By J. Berkshire Miller
The significance of US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s visit to Ulan Bator this month should not be overlooked.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel will touch down in Ulan Bator this month, marking the first visit of a defense secretary to Mongolia since Donald Rumsfeld toured the landlocked country in 2005. Hagel’s trip will be the tail end of an action-packed itinerary, with stops in Japan and China, where strategic anxieties remain high over their vitriolic row in the East China Sea. Mongolia, on the other hand, presents Hagel a less challenging atmosphere. But while U.S.-Mongolia defense relations may lack the intensity of Washington’s other networks in the region, the significance and potential of the partnership going forward should not be dismissed.
Hagel’s upcoming visit is largely being played up as a courtesy call and expression of thanks for Mongolia’s contributions to U.S.-led interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. But it would be unfair to Ulan Bator to characterize the trip purely in terms of diplomatic etiquette. Indeed, there is something more transformational happening in Mongolia’s security doctrine and these changes are not going unnoticed in Washington. Mongolia has rounded out its foreign policy, both in economic and security terms, to distance itself from a historic over dependence on its two weighty neighbors – Russia and China. This “third neighbor” policy has prompted Ulan Bator to look at enhancing its strategic relationships with U.S. and other large economies such as Japan, Canada and several countries in Europe.
It is this more fundamental shift in Mongolia’s approach and – more significantly – its implications for U.S. interests both in East and Central Asia that is the real impetus for blossoming defense ties. Ulan Bator has been brandishing its role as stakeholder on international security issues through several theaters. In 2012, Mongolia deployed peacekeepers to a high-risk area on the border of South Sudan and Sudan. Soldiers from the Mongolian Armed Forces (MAF) also served in the NATO-led Kosovo intervention from 2005-2007. Other peacekeeping deployments over the past decade include Sierra Leone, Chad and Georgia. These commitments, along with the MAF’s efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq, have helped bolster Ulan Bator’s with the U.S. and NATO.
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