Easternisation: War and Peace in the Asian Century

by Gideon Rachman

it is conceivable that some future government in Tokyo might definitively shrink away from the risk of confrontation with China and tacitly accept Beijing’s dominance.

If a conflict were ever to break out, the US navy could attempt to strangle the Chinese economy at the Strait of Malacca and the three other less-used straits (Sunda, Lombok and Makassar) that connect the South China Sea to the Indian Ocean. China, however, is well aware of this vulnerability. The ‘Malacca dilemma’ has been a feature of Chinese strategic discussion for much of the past decade and has helped spur a surge in funding for oil and gas pipelines that could bring energy to China overland, from Russia, Kazakhstan, Pakistan and through the remote Chinese province of Xinjiang.

Nations like Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia pioneered a formula for rapid economic growth, based on exports, manufacturing and foreign investment, that was then adopted – on a much larger scale – by China.

Like the Chinese, the Singaporeans have promoted Confucianism – with its emphasis on hierarchy and obligation – as an alternative philosophy to Western liberalism and individualism. Yet even as the Singaporeans have cultivated China, they have hung on to the United States.

Kishore Mahbubani, a former head of the Singaporean foreign ministry, was fond of remarking, ‘We know that China will still be our neighbour in 1,000 years. We don’t know if the Americans will still be here in 100 years’ time.’

Singapore’s uniquely strong ties to both China and the West – allied to its wealth and strategic position – give it a geopolitical status that far outweighs its size.

The source of the tension is China’s notorious nine-dashed line, which sets out its claims to some 90% of the South China Sea – and which since 2012 has been printed in every new Chinese passport. The line that China has drawn is founded not on proximity to the Chinese coast, but on bitterly disputed historic claims,

In its thousands of years of history, Vietnam has fought just one war against the US – but seventeen against the Chinese.

‘China’s bullying is, for now, cost-free. Diplomatic resistance has no effect. And China is probably right in thinking there is little appetite in America, and even less in ASEAN, for anything more vigorous.’

what else could be brought into play to balance the power of a rising China? For many Western strategists, the answer was obvious: India. As the only other country in the world with a population of over 1 billion, India is the alternative Asian superpower to China.

Indian optimism is, in large part, based on demographics. The Chinese population is ageing and its supply of young workers is shrinking.

India is likely to surpass China as the world’s most populous country, with 1.4 billion people, around 2022. And some economists reckon it might be the world’s largest economy by 2050.

China is now criss-crossed by modern motorways and a network of high-speed railways. In India, by contrast, the road network is still primitive and, in 2015, some 50% of Indians even lacked access to basic toilet facilities – a national disgrace that Modi, to his credit, has made a policy priority. Levels of basic education and literacy, which were crucial to the economic miracles in East Asia, are much lower in India than in China.

Should India continue to define itself, as it did during much of the Cold War, as a leader of the ‘Global South’ – the poorer countries of the world that believed themselves to be disadvantaged and exploited by the industrialised nations of the North? Or should India see itself as part of the rising East – an Asian nation that is poised to correct the historic injustices and power imbalances that were imposed during the centuries of Western imperialism.

A third approach sees China not as a potential Indian ally in changing the world order, but as the country’s biggest emerging rival.

finally, there is a fourth approach. This argues that all this talk of India’s global role overlooks the fact that the country still faces an existential threat right on its border, in the form of a nuclear-armed Pakistan.

the arrival of Narendra Modi in power has seen India draw closer to the US and Japan – and take a more wary attitude to China.

That pro-Russian reflex still remains in Delhi, to some extent – and means that the US cannot rely on Indian support in international crises that pit Moscow against Washington. The suspicion of Western capitalism is always likely to remain a powerful strand in Indian thinking. This, after all, was a country that was once colonised by a Western multinational – the East India Company.

The renewed sense of confidence in India created an opportunity to rethink India’s global role – casting the nation as part of the rising and assertive East, rather than a weak and exploited South.

all this jockeying for regional advantage with China does not – and cannot – mean that the Indian government is resigned to a straightforwardly adversarial relationship with the government of China. China is, after all, India’s largest trading partner – although the huge trade surplus in favour of China is a source of discontent in Delhi.

by the mid-twenty-first century, the rise of the Indian Ocean Rim – linking India with a fast-growing African continent – could well be the next centre of global economic dynamism.

By the closing years of the Obama administration, the notion that a timid America was losing its grip on world affairs was in danger of becoming conventional wisdom

The killing of Bin Laden in 2011 had failed to create an enduring aura of strength. Instead America’s image was being defined by events in Crimea, the South China Sea and Syria.

Every time the US hesitated to enforce a red line in one part of the world, it raised questions over American security commitments elsewhere.

‘It is highly unusual for a country with only 5% of the world’s population to be able to organise favorable political, economic and security orders in almost every corner of the globe and to sustain them for decades.’

foreign-policy strategy known as ‘offshore balancing’ which argued that America should adapt to the relative decline in its power by avoiding large military deployments around the world, and instead using regional allies as proxies to balance potentially hostile powers.

‘The United States still aspires to a level of global dominion for which it has insufficient resources and political will.’

the president’s team was more tolerant of private ‘declinism’ than his public rhetoric might suggest.

a smaller military, no matter how superb, will be able to go to fewer places and be able to do fewer things.’

More of the world’s wealth is being generated in Asia and that, almost inevitably, will translate into more of the world’s military power also being generated in Asia.

The failure of America’s friends and allies to share the burden of maintaining Western military dominance threatens to turn one of the US’s greatest strength – its network of allies – into a potential liability.

Under the circumstances, the temptation for the US to pull back from its global commitments is likely to increase.

The shale revolution dramatically reduced America’s dependence on imported oil, making it much more feasible for the US to pull back from its global commitments.

‘Our first objective is to prevent the reemergence of a new rival . . . This requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.

DURING THE OBAMA years, revolution and then war has engulfed the Middle East. The unwillingness of the United States to intervene and reimpose order has become exhibit one for those who argue that America is in decline as a global power.

the decline of US influence in the Middle East during the Obama years is part of a bigger, historical process of declining Western influence.

If the US was perceived as weak in the Middle East, it was more likely that China would also see it as potentially weak in Asia.

‘We have gone from leading everywhere, to leading nowhere.’

The Saudis have also begun to do much more to cultivate the largest customer for their oil – which is now China, not the United States. By 2014, more than two-thirds of Saudi oil was being sold to Asian markets, with China the largest single customer, and just 8% was going to the United States.

the kind of lavish, ego-boosting welcome that the Chinese are especially adept at delivering.

American military might had been remarkably effective in winning battlefield victories in the Middle East and remarkably ineffective in creating lasting political stability.

an important point about Easternisation. America’s relative decline is just part of a bigger phenomenon – which is the relative decline of Western power as a whole.

The process of Easternisation means not just that Europe no longer controls large swathes of the globe. That has been the case for decades. It also means that Europe is increasingly vulnerable to political, social and economic trends in the rest of the world that it cannot control – but which pose direct and indirect threats to European stability, prosperity and even peace.

competition with low-cost producers in Asia, in particular China, has contributed to the European economic malaise.

The blowback from the turbulence and war in the Middle East has increased the sense of social and political crisis within Europe.

‘France needs Germany to disguise how weak it is, and Germany needs France to disguise how strong it is.’

the top German officials was nothing to do with any latent authoritarianism. It was that they were – if anything – too civilised, too grounded in process and the rule of law, to fully comprehend the ruthlessness of Putin’s Russia, the national ambitions of a rising China or the domestic risks of fully honouring Germany’s legal commitments to refugees.

the financial crisis of 2008 forced deep cuts in both French and British military spending. Add that to the insularity of Germany – the most powerful and populous nation in the EU and the fourth-largest economy in the world – and the emerging picture was of a Europe that was dissolving its ability to play a global role.

In 2012, for the first time in over a century, Asian nations spent more money on armaments and troops than European countries. In military affairs, as in business, economics and power politics, the process of Easternisation is well underway.

Russia is clearly determined to reclaim its status as a world power and is prepared to use military force in pursuit of that end. And increasingly Russia is looking east, not west, for inspiration.