‘US needs Asia to achieve goals’

With dramatic change in global power over the decades, the US now needs Asian cooperation to achieve Washington’s goals, a senior fellow at the East-West Center said.

Charles Morrison said the US, in the past, had been seen as demanding and failing to give due respect to other coutries and the complexity of their societies and politics but “there is much less tolerance of this now.”

“The US is still systemically the region’s most important power, but no longer in the dominant position it once had,” Morrison said in his commentary “What May Not Be In President Trump’s Asia Briefing Book.”

“Americans now need Asian cooperation to achieve US goals (just as Asians need the US), and this puts a premium on listening, consulting, persuading and developing positions in partnership,” he said.

Morrison said successful US policies have been rooted in its national interests, but it has to understand and work with positive regional trends.

“It is virtually impossible to force another government to do something it does not see in its own interests because its leadership is put in the untenable position of losing face or even office. It is more likely that government will win favor at home by rejecting US demands,” he added.

In Asia, he said, even more than most regions strategic vision, gravitas, patience, respect for protocol and predictability are highly prized and expected in leadership.

“Historically, American leaders usually – though not always - projected these traits, and they remain expected today,” he said.

Building a coalition on North Korea for example, according to Morrison, requires a well-thought out and articulated strategy based on the damage North Korea is doing to the world.

“This needs to be presented not simply as an American security problem, but a regional and global one in which South Korea, China, Japan and others have equal or greater stakes,” he said.

President Donald Trump, he said, has had successful meetings with many AsiaPacific leaders.

“More than in Europe, Asians have been giving the benefit of the doubt to the new president. They will be watching hopefully for new signs of affirmative US regional partnership and leadership,” Morrison said.

Trump will be in Manila from Nov. 12 to 14 to reaffirm US commitment to the US-Philippines alliance and Association of Southeast Asian Nations centered regional architecture as he engages with his counterparts from the East Asia Summit, the region’s premier leaders-led forum for addressing the Asia-Pacific’s most pressing political and security issues.