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3 November 2022

Deterrence in the Indo-Pacific

Oriana Skylar Mastro

As China’s military might and tendency toward regional aggression
grow, the United States and its allies are increasingly concerned with
deterrence. Their strategies seek to prevent Beijing from disrupting the
rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific by, for example, invading Taiwan or
conducting gray-zone operations in the South China Sea.

One of those strategies was to revive the Quad grouping with
Australia, Japan, India, and the United States in 2017 to protect freedom
of navigation and promote democratic values. In the period since, the
Quad has become implicitly—or explicitly, at least on the part of the
United States—aimed at countering China’s malign activities in the
Indo-Pacific region. Statements from the February 2022 Quad Foreign
Ministers’ Meeting highlighted the threat of “unilateral attempts to
change the status quo by force and coercion” in the South and East China
Seas while also reaffirming the Quad’s commitment to a free and open
Indo-Pacific. Although the Quad has been reluctant to directly address
security cooperation, the 2020 and 2021 joint military Malabar exercises
revealed a shared focus on improving interoperability.

Yet deterring China with minilateral groupings of states is more
complex and difficult than traditional deterrence theory might suggest.
This essay lays out some of the unique characteristics of the China
challenge before considering how minilaterals can best enhance deterrence
in these circumstances.

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