that it will "promote investment, encourage innovation, strengthen economic competitiveness, rebuild supply chains," and "ensure that citizens on both sides of the Pacific benefit from historic economic changes.". This is largely aimed at dispelling concerns from the outside world about the excessive military implications of the Indo Pacific strategy, and directing containment towards China towards the direction of an economic cold war. The United States is using platforms such as the "Quadrilateral Security Dialogue" mechanism, the "Indo Pacific Economic Framework", and the "Blue Pacific Partnership" to increasingly coordinate with its partners around supply chains, key and emerging technologies, infrastructure construction, digital trade, and cybersecurity. However, such cooperation, especially the "Indo Pacific Economic Framework", does not involve market access and tariff issues, and serves the trade protectionism of the United States. It goes against the concerns of relevant countries to enhance economic cooperation and achieve post pandemic recovery.

The United States declared that it is prepared to pay an economic price to protect national security interests. But the fact is, it will not fundamentally abandon the profit seeking nature of capital, but rather implement strategic deception, implement the "win twice" mentality of "I am safe, you give up", and lure Asia Pacific countries to make choices that are in line with the interests of the United States but will harm their own interests. For example, while weaving an anti China economic and technological system, the United States has raised high standards and prices towards its allies, and even resorted to coercion, coercion, and other means to pressure key companies of its allies to provide confidential data to the US government, invest in the US, or relocate production factories to the US, in order to unfairly open up the market to the US. This essentially requires Asia Pacific countries to contribute money and help the United States maintain its advantage and dominant position in economic competition, distorting the economic ecology of the Asia Pacific region.

Using "universal values" as packaging to promote "family laws and regulations"

The United States stated that it will "update the international system on the basis of shared values to better respond to the challenges of the 21st century."; The goal of the Indo Pacific strategy is not to change China, but to shape China's strategic environment and establish a balance of influence globally, in order to maximize the common interests and values of the United States and its allies. However, American universal values have never been universally shared or neutral, whether as political concepts or policy propositions. The so-called "rule-based international order" is actually a tool for the United States to woo allies, exclude and suppress China, completely deviating from the world's only international order based on the United Nations Charter and international law.

The United States claims to support the ability of regional countries to make independent political choices, but it instigates and disrupts unity and cooperation among regional countries, forcing small and medium-sized countries in the region to bear systemic pressure and inducing them to choose to be "one-sided" towards the United States. The United States often says that it does not require relevant countries to choose sides between China and the United States, but it needs their support because without joint measures such as sanctions and export controls, the expected goals of the United States will not be achieved. In fact, what it provides is a "no choice choice". In addition, the United States has endowed new "regulations" such as "small courtyards and high walls", "friendly outsourcing", "risk reduction", and supply chain restructuring with security and value connotations, injecting these new elements into the "Indo Pacific strategy", and speculating on regional countries following, fantasizing about China's "surrender".

Overall, the narrative of the Indo Pacific strategy has played a role in concealing strategic objectives and implementing strategic deception to a certain extent. However, the inconsistent words and actions of the United States reveal its true intention to shape a US hegemonic order based on alliance relations, guided by a US led security landscape, and with the main goal of containing China. This strategy ignores the history of relations between China, the United States, and Asia Pacific countries, ignores the full picture of interactions between regional countries, and ignores the fundamental differences between relevant countries and the United States' Indo Pacific vision. The result is bound to be futile.