The big task for leaders is to ensure consensus prevails in Asia without stoking China’s fear of encirclement
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A file photo of Asean leaders during the Asean summit in Phnom Penh. Photo: Reuters
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When an American president’s first overseas trip after
his re-election is to Asia, one can be sure that something big is afoot
in the region. Indeed, Barack Obama’s decision to go first to
impoverished and long-isolated Myanmar attests to the potency of the
changes under way in that country, and to the US awareness of China’s
efforts to shape an Asia that kowtows to its economic and foreign policy
interests.
Events at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(Asean) and East Asian leadership summits in Cambodia’s capital Phnom
Penh, the other key stop on Obama’s tour, confirmed this. At the Asean
summit’s conclusion, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, a former Khmer
Rouge commander who has ruled his country with an iron fist for three
decades, closed the meeting by proclaiming that all of the leaders had
agreed not to “internationalize” disputes over islands in South China
Sea. China’s Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, present at the summit to sign
new multi-million-dollar aid agreements with Cambodia, smiled and nodded
in agreement at this apparent acceptance of Chinese wishes.
Not so fast, said Filipino President Benigno S. Aquino
III. No such agreement had been made. Hun Sen had mischaracterized the
discussions among Asean’s leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko
Noda, who was also present in Phnom Penh, agreed with Aquino.
At the summit’s end, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei
and Singapore joined with Aquino in demanding that Hun Sen’s statement
be amended. All six of these states have been pushing China to negotiate
with Asean a multilateral process to resolve the South China Sea
territorial disputes. China, dwarfing all of them, prefers bilateral
talks.
As Hun Sen’s behaviour demonstrates, countries that are
overly dependent on Chinese aid and diplomatic backing will harmonize
their policies accordingly. For two decades, Myanmar behaved likewise,
until Chinese overreach, particularly the now-abandoned Myitsone dam
project, revealed in full the subservient relationship that China
envisioned. Indeed, China’s arrogance —100% of the power from the
proposed dam was to be exported to China—was probably the key factor in
precipitating Myanmar’s democratic transition and new openness to the
world.
But Asians must not misconstrue Obama’s visit. Although
the US is certainly undertaking a strategic pivot to Asia, the US alone
cannot construct a viable security structure for the region. From India
to Japan, every Asian country must play its part.
There is no alternative to this approach because China’s
rise has been accompanied by massive social and economic changes—in some
instances, dislocation—across the entire region. Asia’s economies have,
of course, become much more integrated in recent decades, particularly
through production for global supply chains. But economic integration
has not been matched diplomatically. Even two of the region’s great
democracies, Japan and South Korea, which have nearly identical
strategic interests, have allowed an old territorial dispute—itself
reflecting older unresolved animosities—to block closer cooperation.
China’s prolonged leadership transition, punctuated by
the purge of Bo Xilai, suggests that its leaders’ ability to continue to
manage China’s emergence as a great power is not entirely certain. That
makes the absence of a widely accepted regional structure of peace all
the more dangerous.
International orders emerge either by consensus or
through force. The great task for Obama, incoming Chinese President Xi
Jinping, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the new Japanese and
South Korean leaders who will come to power following elections in
December, and all Asean members is to ensure that consensus prevails in
Asia without stoking China’s greatest strategic fear —encirclement.
As everyone in Asia should recognize, whenever communist
China has deemed that it faced such a threat, it has resorted to war—in
Korea in 1950, India in 1962, the Soviet Union in 1969 and Vietnam in
1979. But fear of provoking China should not stop Asia’s leaders from
seeking a regional security consensus, such as the proposed code of
conduct for disputes in the South China Sea. Only the weakest of Asian
states will submit willingly to Chinese hegemony—or, for that matter, to
a Cold War-style US-led containment strategy. Indeed, the idea that
Asian countries must choose between a Chinese or American future is
false. But can Asia’s fear of hegemony and China’s fear of military
encirclement be reconciled?
Only a shared sense of common purpose can prevent
regional militarization. Some early steps in the right direction are
visible. The US has joined several other countries in embracing a
Trans-Pacific Partnership, a free-trade pact linking the Americas with
Asia. Japan’s ruling party and leading opposition party are coming
around to support the idea, and Obama’s invitation to China to join
suggests that the US is trying to forge regional consensus where it can.
For now, however, China has other ideas. It has pressed
Asean to establish a trade zone that would include China, but exclude
the US and Japan.
In any case, trade agreements, however beneficial, can do
little to defuse Asia’s sovereignty disputes, and it is here—the
greatest current source of regional tensions—that a shared common
enterprise is not only possible, but also necessary if peace is to be
preserved. After all, no government in the region—whether a democracy
like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines, a one-party state
like China and Vietnam, or a tiny monarchy like Brunei—can acquiesce on
such issues and hope to survive.
©2012/PROJECT SYNDICATE
Yuriko Koike Japan’s former minister of defence and national security
adviser, is a former chairwoman of Japan’s Liberal Democrat Party, and
currently an opposition leader in the Diet.
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