Asia's Looming Power Shift

A likely consequence of the divergent interests among Greater Asia's most powerful states and the absence of effective institutions to facilitate collective action is that problems that cannot be addressed effectively without multilateral cooperation will go unattended and fester. These problems include nuclear proliferation, terrorism, environmental degradation, territorial disputes and arms races. Among the desirables that appear infeasible are confidence-building measures that avert crises on land and sea; agreements that enable the cooperative exploration of contested oceanic energy deposits; rule-based management of shared water resources by riverine countries; and codes of conduct on cyberwarfare, trade and investment in a transaction-dense region. The pity is not merely that these challenges are likely to be missed opportunities for cooperation but also that they may aggravate already-abundant sources of tension and conflict resulting from changes in the balance of power. Thucydides would have found these tragic circumstances familiar, but our prevailing paradigms, long on sweep and short on subtlety, cannot do them justice.