27 Comments

>>> "So, let's cherish peace together."

OMG.

This should be the fucking poli-sci textbook example of the meaning of "doublespeak". A power that wants to violently invade a neighbor talking about "cherishing peace" is just SOOOO rich!

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May 27, 2022Liked by Noah Smith

I’m not sure why there’s a notable absence of Singapore in IPEF. Seems to be right up their alley and they’re typically all for deepening regional forums and dialogues. On top of that they’re a key regional ally sitting right at the eastern approaches to the Strait of Malacca.

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May 27, 2022Liked by Noah Smith

Totally agree. These countries also need to deepen bilateral trade and alliances between each other. And other allies in Europe and elsewhere will need to move in the same direction. Keeping compeition with China peaceful depends upon it. A weak alliance will invite war. Current Chinese political rhetoric, as well as observed preparations, clearly puts that on the table. Stability would be acheived if such an alliance did not fully depend on the USA or any other single country.

I'm optimistic about this though because most of these countries simply cannot ally closely with China without major changes in Chinese forgein policy. China claims territory in many and could conceivably do so in others. USA intervention attracts criticism everywhere but at least people understand its limits. What limits would Chinese leaders place on forgein intervention if they had the power to do more?

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Excellent piece, thanks again Noah!

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I mean... i’m a neoliberal mf’er like you, but access to US markets created a domestic political backlash that can’t be ignored. It’d be nice if countries protected their favored industries less in trade agreements

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You have just shown why South-East Asia needs China. How many of these deals would have been made if the was no strategic competitor to Washington ? As an economist you know what happens to a market dominated by a monopoly.

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Why not Latin america instead? I'm not sure why Latin America gets neglected so much, but I think it's much more important for western interests that latin america gets more prosperous and stable.

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Great piece—as always. I think the problem though lies more with a reticence on the part of South Asians and Southeast Asians to unambiguously align with the USA when America just seems like such a “wild card.”

Trump trashed American Allies quite publicly and a couple of times threatened to abrogate US mutual defense commitments. Biden’s record with Afghanistan shocked the world. It is hard to know whether you can rely on America for multi-decade mutual support.

Part of the problem is that if America “tires” of China it can withdraw from the world in a way that its tentative Allies cannot. They need to know the USA is committed. I am not sure the past 5 years have helped.

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Don't forget South America or Africa. In a cold geo-political sense, development here is more valuable than Asia. The proximity to China has more downside than upside. A common mistake is to view apply a military view, which would mean surrounding China with a defensive perimeter. But really, since we expect (with reservations expressed as fears) peace, that plays out mostly as economic and political influence, geography has a different importance.

An Asian country can "switch sides", and is more likely to than other places, due to the proximity and the predictable strong pull to trade with China. Switching sides might mean changing political expressions (more totalitarian, less democratic), it might mean taking a side in a trade dispute, and in the most extreme, it might mean reacting to military threats.

Speaking just geographically I'd rather have the world's semiconductor center in Nigeria than Taiwan. That's not possible today since Nigeria's state capacity is not effective enough to support that. But if it really was so easy a choice, the world would be a slightly safer place from the change.

The same is basically true for all the countries surrounding China. If all the world's industrial capacity is centered there, it would seem to make China's position in the world stronger. While it would mean those economies were more capable of sustaining a military and other state capacity to resist Chinese military and political pressures, it would also increase China's opportunities to win them and thus gain the advantage of all that industrial capacity.

That's definitely not suggesting that it's a good strategy to treat most of South and Southeast Asia as anything other than allies or potential allies, but it does suggest that it would be a possibly grave mistake to give priority in a way that neglects those places geographically closer. Increases in industrial and state capacity in South America and especially Africa would be some of the greatest possible boons to a peaceful future world.

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Jun 1, 2022·edited Jun 1, 2022

Enriching other nations at the expense of American workers to advance "American" interests. A true classic of the foreign policy establishment. We don't need Russia, China or the Islamists. The American government hates its own people enough.

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Thanks for posting. It's a bit of a head-scratch, though, that you ignore SE Asia's richest nation (far richer than Malaysia, which you optimistically site as having First World living standards) and the US's staunchest security partner in the region, Singapore.

US markets are for many years now substantially open, tariff free, to SE Asian[ ASEAN countries. Most have booming trade ties with the US as well as huge inbound US investment. These parts of your proposed policy direction are substantially in place and working.

South Asia -- India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka especially are a different story. One big positive in the region: Bangladesh. The US has been prime mover behind 'its remarkable economic rise in last 25 years.

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If we had guaranteed income and/or guaranteed jobs people would not worry as much about opening our markets and borders.

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I have a simple policy proposal.

Plan: Make a NatGas + Oil pipeline from the Permian Basin to the West Coast to sell US oil to IPEF partners (South and East Asian countries). Add California if it is interested, otherwise we can let them buy gas at $6 a gallon.

Outcomes:

1. Communicate to domestic stakeholders that this will decrease the trade surplus with these countries and bring in investment capital to USA.

2. These countries are more willing to give money to the US which will use it for good purpose, like investment in other economies, etc. rather than give it to Russia, and the gulf states, which use this money to fund proxy wars which ultimately affects Asia in form of terrorism and war.

3. Anyway we need syngas for API manufacturing and petroleum for plastics and everything else. So it will be better if we get it from a cleaner source (light sweet crude and free natgas) rather than from the Asian countries.

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Why not subsidize exports of US nuclear power technology to India?

The Chinese might respond with export subsidies of their own, but that would be no bad thing. Clean energy for the world's largest country (within a year or two, if it hasn't passed China already) would kill several birds with one stone.

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