Geoff Miller raises lots of interesting points about my argument in Power Shift, any one of which would be worth a long post in its own right. But it might be more useful to go to the core idea which I think underlies Geoff's comments. He finds my description of the problem of Asia's future order too stark, and my approach to a solution too radical. He suggests that China's power is already being accommodated, that the region's multilateral machinery is evolving to take that process further, and we can safely relax and let things continue along these lines.
In fact, I agree with many of Geoff's positions, at least up to a point, and some of the remaining differences may be merely temperamental: Geoff is an inveterate optimist, while I am a professional pessimist.
But there is a deeper issue here that deserves analysis. Geoff's optimism derives largely from his view that the region has already begun to accommodate China's rise, and it has gone OK so far, so why shouldn't it continue to go OK? My view is that we have hardly begun to adapt to the political and strategic implications of China's growth, because we — the US, Australia and the rest of the region — have been in denial about the scale and significance of those implications.
But on the most important issues I think we agree: that we need a new order in Asia to keep the peace in new circumstances; that the foundation of that order must be the accommodation of China's power in ways consistent with the most important interests of others; that something like what I have called a Concert of Asia seems the best model for how this might be done; and that Australia should be active in trying to bring that about. If we agree on that much, I’m content to settle the rest over a glass of wine.
Photo by Flickr user Major Clanger, used under a Creative Commons license.
