More natural counter-China balancing in Asia: Vietnam + US

AP story on growing mil-mil cooperation between US and Vietnam via Stewart Ross.

Cold War enemies the United States and Vietnam demonstrated their blossoming military relations Sunday as a U.S. nuclear supercarrier cruised in waters off the Southeast Asian nation's coast — sending a message that China is not the region's only big player.

The visit comes 35 years after the Vietnam War as Washington and Hanoi are cozying up in a number of areas, from negotiating a controversial deal to share civilian nuclear fuel and technology to agreeing that China needs to work with its neighbors to resolve territorial claims in the South China Sea.

But I say again, cannot the Assassin's Mace render this all asunder, with a flip of a button?

Yes, yes.  As the Pythons used to note, "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!"

To which I now add, "Nyyyoooooobody eck-spects the Assassin's MaSSSSSSSSSSSS!"

[It's a fair blog.]

More natural counter-China balancing in Asia: India-South Korea

Great WPR piece that speaks to the "Finlandization" fallacy peddled by Krepinevich:

Indian Defense Minister A.K. Anthony visited South Korea last week at the invitation of his South Korean counterpart to boost defense cooperation between the two states. His visit came just two months after the Indian external affairs minister visited Seoul and at a time of great turbulence in the strategic environment of the Asia-Pacific region. After having long ignored each other, India and South Korea are now beginning to recognize the importance of tighter ties. The resulting courtship was highlighted by South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak's state visit to New Delhi in January, when he was the chief guest at the Republic Day celebrations. During his stay, New Delhi and Seoul decided to elevate their bilateral relationship to a "strategic partnership."

Ah, but what is this compared to the Assassin's Mace!

[cut to the Pink Panther squaring off against his man-servant]

South Korea and India entered into a free trade agreement last year too.

China's rise triggers natural military cooperation among those made nervous

Great WAPO piece by the always good John Pomfret that highlights a recent theme of mine: no great need to "encircle" China, because the more the neighbors worry over its economic rise and foolish threats about the South China Sea, they will simply come to us--for arms and alliance.

Thus, no great effort required.

Weapons acquisitions in the region almost doubled from 2005 to 2009 compared with the five preceding years, according to data released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute this year.

"There is a threat perception among some of the countries in Southeast Asia," said Siemon Wezeman, senior fellow at the institute. "China is an issue there."

The buying spree is set to continue . . .

We have this tendency in the West to suppose our "decline" is absolute and China's "rise" will unfold with no feedback from the system.  Neither, of course, is true, especially the latter.  

China will learn that there is a reason why the U.S. has long had the world's largest gun with no one trying to build one similar: the simple truth is that we're trusted in that role and with that capability.  And a big reason why is that we're a democracy.

China cannot rise as a single-party state and get the same pass. It's rise will naturally trigger all manner of localized and regionalized and globalized balancing by all sorts of players. It will not need to be organized; it will simply happen as a matter of course.

Whatever we do inside the US military to prepare for the China threat (AirSea Battle comes to mind) is marginal compared to this self-selected balancing by so many states, in large part because it will ultimately reflect smaller states pursuing across-the-board hedging strategies vis-a-vis China.

Remember these words:  in the pre-American-styled-globalization, trade followed the flag; today it's the flag that follows trade--as China will soon learn on its own in so many places in the world to its great discomfort.

Japanese employers have a counteroffer to Beijing

WSJ story in which Japan is basically saying to China, if you want us to stay, you have to make your legal system more transparent and your business rules more robust.  

Lately, as a result of worker unrest against Japanese factories in China, Beijing has been lecturing the Japanese on the need to pay its workers better wages.  So apparently the Japanese have decided to return the lecturing favor.

In effect, this is Japan joining the growing chorus of Western businesses complaining about China's increasingly hostile investment and business environment--a big sign, in my mind.

Australia for sale? The next generation of resource-driven fears

Provocative Bloomberg Businessweek piece entitled, "The deal is simple.  Australia gets money, China gets Australia."  Then the subtitle:  "How's that supposed to make a country feel?"

The stunning factoid:  China's exports, imports and investment annually add 3,400 Australian dollars' worth of value to each household in the country.

Chinese resource investment comes in three main forms: In the year leading up to July 2009, Australia saw A$42.4 billion in export demand, A$3 billion of direct investment in Australian companies, and more than A$4.9 billion in other project financing.

Naturally, the direct investment is the most politically charged. Australia's government, for example, wants no Chinese investment to total more than 49% of a company.  99% of China's investments to date have been in the resources industry.

China's hunger for Australian resources has aggravated the deepest divisions in Australian society over population size, immigration rates, taxation, and infrastructure. Bob Kinnaird, formerly of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship and now a private consultant, warns: "The huge growth of the Chinese presence in Australia, through the mining boom, students, tourism, and permanent migration, has been mismanaged to an incredible degree. The industries involved have urged extraordinary growth, but there hasn't been the infrastructure support to cope with it, and the result is that large numbers of Australians in the cities are worried that while the economic indicators are going one way, their real living standards feel like they are going the other."

Public opinion reflects this ambivalence. In new polling conducted by the Lowy Institute for International Policy, an Australian think tank, 73 percent of Australians say Chinese economic growth has been positive, but 57 percent say there is now too much Chinese investment. Economic power has brought fear, too: 46 percent believe China will pose a military threat within the next 20 years.

If China's eliciting this sort of response from an advanced, democratic country, you know that it'll be replicated elsewhere. The fundamental fear is the mismatch in political systems:  if it was the US making such inroads, you'd see the same concerns but far less fear.  There is simply a distinct fear of colonization with the Chinese, because they have an authoritarian government.  It feels like a mismatch:  "our companies" as counterparties to China's government--the real power behind every national company.  I suppose similarly arranged authoritarian regimes in developing countries might not exhibit the same concerns, but even there, the scale issue must be intimidating--as in, China is so big and we're so small in comparison.

Likewise, if China just bought instead of exhibiting this strong desire to own--resources in the ground, stakes in the processing companies, and the transpo infrastructure in between those resource locations and Chinese markets--then maybe these transactions wouldn't elicit such fears.  But China being China, I don't see either dynamic lessening whatsoever in the near term, meaning angst over China's penetration of resource providers' economies will only grow, and thus inevitably create backpressure of the most nationalistic sort.

I imagine Chinese nationalism will likewise rise as a result, but where will it go?  China has neither the gear nor the political will to--as some Chinese nationalists fancifully put it--take what they need from the world.  And, after a while, global sentiment is sure to turn against the apparent Chinese greed, even as it benefits resource providers.  There will arise this sense of China looting the planet while exhibiting all manner of monopsonistic behaviors (a monopsony is where one buyer dominates a market). Eventually, China all by itself will come off not unlike the West on oil in the 1960s-1970s: producer backlashes will label it a destroyer of national wealth because it'll want to consume everything a country can provide it while paying rock-bottom prices.

So one to watch, this bilateral dynamic, simply because I think it'll provide an early glimpse of dynamics we'll see repeated--time and again--around the planet.  China can mitigate such fears by becoming more democratic and giving off the vibe that's its government's behavior can be modified both from within and without, but I see the looming backpressure making such an evolution less likely in the near term, so things are likely to get very nasty before they get better.  Increasingly, the world will grow to mistrust a China it does not feel it can influence its behavior, and that mistrust will close a lot of doors in China's face, making them all the more determined to own resources in the ground.

The Chinese seem to think they can finesse all this with their cash and promises of non-interference, but that seems decidedly naive.  This is not a world exhibiting more trust in governments, as globalization's super-empowerment of individuals makes everybody more wary of turning their future over to bureaucrats--no matter where they hail from.

To me, this is but another reason why the "Chinese century" will be very short indeed.  While the single-party state model is fine for catching up, it comes with inherent self-limitations for the far more intensive growth required for racing ahead.  China, for all its green investments and fine talk, inevitably symbolizes an unsustainable global future far more than the United States allegedly does.

Japan: easier to invest in China than invade

The weirdest part of George Friedman's Next 100 Years was his insistence on Japan returning to militarism in order to secure resources/labor.  I mean, I can't believe he's been there recently or spent any time with Japanese youth if he's still pushing that "coming war with Japan" shtick (his 1991 book--two decades wrong and counting).

And there's just no good logic for it: Japan has the bucks and the technology to take advantage of China in a wholesale fashion, including the reverse flow of Chinese tourists (who now spend as much as Americans in Japan).

Bottom line:  Japan's future is China's rise--pure and simple. China is 26 times the size of Japan and it presents more than 100 million-plus cities.  Then there's all the Chinese money that can be used to revitalize Japanese firms (and American ones too).

Yes, China will shoot ahead on gross output, but Japan's large lead on technology will remain and "will not close easily" because Chinese companies just don't invest in R&D anywhere close to the same degree, so a mutually beneficial relationship for a very long time.

The Asian integration process proceeds, with amazingly low danger of great-power war.

WPR's The New Rules: Putting the Brakes on China until Beijing Can

In late-July, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gently put China on notice regarding its increasingly aggressive claims over the near-entirety of the South China Sea by proposing a formal international legal process to resolve territorial disputes there.  Naturally, the Chinese were not pleased, but the proposal was a great move by the Obama administration. Every step that China takes to build up its military power naturally triggers a strong balancing desire throughout the rest of Asia.  But with none of those far-smaller economies looking to anger “rising China,” somebody needs to give voice to those fears and create vehicles for organizing the sought-after balancing.

That somebody can only be the United States.

Read the rest of the column at World Politics Review.

Hillary pushes for the internationalization of the South China Sea dispute process

WSJ on sharp move and plan by Hillary Clinton to set up multinational legal process for Asian nations to resolve claims in the South China Sea.

Naturally, China is pissed, preferring to keep the whole mess on a bilateral basis, which would allow Beijing maximum advantage in bullying smaller neighbors. Having it all out in the open complicates China’s claims.

Yes, as the piece argues, it’s “a move that could raise new tensions with China,” but it’s well worth the hassle.  The competing South China Sea claims are the last-gasp hope for the big-war-with-China crowd that exists in our national security community, primarily because the old standby dream, the Taiwan scenario, is bleeding out its plausibility with the signing of the free-trade agreement linking the island with the mainland.

This is exactly the kind of far-sighted stuff Clinton should be pursuing—a truly impressive achievement.

The multilat process is to be based on the international law of the sea—even better despite our long-standing problems with it.

WPR's The New Rules: Globalization's Staying Power a Triumph of American 'Hubris'

There’s no question that globalization, in its modern American form of expanding free trade, just went through its worst crisis to date.  But while economists debate whether or not we in the West are collectively heading toward a 1938-like “second dip,” it’s important to realize just how myopic our fears are about the future of a world economy that America went out of its way to create, defend, and grow these past seven decades.

Read the entire column, which you can consider my oblique response to Peter Beinart's "Icarus Syndrome" book, at World Politics Review.

See the references for my inspiration on this piece.

Those uppity Chinese workers . . . in Japan!

Pair of Economist stories.  First one is on how restive Chinese workers in China are changing the management practices of Japanese companies there--not easy to do.

Key point: 

The labour-market troubles are an aspect of China's shift from being the world's workshop to its shopping mall: as employees demand and get higher incomes, the country's attractiveness as a manufacturing base ebbs but its appeal as a consumer market grows.

Remember that as you calculate the Chinese economic "threat" in coming years.

Second story notes how badly Chinese worker-trainees in Japan are treated and how they're already turning to suicide to voice their concerns (those Chinese, they never do anything half-way).

Says Lila Abiko, of the Lawyers' Network for Foreign Trainees:

Japan is the richest country in Asia, yet this programme is exploiting poor Chinese like slaves.

Japan better clean up that act as its population ages . . ..

Ah, the joys and sorrows that is Asian integration!

The fabled Asian century comes with unprecedented resource strains

FT op-ed by Kevin Brown.

It has become a truism, buttressed by the hard realities of economic performance, that the 21st century will belong to Asia. But there is a big problem to overcome first, and it is not the flashpoints in North Korea, the Taiwan Straits and Kashmir. It is the region’s dangerous pace of population growth, and the health, environmental and security problems caused by urbanisation on a scale unique in human history.

The United Nations is forecasting that the world’s population will rise by more than 40 per cent to 9.3bn by 2050, with the proportion living in cities increasing to 70 per cent from slightly more than 50 per cent today. But the impact will be concentrated in Asia, where two-thirds of the world’s population lives, and where rapid economic growth is accelerating the natural process of urbanisation. While Europe is dealing with the problems of ageing, Asia (excluding Japan) will be trying to cope with a rush to the cities estimated at nearly 140,000 people a day.

How well it succeeds will have a huge impact on whether this really does turn out to be the Asian century. So far, the signs are not good. 

The quintessential logic behind my mantra that the "New Core sets the new rules."  It was my primary take-away from the NewRuleSets.Project work I did on the future of globalization with Cantor Fitzgerald.  Once Asia is pulled into globalization fully, we reach a tipping point from which there is no turning back. The resulting evolution is necessarily rapid and will have global influence--and it will be centered primarily in cities.

It's why I see megacity mayors as the natural political leaders of this century.

Great line in the piece from head of UN's economic and social commission for Asia and the Pacific: governments in Asia "simply do not have the luxury of growing first and cleaning up later."

Car market robust enough that Ford investing in tumultuous Thailand

Pic here

WSJ story on Ford dropping $450m into a new car plant in Thailand, one that will crank the Focus, a mid-size model so much in demand across Asia.

Get this:  already Thailand exports more pickup trucks than any country in the world and produces more than any outside of the US.

So Thailand attracts FDI despite its restive citizenry, and over time, all those factory jobs will only make the citizenry more demanding.

Not exactly a circle, but virtuous nonetheless.

Chart of the day: Taiwan-China trade

Economist chart gives you some sense of why Taiwan's leadership, if not its people, was so eager to sign the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement.  Taiwan's exports top its imports by roughly 4-to -1.

Yes, it's always been the case that Taiwan had a trade surplus with the mainland, but the explosive growth in exports over the past decade changes things quite a bit.

First, Taiwan came to realize how big the China opportunity is for its export-driven growth as an island economy. Second, Taiwan needed to move to protect that slice as China enters into free-trade agreements with others in Asia.

Taiwan simply could not be left behind.

The Chaiwan free trade deal moves that much closer to fruition

The lastest on the deal's advance from the FT (6/14):

China and Taiwan have reached agreement on a wide-ranging trade deal that would be an important milestone for the warming of relations between the two cold war rivals.

The deal, called the Economic Co-operation Framework Agreement, or Ecfa, would also pave the way for Taiwan to join in the flurry of free trade deals being made by other Asian countries. China had previously blocked such efforts by Taiwan as it claims sovereignty over the democratically ruled island, but that opposition is expected to fade with the signing of the new agreement.

Without the opportunity to participate in trade deals, Ma Ying-jeou, Taiwan president, said last week that his country would be “sure to lag behind, to be forced out of the global economic sphere and to be marginalised”.

Negotiators from both sides said they had made key breakthroughs after a third round of talks held in Beijing on Sunday, particularly in the “early harvest list” of what sectors would be included in the initial round of opening. The contents of that list had been the main sticking pointin previous negotiations.

The breakthroughs allow the deal to be formally signed at the next semi-annual talks between the two sides. It also secures the centrepiece of Mr Ma’s policy of rapprochement with China, which is by far Taiwan’s biggest export market and where more than 1m Taiwanese already live and work.

The agreement, however, is facing strong political opposition within Taiwan, amid fears that economic integration could lead to political reunification and that the economic benefits of the deal will not be as great as Mr Ma has indicated.

My continuing point:  this is the third great member to join China's future Asian Union, after Macau and Hong Kong. Eventually, we are talking one Asia, many systems.

Roach on resilient Asia

As someone with a lopsided head myself, I got to love this crooked face.

Fabled Stephen Roach in the FT. He decouples as chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia and joins the faculty of Yale this summer.

Roach is famous for his bearishness.

Here, he's pretty bullish.

Three lessons stand out from his three years in Asia, he says:

First, Asia learnt the painful lessons of the 1997-1998 regional crisis very well

Hence, the huge build-up in reserve currencies.

Second, there is the China factor.  As I have criss-crossed the region, there has been no mistaking Asia's new China-centric character.

Another frequent theme here.

Third, Asia cannot presume that just because it weathered the global crisis it has discovered the holy grail of economic prosperity.  In an increasingly complex and integrated world, trouble has an unpredictable way of mutating.

I'm on board for all three judgments, as readers of this blog will attest.

Roach notes that in the late 1990s, exports made up 35% of GDP among developing economies.  Now it's 45%. Asia has a "full plate," says Roach, when it comes to the rebalancing issue.

I also concur with Roach's concluding fear, something I've been saying for the past decade actually:

But I leave Asia with one big worry--that the rest of the world doesn't get it.  I worry, in particular, about the steady drumbeat  of China-bashing in Washington--especially as we approach mid-term elections this year.  

Thus Roach heads off to academia to change some minds as best he can.

We can only wish him well, cause they come no smarter.

Asian integration: an appreciation

 

Very solid piece in World Politics Review by an American U. (DC) prof, Amitav Acharya, who's clearly spent a good chunk of his career building up this expertise.

I trip through the piece as so:

To begin, it might help to quickly summarize some of the most familiar criticisms of Asian regional institutions (while noting that I find some to be more accurate than others). The first is that they have not played a role in the major and longstanding regional conflicts, especially those that are holdovers from the Cold War period, such as the PRC-Taiwan conflict, or those between North and South Korea, and India and Pakistan. Neither have they mattered in the management of maritime territorial disputes, such as the Spratly Islands dispute involving China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines, and Brunei. Similarly, territorial disputes between China and Japan over the Senkaku/Daoyutai islands, or between Korea and Japan over Takeshima/Tokdo islands, have not been addressed by any of the regional groupings.

A second criticism relates to their failure to make use of available instruments of conflict-prevention and resolution . . . 

Third, the failure of regional trust-building, which is supposed to have been brought about by regional groups like the ASEAN or ARF, is reflected in the emergence of what seems to be a significant arms race across the region . . . 

Fourth, on the economic front, there has been no regional free-trade area under the auspices of APEC, which was created partly with that objective in mind. Instead, bilateral trade arrangements have flourished . . . 

Fifth, while the region is regularly visited by natural calamities, there is no standing regional humanitarian and disaster assistance mechanism in place, despite periodic attempts to create one . . .

Finally, on human rights and social issues, Asia continues to lag behind other regions, including Africa and Latin America, not to mention Europe, in developing regional human rights promotion and protection mechanisms . . . 

Yet, skepticism about Asia's fledgling regionalism should not obscure its contributions to regional order. One major contribution has been the socialization of China. In the early 1990s, China was wary of regional multilateral cooperation. It viewed regional institutions like ARF or ASEAN as ways for the region's weaker states to "gang up" against Chinese interests and territorial rights. Yet, China significantly revised its view of Asian regionalism and has now become a key player driving it. 

Without engagement in this nascent regionalism, China would have had little option but to deal with its neighbors on a strictly bilateral basis, which would have given it far more leverage and coercive ability over its individual neighbors at a time of rapidly expanding national wealth and power. In that event, China's re-emergence as a great power might have been much rougher and more contentious. Many Chinese analysts agree that involvement in Asian regional institutions was a major learning experience for China with regards to wider international cooperation . . .

Skeptics may argue that the Chinese "charm offensive" that flowed in conjunction with its participation in regional multilateral institutions is little more than a "time-buying" tactic, until such time as China has built up its economic and military muscle to show its true aggressive colors . . .

But such skepticism can be challenged. Which country would totally eschew bilateralism in its foreign affairs? And which country, great power or not, would forsake aspirations to some sort of a leadership role in the international arena, at least over some key issue areas? And while China may have initially made some strategic calculations about its interest in regional participation, it is not immune to the logic of socialization and learning fostered through the habits of dialogue and continuous interaction. Chinese policymakers are aware of the costs of switching from a policy of engagement to a posture of confrontation . . .

Asian regional groups are not problem-solving or law-enforcing mechanisms, but norm-making and socializing agents. In this respect, they do conform to the general model of international organizations, which generally lack coercive enforcement power, but act as instruments of socialization and legitimation. 

Asian regionalism is often compared, mostly unfavorably, with the European variety. Yet, even the much-vaunted European Union is not without significant shortcomings. Compare, for example, the EU's approach to Russia with Asia's approach to China . . .

. . . the relationship between U.S. military presence and alliance structure in the region and the development of multilateral institutions in Asia is not a zero-sum situation. Indeed, in recent years, U.S. military assets in Asia and the Pacific have been increasingly used for addressing common regional challenges, such as natural disasters like the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004. U.S. military exercises, like Cobra Gold, have expanded beyond their original missions (in this case, of supporting Thailand) to include a range of other regional countries, serving as a platform for multilateral coordination. Multilateral cooperation featuring American forces and those of non-allied nations, such as Malaysia and Indonesia, has also been on the rise in efforts to ensure maritime security in vulnerable parts of Asia, such as the Straits of Malacca. The rationale for regional security institutions need not conflict with U.S. military alliances. Rather, the two can be mutually supportive. 

None of the above assertions would imply that Asian regionalism is in no need of reform and change. To be more meaningful and relevant, Asian institutions need to address four challenges.

The first is the challenge to overcome the 19th-century mindset of sovereignty and non-intervention . . .

Second, Asia needs to reconcile competing proposals for regional architecture that have cropped up . . . 

Third, Asian institutions need to move beyond the ASEAN Way of informal, strictly consensus-driven cooperation, to adopt greater institutionalization and legalization . . . 

Finally, Asian regional institutions should widen their focus to embrace transnational issues, and move beyond being forums for consultations and dialogue to become instruments for problem-solving . . .

To sum up, criticisms of Asian regionalism and regional institutions are not without merit. Yet, they do not warrant the view that investing in Asian regionalism is a waste of resources and time, or that the Asian institutions have not made positive contributions to regional stability and prosperity. Much depends on what sort of yardstick we use to judge their performance. In general, the benefits of regionalism and continued institution-building far outweigh its costs, and the region would be a more dangerous and uncertain place without them.

Very nice piece.

Taiwan: conquering the world--and China. They call it "Chaiwan"

Economist story.

Starts by saying the most important tech show in the world is arguably Computex in Taipei.

The numbers:

Taiwan is now the home of many of the world’s largest makers of computers and associated hardware. Its firms produce more than 50% of all chips, nearly 70% of computer displays and more than 90% of all portable computers. The most successful are no longer huge but little-known contract manufacturers, such as Quanta or Hon Hai, in the news this week because of workers’ suicides (see article). Acer, for example, surpassed Dell last year to become the world’s second-biggest maker of personal computers. HTC, which started out making smart-phones for big Western brands, is now launching prominent products of its own.

The weakness of this model:  Taiwan improves parts over time and manufactures them with great skill and speed, but it does not innovate on the leading edge, and increasingly, all that manufacturing moves to China.   In the info age, this is almost the equivalent of the "commodity trap":  your margin is always so razor thin that you cannot invest sufficiently in branding and R&D, argues one expert.

With China aspiring mightily to move up the chain, Taiwan's fate is ever-more intertwinned:  China recruits Taiwanese firms to help it set higher tech standards, and Taipei loosens restrictions on FDI and tech transfer into China.

Killer ending:

It is hard to see China dethroning Taiwan as manager of the world’s electronics factories soon, says Peter Sher of the National Chi Nan University. But the IT industry in the two countries will increasingly become intertwined, predicts Mr Ernst. “Especially in IT, Taiwan is becoming more and more part of the Chinese economy,” he says. Indeed, some tech types already fuse the pair into “Chaiwan”.

Say good-bye to this great power-war scenario.  The game has moved on.

The equally important superpower

WSJ article.

Former finance chief says Japan’s relationship with the US is key, which is code for, “I won’t break my predecessor’s basing deal.”

But then he’s quick to add that China is “equally important.”

When Japan tells you that, understand that’s as good as the world telling you that.

What that tells you is that there is no such thing as “hedging” against China’s rise anymore—except in a purely internal sense.  We can gear up all we want, say, militarily, and we’ll certainly find friends in that process, but there will be no political nor economic equivalent, and that means bluster without bulk.

Obama & Co. seem to have made that adjustment mentally, which sure beats anybody unable to make that adjustment.  But that understanding is just the beginning of the new relationship, and that’s where I sense there’s no there there with this crew.  And I’m beginning to believe that, given everything on their plate right now, this is the best we can expect.

That would say one-term to me, except I cannot, for the life of me, imagine right now who the Republicans would successfully mount from amidst their Tea Party-infused base, which, quite frankly, strikes me as mostly angry without answers.

But maybe that’s my stagnant disposable income talking . . ..

Balancing in Asia: no effort required

WSJ story, latest in a long line regarding China's rise/NorKo/etc. Anything that unsettles Asia makes darn near everyone there was to keep America's friendship--and its military in region: South Korea over the crisis, naturally; and Japan over the bases; but also Malaysia and Vietnam, says the piece.

When push comes to shove, US bases remain

WSJ cover story.

Yes, the NIMBYs have at it, and yes, Hatoyama resigns for breaking campaign promise, but the Marine bases remain.

NorKo drove the reaction this time; in the future China's build-up will be the excuse.  

Point is, America never really has trouble locating new bases when the need arises and only occasionally has trouble holding onto old ones.  When the latter happens, new offers to host inevitably flow.

Why?  All these rising great powers are good for the business of alliance-building and balancing.

There is no surpassing the US Leviathan; there is only triggering regional balancing responses that bolster its presence.