Asian countries would do well to de-risk themselves from America by engaging other powers. This refers not only to China but Australia, India, Japan and Europe (which has its own challenges with Mr Trump).
Indeed, dependence on China carries its own risks – as the Philippines discovered when former President Rodrigo Duterte’s courting of Beijing failed to produce the desired economic and security outcomes for Manila.
BETWEEN POWER AND PRINCIPLE
It was not that long ago when pundits debated whether Asia would be better off with a US-led liberal order or a China-led authoritarian one. With its rejection of liberal values, globalism and even multilateralism, Mr Trump’s America, in baldly privileging power over principle, has basically rendered that discussion moot.
Does Asia’s pragmatism automatically denote a default vote for power rather than principle? Not necessarily so, for a pragmatic course implies taking the middle path between the two.
But why should Asia – a region unlikely ever to be accused of being liberal – adopt the via media rather than just embracing the new normal of unbridled power politics, perpetrated by the former paragon of principle, and fatalistically accepting its consequences?
Bluntly put, with America having cast aside its global leadership role, Asia must do all it can to preserve the rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific – without which the dire prospect of Asia becoming like the Ukraine of today (as the Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba recently warned) would only increase.
How Asia responds to Mr Trump’s America will shape the security, stability and prosperity of our region. There is no greater urgency than the present where Asia must exercise its agency with all the prudence, discretion and creativity that Asians can muster. The onus for the future of this region is ours to bear.
Tan See Seng is the president and chief executive of International Students Inc in the United States, and concurrently research adviser for the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies and senior associate at the Centre for Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at Nanyang Technological University.
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/asia-strategy-trump-tariffs-trade-war-shangrila-dialogue-singapore-5156476
