Hemispheric Pressure: As Asian Powers Rise, How Should the West Respond?
This content was originally published by THOMAS J. CHRISTENSEN on 12 May 2017 | 9:00 am.
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Rachman gets the big picture in Asia right, but he sometimes gets important details wrong. For example, China’s recent military modernization means forward-deployed American forces and bases in the region are vulnerable to attack in ways they were not during the Taiwan Strait crisis of 1995–96. It is incorrect and somewhat dangerous, however, for him to argue that Beijing “backed off” after the Clinton administration sent two aircraft carrier battle groups toward Taiwan in early 1996. Beijing apparently had no plan to escalate anyway. Nationalism is indeed an important part of the Chinese Communist Party’s domestic legitimacy that influences Beijing’s foreign policies, but that phenomenon long predates the brutal crackdown on protesters on June 4, 1989. Beijing and Washington have worked out peaceful methods to handle their difference over Taiwan since 1972, but the United States never formally accepted Beijing’s One China policy, as Rachman states. Instead Washington adheres to its own version, with intentional ambiguity in regard to Taiwan’s legal status in relation to mainland China.
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Like many, Rachman sometimes seems hamstrung by historical knowledge. In 1914 an archduke’s murder in Sarajevo caused economically interdependent states in Europe to fight a giant war of survival, so why can’t disputes over Asian rocks, reefs and artificial islands create a massive conflagration today? This is a good question, but many differences exist between these two worlds. There are no tightly knit alliance blocks in contemporary East Asia. Today all great powers have either nuclear weapons or nuclear-armed allies, a deterrent to massive conventional escalation. Perhaps most important, globalization in the past few decades has produced fundamentally different and deeper economic interdependence than in the past. The massive investment flows between the industrial economies, the rise of intra-industry trade and the creation of complex transnational production chains are all forces for peace today that were missing in 1914 Europe.
Rachman’s “Easternization” process matters, but so far mainly as a subset of the larger process of globalization that enabled it in the first place. The growing pains of the East pose threats of instability to a highly integrated global system, not directly to the West itself. No Asian actor can currently project military power other than ballistic missiles and cyber volleys very far from home. Serious East-West military clashes, then, would have to occur in the East. Unfortunately, Rachman is correct that Western comfort stops there. Asia is now a vital organ in the globalized system on which we all depend; challenges to Asian stability are real, and Western actors have less wherewithal than in the past to contribute actively to maintaining stability there.
“Easternization” has implications not only for war and peace but also for global governance. Institutions created after World War II have not adjusted smoothly to eastward shifts in power, nor have they kept up with the global demand for cooperation to counter climate change, financial instability, underdevelopment and nuclear proliferation. China has recently taken the lead to fill some of those institutional holes with cooperative ventures like the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank and the “One Belt, One Road” initiative. Beyond the region, Asian states’ growing trade and financial relations with Africa and Latin America are generally positive developments. They come, however, with few strings attached and can thereby undercut recent American and European efforts to condition development aid on improvements in governance.
Rachman’s book concludes with some optimism about the West’s continuing influence. The integrated global economy gives enormous power advantages to institutionally sound governments in the United States and the European Union. China’s insecure single-party state is politically unwilling and structurally unable to replace the American dollar as the world’s reserve currency or Western Europe as a global banking center. Moreover, as long as leaders in the East need growth to stay in power, they should be reluctant to weaken ties to a highly integrated global marketplace. We should then expect considerably less great power conflict during 21st-century easternization than there was in the very bloody 20th century of Western dominance.
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