2023 in Review: How US Pushed Deeper Into Asia While Focus Was on Ukraine & Israel

Speaking to Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in August, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned the United States “has become the biggest destabilizing factor in the world.”

While the world was distracted by the US-backed conflicts in Ukraine and Israel in 2023, Washington was quietly bolstering its military presence in Asia, which it calls the “Indo-Pacific” and considers to be a key theater for “great power competition” against Russia and China.

The US has accused both nations of seeking to overturn what it calls the “rules-based international order,” referring to the post-World War II global order in which the US calls the shots politically, socio-economically, and militarily.

In East and Southeast Asia, the US sought to pry nations away from their partnerships with Beijing and Moscow by casting them as threats to sovereignty that only a military showdown can deter, and to either sell them weapons or place military assets there.

Here are some of the ways the US has enhanced its military presence in Asia over the past year:

In February, Washington and Manila penned a new Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement and in April, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. approved the use of four Philippine military bases by US forces.

The sites are Naval Base Camilo Osias in Santa Ana, Cagayan; Camp Melchor Dela Cruz in Gamu, Isabela; Balabac Island in Palawan; and Lal-lo Airport in Cagayan. Those four are in addition to five other US military bases in the Philippines.

However, the US forces stationed there will be “rotational,” meaning their stationing is not permanent, although the overall US presence is. The Pentagon said the new sites would be for joint training and would “improve regional readiness,” although Marcos denied the US would be able to use the bases for offensive purposes.

Washington and Manila have had a mutual defense treaty since 1951 and their troops regularly drill together. Following the new agreement, this year’s Balikatan joint war games were the largest in decades, which the US says are key to preserving the “peace and stability of the Indo-Pacific Region.”

While Marcos is far more pro-US than his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, Manila is still plotting a careful balancing act between Washington and Beijing. Despite welcoming more US troops and penning a nuclear power cooperation agreement with the US, Marcos has also pushed ahead on the Code of Conduct for the South China Sea, a peaceful solution preferred by Beijing to the increasingly dangerous quarrels over islands and waterways in the South China Sea.

Joint training has also been used to bring more US forces into the region in Taiwan, a Chinese island province ruled by the former Republic of China government, which is hostile to Beijing and only recognized by a handful of countries around the world - ironically, the US is not officially one of them.

Gaffe-prone US President Joe Biden has also let the cat out of the bag with repeated statements that the US would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack, despite a decades-long policy of “strategic ambiguity” on the question designed to preserve the status quo by not encouraging either side to act.

There has been some frustration for the US, however, as the Philippines has refused to allow the US to store weapons on Philippine bases that are intended for Taiwan.

In February, reports in US media indicated several hundred US troops would likely soon be sent to Taiwan to train Taiwanese military units, which Chinese state media referred to as “playing with fire.” The US has also welcomed hundreds of Taiwanese soldiers for training on US soil as well.

Taiwan managed to break through the Ukraine-Israel news dominance in early December, when the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the Pentagon’s massive annual budget bill, was temporarily stalled amid a debate about funding for Kiev. The bill was eventually passed and included tens of billions for Kiev and Jerusalem, and also set aside money for Taiwan - that’s on top of a $2 billion-a-year stipend over the next five years that was approved in last year’s NDAA.

Seoul and Japan have been US allies since the 1950s, each hosting tens of thousands of US troops at numerous bases. However, Washington pushed both nations to deepen their cooperation even further in 2023, building new connections to the NATO alliance in Europe and North America.

NATO upgraded Japan and South Korea, as well as Australia and New Zealand, to a new category of Individually Tailored Partnership Program (ITPP), deepening their cooperation on collaboration on cybersecurity, space, and fighting disinformation, among other things. NATO also opened a liaison office in Japan, a country that is constitutionally neutral.

In addition, South Korea agreed to host more US forces and to conduct more exercises with US forces and others in the region, including live-fire exercises, and the US and Japan announced a joint effort to develop hypersonic weapons interceptors.

However, much like with the Philippines, China has responded to aggressive American moves by extending a peaceful hand. In May, the Chinese and Japanese defense ministers inaugurated a new open hotline to “strengthen the capabilities of the two sides in managing and controlling maritime and air crises, and help further safeguard regional peace and stability,” according to a joint statement.

The two nations have competing claims over several small islands in the East China Sea that Tokyo calls the Senkakus and China calls Diaoyu Dao.

The Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) bloc was announced in September 2021, revealing a new part of Washington’s anti-China network-building in South Asia and the Pacific. The “trilateral security partnership” is aimed at sharing advanced British and American weaponry with Australia, most especially nuclear-powered submarines and hypersonic missiles, but also cyber, artificial intelligence, and quantum technologies.

The deal was a shock to many nations, not the least of which was France, which suffered a major loss when Canberra canceled its deal to buy French-made diesel-electric submarines in exchange for the American Virginia-class nuclear-powered subs.

In 2023, the partnership was pushed ahead, with Biden, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese revealing more details about a joint SSN AUKUS program with American and British parts, which would be built for Australia after the completed sale of between three and five Virginia-class nuclear submarines.

Weapons deals also flourished, with Canberra buying up hundreds of long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles from the US, laying plans for joint hypersonic weapons testing in 2024, and the announcement of forthcoming joint intelligence and cloud-based intel-sharing facilities. The US is also slated to open missile manufacturing facilities in Australia and to deploy another 700 US troops to support the nuclear submarines.

However, 2023 also saw something of a thaw in the icy Sino-Australian relationship, with Albanese meeting in Beijing with Chinese President Xi Jinping last month and resuming bilateral exchanges.

In April, Joseph Yun, the US special envoy for negotiations with Micronesia, Palau and the Marshall Islands, opined that Washington was “playing catch up” with Beijing in the Pacific Islands.

While the three island nations to whom Yun serves as envoy are de facto US protectorates without control over their own foreign policy, others, such as the Solomon Islands, have turned decisively toward China, prompting fears of Beijing penetrating in the Pacific beyond the “First Island Chain” off the East Asian coast, which the US sees as the front line for hemming China in.

In May, the US and Papua New Guinea signed a new defensive pact that would give the US military access to the country’s airfields and ports, followed by a less comprehensive deal with Australia in December.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also paid a visit to the small island nation of Tonga in July, which Blinken blatantly stated was aimed at turning Tonga against China by convincing the country that Chinese fishing boats were a threat to its sovereignty.

Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff was also dispatched on a diplomatic mission to New Zealand and Samoa in July, which the White House characterized as helping with its anti-China drive as well.