China's multilateral investments
One of the mistakes of Amer-ican foreign policy over the last several decades was to not heavily invest in, build, and fortify serious multilateral se-curity and economic institu-tions among Asian nations.
One of the mistakes of Amer-ican foreign policy over the last several decades was to not heavily invest in, build, and fortify serious multilateral se-curity and economic institu-tions among Asian nations.
America has not really taken APEC [shown in green on map below] seriously and on the security front has long chosen to rely on bilateral arrangements between the U.S. and every nation we care about in Asia rather than trying to sew them together in a broader network. One exception to this has been occasional military exercises involving U.S., Japanese, Australian, and occastionally Korean forces -- but generally, America's strategy has been to secure stability in Asia through a set of robust bilateral arrangements rather than a multilateral structure, as in NATO.
One of the interesting consequences of this strategy is that it puts little pressure on the governments in these regions to mature very far beyond their dependence on U.S. forces. It also allows them to bully each other over long term cultural and historical disputes, knowing that at the end of the day that they can get away with various manipulations of the historical record -- and this goes for Japan, China, and Korea -- because America provides an ultimate buffer between them when it comes to any hot conflict.
China, however, may be leap-frogging America's anachronistic and inefficient set of bilateral deals by rooting the first serious efforts in some time of a China-centric multilateralism in the region. China has called for an annual East Asian Economic Summit and the establishment of and East Asian Community that could very well become the dominant structural fabric of Northeast and Southeast Asia.
Yes, there are other networks and forums -- including the ASEAN Regional Forum and ASEAN plus three, and there have been efforts at economic insitution-building like former Malaysian Prime Minister's East Asian Economic Caucus. And of course, there is APEC that seems to be barely kicking anymore.
But China seems to know that there is a genuine opportunity in institution-building among a great cross-section of regional stakeholders. Frankly, this kind of diplomacy -- as we once forged together in Europe -- is exactly what Asia has needed for a long time, and in my view, the U.S. should have been at the helm of this process. Unfortunately, we have been tethered down by the constraints of our own bilateral relations, afraid of becoming less significant to our partner countries if alternative arrangements were introduced. More>>
- Here is an interesting excerpt from a Washington Post article titled "China's Quiet Rise Casts Wide Shadow" by Edward Cody.
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