Feature
World on edge
by Joanne Black
The Obama administration brings a different tone to US diplomacy, but as the global recession bites, the changing distribution of power in the Asia-Pacific region may accelerate. One expert warns the greatest security implications may come from collapsing states. So, which nations are likely to dominate our attention in 2009?
Not since the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, has one person on one day caused so many hundreds of thousands of people to pour onto the streets of a Western capital as occurred for the inauguration of US President Barack Obama. The sense of it being a momentous day was engendered not only by Obama being the first African American to assume the presidency, but by a belief that his administration will make good on its promise of change, and that one of those changes will be the active pursuit of a less-aggressive foreign policy. Many believe such an approach, if it occurs, would better serve American interests by inciting less antagonism towards the US, making the rest of the world safer, too.
The change in approach by the US comes as many academics and commentators believe the period of American military, economic and cultural supremacy in the world is coming to an end.
But the new Government in Washington may be overshadowed by economic events that seem set to dominate the domestic and international agendas of every country for at least another year.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman could not have put it more plainly when he wrote in the New York Times that recent economic numbers “have been terrifying, not just in the United States but around the world. Manufacturing in particular is plunging everywhere. Banks aren’t lending, businesses and consumers aren’t spending. Let’s not mince words. This looks an awful lot like the beginning of a second Great Depression.”
Robert Ayson, a New Zealander who is director of studies at Australian National University’s Graduate Studies in Strategy and Defence Program, says a depression would have enormous implications.
“We know what we got after the last depression: a global war. Perhaps it would not happen again, but we just don’t want to take the risk.”
Ayson says the distribution of power in the Asia-Pacific region has been gradually changing, and one of the questions that cannot yet be answered is how the global recession might alter or accelerate that process.
“New Zealand is one of the countries that has benefited from a sense that no one is able to dominate the wider Asia-Pacific region in a way that directly harms our interests,” he says.
“So, the first question is, are we going to see major changes in the distribution of power and are we expecting major clashes between the great powers? I don’t expect that, but we just don’t know what the impact of this economic crisis will be.
“We don’t know, for example, with a new administration in Washington, to what extent the US will be distracted from the Asia-Pacific region. Will the US be distracted because of its own financial crisis? Will it be distracted because of its focus on the Middle East, and what will that mean for this region?”
Ayson says the other effect of recession in the US will be pressure to reduce defence spending. “That could accelerate the sense of America’s relative position in Asia dropping, compared to some of the other powers. So, the financial crisis may accelerate what was already happening, which is that over the long term the American role in Asia is probably going to be smaller and the roles of China and India will be larger. So, the traditional sense we have had, and which has served Australian and New Zealand interests well, that the Americans will be there to keep everything together and stable, will have a question over it.
“That, in turn, raises questions for Canberra, which has relied more heavily than New Zealand on that role the Americans have played. The Australians are much more concerned about the distribution of power in the region than New Zealand ever is. In New Zealand, we have a degree of protection provided by Australia. We don’t have a dog in that fight.”
Victoria University senior lecturer in international relations David Capie supports Ayson’s view and also says the damage the financial collapse is doing to the US image should not be underestimated. “There will be a certain degree of smugness in some parts of East Asia that the American free-enterprise model that has been so talked about over the past decade or so has fallen apart.”
Both Ayson and Capie say it is unlikely Obama alone can restore the US position. Ayson: “Some think President Obama will ride in on a horse and arrest that relative decline, but I think that will be quite difficult.
”There may be, because of his election, a stronger sense of leadership and a stronger sense of legitimacy from America, but that’s not enough. America’s economic position is very dire. They are more and more indebted, they are reliant on the Asian economy to buy Treasury bonds and this crisis will have an impact long-term on the force they can project around the world.
“Can a new sense of inspiring leadership under Obama compete with the structural problems that the US faces and which have just been made a whole lot worse by the financial crisis? I don’t have a sense of that, but President Obama has got a hell of a job ahead of him, and even if there are four or even eight good years under him, US primacy will not be there forever.”
Page 1 
