Tom Plate :
IF OUR future is not to be dulled by the dead weight of the past, then a clear-headed prioritisation of the issues of the 21st century needs to be undertaken. This means keeping Asia – and thus China- in the top spot of the global conversation. President Barack Obama’s diplomatic trip this week to Asia is welcome indeed.
Obama has only two years of his eight-year presidency left but that’s enough time for a more original, deeper contribution to the Sino-US history book than he has made so far. An eventual hot war between the two would not only be unaffordable but would be injurious to everyone’s health. A brilliant US-China policy could prove a kind of global affordable care act.
Up to now the much-hyped US “pivot” to Asia has been almost a self-deception, with Washington’s mental energies glued to Syria far more than, for example, strategically situated Singapore. For understandable reasons of all-consuming domestic political pressures – more than any lack of international common sense – Washington is still ensnared in the miseries and poisons of the past. This has led to missed opportunities for carefully thought out, if inherently complex, China initiatives. Instead of continuing to be absorbed by the likes of Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu or Syria’s Assad, Obama and his team over the next two years should spend more of their foreign policy energy on Asia. There should be no reverse pivot back.
It is utterly foolish to assume that China’s President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang don’t have much to offer; in fact they impress almost everyone as being very capable indeed. And it is absolutely stupid to believe that simply because they are of the Communist persuasion they shouldn’t be consulted and listened to by the US president and his team as often as their attention can be engaged. Only the moral infant – or the intellectually insecure – is attentive only to those with whom basic agreement is foretold, or easy to achieve.
Our diplomacy needs to get out from underneath the intellectual sloth of its bureaucracies and mix it up more with people who can bring something new to the table. In fact, there are a number of Asian leaders, especially Singapore’s Lee Hsien Loong, Indonesia’s Joko Widowo and the Philippines’ Benigno Aquino, who can offer America different and invaluable perspectives. The world, as we all know, is now all but a universal global entity. We really all are in this together.
Let us listen more to others. After all, with unprecedented rapidity and scale, China ought to win some sort of global prize for so dramatically improving the economic lot of its 1.36 billion people. What the sprawling nation has accomplished in the last three decades is almost unbelievable – and probably unprecedented. On the tiny population end of the scale, of course, there is Singapore, which deserves some sort of global award for the best overall selection and implementation of national public policy over many decades. It has been some show there. The Philippines doesn’t get much positive publicity, of course, but it has been making healthy strides, and resolutely deserves Washington’s notice for remaining a democracy – unlike Myanmar, which has never been one, and Thailand, which apparently doesn’t again want to be one. Even shamefully backward and scary North Korea, which has now dramatically released two captive Americans, finally looks to be considering joining the Asian parade. Indonesia is home to more Muslims than any other country – might not its new president be worth America’s rapt attention on certain issues?
Huge obstacles threaten to derail the through-train to the future. The list – from the troubling unsettlement in Hong Kong (a situation which Beijing needs to negotiate further along careful lines) to the ever-present potential of religious extremism throughout the region – is long. But only one issue consistently merits top ranking. That is the relationship between China and America.
This is the challenge of our epoch. As far as I am concerned, the presidents of America and China cannot meet often enough. What’s more important? Crossing into the frontiers of the 21st century means taking on the challenges of the new. The new now is the rise of Asia – led by China. It’s rather obvious if you stop to think.
(Tom Plate is a distinguished professor and journalist based in Los Angeles)
