A power transition, caused mainly by the rise of China, is going on in East Asia. China has become the No. 1 trading partner of almost every country in the region, while its military power continues to grow. Asymmetrical interdependency between China and other regional states will continue to grow.

At the same time, East Asia has witnessed architectural and structural changes over the years. Multilateral organizations and institutions such as the East Asian Summit (EAS), the China-Japan-Korea Summit, the ASEAN-Plus-Three, and the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) have become increasingly active, and are expected to expand their respective roles. And increasing dynamism for integration and cooperation among the countries in the region has become highly visible and multidimensional. On the other hand, despite efforts to modernize the alliance system, U.S. bilateral alliances have remained relatively static.

Nationalistic sentiment, territorial disputes, and history issues have recently become more contentious among countries in the region, which impedes further integration and cooperation and could become the source of conflict. In some countries, democratization is taking place. Uncertainty over whether this transformation will be smooth is another source of potential instability. In a word, the current major characteristics of East Asia can best be summed up as “iAsia” – integration, innovation, investment, instability, and inequality.

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Arguing against the declinist mood in U.S. politics these days, Robert Kagan, in “Not fade away: Against the myth of American decline,” recalls the triumph of the Cold War as a confidence-booster for worried Americans.

The challenges confronting the United States today, Kagan contends, “are not greater than the challenges the United States faced during the Cold War,” when Washington worked to contain Soviet expansion by cultivating ties with war-depleted countries in the Soviet Union’s neighborhood. Today, having established strategic alliances with several of China’s neighbors, the United States is in a more favorable position than China, whose emergence as a rising power started from a “relatively weak” base. According to Kagan, Beijing faces considerable limits due to its geostrategic location, and it’s China’s turn to scramble, while the United States needs only to “stand still,” to “hold on to what it has” and secure its position. If the United States was able to succeed in the Cold War, the argument goes, conditions would appear to favor the U.S. now, as well.

There’s some merit in this, but also grounds for skepticism over the idea that the United States can afford to stand still in the face of China’s increasing competition and influence. Indeed, China’s scramble today in some ways bears a striking resemblance to the U.S. scramble half a century ago, suggesting a bumpy road ahead for any nation that Beijing deems to be standing in its way.

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The Diplomat is running a series of interviews with Washington D.C.-based ambassadors on defense, diplomacy and trade in the Asia-Pacific region. In the ninth interview in the series, Pacific Forum CSIS non-resident fellow Eddie Walsh talks with Danish Ambassador H.E. Peter Taksøe-Jensen, whose country currently holds the presidency of the Council of the European Union. Their conversation centers on the opportunities and challenges Europe faces as a result of the rise of Asia.

The last few years have seen enormous changes sweep the world. Of all trends, one of the most notable is the rise of Asia. From your perspective, should Europeans fear the increasing wealth and power of Asian countries?

From a Danish perspective, as we look at the enormous changes in the world, you can choose to be scared and nervous, or you can choose to see opportunities. There’s no doubt that we are seeing this as a great opportunity.

We have to remember that there is a bit of catching up still to do in the rest of the world. If you look at Asia twenty years ago, half the population was living in a situation of poverty. That has been decreased over the last couple of decades. The way that economic growth has been used as a tool in fighting poverty should be acknowledged.

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There are many reasons why Syria isn’t another Libya and so requires an alternative model of resolution, perhaps, similar to Yemen and Egypt where a political arrangement paved the way for leadership transition. This is precisely where the role of Syria’s main Asian allies is crucial to any kind of lasting progress.

Clearly, Syria is in the midst of a protracted humanitarian crisis. With thousands killed and ongoing deadly clashes between security forces and armed opposition – including a bombing attack Thursday in Damascus that killed dozens and shaved the facade off a military intelligence building – the international community  is still struggling to effectively implement a roadmap to peace.

Ongoing shelling of opposition strongholds, especially in Homs and Idlib, has further intensified calls for some kind of international intervention, sentiments given voice at the Friends of Syria Summit at the end of March in Istanbul. Yet it’s also clear that there’s little appetite, especially among many NATO countries, for intervention, whether in the form of establishing humanitarian buffer zones or the imposition of a no-fly-zone.

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The high-profile escape of Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng last week from house arrest has sparked renewed speculation over the stability of China’s domestic political situation. The question now is whether despite the fact that Wang Lijun and then Chen deciding to seek U.S. assistance caused considerable embarrassment to the Chinese Communist Party’s much-vaunted unity, these incidents will have provided Beijing with the opportunity to publicly enforce its stand on factional struggles, thus paving the way for longer-term unity under a new leadership later this year.

It’s also not inconceivable that the Bo Xilai affair could increase expectations for the party to expedite political reforms. And while this may not always be perceived positively by individual party members, it has nonetheless made clear the need for change at a higher level. Still, all this may also heighten party tensions, particularly in the short-term, over how the leadership transition ought to take place.  

On the foreign policy front, Beijing has its hands full with a range of regional and global challenges. Closer to home, there are China’s ties with North Korea, which have come under increased scrutiny. The recent claims that China sold North Korea components for a military transporter aren’t likely to go down well with Beijing’s policymakers. And while the decision by Beijing to throw its lot in with the international community in rebuking Pyongyang over its latest missile test marked a rare break from its usual support for its neighbor, the fact that China-North Korean ties were reaffirmed in a high-profile meeting shortly after suggests that Beijing’s dealings with its neighbor are likely to be characterized by continuity rather than change.

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The Diplomat is running a series of interviews with Washington DC-based ambassadors on defense, diplomacy, and trade in the Asia-Pacific region. Last month, Washington Correspondent Eddie Walsh filed the first part of his interview with Ambassador Kim Beazley of Australia. Following is the second part of the discussion, on defense, diplomacy, and trade issues in the Asia-Pacific region from the Australian perspective.

ANZUS recently celebrated its 60th anniversary. To remain relevant, the terms of the treaty must be regularly updated to account for the changing security environment. For example, the Australian and U.S. governments announced earlier this year that a cyber attack on either nation would trigger the treaty. However, some say there are larger questions to be answered than just what new threats fall under the treaty. There are issues of strategic responsibilities and shared costs which can't be overlooked. So, from your perspective, what is the current state of ANZUS? What more needs to be done to modernize the treaty, and how is Australia responding to America’s call for its allies to contribute more to global security within the context of ANZUS?

Most people – Australians included – have a fixed view of the American-Australian alliance. ANZUS is just part of the relationship – a sort of boilerplate document that underpins it all. So, there's a sort of assumption that it was there in 1951 and it's the same now. It isn't. It changes constantly. It changes quantitatively in the characteristic of the relationship between the two countries and the things they do together. It also changes geo-politically as the area that Australia inhabits alters in terms of importance to the United States.

One of the reasons it took so long to get ANZUS in place from 1945-51 across successive Australian governments was because the South Pacific was no longer relevant to the United States once World War II was over. The focal points of the Cold War were already relevant by the end of the 1940s. The global political system of the Cold War had as its focal points Europe, North Asia, and to a degree the Middle East because of oil. Particularly after the Vietnam War, the Nixon Doctrine assumed not much importance to Southeast Asia and none at all to the South Pacific. So, the zones of fascination to Australia were barely important to the United States.

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As Japanese workers depart en masse from the cities for Golden Week, and diplomatic attention focuses on Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s visit to Washington D.C., significant progress has been made in Japan’s relations with India.

Relations between Japan and India are often criticized for lacking initiative. However, as commentators and strategists alike increasingly speak of the “Indo-Pacific” rather than the narrower “Asia-Pacific,” Japan and India are putting this broader concept into practice.

India first really appeared on Japan’s radar because of its impressive economic growth and the enormous potential India’s consumer and labor markets had for Japanese businesses struggling to cope with a shrinking population at home, and concern with over-dependence on China abroad. At the turn of the century, the “dot com” bubble, which highlighted India’s IT aptitude, coincided with some impressive results resulting from economic liberalization reforms initiated a decade earlier.

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The tone of U.S.-China relations over the past couple of years is arguably encapsulated in two sets of views: those of American commentators and opinion leaders, who claim that China is becoming more assertive or even aggressive, and their Chinese counterparts, who argue that by “pivoting” back to Asia the United States is seeking to constrain China’s rise.

Both sides frequently dispute the others’ analysis. However, a recent Brookings report by Kenneth Lieberthal and Wang Jisi underscores how entrenched these views are, and just how prickly things are ahead of this week’s Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Beijing.

The logic behind the report is that “each side can better manage the issue of strategic distrust if its leaders have confidence that they have an accurate picture of the way the other leadership thinks on the issues that produce this distrust.” Based on this logic, the core of the report tries to understand each side’s point of view, with the aim of increasing mutual understanding. However, if one looks closely into the issues discussed in the report, it’s not clear whether it’s actually a lack of understanding so much as specific disagreements that are at the root of the distrust.

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North Korea’s moribund economy is one that most observers would like to see marketized and internationalized. This is often considered an end in itself, wherein such transformations would expose the country to irresistible forces of social and political reform. Indeed, there’s evidence that changes in economic management are taking place. Instead of heralding some great reform, however, the tapping of North Korea’s rich mineral and fossil fuel wealth can be seen as potentially retarding social change. The idea of the “resource curse,” long debated by development theorists, is helpful in understanding how this might be the case. Rather than spur change, a what we might call “resource-driven equilibrium” might develop in North Korea.

The idea of a resource curse was developed in the 1980s, as economists noted that countries, particularly post-colonial ones, with large reserves of natural resources were often not developing as successfully as they potentially could. Sometimes, problems stem from economic causes, such as those faced by the Netherlands in the 1960s and ’70s, after huge reserves of natural gas were discovered in the North Sea. The export of this fossil fuel put tremendous strains on the economy’s manufactured goods, by driving up the exchange rate and making exports more expensive. Furthermore, human resources are drawn away from export-oriented industries, further eroding the competitiveness of the manufacturing sector. These economic pressures came to be known as “Dutch disease.”

There are also political consequences associated with a resource boom. When there’s a lack of manufacturing to begin with, a country’s elites are incentivized to fight for control over the resource base, rather than producing wealth by other means. It’s easier for them to distribute resource wealth to secure their own positions and enrich their political allies. Nigeria is an oft-cited example of this.

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Earlier this month, Singapore launched the Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence Community, setting another milestone in the city-state’s military modernization program known as the 3rd Generation Singapore Armed Forces project.

Without doubt, Singapore has the most technologically advanced armed forces amongst Association of Southeast Asian Nation states. Aside from its Integrated Knowledge-based Command and Control project, the Singaporean Defense Ministry has made numerous acquisitions over the past decade that indicate a shift towards both amphibious and precision strike capabilities.

These acquisitionsspan the air, ground and naval services of the armed forces, and include: Endurance-class Landing Platform Dock Ships; Formidable-class Stealth Frigates; F-15SG Multirole Fighters; F-16D fighters; the Bionix II Infantry Fighting Vehicleand the Gulfstream 550 Airborne Early Warning aircraft (G550-AEW). Moreover, Singapore’s Defense Minister Ng Eng Hen recently stated that Singapore is currently evaluating the possible procurement of the F-35 fighter.

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