Brent Scowcroft Center Resident Senior Fellow Robert A. Manning writes for the Diplomat on how with some foresight and leadership, the postwar Asia-Pacific system can survive:
For all the hand-wringing about China remaking Asia in its image – as evidenced in the recent controversy over Beijing’s new investment bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank – reports of a US retreat are greatly exaggerated.
Congress’s recent approval of Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) and the likely approval of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Obama administration’s legacy trade deal, is the sort of economic statecraft that can update and sustain the open, ruled-based order. Yet as the pending demise of the EXIM Bank illustrates, such efforts have been all too rare.