What Might a New Asian Order Look Like?

Robert A. Manning, James Przystup

Security, Asia

At the end of the day, the present order might not look so bad after all. 

In numerous essays, Hugh White has argued that the U.S.-led Asia Pacific order, which he rightly views as a source of peace and growing prosperity over the past seventy years, is increasingly outmoded. As daily events in the South China Sea attest, the current order is increasingly contested. White fears an Asia caught in the middle of a dangerous U.S.–China rivalry that could spark conflict between the two nuclear powers.

White argues that "It is too easy to assume that the only alternative to U.S. primacy in Asia is Chinese primacy." Instead, Asian leaders need to think creatively as "there are many other possible foundations for a new Asian order, which would serve the interests of all of us, including the United States and China."

Perhaps. On the economic order, it is not difficult to envision an accommodation of U.S. and Chinese interests. China has worked within the WTO system. The Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership are not incompatible and over time hold the prospect for integration.

China is not challenging the IMF. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which some feared Beijing would push as an alternative to the Bretton Woods system, appears to be on a trajectory to define its structure, governance and transparency as being compatible with the World Bank and Asian Development Bank (with whom it is already pursuing co-financing). Clearly the ‘win–win’ vision of an integrated, inclusive Asia Pacific economic order is feasible, if not already taking shape.

But even as regional economic integration continues apace, the regional security situation is marked by increasing defense budgets, confrontation and rising nationalistic territorial disputes. It is here that the competing U.S. and Chinese visions of the regional order are sharply defined with no resolution in sight. No one has yet offered a viable middle ground between the current U.S.-centric architecture and Xi Jinping’s call for a new security architecture of "Asia for Asians."