Peer reviewed analysis from world leading experts

America's pivot to Asia and Asian akrasia

Reading Time: 5 mins

In Brief

Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, East Asia Forum

On his first trip abroad since he was re-elected, Barack Obama became the first US President to visit Burma before attending the East Asia Summit in Cambodia.

Share

  • A
  • A
  • A

Share

  • A
  • A
  • A

This was a bold and welcome initiative that extends support to those inside and outside the country behind Myanmar’s opening toward the outside world. And Obama’s participation in the East Asia Summit (EAS) immediately after the US election was clear affirmation of his administration’s priority in rebalancing US diplomacy toward Asia — the so-called Asian pivot.

Obama’s first foreign excursion after re-election was a resounding success. The visit to Burma allowed low-key but purposeful underscoring of two of America’s foreign policy priorities in Asia: support for commitment to opening Burmese society and its economy and its participation in cooperative regional and international arrangements; and the projection of American economic as well as its political interests as a stabilising force in Asia. The first (support for Burmese opening), of course, can be read as a metaphor for America’s overriding ambition for Asia and both encompass America’s fundamental interests in Asia’s development.

On the eve of Obama’s departure, National Security Advisor, Tom Donilon, described America’s long term vision for Asia as one which aspired ‘to see a region where the rise of new powers occurs peacefully; where the freedom to access the sea, air, space, and cyberspace, empowers vibrant commerce, where multinational forums help promote shared interests; and where citizens increasingly have the ability to influence their governments, and universal human rights are upheld. That’s the future we seek in partnership with our allies and friends’.

What was clear from the outset of this US presidential expedition was that the idea of the pivot toward Asia needed to be extended and revamped to better capture the ambit of US regional interests and ambitions, and much effort was directed to that at its launch and in its execution. In his speech at CSIS, Donilon made it clear that the rebalancing effort was not ‘simply about shifting military resources’, nor about any ‘attempt to contain any nation’. ‘The [US’s] rebalancing posture towards Asia’, he said, ‘harnesses every element of our national power. It is a long-term effort to better position ourselves for the opportunities and challenges we’re most likely to face in this century’. He added that it ‘reflects an often overlooked but critically important aspect of [US] strategy. We’re not only rebalancing toward Asia, we’re also rebalancing our efforts within Asia… in a renewed way on Southeast Asia and ASEAN’. The message was that US rebalancing would be defined by far more than defence posture: it would be defined by deeper economic and political engagement.

The question is how America can achieve all these ambitions on the ground. Translating precept into practice requires active engagement as well as willing partnership.

On security affairs, managing the problem of territorial disputes in the South China Sea (or for that matter between Japan, China, Taiwan and Korea to the north) is the proximate challenge. There is real danger that the United States could be drawn into conflicts in which it has no core interests in this theatre. Encouraging China and ASEAN to make progress toward a formal code of conduct for the South China Sea at the same time as maintaining neutrality in disputes over conflicting claims was the primary objective. There was much commentary about how this issue rendered the EAS ineffectual; precisely the reverse is the case, with the ‘civilised conversation’ (as described by ASEAN Secretary General, Surin Pisuwan) helping to restore the status quo and keeping the door open to progress on core American objectives, shared by most regional partners. The principal danger to regional stability and prosperity over the past year has been the outbreak of akrasia among all the Asian parties principal to these disputes in the face of overwhelmingly more powerful interests in economic integration and engagement. Whatever the origins of the breakdown of reasoned self-interest among the protagonists in the South China Sea territorial disputes, the US interest is in helping define another, cooperative course, not to appear as a meta-protagonist toward China, and that interest increasingly shines through.

On economic affairs, the United States is pushing the TPP, to which some ASEAN members, but not Indonesia, have signed up, while ASEAN is promoting the more inclusive Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) ordered around tying together the trade arrangements that have ASEAN at their centre. These represent two very different pathways toward trade liberalisation and commercial reform in Asia and the Pacific.

As Andrew Elek explains in this week’s lead essay the US mission to ASEAN was not caught flatfooted on the disconnection between its ambition for a tightly negotiated TPP and the more open-ended ASEAN RCEP.

In the past, the United States has found it difficult to relate the ASEAN integration enterprise itself, or even that agenda as it is reflected in the agenda of the Asia Pacific Cooperation process — being neither philosophically nor practically engaged. But in a modest but important agreement with ASEAN around the East Asia Summit, it has found a tangible way to contribute to the regional impulse for deeper economic integration, through the so-called E3 initiative — the Expanded Economic Engagement agreement. This initiative involves a United States–ASEAN trade facilitation agreement, which aims to simplify customs procedures and improve the transparency of customs administration, investment confidence and regulatory principles and practices.

And, unlike the TPP negotiations, the benefits from work through this trade facilitation agreement can be gained without having to wait for progress on the issue of residual border barriers on agricultural commodities and low-technology manufactures. While the E3 initiative might be perceived as a wedge into ASEAN on the TPP negotiations, it can proceed independently of participation in TPP negotiations and importantly it locks the United States into practical cooperation on ASEAN’s own march toward an ASEAN Economic Community.

Peter Drysdale is Editor of the East Asia Forum.

Comments are closed.

Support Quality Analysis

Donate
The East Asia Forum office is based in Australia and EAF acknowledges the First Peoples of this land — in Canberra the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people — and recognises their continuous connection to culture, community and Country.

Article printed from East Asia Forum (https://www.eastasiaforum.org)

Copyright ©2024 East Asia Forum. All rights reserved.