The Continuing Tale of US Decline

The East Asian Summit meeting in Kuala Lumpur, and a certain you-know-who wasn't invited:

WASHINGTON - The United States is rapidly losing its influence in the Southeast Asia region to China, thanks to an overly narrow focus on terrorism and a propensity to place bilateral ties above multilateral relationships, according to US and Chinese analysts....

By making Southeast Asia a "second front" in its global "war on terror", the Bush administration has signalled that "we care less about other areas of policy", Dalpino said, addressing a forum on China and Southeast Asia sponsored by the Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA.

Minxin Pei, director of the China Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, agrees that the US "has ceded the region to China's initiative".

And we can see again that the US really, really fucked up in 1997. We in the west generally don't realize how bad the Asian Crisis was, and how much damage it did to our relations with that part of the world:

He said US military policies following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks have played a significant role in the estrangement. But he dated the problem back to the Asian financial crisis of 1997 and 1998, when the Clinton administration used its influence on the International Monetary Fund to impose solutions on Asian countries that supported US economic goals in the region.

During the crisis, "the US showed to the East Asian countries it really did not care about them", he said.

Conversely, the Asian crisis was a turning point for China's ties with the broader Asian region, said Ren Xiao, director of the Asia-Pacific Studies Department at the Shanghai Institute for International Studies.

Ironically, one of the pillars of the post-WWII US hegemony - the IMF and World Bank - may be the exact same thing that fatally undermines US power in Asia. Not that the rhetoric surrounding China's success doesn't sometimes go over the top:

China, Ren stressed, has built its ties with Southeast Asia out of altruism. "China's foreign policy way of thinking has much to do with its geographical location," he said. "That is to say, we must have a stable and peaceful neighboring area."

I hope that's a bad translation, because otherwise it's just funny. China is deliberately, justifiably, and successfully undermining US power in Asia for its own interests. Altruism is somewhere near the bottom of the list.

This is what gets me - the US ambassador just complained loudly about anti-Americanism in the Canadian election. But here's the point: What the US calls anti-Americanism is in Canada's best interests. Now, it's true that on the particular point (climate change) the US has a better record than Canada, to our enduring shame. But broadly speaking, a more assertive Canada, unafraid to question American policy and work more closely with potential American rivals (like China) would be an unadulterated good thing for Canadians. It would also cause American politicians and pundits to scream blue bloody murder. Don't think so? Look at Venezuela. It can happen here.