America and China: strategic choices in the Asian Century

President Barack Obama meets with Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, on 14 February 2012, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. (Photo: AAP)

Author: Hugh White, ANU

Four months ago, as Australia’s parliamentarians rose to give President Barack Obama a standing ovation, it seemed they had already decided how best to navigate the profound strategic changes that must inevitably flow from the shift in relative economic weight from West to East.

Obama laid out in the starkest terms yet his determination that America will resist China’s challenge to US leadership in Asia, using all the elements of its power — including military force — to perpetuate a future for Asia framed by American values and interests. Read more…

US embargo on Iranian oil a blow to US-China relations

An Iranian security guard walks in front of the Mahshahr petrochemical complex in Khuzestan province. Media reports state that a bill to stop oil sales to European Union countries involved in the oil embargo initiative against Iran was ready to be approved by the Iranian parliament. (Photo: AAP)

Author: Kai Ito, ANU

Beijing has chosen to defy Washington’s embargo on Iranian oil.

While this does not bode well for putting an end to Iran’s uranium-enrichment program, the embargo also represents another worrying failure for US-China relations. Read more…

Xi Jinping goes to America, building mutual trust

Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta shake hands before their meeting at the Pentagon, 14 February 2012. (Photo: AAP)

Author: Cheng Li, Brookings

Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping’s current visit to the United States is important to both nations, but for different reasons.

Xi is expected to soon take over from Hu Jintao as leader of the world’s most populous country and second-largest economy. Read more…

US–China trade friction and India’s role in the G20

A worker at an auto shop changes the tyres on a car in Shanghai on 1 Feb. 2012. A US industry and union coalition has accused China of sweeping illegal subsidies to its auto-parts sector that threaten to destroy more than a million jobs in the US. (Photo: AAP)

Author: Geethanjali Nataraj, NCAER

As developed countries struggle to recover after the global recession and try to confront the looming sovereign debt crisis in Europe, big emerging markets are now driving global growth.

Given the slow down in developed countries, emerging economies are trying to boost domestic demand to sustain growth — and this is particularly the case in China. Read more…

Can Asia save the sinking world economy?

Visitors pass away their time outside the SM Mall of Asia, the world's third largest shopping mall, in Manila, Philippines. (Photo: AAP)

Author: Choong Yong Ahn, Chung-Ang University

Since the fourth quarter of 2010, the global economy has faced serious uncertainty and a turbulent outlook.

Both the US and Europe have gloomy growth prospects due to a lack of credible medium-term plans for debt reduction in the US and the sovereign debt crisis in southern Europe. Read more…

Asian security strategy: one hand not clapping

Philippine marines storm a beach with their counterpart from the US Marines Battalion Landing Team, 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit based in Okinawa, Japan, during the annual joint military exercise at San Antonio, Zambales province northwest of Manila, Philippines on 23 October 2011. (Photo: AAP)

Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, East Asia Forum

The whirlwind visit of President Barack Obama to Australia on the way to the East Asia Summit in Indonesia last November, many believe, forever changed the Asia Pacific strategic landscape with a re-assertion of American primacy and power in Asia.

What was the thinking behind the moves that Obama announced in Canberra and how will it shape Southeast Asia’s strategic future? Read more…

Taiwan’s vote and its international implications

Pasuya Yao (C), director of the Taiwan Government Information Office, points to an advertisement for the 13th bid to join the United Nations by Taiwan. (Photo: AAP)

Author: Nitin Pai, Takshashila Institution

Taiwan’s presidential elections, since they first started in 1996, have in large part been referenda on the ‘One China’ policy.

Voters are generally offered two deviations from the status quo — either a path toward eventual reunification with mainland China or a path toward independence. Read more…

America’s threat to trans-Pacific trade

Chinese President Hu Jintao is pictured during his meeting with President Barack Obama at the APEC Summit in Honolulu, Saturday 12 November 2011. (Photo: AAP)

Author: Jagdish N. Bhagwati, Columbia University and CFR

As if undermining the WTO’s Doha Round of global free-trade talks was not bad enough (the last ministerial meeting in Geneva produced barely a squeak), the US has compounded its folly by actively promoting the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

President Barack Obama announced this with nine Asian countries during his recent trip to the region. Read more…

Trans-Pacific Partnership: a real hope

Japan Obama Asia APEC Summit

Author: Hubert Wu, University of Melbourne

It is wrong to assess the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) against its short-term benefits — these may very well be non-existent. Instead, the deal’s true value hinges upon its chances of a medium-term expansion into Asia.

The TPP is an ambitious regional trade agreement under negotiation between ten economies: Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the US, Vietnam and as of early November, Japan. The Agreement has concluded its ninth round of negotiations in Lima, Peru, with an unofficial round also occurring recently at the 2011 APEC summit in Hawaii.

Read more…

Pakistan–United States relations at the brink

Pakistani protesters carry an effigy representing NATO on a bicycle as they shout slogans during a demonstration in Islamabad on 8 December 2011 against the cross-border NATO air strike on Pakistani troops. (Photo: AAP)

Author: Alicia Mollaun, ANU

This year will be remembered as annus horribilis for Pakistan–United States relations.

CIA contractor Raymond Davis kicked off the downward slide when he gunned down two Pakistanis in Lahore, creating an enormous diplomatic immunity circus, which saw the media, politicians and even President Obama entering the fray. Read more…

US, China and Australia’s Asian century: a view on Hugh White’s argument

An Australian soldier (second from left) helps explain to US troops Australian fighting procedures while in training at Robertson Barracks in Darwin, Thursday, 1 Dec. 2011. There are plans for the number of US marines based in the city to rise to 2500 by 2017. (Photo: AAP)

Author: Brad Glosserman, CSIS, Washington DC

‘No, thanks’.

That, in summary, is Hugh White’s response to the recent announcement that the US would be sending marines on permanent rotation to Darwin.

White is Professor of Strategic Studies at the ANU, one of Asia’s most distinguished strategists, and a former Australian deputy secretary of defence. And he has been making the case for strategic reorientation in Canberra for a couple of years now. Read more…

Obstacles to closer India–US relations

President Barack Obama listens as Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh reads his toast during a State Dinner on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington. (Photo: AAP)

Author: Vikas Kumar, Azim Premji University

During her last visit to India in July, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged India to play a bigger role in Asia.

While this predates Clinton’s more recent suggestion that India, China and the US should work more closely together, it is still widely believed that heightened India–US cooperation is aimed at encircling China. And it appears the symbolic element of official India–US interactions is often mistaken for a sustainable strategic relationship. Read more…