The Great Asia Rebalancing: The Ghost of Huntington

I just wanted to flag two thought-provoking articles on the strategic shifts associated with China's rise, which I've taken to calling, "The Great Asia Rebalancing." The first is by Hugh White (excerpted from a longer essay here), the second by Michael Clarke. Together, they offer fascinating insights into the strategic choices faced by two historic U.S. allies, both of whom face very real constraints on their ability to keep up with the dramatic changes shaping the global security environment.

Clarke notes that with the end of any real security threat either originating from or menacing Europe, the U.S. has effectively reversed poles, becoming an Asian power first, and a European power only a distant second. That shift increasingly renders obsolete Britain's defense identity of the past 80 years, namely being the trans-Atlantic bridge cementing U.S. engagement with Europe. But facing paralyzing budget constraints over the course of the next decade, the U.K. will have difficulty fielding the kind of expeditionary force that would allow it to maintain the same privileged relationship with the U.S. in the latter's new stomping grounds, namely the Middle East and Asia.

For Australia, as White describes, the shift in U.S. strategic focus similarly calls into question Australia's security identity, but for the opposite reason. As America's closest ally in the region, Australia could potentially take on the kind of role in Asia that the U.K. played in Europe. But that role would necessitate a commitment, in terms of both budget and skin in the game, that Australians are unlikely to be willing or able to bear.

For White, that means that Australia's major contribution in the Great Rebalancing will be to leverage its soft power so as to convince the U.S. to privilege Asian stability and order over U.S. regional primacy -- essentially, to yield to China's regional primacy in the interests of the greater good. Should the U.S. choose instead to contest China rather than make room for it, then Australia must consider opting out of the U.S. alliance, whether through armed or unarmed neutrality, seeking a regional alliance to counterbalance China, or even accepting China as the regional hegemon.

For Clarke, the U.K.'s predicament means that it, too, must find ways to leverage its soft power -- in the Middle East and South Asia -- to advance its shared interests with the U.S. in order to maintain the relevance of that relationship. But in order to maintain its own strategic relevance, it must seek out new relationships to supplement its traditional, but increasingly obsolete or strategically impotent alliances. He mentions Japan, Turkey, India, Brazil and Australia as potential candidates.

As critiques of White's essay -- by Greg Sheridan here and Graeme Dobell here (with White's follow-ups here and here worth reading as well) -- point out, the question all this raises is whether strategic policy can be as independent of national identity as strategic thinking can be. According to this view, the connective bonds of the Western alliance are civilizational ones that go beyond shared strategic interests. If so, that suggests these alliances are suicide pacts that must persist even when the strategic interests driving their individual members diverge. In other words, a Huntingtonian clash is inevitable.

But while that may or may not be true of the U.K. and Australia, it is hardly true of the U.S., which has maintained solid cross-civilizational alliances with Japan and South Korea for as long as it has with Europe and Australia. I recently wrote that the U.S. should essentially accept White's advice in Asia, as well as Clarke's in the Middle East, in order to focus its strategic attention on Africa. That might be easier for us to swallow than for our Western allies.