US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is scheduled to travel to Asia again this month to meet foreign ministers at the ASEAN Regional Forum, and to visit India.
On her first Asian trip in February, she provided a welcome contrast to the past with her openness to others’ views, her willingness to cooperate and her star power. She made Asians look at the US anew.
But this trip will be trickier. One challenge is that part of the plot for the US and Clinton is being written by others. North Korea will be on the agenda after conducting its missile tests, as will Myanmar, since its generals persist in prosecuting Aung San Suu Kyi, the world’s most famous political detainee, on trivial charges.
After all that has happened in recent weeks, the definition of “success” must be set low. Nothing positive will come from the US condemning these two difficult regimes unilaterally. So a key goal of Clinton’s visit must be to pull together with the Asian leaders present at the ASEAN Regional Forum.
As for Myanmar, its neighbors and fellow ASEAN members — Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand — are also concerned about Suu Kyi’s continued prosecution. The US should begin to work with these countries not only on this matter, but also on the elections that Myanmar military junta has promised for 2010. Together, they should press for assurances of a free and fair process, with the aim of avoiding the kind of mess that followed the Iranian elections.
Indonesia can be one ally. After decades of autocracy, this vast archipelago of a country just concluded a presidential election that has solidified its transition to democracy. India, proud of its long-standing democracy and fresh from its own elections, shares a border with Myanmar and can also assist efforts there.
The approach to North Korea is similar. Kim Jong-il is a naughty boy who wants attention and incentives to behave decently. Rather than debate with her counterparts, Clinton needs to ensure that other countries in the six-party framework, especially China and South Korea, are on the same page as the US.
On both issues, there is little capacity to exert force or sufficient pressure for solutions any time soon. So diplomatic efforts must instead aim to join Americans and like-minded Asians in common cause, to push for steps forward in the medium to longer term. Others must be brought on board, especially the Regional Forum hosts, ASEAN and Thailand.
A moral community should form in Asia, one that displaces its leaders’ usual cynical calculations of power in order to jump on the right bandwagon.
In all this, China is the 800-pound dragon in the room. China is already closer to ASEAN and a key player with respect to Myanmar, North Korea and other sticky issues. A “bamboo” economic zone appears to be emerging, perhaps to replace today’s weakening US-centric trans-Pacific ties.
This is the context for Clinton’s visit to India, as well. Former US president George W. Bush’s administration should be credited for giving overdue recognition to India, but this was done primarily on a bilateral basis. The US should now leverage that relationship to work on regional and even global issues.
Besides her own work, Clinton is likely to also be inundated during this visit with requests concerning President Barack Obama. There is still no confirmation of when Obama will visit Asia, though many expect that he will attend the APEC summit to be held in Singapore in November.
China, Japan and Indonesia must be among Obama’s priorities, but many others will clamor for him to visit their capitals. Clinton and the US administration would do well to decide which requests are merely photo ops and confine these to meetings at the sidelines of APEC. The US should insist on a substantive agenda as a precondition for any Obama visit. In China, for example, Clinton successfully established an agenda for the two countries to work together on climate change. Plans and resources must now be prepared.
Clinton has reopened the doors for Obama in Asia with charm and confidence. Obama will eventually come to Asia with many high expectations and star billing. While his charisma and openness to dialogue will be sought after, substance will also be measured and much needed.
By November, after all, it will be more than a year since the global crisis began in the US, and Obama and his team must show tangible prospects for recovery. US leadership — globally and in Asia — can no longer be presumed. It must be earned.
Simon Tay is chairman of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs and a fellow of the Asia Society.
COPYRIGHT: PROJECT SYNDICATE
The return of US president-elect Donald Trump to the White House has injected a new wave of anxiety across the Taiwan Strait. For Taiwan, an island whose very survival depends on the delicate and strategic support from the US, Trump’s election victory raises a cascade of questions and fears about what lies ahead. His approach to international relations — grounded in transactional and unpredictable policies — poses unique risks to Taiwan’s stability, economic prosperity and geopolitical standing. Trump’s first term left a complicated legacy in the region. On the one hand, his administration ramped up arms sales to Taiwan and sanctioned
The Taiwanese have proven to be resilient in the face of disasters and they have resisted continuing attempts to subordinate Taiwan to the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Nonetheless, the Taiwanese can and should do more to become even more resilient and to be better prepared for resistance should the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) try to annex Taiwan. President William Lai (賴清德) argues that the Taiwanese should determine their own fate. This position continues the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) tradition of opposing the CCP’s annexation of Taiwan. Lai challenges the CCP’s narrative by stating that Taiwan is not subordinate to the
World leaders are preparing themselves for a second Donald Trump presidency. Some leaders know more or less where he stands: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy knows that a difficult negotiation process is about to be forced on his country, and the leaders of NATO countries would be well aware of being complacent about US military support with Trump in power. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would likely be feeling relief as the constraints placed on him by the US President Joe Biden administration would finally be released. However, for President William Lai (賴清德) the calculation is not simple. Trump has surrounded himself
US president-elect Donald Trump is to return to the White House in January, but his second term would surely be different from the first. His Cabinet would not include former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo and former US national security adviser John Bolton, both outspoken supporters of Taiwan. Trump is expected to implement a transactionalist approach to Taiwan, including measures such as demanding that Taiwan pay a high “protection fee” or requiring that Taiwan’s military spending amount to at least 10 percent of its GDP. However, if the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) invades Taiwan, it is doubtful that Trump would dispatch
RSS