Excerpt:
Second, there is a problem with the very concept of an Asian Century. Asia is not a civilization – it is a diverse region. Previous eras of far-reaching influence were characterized by the influence of a dominating culture such as the American Century, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Tang Dynasty, the Roman Empire, and Classical Greece.
To be sure, culture is a tricky concept. But what is “Asia” and can its culture dominate like previous cultures did? The odds are unlikely as “Asia” is a Western concept with thin resonance in the region and no cultural coherence. In Japan, for example, Asian denotes things foreign. The notion of Asia was manufactured by the ancient Greeks to refer to people living to the east of their civilization – the Persians and the Turks[8]. The continent of Eurasia thus became arbitrarily divided between Europe and non-Europe. Even the idea of an Asian Century had its origins in 1985 in Washington, D.C.[9]
Conclusion:
Mahbubani once said, “If you want to see the past, go to Europe. If you want to see the future, come to Asia.” That future has not arrived. Until a rival idea emerges, the present belongs to America and its universal values.
V/R
Dave
By Devin Stewart on December 22, 2012
A few years ago, New York University appointed me to teach a course on East Asian politics. At the time, experts were sounding the alarm that America was in decline, Asia was on the rise, and China was “eating our lunch.”[1] Works reflecting this anxiety included Charles Kupchan’s The End of the American Era (2003), Parag Khanna’s “Waving Goodbye to Hegemony” (2008), and Fareed Zakaria’s The Post-American World(2008). As I pointed out in 2007,[2] however, predictions of American decline go back decades[3] and have been consistently proven wrong.
But beyond the flaws in the narrative of American decline, the anticipation that an Asian Century would replace the American Century was also misguided. I used the semesters at NYU to deconstruct the notion of a rising Asia and reconstruct an appropriate U.S. foreign policy. Back then, such skepticism was counterintuitive. But just a few years later, several factors turned those doubts about the dawn of an Asian Century into common wisdom.
First, East Asia has witnessed the recent ascent of conservative leadership amid territorial tensions – signaling not a futuristic vision for international harmony but a return to past rivalries. China’s new leader Xi Jinping has already vowed to strengthen its military, creating what U.S. Admiral Michael McDevitt identifies as a “security dilemma” in Asia[4]. While China understandably wants to increase its combat readiness and project its naval power outward, doing so increases the insecurity of its neighbors.
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