Abstract
The year 2012 has emerged as a consequential moment in the evolution of the East Asian strategic landscape. A combination of important, unfolding leadership decisions in many of the regions’ key countries and heightened tensions around several major flashpoints has served to focus attention ever more intensely on possible future trajectories in the years to come. All of this has taken place in the context of an effort by the Obama administration to define the United States’ interests and long-term role in a region that has taken on increasing importance on both the economic and political fronts.
The list of this year’s leadership contests is well known, beginning with the presidential elections that have already taken place in Taiwan and Russia, followed later this year by presidential elections in the United States and South Korea, as well as a planned leadership shift in Beijing at the 18th Party Congress this fall. Added to this mix, of course, was the unscheduled and only partially planned transition in North Korea, as well as the ever-present possibility of a change in Tokyo. These elections and other leadership selection processes in East Asia will not turn primarily on matters of foreign and security policy. On the contrary, key domestic issues—employment, taxes and spending, environmental issues, and social welfare programs—dominate almost everywhere. Yet these elections will have enormous consequences because the choices made by the leaders who will assume or retain power in 2012 will shape the political ties among the key regional states at a time when power relations among them are in great flux. Decisions made in the coming years could determine the stability of the East Asia region for a generation or more.
The leaders who retain or assume office in 2012 will not be developing their national strategies in isolation. On the contrary, each country will seek to base its own policies on an assessment of the likely goals and intentions of others. And in this mix, the most consequential driver will be the choices being made by the United States.
Read the article here (subscription required).