A few years ago, New York University appointed me to teach a course on East Asian politics.
At the time, experts were sounding the alarm that America was in decline, Asia was on the rise,and China was "eating our lunch." Works reflecting this anxiety included Charles Kupchan'sThe End of the American Era (2003), Parag Khanna's "Waving Goodbye to Hegemony" (2008),and Fareed Zakaria's The Post-American World (2008). As I pointed out in 2007, however,predictions of American decline go back decades and have been consistently proven wrong.
But beyond the flaws in the narrative of American decline, the anticipation that an Asian Centurywould replace the American Century was also misguided. I used the semesters at NYU todeconstruct the notion of a rising Asia and reconstruct an appropriate U.S. foreign policy. Backthen, such skepticism was counterintuitive. But just a few years later, several factors turned thosedoubts about the dawn of an Asian Century into common wisdom.
First, East Asia has witnessed the recent ascent of conservative leadership amid territorialtensions - signaling not a futuristic vision for international harmony but a return to past rivalries.
China's new leader Xi Jinping has already vowed to strengthen its military, creating whatU.S. Admiral Michael McDevitt identifies as a "security dilemma" in Asia. While Chinaunderstandably wants to increase its combat readiness and project its naval power outward, doingso increases the insecurity of its neighbors.
Meanwhile, South Korea recently elected conservative Park Guen-hye, the daughter of Korea'spowerful former dictator who has promised to be a strong leader in the style of MargaretThatcher. Japan's December election gave a landslide victory to the Liberal Democratic Partyand conservative Shinzo Abe - partly based on the expectation that the party would deliver amore muscular and less conciliatory foreign policy in response to friction with China and otherneighbors over disputed territories.
Hot and cold disputes of this nature are abundant in Asia. Active disputes are much rarer inEurope or North America, while in Asia they may get worse. A senior Japanese diplomatrecently told me that in the face of an assertive China, he is most worried about a "growingpopulist and nationalist sentiment in Japan."
China's rising influence has shifted the regional balance of power without a stabilizing alignmentof Japan and South Korea. Despite a shared strategic interest in balancing China's power andshaping the future of Asian politics, South Korea and Japan have unwisely let their relationshipbe defined instead by their difficult history and territorial disputes, as Stephen Walt andJoseph Nye have recently noted. While Park and Abe are both pro-U.S. figures and theirgovernments increasingly see China's assertiveness as a threat, the two countries are notexpected to mend bilateral tensions easily.
The United States is the most stabilizing force in Asia as underscored by the welcome given tothe U.S. "pivot" or rebalancing its forces toward Asia. In terms of institutions, Asia is lackingas well. The latest ASEAN summit in Cambodia was declared a failure, thanks to ongoingterritorial disputes across the region. The most newsworthy regional initiative today, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, favored by Abe and Park, may only further divide the region.
Second, there is a problem with the very concept of an Asian Century. Asia is not a civilization -it is a diverse region. Previous eras of far-reaching influence were characterized by the influenceof a dominating culture such as the American Century, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire,the Tang Dynasty, the Roman Empire, and Classical Greece.
To be sure, culture is a tricky concept. But what is "Asia" and can its culture dominate likeprevious cultures did? The odds are unlikely as "Asia" is a Western concept with thin resonancein the region and no cultural coherence. In Japan, for example, Asian denotes things foreign. Thenotion of Asia was manufactured by the ancient Greeks to refer to people living to the east oftheir civilization - the Persians and the Turks. The continent of Eurasia thus becamearbitrarily divided between Europe and non-Europe. Even the idea of an Asian Century had itsorigins in 1985 in Washington, D.C.
Third, and most importantly, Asia lacks a singular vision for the role of the state. The EuropeanUnion, with all of its problems, is built on the shared values of "human dignity, freedom,democracy, equality, the rule of law, and respect for human rights." The model in Europe isclear: free-market, liberal democracies. No such consensus exists in Asia. Its governments spanthe spectrum, from kingdom (Brunei) to hereditary dictatorship (North Korea) to constitutionaldemocracy (South Korea).
The idea of a unique set of "Asian values" that argued for compliance and conformity wasbriefly popular in the 1990s. But that was only a ruse to legitimize authoritarian regimes. Thevague "Beijing consensus," invented by an American journalist in 2004, belied thedisagreements in a region of billions of people and vast diversity. A coherent alternative to theWest has failed to surface in Asia's sub-regions too, such as south east Asia, meaning there is noBenelux analogue that could act as a benign, regional core.
Nor does Asia have an existing model state. In interviews I have conducted in Asia over the pastdecade, China, Japan, and Singapore are often cited as possible models for emulation, but eachpresents its own problems. China has enjoyed rapid growth over the past decades but it isuncertain whether its state capitalist system can survive rampant corruption, popular protests,and environmental degradation. Japan is a leading Asian democracy but its recent elections havere-instated something closer to a one-party state than a pluralistic democracy. Singapore offersone of the best business environments in the world but to present a tiny city-state as a model foran Asian country like China is analogous to saying New York City could be a model for Brazil.
Burma's democratic reforms have given a boost to the cause of democracy in Asia and show thatother closed places, like North Korea, can open up. But Burma, too, has unique assets - includinga once-in-a-lifetime iconic leader - as well as challenges including ethnic violence anddisplacement particularly in western Rakhine State. Speaking to that uniqueness, a Chinesedissident recently told me, "China feels far from god compared with Burma, which benefits fromhaving Aung San Suu Kyi. China has no such charismatic leader."
During a recent trip to Asia, a Singaporean diplomat told me that if there is an emerging Asianconsensus it is the belief that only countries that adopt Western wisdom will enjoy prosperity, astrong middle class, and the shared aspirations of the West, as is argued in Kishore Mahbubani'sforthcoming book, The Great Emergence: Asia, the West, and the Logic of One World (2013). Ifan Asian Century means one in which Asian culture and politics dominate the globe, it won't becoming any time soon. Instead, for many decades to come, Asians will likely seek to increasetheir freedom and equality to accompany their growing prosperity - the universal values thatdefine the American Century.
Mahbubani once said, "If you want to see the past, go to Europe. If you want to see the future,come to Asia." That future has not arrived. Until a rival idea emerges, the present belongs toAmerica and its universal values.