An Asian Security Standoff

PIVOTAL MOMENTS in history are seldom anticipated. And when change is systemic, this rule is even truer. There are unmistakable signs in East Asia, however, that the old, U.S.-dominated order can no longer be sustained in the face of China’s emerging challenge and the relative weakness of both the United States and Japan. A failure of American diplomacy to adjust to these new power realities, or of China to accommodate long-standing U.S. and Japanese interests, could jeopardize the promise of the much-heralded Asian century and return East Asia to its bloody and fractious past. What emerges in this critical region will have global consequences. As the locus of economic and military power shifts decisively from the Atlantic to the Pacific, it is clear that East Asia has never been so centrally important to the international order. Never before have the world’s three preeminent states—the United States, Japan and China—all been Asia-Pacific powers. This raises the stakes for everyone should the Old Order fail precipitously.