Shirley Ze Yu

Opinion | 19th-century US world view has no place in Asia’s vibrant, China-led future

The world is moving beyond the order the Biden administration is cultivating, and no restoration or normalisation can bring back the old status quo

Competitive coexistence is a reality for China but a new strategy for the US, and while America searches for a renewed role in the region, China already has an established position

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Then US assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs Kurt Campbell speaks at the US embassy in Kuala Lumpur in 2012. Campbell will serve as coordinator for Indo-Pacific affairs on the National Security Council and deputy to National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan. Photo: AFP

Shirley Ze Yu

Published: 9:15am, 27 Jan 2021Updated: 9:15am, 27 Jan 2021

“Competition without catastrophe” is how then national security adviser nominee Jake Sullivan defined the US-China strategic landscape. Kurt Campbell, US President Joe Biden’s “Asia Tsar” nominee, paralleled the 19th-century world order to illuminate 21st-century US foreign policy for the Indo-Pacific.

Both represent the ideal of Pax Americana elitism: cultured, restrained and alliance-minded. Both are Kissingerian pundits of balance of power.

One precondition predicates a Kissingerian world – US hegemony is perceived to be over. Unipolarity has been conceded. In the age of transcendence, strategic vision must begin with judgment of the current state and the other side.

Biden-era foreign policy is styled to suit a construct of norms more than a contest of wills. But the world is moving beyond the order Sullivan and Campbell are cultivating. Therefore, no restoration or normalisation can bring the world back to the old, let alone define the new.

“The forces of the times are with us, yet by no means will we settle with the status quo,” President Xi Jinping said at the Central Party School on January 11. “This age calls for the reconstruction of a new development paradigm with a new development theory. The key word is ‘new’.”

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While the US restores the old, China is constructing the new. If that’s the best the US can offer the Indo-Pacific, it will hardly excite Southeast Asia. People in the region have a median age of 30.2 years, they bear no memories of the Cold War and their lives are intricately intertwined with China’s rise.