Health of the Sino-US relations must top global agenda
Tom Plate calls on America to take up the challenge of our time by seriously engaging with China and the region it leads, as our global future hangs on the strength of this relationship
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. US 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 Bashar al-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.
It is utterly foolish to assume that 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 stupid to believe that simply because they are of 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.
US 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 Widodo 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 are all in this together.