Easternization

January 9, 2017
Rachman (Zero-Sum Game), chief foreign affairs commentator for the Financial Times, takes a cue from the tide of Westernization that gradually spread over the globe from the 15th century onward, and is only now being beaten back by the growing economic, strategic, and military power of Asia, with China at its fore. “Easternization,” Rachman contends, is the central problem with which the U.S. will have to contend in the 21st century; the much-vaunted “pivot to Asia” notwithstanding, the rise of Asia will have myriad and far-flung consequences for regions as seemingly disparate as Russia, the Middle East, and Africa. Weaving a smattering of history with insights gleaned from his interviews with global power players, Rachman offers a fast-paced and diverting analysis of the challenges facing U.S. foreign policy in the Pacific. His account, however, is short on research and long on exposition, with the nuances of history and ideology largely whizzing by. More problematically, Rachman, like many observers of international politics, seems to view Asia, and particularly China, as a mysterious and opaque civilization whose rise should automatically send global alarm bells ringing, when it’s clear that the pursuit of what Chinese president Xi Jinping extols as the “China Dream” is not all that different from its American counterpart.

March 1, 2017
A focused delineation of the shifting center of gravity toward Asia and the need for a strenuous Western response without losing global primacy.Financial Times chief foreign affairs commentator Rachman (Zero-Sum Future: American Power in an Age of Anxiety, 2011), a recent winner of the Orwell Prize, presents a fair, astute assessment of China's rise during the past few decades in relation to its nervous neighbors and especially the nuanced--and highly criticized--response of President Barack Obama. Neither China nor the U.S. care to fall into the "Thucydides trap," as defined by China's President Xi Jinping: avoiding "destructive tensions between an emerging power and established powers." On one hand, the rise of China corrects the reigning imbalance imposed by the imperial powers during the 19th century and through World War II, when China's and Japan's markets were forced open. On the other hand, China's increasing military might and its muscle-flexing over the Senkaku Islands have become alarming at a time when America has been distracted by Middle Eastern issues and decreased its military spending. The era of China's "hide and bide" policy under Deng Xiaoping has been replaced by assertive policies, as revealed by the blunt warning issued by the Chinese foreign minister in 2010: "China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that's just a fact." During the recent decades, national rhetoric in China has unmasked a desire for a re-establishment of its "historic grandeur" in the Pacific region. This has deeply troubled neighbors such as South Korea, Japan, and the Southeast Asian nations. Meanwhile, China has doubled down on internal censorship in order to avoid the threat of a "color revolution," such as those that have occurred in Ukraine and elsewhere. Rachman carefully looks at both India's and Russia's roles in the global shift toward "easternization," and he considers the American and Western response, which has been largely ineffectual since the crises of 2008--although institutions like economic governance and law remain firmly entrenched in the West. A sage, forward-seeing study to be heeded.

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