US Warns China It Will Ramp Up Military Drills In The Region

The Biden administration has forewarned China that it plans to bolster military drills and the US presence in the region, particularly off the Korean peninsula where it’s decided to send nuclear-armed submarines as extra deterrence against North Korean threats aimed at Seoul. 

“We are briefing the Chinese in advance and laying out very clearly our rationale for why we are taking these steps,” a Biden administration official said. “We believe that non-proliferation efforts in the Indo-Pacific are in the best interest of not just the United States and other leading states, but China as well.”

USS Ronald Reagan leads a formation of Carrier Strike Group. DoD image

“We’ll announce that we intend to take steps to make our deterrence more visible through the regular deployment of strategic assets, including a US nuclear ballistic submarine visit to South Korea, which has not happened since the early 1980s,” the US official detailed further as President Biden receives his South Korean counterpart Yoon Suk Yeol in Washington on Wednesday.

China was further briefed on US plans to “strengthen our training, our exercises, and simulation activities to improve the US-ROK [South Korea] alliance’s approach to deterring and defending against DPRK [North Korean] threats, including by better integrating ROK conventional assets into our strategic planning.”

“To build peace and stability on the Peninsula, during the visit, the alliance will be announcing a Washington Declaration which includes a series of steps that are designed to strengthen US-funded deterrence commitments and strengthen the clarity by which they are seen by the Korean public as well as by neighbors in the face of advancing DPRK [North Korean] nuclear missile capabilities,” the official added, previewing the Yoon-Biden talks.

Beijing is unlikely to react positively, given it’s also been of late vehemently protesting the US-Australia AUKUS deal to produce and transfer nuclear submarines. China last month warned the countries (including the UK) that they are heading down a “path of error and danger” and that Australia is violating commitments to being a nuclear-free zone. 

Elsewhere in the region, China has been closely watching US-Philippine largescale joint exercises…

On Basco Island South of #Taiwan, U.S. Military Prepares for Conflict With #China

Part of the largest-ever annual drills with the Philippines focuses on defending the strategic Bashi Channel, a key waterway used by the #PLA Navy to access the open ocean.https://t.co/bE7wZPyau4

— Indo-Pacific News – Geo-Politics & Military News (@IndoPac_Info) April 25, 2023

Despite the US framing its planned heightened nuclear presence in the Korean peninsula as “defensive” and “deterrent” in nature, China will surely see it as yet more provocative expansion of the US military machine it its own neighborhood.