Authors: Jonas Parello-Plesner and Parag Khanna, ECFR
Last year proved a tipping point for China’s approach to the world. The confluence of Europe’s debt crisis and America’s contracting defence budget has created rising expectations that China will shoulder ever greater power burdens for international stability.
No longer can it keep a low profile in international strategic and economic affairs. Could it join America as a world policeman sooner than expected? Read more…
Author: Jonas Parello-Plesner, European Council on Foreign Relations
Great powers are sometimes moulded by events as much as, if not more than, by grand strategy. In 1898, the United States — at the time an isolationist and anti-colonial power — entered onto the world stage after Spain allegedly sank the USS Maine in Havana Harbor.
The commercial adventures of the East India Company compelled the British state to intervene in China, sparking the Opium Wars, while in 1850, the British foreign secretary, Lord Palmerston, ordered the British navy into the Aegean in order to protect a British subject, Don Pacifico, and reclaim his lost property. All were defining historical moments, even if they were identified as such only in retrospect. Read more…
Author: Jonas Parello-Plesner, European Council on Foreign Relations
The EU can work together – at least when it is pushed together. China’s heavy-handed effort to get European nations to skip the Nobel peace prize ceremony in Oslo last week did the trick.
Not only did member states show up but Serbia and Ukraine, both countries with EU ambitions, were encouraged to show up as well. Yet this was atypical of a relationship with the EU in which China, with newfound power, has found it easy to divide-and-rule. Read more…
Author: Jonas Parello-Plesner, European Council on Foreign Relations
There are a couple of certainties about Cancun. It will not bring a global deal. The US will try to focus the agenda on a lack of transparency in China’s emissions control efforts — to cover the fact that the US also brings nothing substantial to the table and is stuck in an anachronistic, fuel-guzzling economy and mindset. Chinese negotiators will arrive with their usual arguments, but equipped with better PR techniques for making sure they aren’t seen as the game stopper — the real lesson they took away from Copenhagen. The poorer countries will clamour for more aid for both mitigation and adaption to climate change. The EU’s credibility among other key players will be slightly dented by its current internal skirmishes on moving from 20 per cent to 30 per cent reductions by 2020. At the end of these two weeks in Mexico, those who aspire to a global deal will be directed towards 2011 and South Africa, and few will believe that it can happen there either. Finally, the summit will be a lot warmer than Copenhagen, and the general world temperature will continue to rise, as the scientists keep telling us.
The conclusion is that big global deals are off – at least for the time being. That’s the short, and somewhat depressing, summary. Read more…
Author: Jonas Parello-Plesner, European Council on Foreign Relations
It is the biggest multilateral event this side of the G20, including the leaders of India, China, Japan, Korea, Indonesia and Australia. On Saturday the 30th of October the 16 leaders of the East Asia summit will gather in Hanoi, with special representation for both Russia and the US. Secretary Clinton is joining as the latest leg of her impressive Asia-Pacific trip. From Russia, Lavrov, is flying in. The EU, however, is conspicuously absent.
During the Bush-administration there was no American interest in joining the East Asia Summit, perceived as another talk shop with concrete results. The Obama administration reversed all that. It both signed up for Asian multilateralism – the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation with ASEAN – and made sure it brought something to the negotiation table. Read more…
Author: Jonas Parello-Plesner, European Council on Foreign Relations
The saying ‘forget about Europe’ has become common in Asia in 2010. It has been reinforced by the euro crisis provoked by massive Greek debt. After the euro crisis the Chinese financial press largely wrote Europe off or compared it to Latin America after the 1980s debt crisis. The economic basis for the EU’s power is decreasing. The eternal process that characterised the Lisbon treaty, which is now finally in place, has been perceived as endless procedure for Asian outsiders with little impact while the global order moves on.
Yet the EU still has something to offer in Asia. It is moving ahead on one important area where it has overtaken the US: trade. It is often said that the business of Asia is business. Read more…
Author: Jonas Parello-Plesner
There are rumours that Kim Jong-il will visit China late-March. If the visit takes place, it must be after the 18 March when the joint US-ROK military training ends, which is regarded by North Korea as a prelude to war. The supreme commander can’t be seen to leave the country during that period. Alternately, the visit might be made by a top official in the North Korean system, such as Kim Young-nam. So, what should we expect from this meeting?
Broadly speaking, our expectations can be framed around Kim Jong-il’s promise to his people. Read more…
Author: Jonas Parello-Plesner
Relations with North Korea seem heeded in a more positive direction after the Chinese PM Wen’s visit to Pyongyang, President Hu’s talk with Kim’s envoy and after the informal meeting between State Department official, Sung Kim and North Korean nuclear negotiator, Ri Gun in San Diego at the end of October. Yet tensions are still simmering with the naval clash between North and South Korea Monday the 9th.
On top of that Obama is going to tour the region starting Friday. Read more…
Author: Jonas Parello-Plesner
Barack Obama: ‘America … has to talk with its enemies.’ ’[It] requires allies who will listen to each other, learn from each other and, most of all, trust each other’.
North Korea is a litmus test for Obama’s foreign policy tenets. On the one hand, Obama promised to speak with the enemy to bring new results in foreign policy. Read more…
Author: Jonas Parello-Plesner
China and India (Chindia) is on everybody’s lips when talking about rising Asia.
Then what is KIA? A car, most people would reply. Yet it could also be the new brand-name for Asia’s middle powers; (K)orea, (I)ndonesia, and (A)ustralia. They are Asia’s 4th, 5th, and 6th largest economies. All three are often dwarfed by the big power play between China, India and Japan and the region’s –and the world’s – superpower, the US.
Yet look at Indonesia’s population as the world’s third largest democracy, Korea’s economy, and Australia’s size – a continent in itself. They are solid middle powers. Relocate them to Europe and they would be large countries on most accounts. In Asia, they are too small to be big, but too large to be small.
Read more…
Author: Jonas Parello-Plesner
Since the onset of the financial crisis, there have been suggestions to form a G-2 consisting of the United States and China.
This proposal is based on the facts that China is the largest creditor of the U.S., the U.S. is China’s biggest export destination, and the strong interdependence of their two economies provides a foundation for joint action that can shape the global economy.
This thinking is tempting when the G8 is seen to reflect an outdated balance of power and the G20 is considered too diluted to respond to global challenges.
Yet a G-2 would give a false assumption about stronger global governance and China would probably not deliver in such a format. Let me explain why.
Read more…
