PrintSecurity analysts who follow the Asia Pacific region are less concerned over the rise of China as a threat to regional stability than they are about the United States’ response to that rise.
This is one of several conclusions from a recent international survey of 128 security analysts conducted by the East-West Center in Honolulu. For the last three years, the Center has surveyed security experts in 16 Asia Pacific countries, including North Americans and some Europeans, on a broad range of topics concerning stability and prospects in the region.
Click here for a full report on the survey (and those from previous years).
The survey, which is anonymous and voluntary, provides a frank look at the thinking of individuals whose work puts them at the front lines in the rapidly changing Asia Pacific arena.
Overall, said Richard Baker, coordinator of the project and co-author of the report, the experts agreed that in 2008 the broad outlook for regional security has improved over the past year.
Terrorism, as it has for some time, remains their primary long-term concern.
But the experts rate two other factors – broadly falling in the category of “nationalism” – as critical to the future security of the region: These are the rise of China along with the evolution of Chinese policy, and the reaction of the United States to China’s rise.
And there is a striking difference in how the experts view these two factors.
Generally, they reject the proposition that China’s rise is a threat to regional stability. Analysts from neighboring Northeast Asian countries were the only ones who tended to agree with the “China threat” proposition.
But if most analysts do not see China as posing a near-term threat to regional stability, they do agree with the proposition that the United States will see China’s rise as a threat.
In practical terms, this translates into concern about the direction and management of future U.S. policy in the region and corresponding uncertainty over the prospects for stability.
Even though the ongoing U.S. presidential election campaign has not thus far focused much on China or Asia Pacific policy in general, the question of U.S. policy towards China and the potential for a shift in political attitudes will surely be an issue the next U.S. administration will have to deal with – and soon.
While the China-U.S. question and the ongoing threat of global terrorism remain the overarching general concerns among the experts, their greatest concern among specific short-term issues involved the implications of internal instability and political turmoil in Burma/Myanmar and Pakistan.
Baker said that this likely reflects events underway in those two countries just as the survey was being conducted in November and December.
While concern about Burma/Myanmar and Pakistan was on the rise, those surveyed offered a contrasting dose of “sober optimism” about the threat of the North Korean nuclear program -- an issue that had been ranked among the top in previous surveys. Over time, the respondents said, they expect slow if uneven progress toward denuclearization of the Peninsula.
On other topics:
• The experts anticipate no early end to conflict in Iraq. Most do not see U.S. involvement in the conflict ending any time soon. A strong majority also believes that the American-led stabilization effort will not be successful. This “pessimism” tended to be true of Western (including U.S.) security respondents as well as those from Asia.
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