Opinion | Asia’s leaders must stand up to dangerous US power politics

Instead of setting the global geopolitical agenda, Asia is stuck following a US intent on dividing the world into rival blocs

Countries in the region will only lose if they have to take sides, so leaders must find the courage at the upcoming summits to demand an end to the great power madness

Reading Time:3 minutes

From the left, US President Joe Biden, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, at the Quad Leaders Summit in Tokyo, on May 24, 2022. Photo: AFP

Published: 1:00am, 19 Feb 2023

This should, in theory, be Asia’s year to make its mark on global economic, financial and political affairs as it will host summits of the G7, the G20 and the Asian Development Bank over the coming months. But the region desperately needs to break free of the bonds set from outside to succeed.

The Russia-Ukraine war and US-China tensions have so come (or been manoeuvred) to dominate international affairs that any attempt to shift debate outside these absurdly narrow parameters is regarded as being irrelevant or even disloyal to the “rules-based international order”.

The reality is that the global agenda has been shaped in recent times by a United States which (aided by a largely compliant Europe) appears to be intent on maintaining a “US-based international order”, to the exclusion of most other considerations. This needs to be challenged.

Why? Because it is polarising the world and poisoning international relations, to the point where rational and objective debate become almost impossible, and where the drift towards physical, rather than just ideological, conflict becomes almost unstoppable.

Unless, that is, some of the countries within the vast Asian continent can summon up the conviction and courage at the summit meetings of which they will be notionally in charge in 2023 to demand a reset of this vicious downward spiral before it is too late.

There is little point in pursuing cosmetic summit agendas that talk about the need for cooperation on economic development, sustainability, climate change alleviation or any one of myriad other reforms if the world is being swept along on a tide of blind competition and intolerance.

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