A gathering of Asian and US diplomats, economists and academics in Honolulu, Hawaii, came to the surprising conclusion that no Asian nation is willing or able to assume leadership in Asia despite the economic and political progress of recent decades.
The Asian delegates and US “Asia hands” agreed that China is not ready, Japan is not willing and that India is just emerging onto the world stage, while the US is preoccupied with Afghanistan, the Middle East and the economy. Moreover, Asian international organizations such as ASEAN have so far shown themselves to be mostly talk shops.
Most of those in the conference asserted that peace and prosperity in Asia would be best served by a balance of power, especially between China and the US. No one suggested that Beijing and Washington forge a condominium over Asia but all agreed that armed conflict would be disastrous.
This consensus was surprising because a widening view among Asian leaders asserts that power is shifting from West to East.
Kishore Mahbubani, a prominent Singaporean diplomat and scholar, has explored this thesis in a book entitled The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Power to the East.
The Asian and US delegates in Honolulu met in a senior policy seminar at the East-West Center, a research and education organization funded largely by the US Congress. Under the conference rules, speakers and those who took part in the discussion cannot be identified, supposedly to encourage candor.
“China is not oriented toward foreign policy but is obsessed with domestic issues, somewhat like the United States,” an Asian delegate said.
China’s first major venture into international relations — leading the six-party talks among China, South Korea, Japan, Russia, the US and North Korea to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons — has gone nowhere in six years.
Internal dissent in China was underscored by uprisings in Tibet last year and in Xinjiang earlier this year. The worldwide economic crisis has hit China hard and driven the government, always anxious about its hold on power, to adopt a 10-point stimulus program. Abroad, territorial disputes have caused fear of China, especially in Southeast Asia.
Japan, still wrapped in the passive cocoon into which it retreated after the devastating defeat of World War II, is constrained by its divisive politics. In the last three years, Tokyo has seen three prime ministers, four foreign ministers and six defense ministers. The long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is predicted to lose to the untested Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in the election set for Aug. 30.
“The DPJ is a hodge-podge of old-line Socialists and deserters from the LDP and thus split,” an Asian delegate said. “Its leaders lack experience in government and have failed to cultivate the bureaucrats who really run things in Japan. It will have a rough time governing.”
As a potential leader, India was barely mentioned.
“India is in the equation for the first time,” said an American, lamenting the lack of attention to India.
A US military officer said that relations between Indian and US military forces had expanded.
“India,” he said, “is getting out and about.”
Some Asian and US delegates said that the US was declining in power, with US forces spread thin around the world and the economy troubled at home. Others disagreed.
“Are we seeing the twilight of the US in Asia?” an American asked.
His answer: “No, we are not withdrawing.”
Several speakers contended that the administration of former US president George W. Bush had neglected Asia while the administration of US President Barack Obama was seeking to reverse that perception.
“America has been like Rip Van Winkle, sleeping under a tree,” an American delegate said. “Now he’s awake but we have to see what he actually does.”
Richard Halloran is a freelance writer in Hawaii.
In their recent op-ed “Trump Should Rein In Taiwan” in Foreign Policy magazine, Christopher Chivvis and Stephen Wertheim argued that the US should pressure President William Lai (賴清德) to “tone it down” to de-escalate tensions in the Taiwan Strait — as if Taiwan’s words are more of a threat to peace than Beijing’s actions. It is an old argument dressed up in new concern: that Washington must rein in Taipei to avoid war. However, this narrative gets it backward. Taiwan is not the problem; China is. Calls for a so-called “grand bargain” with Beijing — where the US pressures Taiwan into concessions
The term “assassin’s mace” originates from Chinese folklore, describing a concealed weapon used by a weaker hero to defeat a stronger adversary with an unexpected strike. In more general military parlance, the concept refers to an asymmetric capability that targets a critical vulnerability of an adversary. China has found its modern equivalent of the assassin’s mace with its high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) weapons, which are nuclear warheads detonated at a high altitude, emitting intense electromagnetic radiation capable of disabling and destroying electronics. An assassin’s mace weapon possesses two essential characteristics: strategic surprise and the ability to neutralize a core dependency.
Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平) said in a politburo speech late last month that his party must protect the “bottom line” to prevent systemic threats. The tone of his address was grave, revealing deep anxieties about China’s current state of affairs. Essentially, what he worries most about is systemic threats to China’s normal development as a country. The US-China trade war has turned white hot: China’s export orders have plummeted, Chinese firms and enterprises are shutting up shop, and local debt risks are mounting daily, causing China’s economy to flag externally and hemorrhage internally. China’s
During the “426 rally” organized by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party under the slogan “fight green communism, resist dictatorship,” leaders from the two opposition parties framed it as a battle against an allegedly authoritarian administration led by President William Lai (賴清德). While criticism of the government can be a healthy expression of a vibrant, pluralistic society, and protests are quite common in Taiwan, the discourse of the 426 rally nonetheless betrayed troubling signs of collective amnesia. Specifically, the KMT, which imposed 38 years of martial law in Taiwan from 1949 to 1987, has never fully faced its
RSS