Asia wants US, China to sort out strategic differences: Vivian Balakrishnan

Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan stressed that the biggest challenges humanity faces - pandemics and climate change for instance - will be transnational. ST PHOTO: GAVIN FOO

WASHINGTON - Asia worries about China and America clashing in a hot war, Singapore's Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan told the annual Aspen Security Forum on Wednesday (Aug 5).

The minister stressed that the biggest challenges humanity faces - pandemics and climate change for instance - will be transnational.

Thus, dealing with them will require cooperation, multipolar leadership, and multilateral institutions and processes, he told the forum, a yearly conference for global leaders to discuss foreign policy and key security issues.

It is being held virtually this year because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Dr Balakrishnan cited the 2015 Paris Agreement on combating climate change as an example of a pact only possible because America and China had agreed on it.

It was understandable that American voters would question America's role in the world, he said.

"Putting America first is a rational political development to a change in the world, internally and at a global level," he said.

"At the end of the Second World War… it made sense for the US to underwrite the liberal world order as we know it, which has been a formula for peace and prosperity especially for democratic South East Asia."

The United States' percentage of global gross domestic product then was around 40.

"The problem now is that after 1978, China opened up. In 1991, India opened up. And with the fall of the Soviet Union, even Russia and the rest of eastern Europe came on line. All these actually are positive developments, but what it means is the US now constitutes maybe about 25 per cent of global GDP," Dr Balakrishnan said.

"It is an entirely legitimate question for the American voter to say, why should the United States have to pay in blood and treasure to underwrite this world order?"

"The key point here is we're moving from a unipolar world into a multipolar world," he said.

"If you wistfully think of the so-called good old days, and hope that America somehow will go back to the good old days and single-handedly carry this world, it's not realistic."

Since 1978, China had lifted hundreds of millions of people out of abject poverty through a hybrid system of party dominance and integration in the world economy, he said.

As a historic achievement, this was worth celebrating, and "we have all benefited", he said.

Given that for China, the last couple of centuries had been humiliating, it was also entirely legitimate for China to feel it is on the verge of re-establishing its position in the world order. And China could not be changed, he added.

Calling for a combination of realism and a realisation of history and culture on both sides, Dr Balakrishnan stressed that the "old canard (that) you are either with us or against us does not work in a multipolar world".

"What all of us in Asia want is for America and China to sort out their strategic differences, find a modus vivendi to resolve these differences, and also to be able to collaborate on the multilateral global challenges that we face - and on that basis to continue to engage in Asia, because both America and China have huge equities in Asia," Dr Balakrishnan said.

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