Asian triangles may not prove eternal

The US, we see, has a number of ways to triangulate its Asia policy. The unveiling of the Obama administration's updated National Security Strategy claimed to set out ways to "advance our rebalance to Asia and the Pacific ... The United States has been and will remain a Pacific power. Over the next five years, nearly half of all growth outside the United States is expected to come from Asia." It thus welcomes the rise of a "stable, peaceful and prosperous China. While there will be competition, we reject the inevitability of confrontation."

In fact, it would be a fool's errand to try to contain, much less confront, China. On the contrary, a truly inspired and strategic American diplomacy would relentlessly seek out areas of cooperation, work to deepen and broaden them, and aim to smooth out differences to the maximum degree possible, even losing an argument or two here and there.

Triangles aside, George Yeo, the highly regarded former Singapore foreign minister, views today's world as profoundly altered by China's rise. He recommends viewing the new world order as a solar system with two suns, no longer with just the US as one. This transformative development forces the countries of Asia to reconfigure their diplomatic orbits so as to take into account the new pull from Beijing.

As Yeo has said: "This is a new planetary dance giving new orbital freedoms to everyone, new possibilities but also new dangers." So what about India? Yeo wryly says: "Yes, India is like a Jupiter with growing pull." But it is no way yet the third sun. And any new triangulation will take time.

The author is the distinguished scholar of Asian and Pacific Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.