Strategic Asia 2010-11: Asia's Rising Power and America's Continued Purpose

Preface

Preface Richard J. Ellings That the Strategic Asia Program has survived the vicissitudes of the past ten years—even prospered through them—is a remarkable testament not only to the need for the program but to the tremendous people who have led and otherwise contributed to it. With only myself to blame, it took all of the 1990s to figure out how to market the concept effectively. Even then, it took the tremendous help of people like General (ret.) John Shalikashvili, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Brigitte Allen, NBR’s director of institutional development. Through the dramatic events that marked the end of the Cold War and the twilight of the second millennium, almost no one was systematically tracking the historic changes unfolding. There certainly was a deluge of reports and books on what had and what was taking place (including those published by NBR), but there were no sustained studies that systematically tracked and analyzed the extraordinary data and developments of the times. And there were indeed extraordinary developments: the take-off of China, the fragmentation and problems plaguing the Asian and Islamic portions of the former Soviet empire, reforms in India, the integration of Asia into the global economy, and the utter transformation of the global balance of power. In August 2000, on the outskirts of Seattle, NBR assembled a group of scholars to plan the program, and then in 2001 we secured the support necessary to launch it. Envisioned was a comprehensive assessment of the driving forces and important features of the dramatic economic and geopolitical changes taking shape in the region. Ultimately, our purpose was to understand the relevance of these changes to U.S. interests. With founding research director Aaron Friedberg’s inspiration we named the program and published the first volume in the series, Strategic Asia 2001–02: Power and Purpose. We developed an executive summary and a companion database; we aimed the program at a diverse set of intellectual, policy, and business x • Strategic Asia 2010–11 leaders; and we hoped that new generations of students and analysts would gain deeper knowledge from it. Ashley Tellis, an original contributor, assumed the helm from Aaron as research director when Aaron took a senior position in government in 2004. Strategic Asia 2010–11: Asia’s Rising Power and America’s Continued Purpose is the tenth in the series, and is Ashley’s seventh volume as research director. The title and content of the volume honor these milestones and address head-on both the challenges our nation faces today and the challenges we think our nation will face in Asia for many years to come. The volume assesses the region by providing an integrated perspective—an issuebased assessment to get at the “big picture.” Aaron returns to the program with a thought-provoking, strategic assessment of alternative, geopolitical conceptions of the future. The volume throughout aims to provide a deeper examination of the core concerns of international relations today: power and influence, domestic political and ideological transformation in key countries, economic growth and trade, national security threats stemming from military competition and nuclear proliferation to energy and resource scarcity, demographic trends, international cooperation, and the politics of climate. This is a daunting mission that we thought had to be undertaken. As it turns out, the authors have been up to the task and have done a marvelous job by drawing invaluable comparisons and identifying the cumulative and interactive effects of the most important developments in Asia for a net assessment for the United States. The Very Big Picture Over the last 30 years the strategic landscape of the world has transformed, as the Asia-Pacific replaced the Atlantic as the locus of global power, challenges, and opportunities. The tectonic shift was caused by the collapse of the Soviet empire as well as by the rise of Japan, South Korea, then China, and now India. Current economic weakness in the United States and Europe is further accentuating China’s rise. The political will to sustain international leadership, long an issue for Europe, is increasingly a question asked about the United States. With such rapid change has come ambiguity in the distribution of power and decisiveness to use power. In this environment, some nations may seek opportunities that fulfill international ambitions. Others may lose capacity to fulfill existing international responsibilities or expectations. There is the resulting danger—indeed, likelihood—that nations will aggressively exploit real opportunities or at a minimum misperceive their competitors’ capacities...