Great power competition in Central Asia ebbs and flows in a timeless and tireless fashion. Unlike in Europe and East Asia during the Cold War and after, the fault line for the current jockeying for position in Central Asia between Washington and Beijing is not easily discernible. Instead, fluidity, uncertainty, and even outright reversal of fortunes among the major players have been the norm.
As part of our China Focus, we asked two leading scholars to reflect on the tensions and possibilities in U.S.-China relations. Bonnie Glaser is a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. James Nolt is a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute. We asked them first about the potential for a strategic security partnership between the United States and China, then about their economic relationship.
Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, foreign policy analysts have struggled to find a term to characterize the epoch we now inhabit. Although the ÂPost-Cold War Era has been the reigning expression, this label now sounds dated and no longer does justice to the particular characteristics of the current period. Others have spoken of the ÂPost-9/11 Era, as if the September 11 attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were defining moments for the entire world. But this image no longer possesses the power it once wieldedÂeven in the United States.
On June 4, 1989, the world watched in horror as the Chinese government’s crackdown on student protestors took a deadly turn. As Chinese soldiers fired their weapons indiscriminately and Chinese tanks rolled through Tiananmen Square, an unknown number of students and soldiers were killed. The Chinese military continued its campaign of terror throughout the summer of 1989, drawing strong international condemnation.
ÂThe world is investing too little, according to one prominent economist. ÂThe current situation has its roots in a series of crises over the last decade that were caused by excessive investment, such as the Japanese asset bubble, the crises in Emerging Asia and Latin America, and most recently, the IT bubble. Investment has fallen off sharply since, with only very cautious recovery.Â
The debate in the United States on global climate change is shifting from whether to do something about the problem to what to do. The conventional wisdom focuses on “cap and trade,” also known as tradable emissions permits. The Kyoto protocol, for instance, has instituted a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases (GHGs).
The debate in the United States on global climate change is shifting from whether to do something about the problem to what to do.1 Prudent people do not want to risk unacceptable adverse economic impacts, even if they are extremely concerned about global climate change. On the other side, equally prudent people do not want to risk accomplishing too little. The debate is stymied, even though several bills on global warming have been introduced into Congress. ÂThere will be no climate change legislation coming out of my committee this year, Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM) recently announced. ÂFrankly, I don’t know how to write it, and I don’t think anybody does.Â2
Ostensibly, the growing threat of international terrorism is responsible for the Bush administration’s proposed 2007 military budget, of $439 billion: a 7-percent increase from last year’s record tally. Higher spending, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has indicated, would ensure U.S. success “in the long war against terrorist extremism.”
In the recent debate on "permanent normal trade relations" (PNTR) with China, some progressives argued that failure to ratify the bilateral deal would constitute a retreat into "unilateralism." They asserted that U.S. unilateralism is a bad thing–so bad, indeed, that they supported PNTR even though they agreed with opponents that China’s entry into the WTO, facilitated by PNTR, would likely be bad for most workers in both China and the USA. 2 I think this position rests on a false premise. The policies of the United States–whether acting alone or in concert with other states–have often been at odds
with progressive internationalist principles, but they need not be. This
paper aims to justify this conclusion and to identify the conditions under
which unilateral U.S. actions can serve progressive internationalism.