Is the West Resurrecting SEATO in the Asia-Pacific?

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Moncton, NB]  Times & Transcript

If we have indeed entered into a new cold war, Washington is again attempting to encircle its two major adversaries, Russia and China. As we know, the NATO alliance was never terminated, but two other Cold War pacts, CENTO, the Central Treaty Organization covering the Middle East, and SEATO, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, both came to ignominious ends.

These treaties and agreements were intended to create alliances that would keep Communist powers in check – China, in SEATO’s case. Under Pierre Trudeau, Canada wasn’t in SEATO nor did Ottawa take part in the ill-fated Vietnam War which helped destroy it. Will it be different this time, under his son Justin?

The last few months have not been reassuring. When a Chinese warship came within a few metres of an American guided-missile destroyer in the Taiwan Strait June 3, it was the second time in a matter of days in which Chinese and U.S. military personnel had come close to a major incident.

It occurred during a joint Canada-U.S. naval mission and a Canadian frigate was involved. On May 26, a Chinese fighter jet buzzed a U.S. warplane over the South China Sea.

China’s defence minister, General Li Shangfu, on June 4 told the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, the Asia-Pacific region’s annual security meeting, that Beijing considers such so-called “freedom of navigation” patrols a provocation.

Relations between Washington and Beijing have been strained in recent years over several issues, including China’s claim over Taiwan and territorial disputes in the South China Sea.

China regards the United States as an outsider that has no business being in the region, while the U.S. and other western countries, including Canada, see themselves as protecting Taiwan -- and other nearby states -- from being conquered by an increasingly aggressive China.

This is clearly a recipe for a potential all-out war, sooner or later, and both sides know it. Along with the current confrontation between NATO and Russia over Ukraine, it may eventually herald a world war. To paraphrase the lyrics of a popular song from the long-forgotten Boer War, “We are marching to Armageddon.”

The U.S. has not confronted a potential adversary that is so close to it in military strength or industrial capacity since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and has not actually fought one since it battled the Axis powers in the Second World War. As China’s relationship with Russia deepens, Washington must also worry about fighting two nuclear powers simultaneously on opposite sides of the world.

At the Singapore meeting, which included defence ministers and other officials from Australia, Britain, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, the Philippines, South Korea, Ukraine, and Canada – Russia did not participate -- American Defence Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III asserted that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine showed that Asia should urgently embrace a network of U.S.-led alliances to confront the growing might of China.

China’s former ambassador to the United States, Cui Tiankai, responded that “We don’t need an Asian NATO.” In Beijing’s view, the West’s efforts to encircle Russia had forced Moscow to go to war, and that any such strategy to contain China might provoke a similar outcome.

The South China Sea has become one of the world’s biggest flashpoints, with China laying claims to islands and waterways that are contested by Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam.

The U.S. had maintained a military presence in the Philippines since 1898 but most left in 1991, as Filipino nationalism ran high. But 32 years later, Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has strengthened ties with Washington due to China’s incursions and coercion.

The Philippines on July 5 accused China’s coast guard of harassment, obstruction and “dangerous manoeuvres” against its vessels in disputed waters.

Manila and Washington on Feb. 2 announced that U.S. military forces will be given access to four new bases in that nation. The number of U.S. troops stationed on Philippine islands will be increased significantly, especially nearer Taiwan.

Also, a new European Union-Philippines Subcommittee on Maritime Cooperation was established in June “to strengthen cooperation on maritime matters.”

Below the political radar, China and the west are courting allies throughout the Asia-Pacific region – even in strategically located microstates like the Solomon Islands.

A critic of China’s growing influence in the South Pacific came to Ottawa in June to plead for Canada to invest money in his homeland as a counterbalance to Beijing. “Where is the West?” asked Daniel Suidani, who was recently ousted as premier of the Solomon Islands’ most populous province, Malaita, by Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare.

In 2022, China announced that it had signed a security pact with the Solomon Islands, which would cover Chinese police and the military assisting the country on social order and disaster response. And July 10 they followed up with a “comprehensive strategic partnership.”

 Suidani’s visit is part of the process by which, through countless small, usually unnoticed ways, Canada is being drawn into an “Asian-Pacific NATO” to combat China, as the world gets divided into two axes in preparation for a possible large-scale war.

The historical background is also interesting, because the Solomon Islands include Guadalcanal, a major site of conflict between the U.S. and Japan in the last world war. History does seem to rhyme.