East Asia and Global Security

Two articles on global security and East Asia crossed my path this week. The first is from Japan Focus, and discusses the emerging alliance structure aimed at China that is growing now in Northeast Asia.

Secondly, by explicitly "affirming the common strategic interests and security benefits embodied in their respective alliance relationships with the United States, and committing to strengthening trilateral cooperation," Japan and Australia are signaling an overturn to a half century of East Asian security architecture. An anti-Soviet system of US-dominated but uncoordinated bilateral alliances is being replaced by a nascent anti-China US-dominated multilateral alliance system. The fact that South Korea, now moving closer to China and unpicking its joint military command with the US, is not yet included in this new arrangement, warns us that the East Asian politics behind this new tripartite security architecture is decidedly wobbly.

South Korea's drift into the China orbit will be viewed by scholars of the future as yet another of the many defeats the US suffered under the Bush Administration. Meanwhile over at Peking Duck the redoubtable Raj found an argument for more engagement from the world in the Taiwan Straits issue:

It is time for the developed world, which has enjoyed fruitful results from globalization and the ability to influence China, to put this issue into a larger context. For more than 50 years, America has enjoyed the patent of discussing Taiwan's future, but now other Western countries should break its monopoly. The island is not only important to China, but also to the world.

It is long past time for the world to get involved.....

[Taiwan] [US] [China] [Taiwan Relations Act (TRA)] [Japan]