Asia & the Pacific

As President Obama prepares to host a summit with ASEAN leaders in Sunnylands, California, next week, Center for a New American Security (CNAS) Asia-Pacific Security Program Director Patrick Cronin and Pereira International CEO Derwin Pereira have written a new commentary for CNAS titled “High Stakes at the Sunnylands Summit.” The commentary is a product of CNAS’ Derwin Pereira Southeast Asian Foreign Policy Roundtables.

After seven years of extraordinary governmental stimulus, the world needs a shift from exceptional monetary policies to private sector-led growth. The US Federal Reserve’s increase in interest rates sounded the clarion call. China’s market tribulations highlight deepening global uncertainties and the need for new approaches. Three possible ways to generate growth stand out for 2016.

As the world’s financial policymakers convene for their annual meeting Fridayin Peru, the dangers facing the global economy are more severe than at any time since the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy in 2008.

The defining question about global order for this generation is whether China and the United States can escape Thucydides’s Trap. The Greek historian’s metaphor reminds us of the attendant dangers when a rising power rivals a ruling power—as Athens challenged Sparta in ancient Greece, or as Germany did Britain a century ago. Most such contests have ended badly, often for both nations, a team of mine at the Harvard Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs has concluded after analyzing the historical record. In 12 of 16 cases over the past 500 years, the result was war. When the parties avoided war, it required huge, painful adjustments in attitudes and actions on the part not just of the challenger but also the challenged.

The Obama administration’s negative response to China’s proposed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank was a strategic mistake. Though some Chinese moves might be destabilising and require US resistance, this initiative should have been welcomed.

The US should be careful about opposing ventures that are popular and likely to proceed. Losing fights does not build confidence. Moreover, the new bank’s purpose — to develop infrastructure in Asia — is a good goal. The world economy needs more growth. Many emerging markets are eager to boost productivity and growth by lowering costs of transportation, improving energy availability, enhancing communications networks, and distributing clean water.

The AIIB offers an opportunity to strengthen the very international economic system that the US created and sustained. The AIIB’s designated leader, Jin Liqun, a former vice-president of the Asian Development Bank, sought advice in Washington. He engaged an American lawyer who was the World Bank’s leading specialist on governance. He also reached out to another American who had served as World Bank country director for China and then worked with the US embassy.

If the AIIB was indeed threatening the American-led multilateral economic order, as its opponents seemed to believe, then its Chinese founders chose a curiously open and co-operative way of doing so.

CAMBRIDGE – Every year at this time, China’s government organizes a major conference – sponsored by the Development Research Center, the official think tank of the State Council – that brings together senior Chinese officials, CEOs from major Chinese and Western firms, and a small group of international officials and academics. The China Development Forum (CDF) occurs just after the annual National People’s Congress.

WASHINGTON, DC – Trade is high on the agenda in the United States, Europe, and much of Asia this year. In the US, where concern has been heightened by weak recent trade numbers, President Barack Obama is pushing for Congress to give him Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), previously known as fast-track authority, to conclude the mega-regional Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) with 11 Asian and Latin American countries. Without TPA, trading partners refrain from offering their best concessions, correctly fearing that Congress would seek to take “another bite of the apple” when asked to ratify any deal.

This past month may be remembered as the moment the United States lost its role as the underwriter of the global economic system. True, there have been any number of periods of frustration for the US before, and times when American behaviour was hardly multilateralist, such as the 1971 Nixon shock, ending the convertibility of the dollar into gold. But I can think of no event since Bretton Woods comparable to the combination of China’s effort to establish a major new institution and the failure of the US to persuade dozens of its traditional allies, starting with Britain, to stay out of it.

The death of Lee Kuan Yew, the first prime minister of Singapore, is an occasion for reflection. Lee, who died Monday, was more than just his country's founding father. He did not just raise a poor, notoriously corrupt port city from the bottom rungs of the Third World to a modern First World state (with clean streets and clean government) in a single generation. He was also one of only two true grand masters of international strategy in the last half century (Henry Kissinger being the other), and a wise counselor to the leaders of the world.  (NOTE: This commentary was published by Caixin in Chinese. This is a Belfer Center English translation.)