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| World Marketplace |
Asian Fusion
Ellen Frost
06/01/2005
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Since then, China has
shown an increasing sense of outward orientation and a willingness to embrace
commercial diplomacy in the region, a term that encompasses not only trade and
investment but also political and security relations. This new good-neighbor
policy signals a reorientation of China’s strategic mindset. Chinese leaders are
committed to economic modernization, not only because it will make China strong,
but also because they need it to sustain popular support. Economic modernization
requires an open, peaceful environment. In the 1990s, Chinese strategists
realized that they could help shape that environment and that doing so required
improving both regional and global relations.
Granted, Beijing remains rigid
about Taiwan, which is excluded from the proposed community on China’s
insistence. The tension in cross-strait relations is a regional threat that
China insists is a domestic problem and not the business of its neighbors, let
alone the West. This is one of many reasons that the countries of East Asia, the
smaller countries in particular, see the United States as an essential
counterweight to China.
Balancing Act
All of the ASEAN +3 countries, including China, openly
support a substantial U.S. presence in the region for the foreseeable future.
Many people in the region welcome China’s new role, but they have no desire to
be dominated by China—or by Japan or India, for that matter. They see an
actively engaged United States as a balancing and stabilizing presence that
expands their room to maneuver and their freedom to choose. The risk is not that
the United States will be expelled from Asia, but that our voice will be slowly
drained of influence through our own lack of foresight.
America’s strategic
economic interests in Asia include the free flow of energy, trade and
investment; export controls; telecommunications and aerospace exports; and
measures to dry up the financing of terrorism and crime. Many friendly Asian
governments will continue to share these interests as well as long-standing U.S.
goals such as human rights and democracy. But they will be under pressure to
adjust their priorities, at least at the margins. The balance of influence will
gradually shift further toward Beijing—while America’s highest leadership,
preoccupied as usual with the Middle East, looks the other way.
This subtle
realignment could gradually ripple through the world economy because Asia is the
current locomotive of world growth. Investor confidence is linked to the U.S.
presence in Asia. This presence has become overwhelmingly military, but for most
of the post-World War II period, it was solidly backed by careful and competent
diplomacy and by a range of instruments, including trade agreements, aid,
technical assistance and educational exchanges. If the United States is
perceived to be neglecting Asia, its role as a stabilizer and buffer will
diminish, along with its leverage.
On the other hand, Southeast Asia saw our
response to the relief effort following the December tsunami, while somewhat
delayed, as an example of the U.S.—and the U.S. military presence—at its most
generous. China gave some money, but it was the United States that behaved like
a responsible world power and cobbled together a coalition of navies from the
U.S., Australia, India and Japan to be first on the scene to provide significant
aid.
We would be wise to make this kind of attentiveness the norm again,
through intensive, ongoing, candid, high-level, strategic discussions that would
be similar to but far broader than those sparked by North Korea’s nuclear
weapons. Thus far, however, Washington seems uninterested.
Ellen Frost, a visiting fellow at the Institute for International Economics and
an adjunct research fellow at the National Defense University’s Institute of
National Strategic Studies, is a former government official.
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