Published: December 02, 2011
Abstract
There is plenty of talk about the 21st century being an Asian century, featuring China, Japan and India.
There is plenty of talk about the 21st century being an Asian century, featuring China, Japan and India.
Op-Ed
If one had any doubts about the world being in the midst of a huge power shift, events in November should have dispelled them.
From
Europeans appealing to China to save the euro to US President Barack
Obama arriving in Bali to lobby for Asian support, the transformation is
evident. Less clear is who will lead the world in the 21st century and
how. There is plenty of talk about the 21st century being an Asian
century, featuring China, Japan and India. These countries certainly
seek an enhanced role in world affairs, including a greater share of
decision-making authority in the governance of global bodies. But are
they doing enough to deserve it?
The intervention in Libya, led by
Britain and France, and carried out by NATO, says it all. There is no
NATO in Asia, and there’s unlikely to be one. Imagining a scenario in
which China, India and Japan come together to lead a coalition of the
willing to force a brutally repressive regime out of power, or undertake
any major peace and security operation in their neighborhood, is
implausible.
China and Japan are the world’s second and third
largest economies. India is sixth in purchasing-power parity terms.
China’s defense spending has experienced double-digit annual growth
during the past two decades. India was the world’s largest buyer of
conventional weapons in 2010. A study by the US Congressional Research
Service lists Saudi Arabia, India and China as the three biggest arms
buyers from 2003 to 2010. India bought nearly $17 billion worth of
conventional arms, compared to $13.2 billion for China and some $29
billion for Saudi Arabia.
Chinese, Indian and Japanese foreign
policy ideas have evolved: India has abandoned non-alignment. China has
moved well past Maoist socialist internationalism. Japan pursues the
idea of a “normal state” that can say yes to using force in multilateral
operations.
But unfortunately, these shifts have not led to
greater leadership in global governance. National power ambitions and
regional rivalries have restricted their contributions to global
governance.
President Hu Jintao has defined the objective of
China's foreign policy as to “jointly construct a harmonious world.”
Chinese leaders and academics invoke the cultural idea of “all under
heaven,” or Tianxia. The concept stresses harmony – as opposed to
“sameness,” thus signaling that China can be politically non-democratic,
but still pursue friendship with other nations. China has increased its
participation in multilateralism and global governance, but not offered
leadership.
This is sometimes explained as a lingering legacy of
Deng Xiaoping’s caution about Chinese leadership on behalf of the
developing world. More telling is China’s desire not to sacrifice its
sovereignty and independence for the sake of multilateralism and global
governance, along with limited integration between domestic and
international considerations in decision-making about issues of global
governance. Chen Dongxiao of the Shanghai Institutes for International
Studies calls China a “part time leader” in selected areas of global
affairs.
Japan’s policy conception of a “normal state,” initially
presented as a way of reclaiming Japan’s right to use force, but only in
support of UN-sanctioned operations, may sound conducive to greater
global leadership. But it also reflects strategic motivations: to hedge
against any drawdown of US forces in the region, to counter the rise of
China and the growing threat from North Korea, and to increase Japan’s
participation in collective military operations in the Indian Ocean and
Persian Gulf regions.
Beset by chronic uncertainty in domestic
leadership and a declining economy, Japan has not been a proactive
global leader when it comes to crisis management. Its response to the
2008 global financial crisis was a far cry from that to the 1997 crisis,
when it took center stage and proposed the creation of a regional
monetary fund, a limited version of which materialized eventually within
the Chiang Mai Initiative.
In 2005, Indian Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh asserted that “the 21st century will be an Indian
century.” Singh expressed hope that “The world will once again look at
us with regard and respect, not just for the economic progress we make
but for the democratic values we cherish and uphold and the principles
of pluralism and inclusiveness we have come to represent which is
India’s heritage as a centuries old culture and civilization.” In this
ambition, India was praised by US presidents George W. Bush and Barack
Obama, the latter describing India as “a leader in Asia and around the
world” and as “a rising power and a responsible global power.”
Yet
the Indian foreign-policy worldview has shifted in the direction of
greater realpolitik. Some Indian analysts such as C. Raja Mohan have
pointed out that India might be reverting from Gandhi and Nehru to
George Curzon, the British governor-general of India in the early 20th
century. Curzonian geopolitics assumed Indian centrality in the Asian
heartland, and envisaged a proactive and expansive Indian diplomatic and
military role in stabilizing Asia as a whole.
Indian power
projection in both western and eastern Indian Ocean waters is growing,
thereby pursuing a Mahanian approach for dominance of the maritime
sphere, named after US Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, rather than a
Nehruvian approach. It is partly driven by a desire, encouraged by the
US and Southeast Asian countries, to assume the role of a regional
balancer vis-à-vis China. Like Japan, India has sought a permanent seat
in the UN Security Council, a dream likely destined to remain
unfulfilled for some time. India has engaged in the G-20 forum, but has
not presented obvious Indian ideas or imprints to inspire reform and
restructuring of the global multilateral order.
Asia’s role in
global governance cannot be delinked from the question: Who leads Asia?
After World War II, India was seen as an Asia leader by many of its
neighbors and was more than willing to lead, but unable to do so due to a
lack of resources. Japan’s case was exactly the opposite; it had the
resources from the mid-1960s onwards, but not the legitimacy – thanks to
memories of imperialism for which it was deemed insufficiently
apologetic by its neighbors.
China has had neither the resources
nor the legitimacy, since the communist takeover, nor the political
will, at the onset of the reform era to be Asia’s leader.
In Asia
today, although Japan, China and India now have the resources, they
still suffer from a deficit of regional legitimacy. This might be partly
a legacy of the past – Japanese wartime role, Chinese subversion and
Indian diplomatic highhandedness. But their mutual rivalry also prevents
the Asian powers from assuming regional leadership singly or
collectively.
Hence regional leadership rests with a group of the
region’s weaker states: ASEAN. While ASEAN is an useful and influential
voice in regional affairs, its ability to manage Asia – home to three of
the world’s four largest economies; four, excluding Russia, of the
eight nuclear weapon states; and the fastest growing military forces –
is by no means assured.
Greater engagement with regional forums is
useful for the Asian powers to prepare for a more robust role in global
governance. So many of the global problems – climate change, energy,
pandemics, illegal migration and more – have Asian roots. By jointly
managing them at the regional level, Asian powers can limit their
rivalries, secure neighbors’ support, and gain expertise that could
facilitate a substantive contribution to global governance from a
position of leadership and strength.
This piece was first published on YaleGlobal Online by the Yale Centre for the Study of Globalization on December 1, 2011.
In a recent
speech, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton outlined America’s vision for
engagement with Asia, relating it to a ‘new American moment in
international relations.’ The speech carries impor
Op-Ed
Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton’s “new American moment in international
relations” speech, delivered to the Council on Foreign Relations in
Washington D.C. on Sept. 8, will be widely discussed and debated.
Although the speech did not concern Asia only, it does signal important
changes in the way the United States looks at Asia, especially its
regional architecture.
One unusual aspect of the speech was the
amount of space devoted to regions and regional organizations in
general. Declaring that “Few, if any, of today’s challenges can be
understood or solved without working through a regional context,”
Clinton mentioned region (including “region,” “regional,” “regionally,”
“regions,” etc.) no less than 24 times. There is an entire section on
“Strengthening Regional Architecture” (excluding discussion of NATO,
which is under a separate section on alliances, although NATO is
basically a regional organization), and this discussion is longer than
that on “Global Institutions in the 21st Century.” And in discussing the
role of emerging powers, Clinton warns: “Countries like China and
Brazil have their own notions about what regional institutions should
look like, and they are busy pursuing those ideas.” This is another
reason for the US to “remain robustly engaged and to help chart the way
forward” in shaping regional architecture. This is a logic that applies
especially to Asia today.
Moreover, the regional architecture
section of her speech is broad and not Eurocentric. If anything, it is
Asia-centric. The EU is mentioned in the speech four times (NATO also
four times) compared to seven references to Asia-Pacific institutions,
(including three references to ASEAN, two to the East Asia Summit, and
one reference each to APEC and the Trans-Pacific Partnership).
This
is not to say that the Obama administration is rooting for Asian
regional multilateral institutions at the expense of the United States’
bilateral alliances. Clinton acknowledges that “The Asia-Pacific has few
robust institutions to foster effective cooperation, build trust, and
reduce the friction of competition.” But she adds, “So with our
partners, we began working to build a more coherent regional
architecture that will strengthen both economic and political ties.”
More
important, the Clinton speech, which reiterates themes she touched on
in her East-West Center speech in Hawaii in January, does clarify
thinking about regional architecture in Asia. The US would actively
pursue both bilateralism and multilateralism; the view that they might
be mutually exclusive, questionable as it was before, is even more so
now.
Both the Kevin Rudd proposal for an Asia-Pacific Community
and the Hatoyama proposal for an East Asian Community, which dominated
debate about regional architecture this time last year, now seem
history, despite the fact that Rudd is now Australia’s foreign minister
and may even have a free hand in running foreign policy under Julia
Gillard, who is said to be more focused on domestic issues. Clinton
clarified that the US would continue to value APEC, but supplement it
with the TPP: they would be the leading vehicles for US multilateral
economic and trade engagement in Asia. If so, then the East Asia Summit
(EAS) becomes the main forum for multilateral security engagement with
Asia. Although the US (along with Russia) does not formally join the EAS
until 2011, Clinton will represent the US at the 2010 EAS to be held in
Hanoi in October. Clinton sets an ambitious goal for the EAS: the US
will be “encouraging its development into a foundational security and
political institution for the region, capable of resolving disputes and
preventing them before they arise.” But this is bound to concern China,
which opposed similar efforts to introduce preventive diplomacy and
conflict resolution through the ASEAN Regional Forum a decade ago.
With
the demise of the Rudd proposal, the idea of an Asia-Pacific concert of
powers might seem dead; could others fill the role? Instead of a core
minilateral group comprising big players like China, Japan, India, and
the US, and lesser ones like Australia, Indonesia, and South Korea,
might we see a group of “mid-size powers” playing an active role in the
development of regional architecture? The three most obvious mid-size
countries (read powers) would be South Korea, Indonesia and (you guessed
it) Australia. To some extent this makes sense: mid-size powers may be
less controversial as chaperons of regional architecture than major
powers like the US, China, Japan, and India. They are likely to play
their role in different but complimentary ways – South Korea through the
G20, where it is emerging as an influential member, Indonesia through
ASEAN (hopefully the idea of a post-ASEAN foreign policy for Jakarta has
been laid to rest), and Australia as a bridge between the West and
Asia, with a demonstrated capacity for practical regional action.
The
idea of a G2 persists as well. The idea of a G2 does not necessarily
amount to strategic bipolarity or a Sino-US condominium, as some have
assumed, but is an acknowledgement of the central importance of Sino-US
relations and the need for these two states to manage their bilateral
trade and security relations peacefully (rather than having sole
responsibility of managing affairs of the entire region).
Finally,
while the Clinton speech implies that the “new American moment” would
have a strong element of multilateralism in pursuit of global and
regional governance, this is not because such a stance flows naturally
from the “declining hegemony” of the US, but because it would be
consistent with Washington’s strategic and normative purpose.
Incidentally,
the idea of a US “decline,” already dismissed in Washington, is losing
currency in Asia, including in China. Of greater concern for Asia is the
other “d” word: US disengagement. But like decline, rumors of US
disengagement from Asia (now or in the foreseeable future) have been
highly exaggerated. The Clinton speech should put them to rest. If
anything, the Obama administration is reinforcing its bilateral military
and strategic engagement with a healthy dose of multilateralism,
without necessarily dictating the agenda of multilateral institutions.
Events
surrounding the just-concluded US-ASEAN summit demonstrated that ASEAN
countries want the US to remain in the region, and even have a voice in
the South China Sea conflict, whether Beijing likes it or not. At the
same time, by not mentioning the South China Sea by name, but by
stressing maritime security and freedom of navigation, the summit
clearly indicated that ASEAN does not want the US voice to be at the
expense of their neighborly relations with China. By going along with
this desire, Washington showed a mature and helpful hand. If recent US
statements on the South China Sea succeed in prodding China and ASEAN to
renew efforts to conclude the long-overdue code of conduct in the South
China Sea, then that would be a worthy achievement of US diplomacy.
This piece was first published by Pacific Forum CSIS, PacNet #49, on Oct 14, 2010.
NGUỒN: http://www.asiapacific.ca/category/authors/amitav-acharya?page=1
