What Asia Wants from the Biden Administration

The sheer extent to which the United States’s role in

Asia was unsettled for many countries in the region by the unpredictable and often confrontational approach of the Trump administration has given impetus to an overdue examination of exactly what it is that Asia wants from the US. The Biden administration has a chance to rethink Washington’s policies on a broad range of issues, not just the Us-china rivalry that preoccupies so many players in the region. Hopes and expectations are high throughout Asia and the Indo-pacific that the Biden administration will be a vast improvement over the previous four years, writes Gareth Evans.

What asia is looking for from the new Biden administration is what it has always wanted, but only rarely received, from the united States: its eyes, ears, brains and, on occasion, brawn — in that order. any generalization is fraught, given that there are more cultural and political differences across the region, and the broader indopacific, than practically anywhere else on earth. But there would be more agreement than not on Washington’s need to see asia for what it is; to listen carefully to all the regional players; to craft policy intelligently; and to use military force judiciously.

the first of these needs

is clarity of vision: for Washington to see the region, its power relativities, and its individual country dynamics for what they are, not what it would like them to be. That must begin with insight into america’s own relative place in the regional order. its unipolar moment is over, and continued use of the ‘p’ words — primacy, predominance, pre-eminence — helps relationships neither with adversaries nor allies.

While inconceivable for the Trump administration to accept, this is well understood by Biden’s foreign policy team. But it has been rarely articulated by any of them, still inhibited as they are by domestic politics — just as was President Barack obama in his State of the union address in Febru

ary 2016 with his tin-eared assertion, in the context of the Trans-pacific Partnership, that “China does not set the rules in that region, we do.” The obvious reality is that China is becoming ever more powerful both absolutely and relatively, ever less willing to be a global and regional ruletaker rather than active rule-maker, and ever more assertive regionally.

But China is not the Soviet union: it won’t implode any time soon; its preoccupations are still overwhelmingly internal; its Communist Party leadership has no evident ambition for global or regional ideological dominance or taste for outright territorial conquest (Taiwan possibly excepted); and it is joined at the wallet — to everyone’s mutual benefit — with not only the united States but a host of regional economies. Confrontation is not inevitable, and coexistence is perfectly possible.

Clear sight is also needed about the risk to us and regional security posed by north Korea. all the objective evidence is that its leadership is obsessed with regime survival, does not trust the West to guarantee it and believes that nuclear weapons are a critical deterrent to external attack. But north Korea also understands perfectly well that any aggressive use of its weapons would be catastrophic: To be homicidal would be suicidal. Those realities give hope, and scope, for intelligent diplomacy, particularly if Washington adds ears to its eyes and listens more carefully to what the Moon Jae-in administration in Seoul is telling it about the need to accompany summit showmanship with serious step-by-step trust and confidence building.

The Biden administration’s eyes also need to be clear about the limited traction in asia of democratic, civil and political-rights values — universal, not just Western, though these of course are under the united nations human rights Declaration and associated international covenants. authoritarian and illiberal governments are currently less the exception than the rule across the region, and there is little taste for calling out any but the most extreme violations, and often not even those. To recognize this reality does not mean accepting it, but it does mean crafting response strategies that are more likely than not to be practically effective — on which more below.

the first thing that anyone who seriously listens to key regional players will hear is that no one, but no one, wants to choose between the us and China. no state can afford to have its economy held ransom to a Washington loyalty test, and none can afford to have its security held ransom to a Beijing loyalty test.

Throughout the region, China is fast overtaking the us both as the major source of investment and as the final market for exports. in country after country, the degree of economic dependence on China is extraordinarily large — in the case of my own country, australia, well over a third of our exports — and the prospects for diversification, except at the margin and over a very long time, is minimal.

at the same time, it is acknowledged throughout the region — not only by america’s immediate allies and partners, albeit more grudgingly in the case of some others — that america’s commitment since the end of the Second World War to a liberal, open rules-based economic order has contributed mightily to the region’s current prosperity, and that a post-trump restoration of us leadership in meeting challenges to that order is in everyone’s interests. opinion is more divided

on the indispensability of us military might in maintaining a stable peace and security environment — mistakes like Vietnam are hard to forget. But certainly, for countries like my own, and Japan, South Korea, most nations of Southeast asia, and increasingly for india, the case for the us as a stabilizer in the past, and as an important counterweight to a possibly over-reaching China in the future, is unarguable.

The message for the Biden administration in all of this is that whatever the domestic pressures it might feel to find comfort in a shared adversary, it will find far more comfort trying to find co-operative solutions to common problems than in forcing other countries to make win-lose choices. The overwhelming sentiment in the region is to not see the us-china relationship as a zero-sum game.

if it listens closely to the region, the Biden administration will also hear that one of the most useful steps that it could take in restoring us credibility and influence — and one that plays directly into its own multilateral instincts — would be to take a leading role in reforming outdated governance structures and generally strengthening the capacity of the global institutions upon which the region’s prosperity will continue to heavily depend, including the World Trade organization, the international Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World health organization and the international energy agency.

an important opportunity will arise to advance that agenda when indonesia — long a vocal proponent of reform for the World Trade organization and international Monetary Fund in particular — assumes the chairmanship of the group of 20 nations in 2022. if that leads america to listen more closely to Southeast asian voices, and not just the northeast asian interests that have so overwhelmingly preoccupied it since the Vietnam War, that is also devoutly to be wished.

intelligent policymaking

depends significantly on good eyes and ears, but also sound judgment — all conspicuously lacking in the Trump years. This creates multiple opportunities for the Biden administration to distinguish itself, in asia as elsewhere. opinions will differ as to priorities, but ranking highest for many, if not most, in the region will be avoiding a catastrophic deterioration in relations with China; seriously addressing existential risks facing the planet; and — although no doubt appealing more to the region’s peoples than many of its governments — ensuring greater respect for universal civil and political rights.

navigating a modus vivendi with China so as not to slide further into a confrontational cold war, with the slim but not impossible risk this entails of it becoming catastrophically hot, will be Washington’s greatest challenge. The beginning of wisdom here, mapped among others by former australian prime minister and now asia Society president Kevin rudd, is to adopt a multidimensional approach, recognizing that certain areas of disagreement will remain intractable for the foreseeable future, defying easy solutions and requiring extremely careful management, but that collaborative progress is possible on a number of other issues where there is actual or potential common ground.

The most intractable issues include the South and east China Seas, us alliances in asia, Chinese military modernization, and above all Taiwan, where it is critical, as Jessica Mathews has recently put it, to maintain the “delicate balance of ambiguities” of the one China policy and not see it, as did Trump and Pompeo, as a game of chicken. another group of issues — the trade and invest

ment concerns on which China manifestly needs to move, including intellectual property and technology transfer, investment rules and excessive subsidization of state-owned enterprises — remain very difficult, but should not be impossibly intractable if tensions ease on other fronts.

The best prospects for such tension easing, where collaborative co-operation really should be possible if the us adopts a more measured approach and China responds in kind, are global and regional public goods issues like counterterrorism, peacekeeping, piracy, international crime and, above all, the three great existential risks to life on this planet as we know it — climate change, pandemics and nuclear war. in all of these areas, China has in fact already played a more interested, constructive and co-operative role in the un and elsewhere than has been generally recognized, and is well aware of the “soft power” returns in being seen to do more.

The potential for co-operation on climate change and future pandemics has been amply mapped by others, but it is worth noting how much more could be done, with possible Chinese support, on nuclear arms control. While in recent times its mood has been hardening, as has been its nuclear arsenal, China in the past has been a very reluctant starter in the nuclear arms race, adopting a clear policy of minimum deterrence and doctrinal commitment to no First use. if that stance is to continue, however, and China is to help quell rather than compound fears of a nuclear nightmare, the primary impetus is going to have to come from the us, on which more below.

Sound policy judgment will certainly be needed from the Biden administration if it is to advance the cause of universal civil and political rights protection, an issue of great concern to innumerable people in the region if not — obviously — to many of their governments. in apply

Navigating a modus vivendi with China so as not to slide further into a confrontational cold war, with the slim but not impossible risk this entails of it becoming catastrophically hot, will be Washington’s greatest challenge.