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Comments in response to East-West Dialogue Issue 1, Renewing the Pacific Partnership
Michael G. Plummer, The Johns Hopkins University, SAIS-Bologna
Sep 8, 10:03 PM
I read with great interest the Morrison and Petri essay. They are absolutely right that the United States is losing ground in Asia due to a lack of overall strategic vision, and there is a good deal of “low-lying fruit” that could be picked easily. Their three-pronged approach — strategic planning, institution building, and public diplomacy — makes a good deal of sense. But unlike other world powers, the United States has global strategic and economic interests and responsibilities that often compete with each other. It will be a constant fight to “weight” the associated regions effectively. The weights are mainly politically driven and determined by risks rather than opportunities; reforming, stable, and prosperous Asia tends to receive a relatively small weight, ironically because in many ways it is an oasis of stability (at least compared to other regions). The only country in the region that seems to receive a disproportionate weight is North Korea, whose weighting through economic criteria would be zero. As Morrison and Petri point out, this is short-sighted and needs to be remedied.
I have three brief comments on the essay itself. First, it gives several impressive figures to show Asia’s rising importance to the world economy, a theme that Drysdale takes up as well. But economic integration deepening and widening lead to a non-linear increase in the significance of the rise of any region. Europe, for example, has in recent decades been essentially as large or larger than the United States, but its strategic and economic importance grew only as it deepened integration and expanded membership. The same is true in Asia; as integration proceeds apace, its importance to the United States will increase disproportionately.
Second, Morrison and Petri offer us words of wisdom in terms of building institutions: APEC’s “products must be well defined, substantial, and recognized as important. APEC should never again allow a major regional economic issue, like the Asian financial crisis, to occur without vigorously addressing it.” I would extend this maxim to avoid extravagant trade initiatives, such as the Bogor Vision, that lack credible implementation and common political sense. The fact that 2010 is rapidly approaching and APEC has essentially zero chance of creating a region of “open trade and investment” for developed countries has caused the organization to lose credibility, regardless of its many positive contributions. The Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific should only be promulgated if it is just that.
Third, I agree with the regional approach that the authors sensibly take. However, just as there should be no contradiction between building an East Asian Community and a Transpacific Community, deepening bilateral relationships and building on them over time can also play a pro-active role. Indeed, I would argue that US bilateral trade initiatives in the region, provided that they are open (as in the case of the US-Singapore Free Trade Area), constitute important means of keeping the United States engaged in the region as well as ramping up the momentum to construct a Transpacific Community.
Benjamin B. Olshin, Ph.D
Sep 2, 3:44 AM
I read “Renewing the Pacific Partnership” the other day with great interest, but as I finished the article, a thought came to mind: the reason that the U.S. has been “dropping the ball” on such a partnership is lack of knowledge. In short, Americans know very little about Asia, about its importance in the world economy, not to mention its culture and history.
I was pleased, then, to see your article coupled with the “sidebar” entitled “The Other Deficit” about the United States having “one of the lowest ratios of ‘outward student mobility’… in the world.” This, clearly, is the source of the problem. As a consultant and academic, it astonishes me that even students from wealthy families with the resources to travel and study abroad often choose not to do so. This means that we are producing a whole new generation that will again fail to understand that the U.S. exists in a global context, and, as I often tell my students, “there is a whole other world out there.” Indeed, I believe most Americans would be surprised to know that most of the largest cities in the world are outside the U.S.: Tokyo, Shanghai, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Lagos, and so on. The failure of the U.S. to establish healthy partnerships with Asia (not to mention Latin America or Africa) begins with its failure to educate its citizens about the world, other cultures, and other economies.
S.G.Tan
Aug 31, 7:01 PM
The US must be seen to be interested in the rest of Asia rather than just China, Japan & the two Koreas. She should also demonstrate herself to be more of a team player than an all powerful superpower. More people to people bilateral contacts such as the now grossly underfunded EWC graduate programmes should be restored. Awareness of whats happening in the Asia-Pacific region should be encouraged among Americans other than just news reports on negative events. Hence the ‘charm offensive” proposed by the report should be fully supported.
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