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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Author: Geoff Wade, ISEAS, Singapore
That US engagement with East Asia has grown in recent years is news to none.
But as the dust settles following President Obama’s announcement of the imminent stationing of US marine forces in northern Australia, it is perhaps time to assess what this development might augur for the broader East Asian region in the longer term. Read more…
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…
Author: Anita Prakash, ERIA
The sixth East Asia Summit (EAS) and 19th ASEAN Summit were held from 17–19 November 2011.
The EAS in particular helped renew regional channels of cooperation, a development marked by the entry of the US and Russia into the summit. Read more…
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…
Authors: Bonnie S. Glaser and Brittany Billingsley, CSIS
Since Ma Ying-jeou assumed the presidency in Taiwan in May 2008, relations across the Taiwan Strait have improved dramatically.
In the past three and a half years, 16 agreements have been signed on practical matters that have largely benefited both sides of the strait. Read more…
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…
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…
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…
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…
