{"id":20813,"date":"2015-06-03T06:00:31","date_gmt":"2015-06-02T20:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=20813"},"modified":"2015-06-02T17:23:02","modified_gmt":"2015-06-02T07:23:02","slug":"asias-balance-of-power-big-fact-and-top-trend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/asias-balance-of-power-big-fact-and-top-trend\/","title":{"rendered":"Asia\u2019s balance of power: Big Fact and Top Trend"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Singapore's<\/a>The balance of power is one of those concepts that gets the most attention when it\u2019s shifting. Or wobbling. When people are talking about it, it\u2019s time to be worried. And everybody is worried.<\/p>\n

As Grandma observed, family arguments are getting too loud when the whole village is gossiping about whether the marriage will survive.<\/p>\n

Balance of power was top of mind and top of text when Singapore\u2019s Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong<\/a>,\u00a0launched the Shangri-La dialogue.<\/p>\n

Lee\u2019s central proposition was a simple one with huge implications: \u2018The strategic balance in Asia is shifting.\u2019 Mark this is a Big Fact, not a mere opinion.<\/p>\n

The Big Fact of Asia\u2019s rapidly changing power relativities is directly related to Asia\u2019s Top Trend. This is unusual. New and different Big Facts come along all the time while the Top Trend, by definition, is a long-wave phenomenon.<\/p>\n

Look back over recent decades to see what this means. In 1989, the Cold War collapsed with the Berlin Wall, and China butchered its own youngsters in Tiananmen Square. These Big Facts didn\u2019t derail Asia\u2019s Top Trend, which was already broad, powerful and transforming. Asia\u2019s Top Trend, then and now, is the economic miracle that has lifted more people from poverty in a shorter time than any other moment in human history.<\/p>\n

Lots of other Big Facts keep coming to crowd the screen. China arrives. India rises. Asia hits the economic wall with a financial crisis at the end of \u201890s; Europe and the US do their own, even more spectacular economic smash, a decade later. Still, for Asia, the Top Trend keeps surging.<\/p>\n

All sorts of building work gets done, but in the strategic realm this is slow-motion stuff where ambition outstrips achievement. The confidence of the \u201890s saw the creation of regional institutions like APEC and the ASEAN Regional Forum. The strategic buzz was about achieving transparency and confidence building; today we\u2019ve got a lot more transparency but not much confidence.<\/p>\n

Instead of confidence, we have pleas for stability and rule of law. Stability ain\u2019t what we\u2019re going to get, was the advice from Malaysia\u2019s Prime Minister, Najib Razak, launching the 29th<\/sup> Asia Pacific Roundtable in Kuala Lumpur.<\/p>\n

Rapid change in the strategic environment looks inevitable to Najib, but that doesn\u2019t have to be a bad thing: \u2018The ongoing shifts in the distribution of power and influence in the Asia Pacific should not necessarily be seen as inherently threatening.\u2019<\/p>\n

Embracing the Big Fact and the Top Trend, Najib had this observation about the regional hegemon that\u2019s feeling the heat: \u2018The US will remain a power of major consequence in the Asia Pacific, despite claims by some that we are witnessing the twilight of America\u2019s role and interest in the region.\u2019 Twilight! So do a reverse Dylan Thomas\u2014go gentle and don\u2019t rage against the dying of the light. The Chinese, no doubt, will invent a nifty proverb for the thought.<\/p>\n

At Shangri-La, the International Institute for Strategic Studies offered its thoughts on the power balance with its Asia Pacific Regional Security Assessment 2015<\/a>.<\/p>\n

IISS starts with the idea that the region is too large and diverse<\/a> for any state to dominate:<\/p>\n

Indeed, it is too large for any state unilaterally to protect its own interests or to seek to shape the regional order without risking overstretch or instability. Attempts to do so will be destabilising and provoke reactions from other regional powers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Good advice for either the US or China.<\/p>\n

The IISS judgement is that fiscal stains are yet to impinge too much on the plans expressed in the US rebalance, although \u2018within the region there is still some doubt as to the sustainability of the US posture in the Asia Pacific beyond the medium term.\u2019 With the balance in flux, the medium term can arrive quickly:<\/p>\n

Uncertainties remain over what role the US envisages for its allies and partners. The rebalance looks far from complete when one considers the lack of a grand strategy, as well as unresolved questions over specific weapons systems and doctrine aimed at deterring China.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Not much doubt about the grand strategy Xi Jinping has set for Beijing, according to IISS:<\/p>\n

China calculates that its economic power and the interconnectedness of Asian economies will put it at the centre \u2013 and the apex \u2013 of the Asia-Pacific region. In tandem, China seeks to weaken the US-led regional security order and to promote the concept that Asian security should be managed solely by Asians.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Big Fact of a shifting power balance is a product of the great changes flowing from the Top Trend. And everybody in the village, and the region, is \u00a0gossiping loudly about what the new Big Fact might do to the Top Trend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The balance of power is one of those concepts that gets the most attention when it\u2019s shifting. Or wobbling. When people are talking about it, it\u2019s time to be worried. And everybody is worried. As …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":20814,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[52,71,358,50,471,31],"class_list":["post-20813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-china","tag-maritime-security","tag-shangri-la-dialogue","tag-singapore","tag-south-china-sea","tag-united-states"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAsia\u2019s balance of power: Big Fact and Top Trend | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/asias-balance-of-power-big-fact-and-top-trend\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Asia\u2019s balance of power: Big Fact and Top Trend | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The balance of power is one of those concepts that gets the most attention when it\u2019s shifting. 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