Economics, Politics and Public Policy in East Asia and the Pacific
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.
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…
Author: Donald K. Emmerson, Stanford University
Southeast Asian policy makers looking north to the Asian mainland and east across the Pacific see two major assets to their region: China’s biggest-in-the-world economy and America’s best-in-the-world military.
Of course, America is still important to Southeast Asia’s economy: the US and China each imported 10.1 per cent of the total value of ASEAN’s exports in 2009; and accounted for almost identical shares of FDI inflows into ASEAN: 10.8 per cent and 10.4 per cent respectively.
Author: Frans-Paul van der Putten, Clingendael
This century will be America’s Pacific century, wrote US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the November issue of Foreign Policy.
As she put it: ‘The future of politics will be decided in Asia, not Afghanistan or Iraq, and the United States will be right at the centre of the action’. Read more…
Author: Sandy Gordon, ANU
Australia’s Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, would have been more politically comfortable had she left the issue of uranium sales to India rusting in the ‘parking lot’.
The pressing question is therefore: why visit the issue now? Read more…
Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, East Asia Forum
The whirlwind visit of President Barack Obama to Australia and Indonesia last week has, many believe, forever changed the Asia Pacific strategic landscape with a re-assertion of American primacy and power in Asia. Prudence might recommend a more cautious assessment.
American power is already well entrenched in Asia and the Pacific. Read more…
Authors: David Capie, Victoria University; and Amitav Acharya, American University
This week President Obama will join seventeen other Asian leaders in Bali for the Sixth East Asia Summit (EAS).
With a tough economy at home and the decision of the Congressional ‘super-committee’ on the federal budget only days away, this is hardly a good time for a US president to be out of the country. Obama’s decision to participate in the EAS for the first time in Bali is therefore a powerful symbol of a shift in American policy towards Asia. It also says much about the evolving nature of regional cooperation. Read more…
Author: Hugh White, ANU
As China’s power grows, the Asia we have known is passing into history, and a new and very different Asia is taking shape.
Barack Obama’s visit is a key moment in that transformation, because he is coming here to promote America’s view of how the new Asia should work. Read more…