Peer reviewed analysis from world leading experts

On the edge in Asia, yet right in the middle of it

Reading Time: 5 mins

In Brief

The course of Asia’s future will be significantly determined by how the bigger powers in the region — China, India, Indonesia, Japan and South Korea, perhaps — manage their own national development and choose to play into regional and world affairs. In this context there is natural pre-occupation with China’s transition towards great power status and particularly its relationship with the established powers, importantly the United States

Share

  • A
  • A
  • A

Share

  • A
  • A
  • A

; how India is travelling as a regional and global player; what the potential of Indonesia is; and whether the established powers in Asia and outside can manage the transition in the structure of Asian power.

But recent developments in Northeast and Southeast Asia should give pause to the idea that the games played between the big and the powerful are entirely under their own control or within their own grasp. Even the biggest powers are beholden in some way to their smaller allies or clients. One manifestation of this is how the the tensions between Japan, China, South Korea and Taiwan over territorial and other issues (of history and national face) have the potential to enmesh the United States in conflict with China when it has no clear national stake at issue. Another is the threat of US entrapment in the claims of Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei or Malaysia to the disputed Spratly, Paracel and Scarborough islands in the South China Sea. And yet another is the increasingly awkward relationship between China and North Korea. There are security and political spill-overs that have little to do with the interests directly at issue among the major players but which independently have potential to confound them. How smaller countries manage their relations with larger countries on this plane clearly weighs into outcomes among the major players.

What small countries do, whether it is beneficial or damaging to themselves, may not commonly have much effect on others, especially big countries. In economics, there is a ‘small country assumption’ that facilitates the analysis of outcomes in these economies and relies on that assumption. If Cambodia, Brunei or Laos, for example, chose to put up some large trade barriers, this would hardly have an effect on the rest of the world, although it would still hurt their own consumers and exporters substantially. But there are circumstances where what small countries do or do not do matters greatly to others. This is especially the case where behaviour is imitated among small countries, in the same region or globally. But also, with contagious disease eradication, anti-money laundering, fissile material control, shelters for terrorists or tax havens there can be external effects on the interests of all countries from what happens in smaller countries, including the biggest players in the international system. The problem of the eradication of a disease like polio, if it appears in a place like Afghanistan or Pakistan, poses a global threat, not merely a threat to either of those countries. So on this plane too, taking an interest in the whole neighbourhood, the small players as well as the big, is part of the watch. The negative spill-overs from fragile or poor countries as well as small rich states may have consequence.

In these ways, countries on the edge of Asia can be at the crux of regional outcomes. How confidently and purposefully they manage their affairs is not at the periphery but at the centre of things.

This month’s issue of East Asia Forum Quarterly (EAFQ)On the edge in Asia’, edited by Nicholas Farrelly and Li Narangoa, examines a number of dimensions in the circumstances of the smaller players in Asia, on the edge.

Sitting next to the region’s great powers can be tricky. Today both Mongolia and Myanmar are steering economic, political and diplomatic development alongside their giant neighbours. For Mongolia, its relationships with China and Russia have motivated a bold and inclusive foreign policy, one that has successfully cultivated new ties from Western Europe to Australia. In the case of Myanmar, the post-dictatorship government is using its fresh democratic credentials to escape the sole embrace of China.

This week’s lead essay, from Mongolian expert Tuvshintugs Batdelger, describes the remarkable achievement of his country over the past two decades in transforming its economy, with a growth rate last year over 12 per cent — perhaps the highest in the world. He also points out the problems — low though improving standards of governance, defining a development path through adjustment to the commodities boom and keeping Mongolia’s creative economic and foreign diplomacy on track. In an accompanying piece, Julian Dierkes argues that Mongolia needs to ramp up the economic dimension of its foreign policy to manage these challenges. Indeed, in launching the EAFQ last Thursday in Canberra, Mongolia’s Foreign Minister Luvsanvandan Bold, declared his country’s ambition to do just that, seeking a more active role in regional economic as well as political arrangements.

This issue of EAFQ traverses aspects of ‘being on the edge’ in Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, North Korea, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Northeast India, Laos and Central Asia.

Edges can mean borders and frontiers, as Jason Cons notes on the frontiers of Bangladesh and India.

Being on the edge in Asia can imply a heightened sense of anxiety. Some of these anxieties and how they are being dealt with are the subject of this issue of EAFQ.

Being on the edge, of course, also requires constantly looking out for the next big external shock or mobilising capabilities for development domestically and externally that may have so far eluded a remote smaller economy. Development remains the major challenge in a number of smaller countries in our region.

The edges of Asia are where we can judge the early indications of some of the big changes that loom. There, we can share many of the expectations, some of the forebodings, but hopefully also a strong sense, in a number of Asia’s smaller economies and polities, of the determination and the capacity to overcome the challenges.

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.