{"id":52403,"date":"2019-12-09T06:00:18","date_gmt":"2019-12-08T19:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=52403"},"modified":"2020-01-13T12:49:37","modified_gmt":"2020-01-13T01:49:37","slug":"the-2020-asia-pacific-outlook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/the-2020-asia-pacific-outlook\/","title":{"rendered":"The 2020 Asia\u2013Pacific outlook"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

Render the strategic outlook for 2020 into a core conundrum: How goes the new era of great-power competition? Is it to be security confrontation and economic decoupling?<\/p>\n

The crystal ball is clouded by rivalry. China and the US are simultaneously close and apart, enmeshed and divided, locked together in contest while musing about trade and technology cleavage.<\/p>\n

The region\u2014using either the Indo-Pacific or Asia\u2013Pacific label\u2014slides towards what Peter Jennings calls \u2018a riskier, more dangerous reality<\/a>\u2019. Australia has ruefully accepted that managing great-power competition is now its \u2018first priority<\/a>\u2019.<\/p>\n

Tackling the conundrum is the purpose of the annual survey from the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP<\/a>). With 20 country committees, plus the EU and Pacific Islands Forum, CSCAP ruminates from many angles in its 2020 regional security outlook<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The outlook\u2019s editor, Ron Huisken, writes that rivalry between the two mega-states is deepening international division and antagonism:<\/p>\n

The present clash between the US and China is arrestingly sharp and deep not only because the stakes are so high and the parties so profoundly different\u2014most critically, perhaps, in terms of philosophies on governance\u2014but also because it has been brewing over several decades of increasingly intimate and complex interaction.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A fundamental question, Huisken writes, is the tools and mindsets states can legitimately bring to the competition. The answer will determine if interdependence can be maintained or if there will be a significant degree of disengagement.<\/p>\n

So, contest for sure, cleavage perhaps.<\/p>\n

Reporting from the US, Siddharth Mohandas writes that the Trump administration has \u2018fundamentally shifted the US\u2013China relationship in a more competitive and even confrontational direction\u2019. The US policy focus on China extends far beyond trade to encompass economic, security, technology and ideological issues that \u2018are now increasingly at the centre of American foreign policy\u2019.<\/p>\n

In Canberra, Australia\u2019s top diplomat foresees an era of enduring differences with China, calling it the \u2018new normal\u2019<\/a>. The same phrase is used by Mohandas in his final sentence: \u2018The evidence of the past year is that instability is not a passing phenomenon but the new normal against which all regional capitals must plan.\u2019<\/p>\n

From China, Wu Xinbo writes that Beijing senses Washington\u2019s determination to reorient its \u2018policy towards a more competitive and confrontational stance\u2019, pushing China\u2019s \u2018trust towards the US to a historical low\u2019. Wu judges that the relationship has gone from cool to freezing:<\/p>\n

The Asia\u2013Pacific has entered a period of profound changes set off by shifts in the power balance as well by adjustments of strategy and policy settings by regional players. Managing major power competition and dealing with hot spot issues top the regional security agenda, while Sino-US interactions hold the key.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wu says Beijing and Washington must delineate the boundary of their intensifying competition:<\/p>\n