The US in Asia and the world

Princeton's G. John Ikenberry has a long guest post at the Washington Note addressing Kishore Mahbubani's arguments in The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East. Not having read Mr. Mahbubani's book yet, I can't speak directly to his argument, but I do want to address the points raised by Professor Ikenberry.

The crux of Professor Ikenberry's argument is that the rise of Asia does not necessarily mean the decline of the West, or, more specifically, the decline of the US. He does not deny Asia's growing influence, but he suggests that while power is flowing Asia's way, the Asian powers have not proposed new organizing principles for world order. He suggests that what might happen — and what will probably be the best possible outcome — is a modified version of the American-led postwar system, a postwar system with an Asian flavor in which China and the other Asian powers recognize that maintaining the system is in their interests. As Professor Ikenberry writes:

China may well be tomorrow's greatest supporter of the American-led postwar system. That system provides rules and institutions for openness and nondiscrimination. These are features of order that China will want going forward as its growing economic weight will be greeted by efforts by others (including some governments in the West) to close and discriminate. Rule-based international order is not a Western fixation. It is a system of governance that all states - East and West - have some interest in maintaining, China not least.

There is considerable value in this argument. Given that China most likely will not have the opportunity to remake the international order anew in the manner that the US and its allies did in the aftermath of the World War II, China, India, and the other rising powers will have little choice but to jury-rig preexisting institutions to reflect their power and their interests.

It's also possible to overstate US decline, both in Asia and globally. As an "Asian" power — the US unmistakably is a great power in Asia — the US will have a stake in shaping the "Asian" world order. Washington will have to reconsider how it exercises its power regionally and globally, of course, becoming less reliant on its military power and more willing to listen to others, but the US has not begun its Recessional yet.

The emphasis needs to change, however. Since the US expanded its role in Asia at the end of the war, its Asia policy has been schizophrenic, divided between a crusading, transformational tendency and a stabilizing tendency. This schizophrenia persists up to today, with the crusaders keen to paint China as the next great threat to the US. But the time for US crusades in Asia is past. For the first time in nearly two centuries, Asian powers are in a position to manage the region's affairs themselves. That doesn't mean there is no role for the US; in fact, it means the US role as stabilizer and pacifier is more important than ever. I think, for example, that the presence of the US military, especially the US Navy, has ensured that political tensions have risen inexorably despite the ongoing Asian arms race. In short, US power should be used less for dictating terms and more for underwriting the efforts of others to create international order. The US should participate in the latter process, but only as one country among many. Its alliances in the region should shift accordingly, measured more in terms of how the support this US role. Transformational ideas, like Abe Shinzo's and Aso Taro's "arc of freedom and democracy" have little place in this order. Asian countries are in no hurry to see the US evacuate Asia; if anything, they want the US to be more involved, to be less obsessed with terrorism and more willing to listen to their concerns. It is imperative that the US start thinking seriously about how it will play this stabilizing role in Asia over the long term.

The US role globally will be more central than in Asia, but the question will be the same: as Professor Ikenberry writes, "...the United States should be asking itself: what sort of international order do we want to have in place in 2040 or 2050 when we are relatively less powerful?" Extending US influence, if not predominance, will depend on developing foreign policy tools other than military power (and with it, a shift in attitude that acknowledges that the US is less able to dictate terms to other countries).

Meanwhile, it is a mistake to refer casually to "Asia" in this discussion. Whose Asia? Is Asia a codeword for China? For India? For ASEAN? Each of these players has a different vision for the region, which redounds to the advantage of the US. Just as the Asian regional future is unknown, so to is the future of an Asia-centered world order unknown. The US is still in a position to shape the Asian and global orders.

The three stooges

At the tail end of the APEC summit, Messrs. Abe, Bush, and Howard met for a much-vaunted security summit that came in the wake of the US-India-Australia-Japan-Singapore exercises in the Indian Ocean (the "quad" + one?).

Commentator Richard Halloran believes that the quad is shaping up to be a "informal defensive pact based on shared national interests and democratic values."

But how durable is the quad? India, for one, remains as committed to pursuing an independent course as ever, maybe even more so as it becomes a political and economic giant. (India has just announced naval exercises with China and Russia — why do exercises with the democracies mean India is joining an informal grouping, but exercises with China and Russia lack larger significance?)

Beyond India, whose commitment to the quad is the weakest, what of the "emerging" US-Japan-Australia triangle? I think things would look considerably different under different political leadership in each member state.

Indeed, it is hard to imagine a group of leaders more harried at home than Bush, Abe, and Howard. Mr. Bush (30% approval, 64% disapproval), of course, has been universally recognized as a lame duck — a lame duck choking on the sands of Iraq — for months. Mr. Abe (negatives in the sixties) has been more or less written off, holding on to power simply because no one is in a position to force him out of office (or no one wants to). Mr. Howard, meanwhile, might be headed for an election defeat at the hands of Kevin Rudd's Labor Party, which has just widened its lead in public opinion polls in advance of the general election expected for later this year.

Would the quad look the same if it was, for example, a meeting between Mr. Rudd, Mr. Ozawa, and Mrs. Clinton (or substitute a Democrat of your choice)? Would these leaders pursue integrated cooperation with the same gusto as the current trio? Would they place the same emphasis on shared values, which serves little other purpose other than to separate them from China?

That's my problem with this whole project. If it is just an "open network" that recognizes the important ties each member has with China, what values does it add? Is Japan's security improved all that much by new security ties with Australia? What can Australia contribute that isn't already provided by the US, if not pressure on China? The same is the reverse, even more so, for Australia — what can Japan possibly contribute to Australia's security? I fear that, intentionally or unintentionally, this arrangement subordinates regional objectives to Japan's needs, given that Japan is perhaps the most insecure of the participating countries. As Halloran writes, "In Japan, strategic thinkers have pointed to open hostility from North Korea, barely concealed hostility from South Korea, and anxiety over long-term threats from China despite recent moves by Beijing to reduce the antagonism."

But why risk raising tensions with China now when the arrangement provides so little in practical terms?

So I remain dubious that this meeting was "historic," as the Sankei Shimbun writes in an editorial today. More like one last caper for a group of leaders facing the ends of their political careers.

In Asia's future, flexibility first

In the week since Prime Minister Abe called for an organization of democracies that would implicitly encircle China, his proposal has been met with deafening silence from the capitals of the countries that would be involved, illustrating just how out of touch with new realities the prime minister's foreign policy thinking is.

As I've argued before, the future of Asia is flexibility: each power in the region will work to expand its options, constantly hedging (even with allies) and looking to secure interests by whatever means necessary. In the four countries that would Abe would like to include in his community — India, Australia, Japan, and the US — there are manifold signs that these governments are interested in expanding their options and thus are less than willing to be bound to an organization like that proposed by Mr. Abe.

In Australia, for example, a recent poll by the Lowy Institute recorded declining support for the ANZUS treaty, driven perhaps by fears of entrapment in the wake of the Iraq war. It is difficult to conceive of hostility between the US and Australia, but perhaps the ANZUS treaty should be included in any discussion of the end of alliances, as Australians begin to question whether the alliance with the US still serves their interests.

India, meanwhile, has long distrusted its neighbors and fears encirclement and international ostracism. While American commentators tend to view the pending US-India civilian nuclear agreement as the doorway to a strategic partnership in Asia, this editorial in the Times of India argues that the agreement could result in India's playing a more active role in the regional balance of power. That would facilitate greater cooperation between the US and India, as well as India and Japan, but it would be opportunistic cooperation, dependent on the vicissitudes of the regional balance — hardly the great alliance of democracies envisioned by Mr. Abe.

And the US? Washington has given no signs that it is on board with Mr. Abe's scheme, and the to do over Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte's criticism of the planned Taiwanese referendum on UN membership suggests that stability, as ever, remains Washington's primary interest in Asia.

Even the feared partnership between China and Russia is exaggerated, as argued by the Eurasia Group's Ian Bremmer. While I disagree with Bremmer's conclusion that "China is well on its way to becoming a status-quo power" — unless "well on its way" means decades — his assessment that Russia's and China's strategic interests over the long term are at odds is spot on.

China, in particular, knows that its interests demand cooperation with the region's powers, which makes it, if not a status quo power, than at least a pragmatic power. Hence the Sino-Japanese defense summit, in which the Chinese and Japanese defense ministers concluded final agreements on exchanging port visits for warships and setting up a Sino-Japanese hot line.

Even if existing alliances persist, it is unlikely that new exclusionary organizations and partnerships will be established within the region. The US hub-and-spoke alliance system, established in the early years of the cold war, will not be transformed into the kind of organization envisioned by Mr. Abe.

Does the PLA run China?

Back in January, in the aftermath of revelations about China's ASAT test, I wrote that the test, which contrasted sharply with cooperative overtures by China at approximately the same time, might have been the product of the PLA's over-sized role in policy debates in Beijing.

Now, over at China Confidential, Confidential Reporter asks whether "China may actually be a military dictatorship posing as a party-ruled, authoritarian (formerly totalitarian) state." (Hat tip: China Digital Times)

This is a hugely important question, but one that may not be answerable, due to the opacity of the Chinese state. But if the PLA is truly ruling China, can any of China's neighbors trust conciliatory words spoken by Premier Wen and the Chinese Foreign Ministry? Are the social changes supposedly at work in China all subject to reversal by a PLA "counterrevolution"? Or, on the contrary, can the PLA, not to mention the party, govern China at all?

On that point, I have strong doubts about the ability of any central authority to govern a nation of more than one billion people, hence the reason for having more confidence in the sustainability of India's rise — Indian federalism seems to provide a more durable system of governance for a megastate than China's klepto-constructo-developmental authoritarianism. After all, the law of diminishing marginal returns surely must apply to population: beyond a certain level, every additional million (or hundred million) provides more problems than benefits for a central government.

Presumably, though, if significant authority can be devolved to the state and municipal levels — and if that authority can be held accountable by the people — the threshold after which the law of diminishing marginal returns kicks in can be pushed up. Consider that federalism enables Delhi to share responsibility for the governance of the populous but poor state of Uttar Pradesh with state authorities in Lucknow. So perhaps when considering India's comparative advantages relative to China it is necessary to mention its federalist political system.

All of which means that the CCP — or the CCP's PLA masters — cannot be thrilled about reports that China's population is set to rise.

A new "new world order"?

Apologies for the lag in posting; life in Nagata-cho has gotten busy, leaving little time to dash off notes.

In any case, I want to call attention to an article in Foreign Affairs by Tufts University professor and blogger Daniel Drezner, called "The New New World Order."

Drezner argues that US foreign policy in recent years has been characterized by an increasing willingness to welcome emerging powers, namely China and India, into leadership roles in international society, lest they opt out and create parallel structures: "If China and India are not made to feel welcome inside existing international institutions, they might create new ones -- leaving the United States on the outside looking in."

His thesis links to a notion I've been toying with for some time. In the early years after the cold war, various international relations theorists (realists, by and large) were quick to point out that a new multipolar order would quickly replace the aberrant unipolarity that had followed the fall of the Soviet Union. Numerous articles talked about the inevitability of multipolarity, and speculated as to which powers were the leading candidates to become the next great powers. (Germany and Japan were the leading candidates -- just as Japan's economy stalled and Germany was forced to absorb the enormous costs of reunification with the impoverished East.)

It seems, however, that those realists were right, about fifteen years too soon -- and their vision of multipolarity owed more to bygone nineteenth century European balance of power than to the world order actually coalescing today. It seems that the multipolar order emerging today more resembles the "three-dimensional chessboard" discussed by Joseph Nye and others, in which multipolarity in economics, culture, and politics exist alongside and despite US military dominance.

Rather than resisting this, Drezner argues, the US has embraced the emergence of new powers and sought to revise international order accordingly, given them a stake in the system in a bid to forestall a revolution of the "upstarts."

This is especially interesting in light of the recommendations of the recent second Armitage-Nye Report, which I have previously discussed at length. The picture painted by the report is of a US more willing to cooperate with China, India, and other regional powers -- including Japan -- to shape the regional environment so to accommodate the new giants. The extent to which the US has worked to engage China was revealed today, in a talk by Randall Schriver, partner at Armitage International, former deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asia/Pacific affairs, and participant in the drafting of the Armitage-Nye Report. (I was attending on behalf of my boss.)

The picture painted by Schriver -- whose brief was to discuss China-Taiwan relations, which ended up encompassing Sino-US relations -- is of a US that, while still hedging somewhat in the event that China takes a belligerent turn, has fully embraced engagement with China, from the president down. Thanks to Secretary Paulson, the China-US Strategic Economic Dialogue ensures that US fears don't subvert the overall economic relationship. Under outgoing chief of Pacific Command William Fallon, the US Military and the PLA held their first joint exercises and engaged in a number of visits and exchanges. The Bush administration, like earlier administrations that have entered office intent on taking a hard line against China, is now pushing for greater engagement with China in the hope that it will become, in the words of former Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick, a "responsible stakeholder" in international society.

I will close with a number mentioned by Schriver in his talk. In the first Armitage-Nye Report, published in October 2000, China was mentioned a total of six times. In the most recent Armitage-Nye Report, China was mentioned 123 times. It is a new Asia, and, perhaps, a new world order.

Dissecting the second Armitage-Nye Report, part 2

Continuing from my previous post, this post will focus on the second Armitage-Nye Report's vision of Asia. My thoughts on the report's recommendations for the US-Japan alliance can be read here. (The report can be downloaded from CSIS here.)

All of the report's predictions and policy recommendations stem from a principle stated on its first page: "Getting Asia right in this regard does not mean the imposition of U.S. values on the region, but rather encouraging an environment in which the region’s leaders define their own national success in terms that are consonant with U.S. political and economic objectives."

As the center of gravity shifts to Asia, as Asia emerges as a region with three major powers (China, Japan, and India) existing side-by-side for the first time in modern history, the above principle serves as a concession to this immutable reality of twenty-first century Asia. For better or worse, we are entering an age of "Asia for Asians," during which Asian powers -- including, to the chagrin of certain leaders, Australia and New Zealand -- will largely shape the future of the region. As the report's authors acknowledge, even as the US retains considerable power and influence in the region, it will increasingly be unable to impose outcomes, necessarily entailing that the US step into a less visible, supporting role.

On the whole, then, this report is typical of the "new pragmatism" that seems to be taking hold in Washington in the waning years of the Bush administration. (This is one prominent example.) The Bush administration's post-9/11 revolutionary zeal apparently having burned out, the revolutionaries isolated or out of office, the US foreign policy establishment is in problem-solving mode, this being one example (and the recent six-party agreement being another, as this IHT article suggests).

The biggest "problem" in the region facing Washington is, of course, the rise of China, although problem isn't the best word to use. What China will look like in 2020 is unknown, and, at this point in time, unknowable. The report phrases it thusly:

Even factoring in the possibility of disruption, China will continue to be an engine of regional growth and global dynamism. China’s growing comprehensive national power is already well reflected in its assertive diplomacy aimed at shaping the strategic environment around its borders. One key question for the United States, Japan, and all of Asia is: how will China use its newfound capabilities and resources as it matures as an economic and military power? (p. 3)

Accordingly, as they discuss the strategic triangle of the US, Japan, and China, much of their attention focuses on the goal of encouraging China to channel its power in the region to constructive ends. The authors believe that this goal is achievable, because Beijing, preoccupied with the instability it has unleashed internally by opting for liberalization, is ill-prepared to pursue a revolutionary foreign policy in its near abroad. As the report notes, at some length (worth quoting, because I find it to be a rather succinct expression of my own thoughts on China's rise):

China will grow, but its growth will not necessarily be a linear “rise” without complications. China has massive internal challenges that include an aging society, a weak social safety net, large and growing disparities in development, and systemic corruption—all of which have resulted in social unease. China’s leaders also are faced with growing labor unrest, a weak banking and financial system, lingering ethnic disputes, environmental problems almost unimaginable to Westerners, and vulnerability to epidemic disease. Together, these challenges have caused Chinese leaders to focus internally, thereby putting a premium on external stability. China seeks a stable, peaceful international environment in which to develop its comprehensive national power. China needs to avoid any disruption of its access to national resources (particularly oil and gas) and foreign investment, and it can ill afford major diversions of resources to causes unrelated to the objectives of economic growth and public welfare (p. 3).

The idea of some in the Pentagon and the commentariat that China is spoiling for a fight is wholly fallacious, and harmful to America's long-term interests in the Asia-Pacific region. According to the authors of the report, the US and China share a fundamental interest, namely in "stability": "Our interest is in stability, to which the United States, Japan, China, and all countries in East Asia can play a supportive role. In particular, stability in East Asia will rest on a triangle of U.S.- Japan-China relations, which should be fostered in addition to our strong alliance with Japan" (p. 26).

The report belies the paramount importance of stability to some extent, as the authors emphasize the need to encourage the spread of liberty, which can often undermine stability; this means that the second Armitage-Nye Report embraces somewhat contradictory goals, seeking the spread of values that will undermine a status quo that encourages non-interference by states in the internal affairs of their neighbors at the same time as trying to maintain stability in East Asian international relations. Nevertheless, stability in East Asia has been the most prominent US policy aim in the region since the end of the cold war, when the cold war's predictability gave way to the "uncertainty" (a popular word in strategy documents from the 1990s) of East Asian "minipolarity." If anything, it is even more important to the US now than ever before, as the region's map changes to accommodate the rise of two massive powers.

As such, the authors also focus on India, and its potential as a possible anchor for democratic values in the region. But they are right to point out that India will not be a mere cat's paw for the US, Japan, or any other power. As they wrote:

Washington and Tokyo have both qualitatively improved their respective strategic relationships with India. However, both should move forward based on the assumption that India will not act as either Japan’s or the United States’ counterweight against Beijing, mindful that India has its own synergies with China. New Delhi is cautious with respect to Beijing and is not interested in raising tensions with China. That being said, New Delhi’s Look East Policy is particularly appealing to Asia, and its growing economic, political, and cultural ties to East Asia will make it a larger part of the region’s strategic equation (p. 6).

India remains as much a question mark as China. Will India be seduced by great power and embrace a kind of realpolitik, or will it trumpet its position as the world's most populous democracy as an example to rival China (the Bangalore Consensus versus the Beijing Consensus)? How India answers that question will play a major role in determining what Asia looks like in 2020 and beyond.

While the report also touches on the roles to be played by Southeast Asia, Russia, and regional integration in shaping the region, I am going to withhold comment and instead conclude this already long post by talking about the report's notes on the Korean Peninsula. The authors note that it is essential for both the US and Japan to patch up relations with the Republic of Korea, because, despite Seoul's increasingly continental orientation, the three countries still have shared values that can serve as the basis for enhanced cooperation. However, as acknowledged in the report, the obstacles standing in the way of an re-invigorated US-Japan-South Korea triangle are many, including generational change within South Korea, shared interests in Seoul and Beijing, and the weight of history. These obstacles suggest that while functional cooperation on matters of shared concern (i.e., North Korea) are possible, South Korea will not be an especially enthusiastic partner of the US, Japan, and the region's other democracies in pushing hard for the spread of liberal values -- at least that's not what I expect.

I will return tomorrow with comments on the remaining bulk of the report, the sections focused on the US-Japan alliance.