Author: Shiro Armstrong, ANU

In President Obama’s landmark speech in Canberra last month, an over-riding theme was that the United States welcomes China’s rise so long as it plays by the global rules.

Yet those rules are dynamic, and there is a need to have China involved in setting them given the scale of China and its importance to the regional and global economy, as well as to global security. Read more…

Author: Shiro Armstrong, ANU

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement got a big boost around the APEC meeting in Honolulu. A broad framework was announced, progress highlighted, and a 12 month deadline for a deal was set.

The TPP is the first trade agreement which President Obama did not inherit from his predecessors, and it is seen as a means of keeping the US engaged in Asia. Read more…

Author: Peter Drysdale, ANU

Whatever is done to re-position Asian regional architecture, it needs to take account of Asia’s new role in global economic governance.

It needs to attend to the implications of Asia’s rise for political and security affairs. Read more…

Author: Sourabh Gupta, Samuels International

On November 5, President Barack Obama became the first US president in more than three decades to pay a state visit to India during his first term in office. The visit, though modest in content, followed in his predecessor George W. Bush’s vein of extricating India from the ‘technology denial regime’ that Washington itself had instituted in bits and pieces following New Delhi’s nuclear test of 1974. Further, in a gesture that thrilled his hosts, President Obama endorsed India’s candidature to a permanent seat in a future expanded Security Council, during an address to the Indian Parliament. The American side, curiously though, provided no such direct assurance in the Joint Statement. Rather, the Indian side borrows the president’s phraseology to Parliament – look forward to a reformed UN Security Council that includes India as a permanent member – and thereafter proceeds to express gratitude for it as affirmation of India’s candidature!

Insofar as the East Asian region is concerned, both countries expressed their commitment to an ‘open, balanced and inclusive’ order, and to the stability of, and access to, vital public commons therein – air, sea, space, and cyberspace. Read more…

Author: Evan Feigenbaum, CFR

With President Obama having visited New Delhi earlier this month, it seems like a good time to ask why Washington and New Delhi remain so burdened, even imprisoned, by continental preoccupations.

To Americans, India can be a real jumble of contradictions. It is a maritime nation—strategically situated near key chokepoints—but with a continental strategic tradition. It is a nation of illustrious mercantile traditions but for decades walled off large swaths of its economy. Much has changed, principally because rapid economic growth has allowed India to break from the confining shackles of South Asia. India is again an Asian player, better integrated into the East Asian economic system. Read more…

Author: Ernie Bower, CSIS

The Obama Administration deserves the highest marks for reinvigorating the US’ focus on Asia. Trips by the President and the US Secretary of State have been well prepared and executed. These trips have elevated existing ties with old friends, transformed relationships into partnerships, and have been characterized by substantive agendas and heart. But leaving Seoul without an agreement on the US Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS) is not the right signal to an Asia that considers American determination to pass KORUS as the acid test for whether the US can return to a leadership position on trade. For the US, a strong trade policy is crucial to foreign policy in Asia.

The US Administration’s full-court press in Asia is important. Read more…

Author: Robert Sutter, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University

Since the early years of the George W. Bush administration, US and Chinese leaders have endeavored to emphasise the positive aspects of the US-China relationship and to deal with their many differences out of the public limelight, mainly through the dozens of largely secret dialogues that characterise recent Sino-American relations. Barack Obama came to office with the unusual distinction of avoiding significant China related issues during his long presidential campaign.

Since taking office, Obama has sought the cooperation of China and other world powers to deal with such key international issues as the global financial crisis, nuclear proliferation, terrorism, and climate change. Read more…

Author: Peter Drysdale, ANU

There is no question more central to the future of political stability and security in Asia and the Pacific than how the rise of Chinese power is managed alongside the established power of the United States of America. Over the last few years, Hugh White has made an immensely important contribution by forcing us all to think about this question. The central issue for White is whether it is possible to construct an arrangement whereby the new powers in Asia, most prominently China, can engage with the established power, the United States, as the structure of regional power undergoes dramatic change. The answer to this question is vital to the future of regional political stability in the intrinsically unstable process of transition in the balance of regional political power.

In the political sphere, former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made focus on this issue an international political mission. Read more…

Author: Hugh White, ANU

Asia’s security and Australia’s future depend not just on the choices China might make, but on America’s choices too. Even if China overtakes it economically over the next few decades, the US will remain the second-strongest country in the world for a long time to come, and by far the most serious constraint on Chinese power. The way America chooses to use its power is as important as anything China decides, and America’s choices may be harder than China’s.

A peaceful new order in Asia to accommodate China’s growing power can only be built if America is willing to allow China some political and strategic space. Such concessions do not often happen. Read more…

Author: Ernest Z. Bower, CSIS

In late September or early October, President Barack Obama will host the first US-ASEAN Summit on US soil. The summit will be the second of its kind following the inaugural meeting in Singapore last November. There are two venue options now being considered by the White House: New York, on the margins of the UN General Assembly; or Washington D.C., the US capital. There is only one correct answer to this foreign policy test: Washington.

While the policy teams at the State Department, the National Security Council, the Pentagon, the Commerce Department, and the Office of the US Trade Representative will understand immediately the core importance of ASEAN, political leaders may not have connected the dots yet. Read more…

Author: Fenna Egberink, Clingendael Institute

The United States’ recent Asian diplomacy has been most interesting. The US has drawn ASEAN countries into the guarded enmity between the US and China. Is this to Southeast Asia’s benefit?

Earlier this year China took a noticeably more proactive stance vis-à-vis its regional partners. After first asserting the South China Sea to be a ‘core interest’ during bilateral discussions with the US, a term generally reserved for its claims to Tibet, Taiwan and Xinjiang, China defied US diplomatic efforts by using its veto-powers in the UN Security Council to block actions against North Korea in the aftermath of the Cheonan incident.    Read more…

Author: Simon Tay, SIIA

Ambassador-At-Large Tommy Koh has written a comment which addresses several points in my book Asia Alone: The Dangerous Post-Crisis Divide from America.

Questions of leadership and engagement in Asia are live issues. New frameworks for cooperation are taking shape, with the US announcing it will join the East Asia Summit as well as host the second US-ASEAN Summit. Australian and Japanese proposals for a new community have been shelved. Read more…

Author: Vikas Kumar, Bangalore

Over the last two decades Asia has seen the emergence of competing centres of power, an unprecedented development in its modern history. A similar development in modern West Europe was followed by immense inter-state rivalry that ended only after a series of devastating wars. Even then it was the common threat of Communism and the security umbrella of an outsider, the United States, that curbed inter-state military rivalry. The United States served as a channel for inter-state communication and also balanced local powers against each other. In addition, it committed itself to defend West Europe from Soviet aggression.  While Asian countries are cognisant of the economics of conflict, none of the major constituent regions of Asia — East, West and South Asia — has a common enemy that could force otherwise competing powers to close ranks.

More importantly, the capacity of any state, including the United States, to serve as a guarantor of security in 21^st century Asia is increasingly moot. Read more…

Author: Evan A. Feigenbaum, CFR

It’s been a long and frustrating (and bloody exhausting … ) seventeen months for American trade policy. But on the margins of last month’s G20 summit, President Obama at last committed to complete the Korea-US Free Trade Agreement (KORUS).

Seoul hosts the next G20 summit in November. So the move—and Obama’s timing—makes a lot of sense. Indeed, as my friend Phil Levy puts it, ‘the failure to move on KORUS was calling into question US credibility on trade in general and US standing in Asia in particular. Read more…

Author: Peter Drysdale

The United States is heading towards a crunch point in re-shaping its relationships with Asia. It’s not that there are big immediate issues to deal with —although  the problem of North Korea is active again, with unresolved questions over the sinking of the South Korean naval vessel, the Cheonan. Rather, it’s the imperative of follow-through on the commitment that America’s first Pacific President, Barack Obama (‘ a guy who actually grew up in Indonesia for several years’ ) and Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, have made to staking out America’s long-term strategic economic and political claims in Asia before the time has passed.  There have been recent contributions to EAF on America’s regional interests from Vogel, Pempel and Bower.

Deep down these new American commitments are motivated by a growing anxiety about the neglect of American interests in the fastest growing part of the world and how the rise of China will impact on them if the neglect continues any longer. Read more…