February 10th that the World Newspaper Syndicate website published an article entitled “Biden’s Asian Triangle” by Harvard University professor Joseph Nye on February 4.
The full text is extracted as follows:
How Joe Biden will handle his relationship with China will be one of the decisive questions about his presidency.
The Sino-US relations he took over are currently at their lowest level in 50 years.
Some people blamed this on his predecessor Donald Trump. Trump should be responsible for “fueling the fire”.
At the same time, the United States and China remain interdependent on the economy and ecological issues beyond bilateral relations.
The United States cannot completely decouple its economy from China without paying a huge price.
During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union had little economic or other interdependence.
In contrast, the annual trade volume between the United States and China is about 500 billion US dollars, and the two sides have extensive exchanges between students and tourists.
More importantly, China has learned to use the power of the market in a way that the Soviets never mastered, and China is a trading partner of more countries than the United States.
Given the size of China’s population and rapid economic growth, some pessimists believe that it is impossible to influence China’s behavior.
But if you think from the perspective of the alliance, this is not the case.
The combined wealth of developed countries – the United States, Japan and Europe – far exceeds that of China.
This strengthens the importance of the Japan-US alliance to the stability and prosperity of the East Asian and world economy. At the end of the cold war, many people in both countries regarded this alliance as a legacy of history.
Former President Clinton’s policy towards China has provided contact, but it has also made two bets, reaffirming that security relations with Japan are the key to China’s geopolitical rise. At that time, there were three major powers in East Asia.
If the United States continued to form an alliance with Japan (Japan is now the world’s third largest economy), these two countries could shape the environment in which China’s power growth is located.
In addition, if China tries to expel the United States from the first island chain, as part of its military strategy to expel the United States from the region, Japan, which forms the most important part of the island chain, is still willing to provide generous host country support to the 50,000 U.S.
troops stationed there. As a thoughtful and skillful executor of Clinton’s policy at the time, Kurt Campbell is now a key coordinator for Biden’s National Security Council in the Indo-Pacific region.
Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe led a new interpretation of Article 9 of Japan’s post-war constitution to strengthen Japan’s defense capabilities under the Charter of the United Nations.
After Trump withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), Abe retained the agreement in the form of a comprehensive and progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (CPTPP).
Under the leadership of the new Prime Minister Yoshihiro Kan, who was Abe’s cabinet chief and may continue his policy, Japan’s regional leadership is likely to continue.
The Japan-US alliance is still very popular in these two countries, and they need each other more than ever.
If Japan and the United States are united, they can balance China’s strength and cooperate with China in areas such as climate change, biodiversity, epidemic prevention and efforts to build a rules-based international economic order.
For these reasons, as the Biden administration develops a strategy to deal with China’s continued rise, alliance with Japan will remain the top priority.
