While a Chinese balloon floated through American skies President Joe Biden stepped up to the podium to deliver his annual State of the Union Address to a joint session of Congress.

The events were notable for two reasons: They exposed an irrational Yellow Peril fear that more than matches the Red Scare of Cold War years and pointed to a possible new era of American isolationism.

Conspicuous by its absence from Biden’s address to the Joint Session of Congress was any mention of foreign policy. With war raging in Ukraine, Turkey and Syria devastated by earthquakes, South America in political turmoil and China expanding, spying and rattling sabres over Taiwan. one would have thought Biden would have focused more on the world situation.

Instead he spoke about domestic concerns. Biden’s success in creating jobs; protecting American industry and controlling inflation. With at least one eye focused on next year’s elections, he is stealing Republican clothes by shifting to a more isolationist stand.

In this respect, the president appears to be following rather than leading US public opinion. The latest polls show a significant drop in American support for the war in Ukraine. China, however, is a different matter. The Chinese spy/weather balloon (probably a bit of both) did secure a passing reference in the president’s speech; probably because of the hysteria it generated among the American public. The fact is that countries spy on each other. The US spies on China. China spies on the US. Russia spies on….

Most of the spying is unseen. Intelligence operatives skulking in the corridors of power or satellites in space. The balloon, however, could be seen as it floated from Alaska, over missile silos in Montana and North Dakota and then finally to the Atlantic where it was shot down by US fighter planes.

The much discussed Asian Pivot was this week back in the news. For a start, American troops are returning in big numbers to the Philippines. The reason? The threat of China and the need to maintain international access to the South China Sea and protect Taiwan.

With a brief wartime interregnum, the US had a major military presence in the Philippines from 1898 until 1992. Subic Bay and Clark Air Base were for many years America’s biggest overseas bases. The naval facilities at Subic covered as much land as Singapore and at the height of the Vietnam War 47 ships were based there. The neighbouring city of Olongapo was one big red light district.

For a long time, the US bases were sovereign American territory, a holdover from the days when the Philippines was an American colony. But in 1979, the US acceded to nationalist aspirations, ceded the land to the Manila and became rent-paying tenants. When the Filipinos increased the rent, they left. Vietnam and the Cold War was over. Relations with China were stable. Subic Bay was expensive and redundant.

The Americans are now returning, but not on the same terms as before. Since they left in 1992 the Filipino constitution has been rewritten to ban the permanent basing of foreign troops in the Philippines. So the new agreement means that US troops will be stationed on a “rotational basis.” This is probably legal semantics to circumvent the nationalists. American construction companies are already on site building new barracks, air strips and port facilities.

Further north, in Japan, the government of Fumio Kishido has decided to beef up national defences. The plan is to increase military spending over the next five years by 60 percent to the NATO target of two percent of GDP. Japan would then be the world’s third largest military.

The new Japanese military would assume responsibility for many of the regional Western defense duties. This delights Washington. America has 50,000-plus troops based in Japan. They are expensive to keep there and can be usefully deployed elsewhere.

It will, however, take at least ten years for the increased defense spending to have any real impact. Much of the money will need to be spent on military infrastructure including a bigger arms industry, new bases, roads, ships, recruitment and training and missile systems. These take time to build and so in the short and medium term, Japan will continue to be dependent on the US.

There is also the question of whether or not Kishida can push his defense spending programme through the Japanese Diet (parliament). There is fierce opposition from both the pacifist lobby and the fiscal conservatives. The pacifists are probably the lesser problem. Memories of World War Two and Japanese militarism are fading. Of greater concern are the fiscal conservatives. With public spending at 235 percent of GDP there is little room for borrowing to pay for more weaponry. So the plan is to raise the money with a wide range of tax increases. Unsurprisingly, this is proving unpopular, and a threat to Kishido’s premiership and his defense programme.

India too is increasing its defenses. The sub-continent nation this week announced it is putting a refitted Soviet-era aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean. The INS Vikramaditya will soon be joined by a second aircraft carrier which means that the Indian navy will have two full battle groups in the Indian Ocean.

The Chinese have also been increasing their naval presence in the region. They will soon be deploying an aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean and have naval facilities in Djibouti. They also have commercial port facilities in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Myanmar. All these countries have severe political and/or economic problems which China could use to convert the co mmercial facilities into military.

Military analysts are certain that any Sino-Indian war would be dominated by clashes on the land with Chinese troops attacking over the Himalayas. But the sub-continent’s communications with the rest of the world—especially Europe and America—are via the oceans and so its navy would play a vital role in keeping the sea lanes open.

India and Japan are China’s historic rivals in the region, and the countries are two of the four legs of the anti-Chinese Quad Alliance (the US and Australia are the other two). India is also this year set to overtake China a s the world ’s most populous country and its economy is growing . It should be helped by t his week’s budget which announced increased government spending on business-friendly infrastructure projects.

India, however, does not have the same historic and military ties to the US as the other members of the Quad. During the Cold War years it was the leader of the Non-Aligned Movement , but with a decided bent towards Moscow. The Soviets became India’s main weapons supplier and strong links were forged which continue to this day. Russia and India recently agreed a joint project to manufacture Kalashnikov rifles in India and Delhi has refused to join Western sanctions against Putin.

Pakistan was America’s major South Asian ally during the Cold War years. It countered the Soviet links to India; provided a diplomatic conduit to China and was the base of operations against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

But relations soured when the Soviets left and the Taliban took over. Pakistan was a major supporter of the Islamic fundamentalists whose primary target shifted from Moscow to Washington. But Pakistan still needed American military and economic aid to counterbalance the threat from their traditional enemy India. So the Pakistani’s walked a swaying political tightrope.

Few were more adept at this then Pervez Musharraf who died this week. The army chief of staff turned president was expert at balancing between the demands of the Washington and the fundamentalist mullahs churning out West-hating jihadists from the madrassa of Pakistan. During the Clinton Administration, Musharraf persuaded the US President that he was the man to stand up to the Islamic fundamentalists– with American weapons if need be. Clinton agreed, provided the weapons and Musharraf gave them to the Taliban.

Musharraf ruled as a military dictator from 1998 to 2007. Among other actions, he repeatedly arrested Pakistan’s Supreme Court, suspended the constitution and declared a state of emergency. After finally agreeing to elections, he fled to London to avoid impeachment. He briefly returned but then fled again after being arrested for treason. He was tried in absentia and sentenced to death. The sentence was largely symbolic as by this time he was in Dubai dying of the rare disease of Amyloidosis. When Musharraf passed away aged 79, the Pakistani Parliament refused to say prayers on his behalf.

Musharraf’s foreign policy legacy is one of distrust and duplicitousness. Western countries are now worried about the close Afghan-Pakistani ties, Islamic fundamentalism in Pakistan and the links with Beijing. China has a commercial port at Gwadar on the Arabian Sea and holds an estimated 50 percent of Pakistan’s foreign debt. Recent floods have destroyed Pakistan’s agricultural industry and increased the likelihood of increased Chinese influence.

* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and author of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “America Made in Britain". To subscribe to his email alerts on world affairs click here.