Sino-US ties need new approach

The United States has a huge and growing stake in the Asia-Pacific region, one that offers great promise for the American economy through trade and investment but one that also poses some of the greatest foreign policy and diplomatic challenges.

The US' relations with each nation in the region are important and require tailored care, but no bilateral relationship will be successful if Washington fails to handle its relations with Beijing wisely. The greatest challenges facing this relationship - deficit of trust, regional tension over territorial disputes as well as US and Chinese domestic hurdles - have implications well beyond the bilateral aspects.

Washington's Asia-Pacific policy should have at its core upholding the stability and rules-bound system that have delivered growing success for small and large powers alike for decades while accommodating the re-emergence of China as an increasingly important power with a voice in regional and global affairs.

The Barack Obama administration sought to rebalance American policy toward Asia in the middle of 2011. The rebalance, or misnamed "pivot to Asia", is usually depicted in military or security terms, with the US shifting its focus and resources from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan back to the Asia-Pacific region, where American economic and security interests are greater.

Unforeseen events have complicated the picture. Tensions erupted between the Philippines and China, and Vietnam and China in the South China Sea, between Japan and China in the East China Sea, and between Japan and the ROK over disputed territorial claims. And the US became entangled in the disputes further straining Sino-American relations.

The Obama administration faces a cascade of decisions that will largely be viewed as relatively low priorities in the American domestic context but could prove supremely important in terms of great-power relations and the future of the US economy if they are mismanaged.

If Beijing and Washington, despite their many complementarities, fail to manage their real differences, the potential costs would be unimaginable. The trick will be to exploit the complementary aspects of Sino-American ties to resolve, contain or, if deterrence fails, defeat the threats that the differences may produce.

The Obama administration needs to decide how to position Sino-American ties. This will not be a binary process but one with many complicating factors, starting with the formulation of policies to revitalize the US economy. A confident and growing US will have few impediments to exercising its influence.