Vice President @CarnegieEndow; 2019-20 James R. Schlesinger Distinguished Professor @Miller_Center; twice US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State; Asia's future.
Sep 13, 2018 • 11 tweets • 5 min read
1/4: This is correct and is too-often ignored in debates about the supposed "decline" of the United States in Asia. ASEAN alone has received more than $274 billion in US cumulative investment. But -- and, in my view, it is a very big "but" -- it also risks missing the point.
2/4: US economic involvement is growing in absolute terms but receding in relative terms. Trade with the US comprises a diminishing share of nearly every Asian country’s total trade. Yet the US has focused mainly on security rebalancing to the exclusion of economic rebalancing.
Jan 20, 2018 • 13 tweets • 4 min read
1: I worry sometimes that too much of our narrative about modern Asia is overly Sinocentric -- Chinese advance, Chinese growth, Chinese initiative ... and then US/allied reaction. But this misses much of the story of Asia's last three decades.
2. For example, it has become fashionable to ascribe efforts to build a pan-Asian economic/institutional order to rising Chinese assertiveness or, more precisely, to Chinese ambition. And that is a simple, straightforward enough narrative. But it is just one part of the story.
