Playing the America Card

...Washington is negotiating India's entree into the international nuclear club...

...With American sponsorship, what one newspaper calls "the Americanization of the Indian military" is underway...

...Australia's latest defense white paper could have been written by the Pentagon: It emphasizes closer relations with America and Japan based on shared values, the continuing benefits to Asia of America's predominance, and the threat posed by China's growing military might...

...trade and investment—last fall, the United States sent to India its largest official trade delegation to any country ever—reflect India's embrace of American technology to quicken the pace of development...

...Southeast Asian leaders have aggressively pursued free trade agreements with the United States in order to reduce their economic dependence on Beijing...

...2) Encourage strategic cooperation among Asian and Pacific democracies...

...America has a dog in this fight...

...if it is, we'll urge it to get here first...

...In parts of Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and Russia, leaders rail against American "hegemony," while public approval of the United States is mixed at best...

...4) Reform international institutions for the Asian-Pacific century...

...Indonesian foreign minister Hassan Wirajuda says that peace, development, and democracy are "inseparable...

...Today, Asian nations are leading the effort to form democratic security concerts, a trend Washington should enthusiastically nurture...

...Nearly 70 percent of China's GDP comes from trade, attesting to its dependence on the global economy and the U.S.-policed sea lanes that carry Asia's trade and energy supplies...

...leadership and are far more comfortable living in a world in which American power, rather than Chinese, is preponderant...

...China is indeed growing rich and its citizens better off...

...Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand are pursuing military interoperability with NATO...

...India has made a strategic decision to pivot toward America after half a century of hostility because it knows that U.S...

...Most Asian leaders support a leading U.S...

...Indian leaders believe America holds the keys to their foremost objectives: security in the face of nuclear-armed rivals like China, economic modernization, and international recognition as a great power...

...Japan and India deserve seats on the U.N...

...We're 4.5 million people...

...We can face this future with confidence—because it will fuel our own prosperity...

...Goldman Sachs predicts that China's economy will be bigger than America's in two decades...

...Declaring that America has "many friends and many strategic interests" in Southeast Asia, Singapore's prime minister recently said, "It's important for us to continue to nourish this, and to make sure attention is focused in America on cultivating this relationship and developing it...

...But for now, Beijing covets a special relationship with the country that has the greatest ability to play the role of spoiler for China's "peaceful rise...

...From Shanghai to Singapore, one hears whispers of a "new Daniel Twining is the Fulbright/Oxford scholar at Oxford University and a transatlantic fellow of the German Marshall Fund of the United States...

...We have heard similar sentiments before, when Asian strongmen, "Asian values," and bureaucratic capitalism were perceived as providing development models superior to free-market democracy...

...The United States' predominant position in Asia naturally is an obstacle to China's aspiration to lead the region...

...The desire of nearly every important Asian country for a special relationship with Washington should not make Americans hubristic, for the sense among many of our Asian friends that our diplomacy has neglected the region is real...

...While China's economic growth is fueling the region, Southeast Asian leaders recognize the continued importance of U.S...

...counterparts for neglecting the region, are deeply insecure about any hint of an American pullback, and increasingly identify democratic political values as the basis for closer cooperation with America and each other...

...With an eye on the successful democracies of India, Indonesia, and Turkey, Washington should be much more confident about nudging Pakistan in a democratic direction...

...The Group of Eight were wise enough to invite emerging economies to their latest summit as "outreach partners," but treated them as outsiders lucky to be invited to the big boys' club, issuing the press release announcing their joint declaration before they actually met...

...Regional clubs help other Asian nations bundle their power to engage China from a position of strength, diluting its ability to dominate its neighbors and socializing it as a status quo power...

...Former heads of state from nearly every country in Asia recently demanded that Burma's dictators free the imprisoned Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma's elected leader...

...As China rises, America cannot complacently assume its Cold War alliances will manage themselves but must intensify cooperation with old and new partners...

...Their goal is to preserve and enhance their autonomy and influence in a dynamic region characterized by multiple centers of power...

...Intimate relations with a benign, distant partner that values and empowers their leadership are central to this strategy...

...Smaller Asian countries are less likely to jump on the Chinese bandwagon as long as they have other alliance options...

...This has been an enduring concern of Chinese leaders: At their first meeting in 1972, Chinese premier Zhou Enlai asked President Nixon, "Can the United States control the 'wild horse' of Japan...

...Rather, relations with the United States are vital to Asian leaders' ambitions to make their countries rich, strong, and secure...

...5) Promote Asian regionalism...

...3) Talk economics...

...It is no surprise that the two Japanese leaders who have done the most to strengthen the alliance—prime ministers Junichiro Koizumi and Shinzo Abe—are also the ones who have been most determined to make Japan a normal great power that can deploy its armed forces abroad and embrace international security responsibilities...

...Yet China's geopolitical ascent is creating what Mao Zedong would have termed a "contradiction": China's rising power makes the United States increasingly important to nearly every Asian nation, including China itself...

...However, the question is not whether Asians will develop these institutions—they will—but, in the words of Georgetown's Michael Green, a former senior director for Asian affairs at the National Security Council in the Bush administration, "what the new institutions are to be based on: preserving Asian exceptionalism, as Beijing now argues, or pursuing a common set of values rooted in democracy and the rule of law," as Japan and key Southeast Asian states contend...

...We should seize it...

...Democracy is America's greatest source of soft power, in Asia and the world...

...Asian states do not want to subordinate themselves in relations of dependence on America...

...Leaders in Japan, India, and the countries of Southeast Asia are increasingly speaking out about the importance of a values-based foreign policy...

...As one Chinese policymaker puts it, "If we can't have a peaceful and prosperous backyard, then there can't be any rise of China...

...These countries have enabled the United States to better project military power in the region by expanding basing and port visitation rights as a hedge against China...

...As a senior Japanese diplomat puts it, China will ultimately have no choice but to embrace democracy because every other political system in human history has been tried—and has failed...

...neglect of Southeast Asia has left an open playing field for Beijing to expand its influence...

...Moreover, China's leaders can rule with a strong hand, in the overconfident belief that Western leaders are more interested in commercial opportunities for their companies than political freedoms for the Chinese people...

...At their last summit, Southeast Asian statesmen considered a charter declaring that regional peace and stability rest on "the active strengthening of democratic values, good governance, rejection of unconstitutional and undemocratic changes of government, the rule of law, including international humanitarian law, and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms...

...sponsorship, India is emerging as a global power with a Curzonian worldview as the natural leader of a vast region stretching from Aden to Singapore—and a determination not to kowtow to Beijing (or anyone else...

...Security Council, whose current membership was conceived in the 1940s...

...The vision of a Pacific Pact of free Asian nations has animated American leaders since Eisenhower, but Cold War divisions and the legacy of Japanese imperialism made it impossible to implement...

...Seventh Fleet is nearby...

...Democratization of the Asian tigers, the bursting of Japan's economic bubble, and democratic India's successful economic opening have demonstrated how wrong such assessments were...

...Southeast Asian states want to maintain their economic and political autonomy in the face of far bigger neighbors...

...When Asians took to the streets to demand democratic rights in South Korea (1980), the Philippines (1986), Taiwan (1986), Burma (1988), China (1989), Thailand (1992), Indonesia (1998), Hong Kong (2003), and Pakistan (2007), they were not standing up for Western cultural values but for the universal aspirations of mankind...

...trade and investment: A majority of Chinese exports are produced by Western, Japanese, and Taiwanese firms based in mainland China...

...Partnership with a benign, distant power allows them to do just that...

...Partnership with the United States is important for Asian nations' prosperity, security, and autonomy in the shadow of Chinese power...

...officials do not like being excluded from such regional gatherings...

...In 1989, popular protests erupted in every major city in China and, in the view of many experts, would have brought down the regime had the movement not been snuffed out by the Tiananmen massacre and subsequently diverted by the state-led mobilization of xenophobic nationalism...

...Popular majorities in countries as diverse as Japan, India, South Korea, Australia, and Vietnam hold the United States in high regard...

...With U.S...

...Its U.S...

...China's manufacturing prowess makes it a direct competitor for Southeast Asian states at similar levels of development, while America offers greater economic complementarities...

...America is the key antiterrorism partner for Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, and the Philippines...

...intervention in Iraq, and its support for scrapping the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty...

...America should take the lead in reforming old international institutions and designing new ones with the goal of making emerging Asian world powers responsible international stakeholders rather than second-class citizens...

...Americans should be thrilled that our democratic friends in Asia want to tie up with us and each other to promote regional peace and prosperity, which benefits China too...

...Ironically, Washington has been ambivalent about what Chinese strategists fear is an emerging "Asian NATO" of great democracies...

...Even China cultivates America as its most important external partner, while North Korea's totalitarian ruler covets a special relationship with Washington and has developed nuclear weapons in a perverse effort to secure it...

...What else can Singapore do...

...Although China remains a patron of Islamabad, Pakistan's foreign minister recently made the disquieting declaration that President Musharraf would remain in power as long as he had the support of "the Army, Allah, and America...

...technology, investment, military prowess, and diplomatic clout will smooth its path to world power...

...he calls all other forms of government an "aberration...

...The U.S.-South Korea Free Trade Agreement is partly an effort by Seoul to reorient itself toward Washington after years of drift toward Beijing...

...Vietnamese and Singaporean leaders have bluntly told Washington that U.S...

...role in a regional order characterized by what Singapore's ambassador to Washington calls "asymmetric multipolarity"—multiple centers of power in which the United States is strongest...

...If it's not, we'll look west to see if the Indian navy is close by, and if it is we'll urge it to beat the Chinese here...

...Its alliance with the United States provides the best possible framework for Japan to achieve these goals...

...America could invest much more heavily in the modernization of Asia's other big democracy, Indonesia: The National Intelligence Council identifies this moderate Muslim nation of 235 million people sitting astride critical sea lanes as an emerging great power whose economy will surpass those of many European countries by the 2020s...

...Deepened economic cooperation could also provide ballast to volatile U.S.-China relations: China needs corporate America's help to modernize its banks, develop mature capital markets, construct health care and pension systems for a rapidly aging society, and create a transparent investment climate...

...In India, the opposite logic applied: New Delhi was lukewarm about the quad until Beijing began lobbying against it, leading India to sign on enthusiastically...

...Political scientists identify a historic power shift from West to East...

...Southeast Asian states have pursued closer cooperation with the United States to help defeat internal challenges like terrorism, preserve their autonomy as China looms over the region, and fuel the Asian economic miracle...

...China's authoritarianism looks like the outlier in Asia, not the model its neighbors mean to follow...

...More recently, the official Xinhua news agency attacked Japan's "wild ambitions of becoming a political and military power," highlighting the threat to China's own ambitions posed by Japan's ability to challenge Beijing's leadership in Asia...

...As one Singaporean think-tanker told me: What will Singapore do if, in 10 years' time, Beijing calls us to announce that its naval fleet is steaming towards Singapore to call uninvited at our ports...

...If we don't work with our friends to build an enduring foundation for order in Asia as five centuries of Western dominance in international relations give way to a new era, others not guided by our political values will—and we may not like the results...

...The present historical moment offers America a fleeting chance to shape emerging Asia in ways that preserve our privileged position in the world's most dynamic region...

...Japan and Australia recently signed a bilateral security pact—Japan's first outside the U.S...

...Because each of these countries has repeatedly held free elections, each constitutes a test of the popular appeal of liberal values...

...Asia's other key states have moved closer to Washington even as countries in Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America have edged away...

...If neither friendly navy is available, we'll have no choice but to open our ports and enter China's sphere of influence...

...In each of these countries, moderates have always prevailed over Islamic extremists, who have garnered tiny proportions of the vote...

...By contrast, Asian leaders broadly seek closer relations with Washington, scold their U.S...

...But as the Dalai Lama puts it, President Hu Jintao's "constant emphasis on a 'harmonious society' suggests that something is missing...

...When China's leaders claim a mandate to rule based on their economic stewardship, they have the wider world to thank...

...Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh declares of liberal democracy, "All countries of the world will evolve in this direction as we move forward into the 21st century...

...protection against neighbors that have colonized the peninsula in the past...

...Asian states worked to include India, Australia, and New Zealand in the East Asia Summit in order to prevent that organization from becoming Sinocentric, pulling in countries that could share American interests while retaining an Asian or Pacific identity...

...The open international economy that has made possible China's export-based prosperity is a product of international economic rules underpinned by Western leadership...

...Such strong Asian states along China's periphery could deter Chinese adventurism and help ensure its peaceful rise...

...because most Asian states support an "open regionalism" that includes America, not a return to the Sino-centric hierarchy of Asia's past...

...6) Stay engaged...

...But the success of democracy in Taiwan, overwhelming popular support in Hong Kong for greater democratic freedoms, the relative popularity of the United States among the Chinese public even today, and the creeping debate within China's ruling party about how to institutionalize the party's dominance through the trappings of managed democracy all attest to the power of liberalism's appeal...

...There is a perception in Asia that America's laser-like focus on defeating terrorism causes it to talk past allies primarily concerned with fueling Asia's economic dynamism...

...policy now can help ensure that the new age dawning will not be "someone else's century," as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warns, but our own...

...To the extent that Asian governments and peoples continue to embrace universal values, we can be confident that our common ideals will be an enduring source of security and prosperity...

...Nixon pointed out that China and America shared a compelling interest in containing Japanese military power...

...Japan has led in the formation of a quadrilateral security partnership with India, Australia, and America...

...The Asia-Pacific region encompasses half of humanity, includes five nuclear powers, and within a few decades will contain the world's four largest economies and biggest navies...

...Vietnam's leaders made a strategic decision in 2003 to qualitatively enhance relations with America for fear of growing Chinese influence, telling American officials that "the [U.S.-China-Vietnam] triangle is out of balance" and that closer U.S.-Vietnam ties were necessary to maintain Asia's geopolitical equilibrium...

...A resurgent Japan ever more closely tied to America now seeks to spread the values of "freedom, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law" in Asia and the world, as outgoing Prime Minister Abe put it...

...What should we be doing to help build a new American century in Asia...

...This desire helps explain why Asian leaders are attempting to construct regional organizations—and why the United States, even if not a member of all of them, benefits from their development...

...Such influence gives the United States a singular opportunity to construct a new American century in Asia...

...The authoritarian stability and dynamic prosperity that characterize China's domestic order are made possible in part by the character of China's external environment...

...Americans should not fear the rise of Asia: As a Pacific nation with a dynamic, globalized economy and vibrant society, we will benefit immensely from the economic transformation of China and India, even as the combined power and norms of the Euro-Atlantic allies continue to shape international society...

...China's export- and foreign investment-led economic transformation is the central source of legitimacy for the Communist party...

...In Southeast Asia, once the bastion of "Asian values," a lot has changed...

...When China's leaders speak of the first decades of this century as a "20-year period of opportunity," they implicitly highlight the benign international conditions conducive to the peace, security, and flows of trade and finance that are making China a world power...

...China has adopted Southeast Asia's economics-first discourse, and its influence has increased accordingly...

...India has shown itself to be a responsible multilateral partner in its multiple votes to sanction Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency, its non-opposition to U.S...

...The civilian-nuclear agreement, extensive technology transfer, wide-ranging American assistance programs, and U.S...

...Japan's overriding goal is to become a "normal country" that can defend itself, export its values to shape its region, and pursue the kind of global leadership befitting the world's second-largest economy...

...1) Accelerate the rise of democratic great powers in Asia increasingly willing to help police the region...

...The United States is the most important provider of these public goods...

...We need to speak the same language as our prosperous friends, who know that U.S...

...Countries that believe this are natural allies of the United States...

...alliance offers Japan better options, which is why Tokyo has moved closer to Washington, not edged away from it as experts predicted, since the end of the Cold War...

...In China, an active public debate over democracy was well underway in the 1980s...

...Although Beijing certainly wields influence in Pyongyang, it appears that North Korea's Dear Leader deems the United States a more desirable patron in his quest for regime security...

...trade and investment agreements are qualitatively superior to—and more lucrative than—anything China, India, or Japan can offer at the moment...

...Perhaps most strangely of all, North Korea's armed antics over more than a decade look like part of a larger design to maneuver the United States into sponsoring North Korea's brittle regime— through massive economic and energy assistance, food aid, a security pact, and diplomatic normal-ization—in order to bolster its legitimacy in the face of challenges from South Korea's far more successful socioeconomic model, and to secure U.S...

...alliance since 1951—and Australia and Indonesia have inked a bilateral security treaty...

...First, we'll look east, to see if the U.S...

...Smart U.S...

...Without the alliance, Japan would face a stark choice between testing nuclear weapons to provide security in a dangerous region and falling in line behind Beijing...

...Freedom has roots in Asia: Sun Yat-sen declared the first Chinese republic in 1912, and since 1947 the "idea of India" has been democracy...

...The permissive strategic environment that has allowed China to prioritize economic development is a function of America's stabilizing military presence in Asia...

...Chinese century" recalling the Sino-centric hierarchy of traditional Asia...

...Most people in most places want to replicate some form of it, if not its Western cultural byproducts, in their own countries—including the citizens of Indonesia, Pakistan, India, and Turkey, four countries that together contain the majority of the world's Muslim population...

...Economists speak of a new "Beijing consensus" on economic development that is replacing the "Washington consensus" of democratic capitalism...

...and because the values of democratic modernity to which Asian people aspire found their earliest and most enduring expression in the West...

...Modernity today is defined by democratic capitalism and a culture of opportunity...

...The staying power of the United States in Asia gives smaller countries geopolitical options they would not otherwise have...

...Widespread Asian craving for American leadership indicates that perhaps we are not providing enough...

...Among the Bush administration's finest accomplishments have been the transformation of the U.S.-Japan alliance and the construction of a wide-ranging strategic partnership with India...

...7) Foster democracy...

...Although it did not make the rules of the global economy, China benefits more from them—and from their enforcement by Western nations and clubs like the World Trade Organization (WTO)—than almost anyone else...

...The material success of authoritarian China has led to premature anxiety that economic modernization there will not produce a middle class that demands democratic rights, as occurred in the West...

...Japanese leaders now call for the construction of an "arc of freedom and prosperity" across Eurasia that will one day become a circle, incorporating a democratic China...

...China relies on the United States to contain Japan's formidable latent military power...

...America could focus on the goal of an Asia-Pacific free trade agreement encompassing over $20 trillion of combined GDP and 55 percent of world trade, although it faces daunting obstacles like China's lack of legal transparency and Japan's agricultural protectionism...

...In doing so, they remind Americans of our own history, when our ascent to world power a century ago was marked by similar calls to make the world safe for democracy...

...This is in keeping with Korean leaders' traditional concern about predation by neighboring great powers China, Russia, and Japan as well as political challenges from contending domestic centers of power on the peninsula...

...Despite the widely trumpeted power shift, most Asian leaders still express a clear preference for U.S...

...In Indonesia, for instance, the Islamist party polls at only 7 percent, while in Pakistan, an assortment of Islamist parties, some sponsored by the military regime, has never garnered more than a combined 11 percent of the vote...

...This particularly upset India's prime minister, who perhaps wondered why Russia is among the G-8, but his democracy—which constitutes one-sixth of mankind, boasts economic growth of nearly 10 percent annually, will soon have an economy larger than every European country's, and is on globalization's front lines—is not...