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With the rise of China as a great power and the looming nuclear threat of North Korea, the United States has an enormous incentive to get its policy right with Northeast Asia: China, Japan, Korea and Russia. Yet, according to veteran diplomat and East Asia expert Michael H. Armacost, American policy in that vital region remains adrift because of its overriding preoccupation with the Middle East as well as South and Central Asia (India, Pakistan and Afghanistan).
Meanwhile, Northeast Asia is becoming more interconnected, he said, as new leaders, powers, alliances and forces of nationalism are on the rise.
Armacost, the former U.S. ambassador to Japan and the Philippines, elaborated on these concerns at the inaugural Borton-Mosely Distinguished Lecture on Eurasia: "The U.S. and Northeast Asia: A New Balance of Power? A New Concert of Powers? A New Asian Community?"
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Armacost is one of many scholar-diplomats with ties to Columbia; he earned his master's and a doctorate in public law and government here. |
Cosponsored by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and the Harriman Institute, the series was funded by an anonymous donor to honor the memory of two former directors of these institutes: Japan specialist Hugh Borton (1902-1995) and Soviet Union expert Philip Mosely (1905-1972), both scholar-diplomats who taught at Columbia for many years.
Armacost identified several key regional developments that are diminishing American influence in Northeast Asia.
In addition to China's rise and the risk of nuclear breakdown, he cited: Japan's growing ambitions in international security and diplomacy; the return of Russia to a more assertive role in the region; the scramble for energy by the region's major players; the emergence of a new generation of leaders and corresponding rise of nationalism throughout the region; and the movement away from a trans-Pacific alliance to a regional alliance, ASEAN Plus Three -- which, significantly, the U.S. has not been invited to join.
While none of these developments is within the power of the United States to control, American leaders have scarcely engaged with them to date, as the pendulum has swung toward regime change and away from issues of balance of power -- a direction Armacost identifies as antithetical to the interests of the Northeast Asian players.
What is more, the U.S. has chosen to focus on containment of China and concern over its growing military power, a strategy Armacost views as unwarranted. China's close neighbors, despite unease with the country's swift rise, do not speak in terms of containment, he observed.
American interests would be better served, he argued, by nurturing closer relations in the region -- in particular, with the two great Eurasian powers, China and Russia, to keep them from joining forces against us, as well as with Japan and India, to prevent the hardening of the growing alliance between continental and maritime Asia.
And, for its own protection, he asserted, the U.S. should be coming up with strategies to ensure it becomes part of whatever trading bloc emerges in the region.
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