Despite the growing promise of a multi-polar world with Asian powers playing a greater role in addressing global challenges and sharing leadership with a weary US, that world does not yet exist. The US may be recognizing its limits, but no new system has emerged to take up the slack. If Asian states are to play this role, they must do far more to address their own regional challenges and to promote a positive, universal set of norms.
Asian states could do far more, for example, to address the dangerous nationalism that persists in Asia. Unlike Europe, which largely put its historical ghosts to bed after 1945, Asian countries remain mired in 19th century-style nationalisms that weakens collaboration and makes the region more dangerous than it needs to be. China and Japan, Japan and South Korea, India and Pakistan, Singapore and Malaysia, and many other pairings of states connect on some levels, but remain dangerously divided on others.
Furthermore, Asian states could be far more assertive in addressing humanitarian issues in their own backyard — especially for places like Burma and North Korea — and in taking a lead in international climate change negotiations. The US, for example, provides 50 percent of UN food aid and pays 20 percent of the UN’s overall costs. China, soon to be the world’s second largest economy, pays 0.7 percent of food aid and a mere 2 percent of overall UN costs. Japan has shown leadership in all these areas, but few others in the region have demonstrated a similar sense of global responsibility.
Asian states should also strengthen Asia-Pacific regional structures, such as APEC and the ASEAN Regional Forum, in order to ensure stronger collaboration on issues of regional and global concern. Although states in the Asia-Pacific region have come a long way in this regard, regional structures are nowhere near as strong as Euro-Atlantic structures. If the 21st century is to be the Asia-Pacific century, they must be.
Until such changes occur, many challenges will fall through the cracks that exist between a strained Pax Americana and a rebalancing world. Issues such as Burma, North Korea, Darfur, Zimbabwe, climate change and nuclear proliferation all appear to be falling, because they are being insufficiently addressed, into this crack.
All nations must work together to revise our models for international cooperation in a way that incorporates the global shift in economic power. Until this structure emerges, let us hope that the US can lead wisely and that other countries, particularly Asia’s new powers, will assume more meaningful responsibilities in managing global crises.
Jamie Metzl is executive vice president of the Asia Society and a former member of the US National Security Council during the Bill Clinton administration.
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