{"id":11496,"date":"2014-01-06T06:00:08","date_gmt":"2014-01-05T19:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=11496"},"modified":"2014-01-07T15:57:06","modified_gmt":"2014-01-07T04:57:06","slug":"asia-in-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/asia-in-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"Asia in 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>We enter 2014 with the Asian security mosaic as complicated as it\u2019s been in a long while. The two rising regional great powers, China and India, are still rising but at least in China\u2019s case growth is slowing. The region\u2019s stalled great power, Japan, is making a solid effort to get its motor running again. Russia is probably still a declining power, at least as far as Asia and the Pacific are concerned, but it\u2019s modernising its nuclear forces and playing its foreign policy cards more adroitly. Kim Jong-un\u2019s North Korea remains a regional wild card, the country\u2019s nuclear program accelerating even as its domestic politics become more brutal and less certain. The region\u2019s second-tier powers\u2014and here we could reasonably count South Korea, Indonesia, Australia, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam\u2014add their own complexities to the mix. And that\u2019s before we even get to the United States.<\/p>\n We’re approaching the one-year anniversary of the beginning of President Obama\u2019s second term. And, speaking plainly, I don\u2019t think it has started well. The noted Asia hands of his first administration\u2014people like Kurt Campbell and Jim Steinberg\u2014have left. True, Joe Biden (the Vice President) and Susan Rice (the National Security Adviser) have both delivered big set-piece speeches on Asia. And the rebalance remains the core of US Asia policy\u2014even though Asian audiences are still trying to decide what it actually means. Meanwhile two US decisions about the Middle East\u2014the handling of the Syrian chemical-weapons issue<\/a> and the Iranian nuclear agreement<\/a>\u2014have both muddied the waters in US relations with Asia. The first showed a hesitancy in US willingness to use force; the second a US willingness (actually a P5+1 willingness) to accept a quasi-nuclear status for Tehran. Both decisions have generated ripples in our own region.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not to suggest the administration hasn\u2019t sent other signals as well: twice it has reached for the big stick in Asia, flying strategic bombers over South Korea in the wake of the third North Korean test, and through the recently-declared Chinese Air Defence Identification Zone. Strategic bombers are meant to send strategic messages, both to foe and friend alike. But the messages have been mixed, not least because of the distracting priorities in the Middle East. Some analysts even argued that the bombers\u2019 messages were meant for the Middle Eastern audience just as much as they were meant for an Asian one. It\u2019s less obvious that the strategic bombers exercised much suasion over their first-level targets. There\u2019s no evidence, for example, that Pyongyang slowed its nuclear program in the aftermath of the American B-2 and B-52 flights; and not much evidence that China has tempered its approach to territorial claims and conventional power projection in Asia. Indeed, both Pyongyang and Beijing might actually have been encouraged by the train of events in the Middle East to push the envelope in Asia.<\/p>\n For all those reasons, the first year of Obama\u2019s second term can\u2019t be ranked an unmitigated success. The administration\u2019s approach to Asia has lost some of its traction with the passing of its key Asian figures. I recall hearing Jim Steinberg a few years ago answer, in his usual pithy style, a question about whether the US would make room for China in Asia. While the question invited a protracted answer, Steinberg delivered a one-liner: \u2018Yes\u2019, he replied, \u2018but not in the geographic sense.\u2019 The answer, at first glance puzzling, is in fact an elegant statement of the US position in Asia: it’s prepared to make room in the Asian order for a China that steps up to a growing regional role, but it isn’t prepared to step back from the Western Pacific where a range of its allies live. Nor is it prepared to abandon the order it has built in the wider Asia Pacific\u2014an order that is simultaneously stable, liberal and prosperous.<\/p>\n