“Asian Century” Is Strategically A Myth

“ASIAN CENTURY” IS STRATEGICALLY A MYTH

By Dr. Subhash Kapila

Introductory Observations

The term “Asian Century” as a belief first emerged in political discourse and analysis sometimes in the mid 1980s or late 1980s. It signified that the 21^st century would be dominated by Asian countries and this assessment was predominantly based on some demographic and economic factors materialization.

In the late 1980s when this Author was researching on his doctoral thesis on “Asia Pacific Security: 2000 AD Perspectives” political analysts and the academia were terming the 21^st century as the “Japanese Century”. By the mid 1990s or so the same set of people had started viewing the 21^st century as the “Chinese Century”.

The Asian Century as a term had faded away as a consequence. The belief that the Asian Century is already here and not that it is coming stands resurrected in 2008 with the publication of the Book: “The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Power to the East” by Singapore’s distinguished diplomat Kishore Mahbubani.

This is not the first book on this subject which deals with the shift of power to Asia. One remembers a book “Fire in the East” by Paul Bracken which basically covered this same phenomenon.

However, Professor Mahabhubani’s book and the assertions that he has made are more provocative and therefore invited rave reviews, critical comments and strong appreciations by reputed economists. Many of these stand projected on Prof. Mahbubani’s website. He has given extensive lectures in US universities forcefully projecting his assertions on the Asian Century.

Strategically, an Asian Century cannot emerge in opposition to or despite the United States and the West. If it were so then during the Cold War a large number of Asian countries would have gravitated to Communist China’s camp or the Russia-China camp initially. Unlike China, the United States and the West have been a positive force for Asian stability.

Further, an Asian Century theme must not ever be viewed as antithetical to the United States and the West. The economic resurgence of Asia which provides the promise for an Asian Century was underwritten in terms of US and Western investments, including in Communist China.

The purpose of this Paper is neither to review Prof. Mahbubani’s distinguished book nor to place one self in his intellectual league. However, the aim of this paper is to dispel the belief that the 21^st Century as an Asian Century can strategically emerge.

It is intended to do so in this Paper by selecting some of the more striking assertions that Prof. Mahabubani has made and some points emerging from his interviews on the subject. Accordingly, the Paper dwells on the following aspects:

Asian Century is Strategically a Myth
The Asian Power Struggle
Asia More Capable of Delivering a More Stable World Order: Questionable
United States and the Islamic World: Bridging the Divide
Asian Century’s Stewardship?

Before examining each of these aspects it needs to be stated that the belief of the 21^st Century as an Asian Century seems to be more fostered solely from the economic and cultural prism rather than the “strategic prism” which is the final arbiter of sound policy formulations.

Asian Century is Strategically a Myth

The Asian Century is strategically a myth for nowhere is there evidence today or evidence in terms of future indications that the Asian Region extending from Turkey in the West to Japan in the East and from Mongolia in the North to Sri Lanka in the South is a “monolithic whole” strategically, politically, economically or culturally.

Within this Asian region there are deep cleavages, fragmentation and disparities which in the last sixty years or so (when the process of de-colonization started) no one has made any serious effort to bridge.

Within the strategic sub-systems of the Asian regions conflictual flashpoints exist in East Asia, South East Asia, South Asia and the Middle East. The so called regional powers in these regions have not been able to douse these fires.

Admittedly, in Asia there are emerging global powers like China, India and Japan. By themselves, the combined might of these three nations does not give the strategic and political weight to dominate global affairs the way the United States and the West has done so far.

The 21^st Century to be truly an Asian century would call for the combined strategic weight of China, Japan and India to project strategic, military and political power across the globe and create a “new world order dominated by Asia”. This is nowhere in sight, Economic superpowers by themselves do not count as global “Great Powers”.

To maintain that ASEAN provides a stable framework on which a larger Asian monolithic strategic identity can be forged is fallacious. ASEAN was an economic grouping which later acquired strategic overtones but which is now getting marginalized.

Asia in the last sixty years has been so besieged from within in terms of conflicts and wars that it had to rely and welcome the United States to maintain security and stability in the various regions. This is a strategic reality. Even China counted on the United States as a countervailing power for its security against the USSR during the years of estrangement.

The Asian Power Struggle

Asia today witnesses China, India and Japan engaged in competitive strategic rivalries both for regional and global influence.

China has shown no inclination to indicate that it is willing to share the “Asian Strategic Space” with Japan and India.

On the contrary, China has actively created “spoiler states” like North Korea against Japan in East Asia and Pakistan against India in South Asia to strategically marginalize these two democracies and thereby assure its own strategic salience.

The ongoing Asian power struggle thereby invites a very natural strategic response from Japan and India. Japan is in a security alliance with the United States against China. The evolving US-India Strategic Partnership when fully consummated would drastically affect the global power balance in a significant manner against China’s aspirations to be counted as a superpower.

China’s pretensions for emerging as a superpower to provide bi-polarity to the United States are strategically impossible. As I have constantly maintained in my writings that China has no “natural allies” in the world like the United States to further its strategic designs, not even in the Islamic World.

The ongoing Asian Power struggle could intensify further as China continues to move to create more strategic and military asymmetry with India and Japan.

An Asian Century is therefore a “mirage” and not likely to materialize due to the inherent power struggles within Asia and the contradictory stances of the main contenders.

Asia More Capable of Delivering a More Stable World Order: Questionable

This is a much quoted assertion of Prof. Mahbubani in the various commentaries that have appeared lately in the media.

For reasons discussed above, Asia does not seem to be equipped with moral and motivational predominance across the globe to deliver a secure world order.

Further, a “Stable World Order” is a utopian dream and emerges more from the liberalist school of political thought. In a world of competing strategic rivalries, in which Asia is no exception, it is only the “balance of power” concepts that ensure regional and global stability in which powers external to Asia invariably get drawn into.

War and conflict are inevitable and inescapable determinants in the international order. Where wars are avoided, “strategic pressure points” and “counter strategic pressure points” are brought into play by regional and global powers.

The definition of peace itself is negative. Peace is defined as “absence of war”.

United States and the Islamic World: Bridging the Divide

One wonders as to how this becomes relevant to the theme of an Asian Century. For all practical purposes the United States – Islamic World divide has surfaced as a reaction – counter reaction effect in the policies of these two entities.

The United States has many notable Islamic allies who can help bridge this divide. It should be nobody’s case that China or India as leading Asian powers could do so.

Lately, India in the Islamic World has been viewed as a close US ally and especially in the fundamentalist Islamic World which is at odds with USA. In fact USA, Israel and India are grouped together as targets for Islamic Jihad.

It would be a strategic folly for the United States to even think that China can help bridge the US-Islamic World divide. China has been strategically exploiting this divide to keep US strategic focus away from East Asia from where it ultimately plans to expel US military presence. China has notoriously distinguished itself in providing nuclear and missile arsenals in Islamic countries to challenge the United States.

Asian Century’s Stewardship?

When one talks of the United States and the West as a global force what gets conjured in one’s mind is of the United States as a super power in alliance with like-minded, culturally similar and religiously akin Western countries which are politically mature and economically secure democracies.

This is what permitted the 20^th Century to be termed as the “American Century”. No such cohesive picture strikes the mind, nor there seems to be one on the horizon when one even thinks of an Asian Century.

If an Asian Century is here, who is stewarding it? And if it is to come, who will steer it? Some would like to suggest China or India and some more optimistically “China and India”.

China and India are engaged in competing strategic rivalries within Asia and on the global stage and these rule out all of the above propositions. In India whether the Indian Government mouths it or not, the Indian public at large view China as “India’s Threat Number One”. This negates China and India getting together.

If Asian countries ever gravitate towards one single country for stewardship of the Asian Century then one can daresay it would be India. Except for China’s strategic allies like Pakistan, India has no history of conflict or disputes with Asian countries. This is unlike China.

More importantly, India as an emerging global power is viewed as a benign and positive force for stabilization in global affairs, unlike China. Its international acceptability will be more.

But one question does predominate and that is whether India’s political class as a whole is willing to shed their delusional non-alignment mind-sets and accept the strategic responsibilities of stewarding the Asian Century.

Concluding Observations

The Asian Century, if ever it becomes a reality cannot become one without accommodative stances of the United States and the West. The Asian Century cannot be thought of as one of delivering Asia from the so called Western domination. In global terms, an Asian Century that emerges will have to accede “strategic space” to the United States and the West and their national strategic interests.

Asian countries are right to demand with their growing power the re-structuring of the United Nations, the World Bank, the IMF and the NPT. However, one cannot blame the US and West solely for obstructing it. What about the attitude of Asia’s must powerful country China in opposing membership of the UN Security Council with full veto powers to India and Japan?

The fact that policy analysts stopped terming the 21^st Century as the “Chinese Century” is an ample indicator that in any Asian Century, China will not be acceptable as the predominant and influential Asian Power.

India’s Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh was right in observing in an address in 2006 at the Asia Society, New York that: “Some people (Bush) have said that 21^st Century will be the Asian Century. I believe the 21^st Century will be “Freedom’s Century”.

(The author is an International Relations and Strategic Affairs analyst. He is the Consultant, Strategic Affairs with South Asia Analysis Group. Email:drsubhashkapila@yahoo.com)