People alternated between optimism and nervousness as they waited for the final vote counts in the incredibly stressful US presidential election.
As Joe Biden is now the US president-elect, the world is waiting to see what the US’ security agenda in Asia will be.
It remains to be seexn whether Biden will undo much of US President Donald Trump’s combative diplomacy and return to championing the rebalancing tactics that he championed as US vice president under former US president Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017.
A look at how Biden previously engaged with nations in Asia should provide clues to his thinking on US global involvement.
It is fair to characterize Biden as a globalist. Serving under the Obama administration, he adhered to the principles of realism (maintaining a delicate balance of power), idealism (promoting democracy and human rights) and humanitarianism (relieving poverty among refugees) that had underlined the US’ foreign policy since World War II.
Defending an international rules-based system of nation-states, he advocated a strategy of wider engagement in Asia to ensure a safe environment for economic exchange and to defend the US.
Peace and stability in Asia is key to a rules-based global order.
Stretching from the Indian subcontinent and including both sides of the Pacific Ocean, the vastly diverse continental and maritime areas have thriving middle-class populations and some of the world’s most advanced economies such as Taiwan, Japan and South Korea.
Although Trump in early 2017 scrapped the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the conceptualization of this inclusive plan laid the foundation for free-trade dialogues connecting economies outside the China-led order in Asia, the southern Pacific and South America.
Despite the growth potential of vast human and natural resources, Asia faces populations with grievances and considerable discontent over demographic and socioeconomic changes, regional powers’ extraterritorial ambitions and worsening interstate tensions.
The proliferation of youth-led struggles for democracy in Hong Kong and Thailand has shown that today’s university-educated generations in major Asian cities value freedom as much as prosperity, and are ready to question and challenge the political “status quo.”
These protests against police brutality, official corruption and patronage politics speak directly to accountability and openness, and demand more democratic rights and freedoms than at any other time in history.
Throughout his long career as a US senator and as a vice president, Biden has accumulated sufficient foreign policy experience and his view on China has clearly evolved over time.
When Washington ended its formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan in 1979, Biden joined a group of senators to pass the US’ Taiwan Relations Act, continuing de facto bilateral exchanges and stipulating the US’ commitment to the nation’s survival.
During the 1990s and 2000s, he supported the conventional policies of engaging and integrating China into the international community. Yet, over the past few years, he has spoken out against Beijing’s military adventurism in the South China Sea, the flagrant human rights abuses in the Xinjiang region, and the collapse of civil liberties and judicial independence in Hong Kong.
Faced with a more assertive and prosperous China, there is no going back to how things were years ago.
As the world is coming to grips with the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, China has positioned itself as a unipolar state in Asia capable of containing the pandemic and initiating a gradual economic recovery.
This self-serving assessment is largely for internal propaganda.
To reset the global agenda when the opportunity arises, the US must be realistic about its ability to interact with China and avoid picking fights with allies.
The compelling task for the incoming Biden administration is to activate a transnational framework built on shared international values and norms, not imperial control and economic coercion.
One feasible option for maintaining regional order would be to rebuild the longstanding US alliance system, deepen security exchanges and partnerships, and invest in functioning multilateral institutions to resolve territorial disputes.
Against this backdrop, Taiwan is in a perfect position to join a coalition to push back against China’s assertiveness. Having adhered to the norms of a liberal world order, Taiwan is making its presence felt and closing the influence gap with China.
In particular, Taiwan’s extraordinary success in containing COVID-19 has bolstered its global image.
President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) efforts to reach out to the US, India, Japan, Southeast Asia and beyond have enabled Taiwan to maneuver in a fluid geopolitical environment.
Despite the widespread conception that Taiwan is at the mercy of China, the nation has strengthened its security via cooperation with the US.
This bilateral cooperation is holistic, encompassing the areas of humanistic exchanges, science and technology, business collaborations, etc.
With pragmatic imagination and political will, Taiwan and the US will someday formalize their extensive connections in a way that they deserve.
Joseph Tse-hei Lee is a professor of history at Pace University in New York City.
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