DAZZLED BY ASIA
When will China lead the world? Don’t hold your breath.
Joshua Kurlantzick
The Boston Globe, February 7, 2010
During his trip to Asia in November, Barack Obama seemed strangely mute. Unlike Bill Clinton, who criticized China’s human rights record in front of then-president Jiang Zemin, Obama largely avoided the topic of rights. In Singapore, despite pressure from human rights activists, the president deferred to pressure to not release a statement calling for the freeing of Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. In Japan, the president worked valiantly to massage local sentiments, bowing deeply to Emperor Akihito - and drawing flak back in the United States from conservative critics for appearing weak.
More than any recent American president, Obama displayed deep deference to his Asian counterparts. He did so, in part, because, like many Americans, he has become convinced that this will be Asia’s century, and that the United States must begin to accommodate itself to this stark new geopolitical fact. A recent report by the US National Intelligence Council concluded that the world is witnessing the rise of “major global players similar to the advent of a united Germany in the 19th century and a powerful United States in the early 20th century...[and they] will transform the geopolitical landscape.” Major media outlets covered the president as if he was some kind of Dickensian vagrant, appealing to his increasingly powerful creditors in China for leniency. “Obama’s trip reveals a relationship with a strangely lopsided quality to it,” wrote longtime China specialist Jonathan Fenby, in one typical example of the coverage.
Over the past two years, some of the most important foreign policy thinkers have chronicled America’s decline, and argued that Asia is rising to preeminence. Parag Khanna’s “The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order” landed on the cover of The New York Times Magazine, while Fareed Zakaria’s “The Post-American World” became a bestseller. Meanwhile, the influential former Singaporean ambassador Kishore Mahbubani, who helped spark the “Asian values” debate of the 1990s, released “The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East.” Martin Jacques, a prominent columnist for The Guardian, took the idea one step further. In his book “When China Rules the World,” he contends that China’s rise will have a greater impact on the globe than the emergence of the United States as an international power in the 20th century.
(...) [artículo aquí]
When will China lead the world? Don’t hold your breath.
Joshua Kurlantzick
The Boston Globe, February 7, 2010
During his trip to Asia in November, Barack Obama seemed strangely mute. Unlike Bill Clinton, who criticized China’s human rights record in front of then-president Jiang Zemin, Obama largely avoided the topic of rights. In Singapore, despite pressure from human rights activists, the president deferred to pressure to not release a statement calling for the freeing of Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. In Japan, the president worked valiantly to massage local sentiments, bowing deeply to Emperor Akihito - and drawing flak back in the United States from conservative critics for appearing weak.
More than any recent American president, Obama displayed deep deference to his Asian counterparts. He did so, in part, because, like many Americans, he has become convinced that this will be Asia’s century, and that the United States must begin to accommodate itself to this stark new geopolitical fact. A recent report by the US National Intelligence Council concluded that the world is witnessing the rise of “major global players similar to the advent of a united Germany in the 19th century and a powerful United States in the early 20th century...[and they] will transform the geopolitical landscape.” Major media outlets covered the president as if he was some kind of Dickensian vagrant, appealing to his increasingly powerful creditors in China for leniency. “Obama’s trip reveals a relationship with a strangely lopsided quality to it,” wrote longtime China specialist Jonathan Fenby, in one typical example of the coverage.
Over the past two years, some of the most important foreign policy thinkers have chronicled America’s decline, and argued that Asia is rising to preeminence. Parag Khanna’s “The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order” landed on the cover of The New York Times Magazine, while Fareed Zakaria’s “The Post-American World” became a bestseller. Meanwhile, the influential former Singaporean ambassador Kishore Mahbubani, who helped spark the “Asian values” debate of the 1990s, released “The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East.” Martin Jacques, a prominent columnist for The Guardian, took the idea one step further. In his book “When China Rules the World,” he contends that China’s rise will have a greater impact on the globe than the emergence of the United States as an international power in the 20th century.
(...) [artículo aquí]
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