The Bush administration’s imperial and corporate misadventures over the last decade have proven that the world would be much better off without the US interference. China, as the new rising power, should be wary not to replicate the West’s old patterns of domination.
Despite the glitter that surrounded both the Olympics in בייג'ינג and the Democratic National Convention in דנבר, the messages coming to אסיה from the two events were very different.
מ בייג'ינג the message was, to put it in the words of one pundit, סין has had a few bad centuries but is back on its feet. From דנבר, the word was that the ארצות הברית has been on a desperate decade-long downspin that can only get worse if the Republicans keep the White House.
For people in this part of the world, the weakening of U.S. power is most evident elsewhere: in the Middle East and Southwest Asia, where Washington is bogged down in unending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; in Latin America, where the rebellion against neoliberalism and U.S. meddling is in full swing; and, most recently, in Central Asia, where Washington and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have been taught a painful lesson in overextension in Georgia.
השחיקה של וושינגטון‘s position is less obvious in אסיה. אחרי הכל ארצות הברית continues to maintain more than 300 military bases and facilities in the Western Pacific. Over the last decade, it has established a permanent troop presence in the Southern Philippines to make up for its giving up its two big military bases on לוזון איסלנד in 1992. And in אינדונזיה, the Pentagon has reestablished its close ties with the Indonesian military after several years of uncertainty, using the opportunity provided by relief operations during the tsunami of 2004.
Erosion of ארצות הברית Power in East Asia
Nevertheless, the region – and Southeast Asia in particular – is probably more independent of the ארצות הברית today than at any other time in the last 60 years. Economics is the reason. Over the last two decades, several developments have eroded the ארצות הברית עמדה.
First of all, its drive to create the trans-Pacific free-trade area known as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) failed. APEC was meant to be a westward extension of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and both were intended to serve as a geo-economic counterweight to the European Union. יפן, סין, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), fearing ארצות הברית economic domination in the name of free trade, scuttled President Bill Clinton’s trans-Pacific dream at the APEC Summit in אוסקה in 1995. APEC summits continue to be held, but these are remembered more as times when heads of state don the host country’s national costume than as occasions for serious economic decision-making.
שני, ארצות הברית efforts to impose capital account and financial liberalization on the Asia Pacific economies as a key element of more thoroughgoing structural transformation backfired. Capital account liberalization led to the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998. Instead of helping to shore up economies in crisis, וושינגטון took advantage of the crisis to try to comprehensively transform the region’s economies along neoliberal lines. As one of קלינטון‘s economic lieutenants saw it, "Most of these countries are going through a dark and deep tunnel…But on the other end there is going to be a significantly different אסיה in which American firms have achieved a much deeper market penetration, much greater access."
The outcome proved to be different. מלזיה imposed capital controls. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) was discredited, with the Thai government declaring its intention never to go back to the agency after paying off its loans in 2003 and the Indonesian government resolving to do the same thing in 2008. While Washington and the IMF were able to kill יפן‘s proposal for an Asian Monetary Fund (AMF) at the height of the crisis, the East Asian governments formed the "ASEAN Plus Three" financial mechanism that excludes the ארצות הברית and is likely to be the precursor of a full-blown regional financial agency. Neoliberal transformation has stalled in יפן and most Southeast Asian countries, with possibly only דרום קוריאה continuing to travel along the free-market path desired by the ארצות הברית.
Moreover, the Asian governments have built up massive foreign exchange reserves to protect themselves against future speculative crises provoked by the movements of global finance capital led by ארצות הברית funds. And the ארצות הברית has become dependent on these Asian reserves for funds to prop up its massive military expenditures and the middle-class spending that for a long time served as an artificial barrier against recession. With the unraveling of American financial institutions, the onset of recession, and the depreciation of the dollar, the ארצות הברית economy has become hostage to these countries’ decisions to continue to lend to Washington and Wall Street.
In a third development not positive for the ארצות הברית, the region has become increasingly dependent on the red-hot Chinese economic locomotive. According to a United Nations report, סין has been a "major engine of growth for most of the economies in the region. The country’s imports accelerated even more than its exports, with a large proportion coming from the rest of אסיה." In fact, this Chinese demand pulled the Asia Pacific economies from the recession caused by the Asian financial crisis. סין has not only surpassed the ארצות הברית להפוך ל יפן‘s main trading partner but Chinese demand has helped keep the world’s second-largest economy from falling back into recession.
Conscious of its economic clout, סין has moved to consolidate its position as מזרח אסיה‘s new economic center via smart economic diplomacy. In 2002, it convinced the ASEAN governments to create the ASEAN-China Free Trade Area that is scheduled to come into effect in 2010. יפן has tried to catch up by offering ASEAN countries "economic partnership agreements." Meanwhile, talks on a U.S.-Thailand free trade area have been frozen by popular opposition to וושינגטון‘s strident championing of the so-called intellectual property rights of its corporations. All in all, the biggest beneficiary of the Bush administration’s imperial and corporate misadventures over the last decade has been סין, which has kept itself from military entanglements and devoted itself single-mindedly to economic development.
Challenges Posed by סין‘s Ascent
העלייה של סין poses a number of fundamental challenges to different key actors in מזרח אסיה.
בעד יפן, the key challenge is to move from being the springboard for ארצות הברית power projection in the region to a mature relationship with סין. A definitive acceptance of responsibility on the part of the Japanese people and their leaders for the atrocities committed by Japanese troops during World War II, including the infamous Nanjing Massacre, is an indispensable step in this move toward a mature relationship between אסיה‘s leading economic powers.
בעד דרום מזרח אסיה, the challenge is how to avoid becoming an appendage of the Chinese economy. Chinese demand was, as mentioned earlier, an immense force lifting דרום מזרח אסיה‘s economies from the depths of the Asian financial crisis. However, סין‘s developing trade and investment relations with ASEAN also include some unpleasant aspects, for instance the experience of Thai vegetable and fruit producers under an "early harvest" free trade arrangement with סין earlier this decade. Under the agreement, תאילנד expected to export tropical fruits to סין while eliminating tariffs on imports of winter fruits from סין. The expectations of mutual benefit evaporated after a few months, however, as massive imports from סין wiped out Thai producers of many fruits and vegetables such as garlic and red onions.
But the fears of many in Southeast Asia go beyond lopsided trade agreements with סין. With land and energy relatively scarce in סין, בייג'ינג has encouraged Chinese enterprises to seek deals to mine minerals and grow crops in Southeast Asian countries for exclusive export to the סין market. For example, in a deal with the הפיליפינים, the Chinese Fuhua Group plans to invest $3.83 billion over five to seven years to develop 1 million hectares of land to grow high-yielding strains of corn, rice, and sorghum. The Philippine government is currently identifying "idle lands" that can be incorporated into these Chinese plantations. This in a country where seven out of 10 farmers are landless.
Some have been quick to call סין‘s international economic policies "imperialistic." However, exploitative relations between סין and other developing countries have not acquired an imperial structure and lack the element of force and coercion that accompanied the imposition of European and American economic power on weaker societies.
Nevertheless, Southeast Asian governments need to balance their spontaneous feelings of South-South solidarity with cool-headed realism. Countries like סין, ברזיל, ו הודו are led by developmentalist elites that are seeking to find their place in a new global capitalist order marked by the loosening of the economic hegemony of the old capitalist centers, that is, יפן, ה ארצות הברית, and the European Union. The pursuit of national economic interest, not regional cooperation for development, is the central concern of these elites. The intention of סין, הודו, ו ברזיל in promoting trade and investment agreements with smaller countries or courting them to join regional economic formations is to advance their own regional and global aims.
However, this does not mean that a trade agreement and regional economic formation linking סין and ASEAN should be avoided at all costs. Rather, ASEAN governments must enter talks with סין with eyes wide open and negotiate collectively, not as 10 separate governments. They must make it clear to China that they don’t desire a trade agreement based on free trade–such as the arrangements that the U.S., EU, and Japan are pushing on them – but one in which the net benefits of the arrangement accrue to them, not China. Although China’s relationship with Southeast Asia is not exploitative, the negotiation of economic relationships between Beijing and its neighbors could replicate the old structural patterns marking the relations between Southeast Asia and Europe, the United States, and Japan – unless considerations of equity are front and center.
The U.S.-China Relationship
The most critical regional relationship, however, is between the ארצות הברית ו סין מאז ארצות הברית is the most powerful power in East Asia and סין the next most powerful.
In his stimulating book Adam Smith in בייג'ינג, the eminent political economist Giovanni Arrighi of ג'ונס הופקינס אוניברסיטה writes that there are three alternative policies that the ארצות הברית can adopt toward an ascendant סין.
The first is an updated version of the Cold War strategy of containment. In this strategy, סין is seen as a strategic threat or, as the Bush administration puts it euphemistically, a "strategic competitor." The U.S. response would be to "dissuade China" from its military ambitions by boosting the massive American military presence in the Western Pacific, strengthening the bilateral agreements with U.S. allies that sustain this trans-Pacific garrison state, and building up defense cooperation with India, Asia’s other big power. This response misconstrues the nature of the Chinese challenge, which is an economic rather than a strategic one, and would be disastrous for the whole world.
According to the second strategy, the United States chooses not to confront China directly as it confronted the old Soviet Union but to put into motion balance of power politics to weaken China indirectly. Arrighi quotes James Pinkerton, a protagonist of this approach: Instead of confronting directly the rising Asian powers, the ארצות הברית should play them off each other. As the Latin expression tertium gaudens – the happy third – reminds us, rather than getting in the middle of every fight, sometimes it is better "to hold the coats of those who do." For the ארצות הברית national interest, "a better Asia would be one in which סין, הודו, יפן, and possibly another ‘tiger’ or two contend with each other for power while we enjoy the happy luxury of third party by-standing." This strategy, too, would also have terrible consequences for the region.
A third strategy, which Arrighi identifies with former national security advisers Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski, views China not as a revisionist power but as one that wants to join the global status quo. The appropriate response for וושינגטון is to accept סין as part of the elite of the global state system and work with it in pursuit of international stability, in the same way that בריטניה, the hegemon of the 19th century, cooperated and made way for the ארצות הברית, the hegemon of the 20th century.
Arrighi prefers this third strategy. And I do, too, though not enthusiastically since it still is in essence conservative, preserving the global status quo. This strategy is, however, the least likely of the three to be adopted. Imperial אמריקה is not like imperial בריטניה. ה ארצות הברית is ideologically an expansionist missionary democracy that will find it difficult to accept No. 2 status without provoking a reactionary populist reaction among key segments of its population. Aside from powerful corporate and strategic interests – which desire an accommodation with China – U.S. leaders have a messianic drive to remake the world along the lines of a liberal or neoliberal Lockean democracy.
אזרחי חֶברָה, סין, ו אמריקה
This conundrum inevitably leads to a discussion of how civil society, both in Asia and globally, ought to respond to the erosion of ארצות הברית hegemony and the ascent of סין. In the best of all possible worlds, the United States and China could be supporters of the drive to create a new world order built on peace, justice, and popular sovereignty. Unfortunately, we live in a less-than-ideal world.
The task of civil society is to pressure סין, as it intensifies its engagement with the world, to resist the temptation of following the destructive imperial path blazed by Europe and the ארצות הברית. Social movements must also push סין away from the fossil-fuel intensive, consumption-oriented path of development pioneered by the West and toward one that is more ecologically sustainable and sensitive to equity issues. This won’t be easy. Nevertheless, there are signs of hope. For instance, Chinese leaders are currently rethinking the direction of the country’s development. Notes Arrighi:
If the reorientation succeeds in reviving and consolidating סין‘s traditions of self-centered market-based development, accumulation without dispossession, mobilization of human rather than non-human resources, and government through mass participation in shaping policies, then the chances are that סין will be in a position to contribute decisively to the emergence of a commonwealth of civilizations truly respectful of differences. But, if the reorientation fails, סין may well turn into a new epicenter of social and political chaos that will facilitate Northern attempts to reestablish a crumbling global dominance.
Given the Chinese leadership’s concern for legitimacy both internally and internationally, the failure of the proponents of reorientation is not a foregone conclusion. This is why pressure from international civil society for a change in economic strategy, for pro-environment policies, for the expansion of democratic rights, and for equitable relations with the developing countries must be kept up.
Toward a New American Isolationism
Blunting Washington’s innately hegemonic thrust will be much more difficult – but not impossible.
Perhaps the best strategy for civil society at this point is not so much to rely on appeals to American ideals but to continually point to the very high costs of intervention, in terms of soldiers killed, money spent, domestic strife, and credibility lost. Part of this strategy must be pressure for the removal of the ארצות הברית military bases from Asia and the Pacific and the neutralizing of the bilateral treaties between the ארצות הברית and a number of Asian countries. Aside from being the pillars of וושינגטון‘s containment of סין, these institutions are the main factors that prevent סין and other East Asian countries from evolving a more mature relationship.
More broadly, the aim of civil society mobilization both in אסיה and globally should be to encourage a new American isolationism. Barack Obama is definitely preferable to John McCain, but the world doesn’t need a new American internationalism of the liberal and soft-power variety. We shouldn’t tolerate a policy of withdrawing troops from עיראק only to send them to אפגניסטן in the name of defending human rights. We don’t want in place of military confrontation, an aggressive diplomatic isolation of אירן led by a Democratic elite that is uncritical, as Obama is, of ישראל. We don’t want an obsession with the Middle East to be replaced with an obsession with destabilizing Hugo Chavez and restoring ארצות הברית השפעה ב אמריקה הלטינית. And we should worry when Bill Clinton says, as he did during the Democratic Party convention, that one of Obama’s objectives will be to "restore American leadership in the world." אסיה doesn’t need or want American leadership.
What Asia, like the rest of the world, needs is a vacation from a messianic ארצות הברית. A few decades of a withdrawn, self-absorbed, isolationist אמריקה, paying attention to its domestic troubles and deterred by the high costs of the continued pursuit of hegemony globally, would be good for the region and good for everybody.
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