The deteriorating U.S.-China relationship will influence each of these regional issues and in some instances make them more fraught. The modern Sino-American relationship can be said to be in its fourth phase. The first phase, which lasted from the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 until rapprochement under President Richard Nixon, was one of open hostility. The United States much preferred that the Communists not win the internal struggle for power that resumed following World War II, and after they did, the two countries fought on opposite sides during the Korean War. The second phase was animated by a shared antipathy toward the Soviet Union, and saw the United States and China work together to counter the Soviet threat. It was a relationship built on realism: when China’s government killed hundreds and perhaps thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in 1989, the George H. W. Bush administration chose to preserve the bulk of the relationship in order to keep the pressure on the Soviet Union. Once the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the relationship entered its third phase, typified by increasing investment, trade, and China’s integration into the global economy. While Americans benefitted from cheaper Chinese goods and access to China’s market, and China received much-needed capital and technological know-how, Americans eventually soured on this relationship as it failed to create a more open, market-oriented, and cooperative China at the same time it helped to bring about an economic competitor. It can be said the U.S.-China relationship is now entering its fourth phase, and is currently looking for a rationale. Without a strategic or economic underpinning, the relationship is becoming increasingly adversarial.
One critical factor in determining the region’s future will be the role that the United States chooses to play going forward. As already noted, one reason for the region’s phenomenal success over the past seventy years is the presence of the United States. Yes, the United States badly overreached by trying to unite all of the Korean Peninsula by force and then again in making a commitment to Vietnam that was not justified by its direct interests. But the U.S. military presence, its political and diplomatic involvement, its support for trade and investment, and its reputation for reliability also contributed mightily to the region’s success. The obvious question is whether the United States will be willing to play such a role moving forward. If not, one can imagine a future of increased Chinese influence, Japanese rearmament, and conflict on the Korean Peninsula, over Taiwan, or owing to one or more of the other outstanding territorial disputes.
LOOKING AHEAD
The direction of the U.S.-China relationship will be critical for the region’s future. What will determine its trajectory more than anything else will be whether the two countries can reach a modus vivendi in the economic sphere, particularly regarding advanced technologies and the role of the Chinese state in its economy. Geopolitical issues such as the South China Sea and Taiwan, and differences over how China treats its minority groups, are unlikely to be resolved. The foreign policy challenge, therefore, will be to manage these differences so that they do not get out of hand or preclude cooperation where the interests of the two countries overlap.
Not all of the challenges facing the region are geopolitical. One is demographic. The region is aging more rapidly than any region in history. The principal causes are increased life expectancy, low immigration levels, and declining fertility, something often associated with economic success. Many of these countries (in particular Japan and China) will face a future in which a declining percentage of the population will be of working age and will nonetheless be forced to support a large number of old people who are retired.
There are also internal political and economic challenges facing several countries. Chinese leaders face not just an aging population and an abundance of men over women (both related to years of imposing a one-child limit on families, something that led many to opt for boys) but also widespread corruption, environmental degradation, and an economy overly dependent on access to the markets of others. There is a potential tension between the Communist Party’s desire to build an innovative modern economy and its desire to impose strict limits on individual freedom. It is not clear China can enjoy the benefits of an open economy while maintaining a closed political system. The overriding question is whether the Chinese government can maintain political stability amid lower levels of economic growth, and, if it cannot, whether it resorts to a more nationalist foreign policy in order to distract attention from domestic frustrations.
The question naturally arises: Can Asia continue to be a modern miracle? Can it sustain its economic growth, political stability, and peace? It is possible, but it is by no means assured given shifting power balances, continued military modernization, the emergence of a more capable and assertive China, unresolved territorial disputes, expected changes within societies, and questions over what the United States is willing to do in order to maintain the region’s stability.
South Asia
South Asia consists of eight countries that constitute roughly 25 percent of the world’s population, under 4 percent of its landmass, and approximately 4 percent of its economy. The region includes India, the world’s most populous democracy, which will soon overtake China as the world’s most populous country. South Asia’s overall population and its share of the global population are both predicted to rise for the next few decades. The region also includes three of the four countries with the world’s largest Muslim populations: India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. In fact, by 2050 India is projected to have the world’s largest Muslim population, overtaking Indonesia. (It should be pointed out, though, that roughly 80 percent of Indians are Hindu.)
Most of South Asia’s countries were once British colonies. They now live in the shadow of India and Indo-Pakistani tensions, which are pervasive. Regional ties are weak. The local regional organization, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, has had negligible impact, failing to hold regular summits due to disputes between India and Pakistan. This is the world’s least economically integrated region; trade between and among the region’s states is small and represents only a fraction of their foreign trade.
If there is a thread that captures the essence of South Asia, it is one of struggle. The modern history of the region began with conflict, and war has been a regular feature ever since. The region is far behind most of the rest of Asia economically. Alas, there is little reason to predict the future will be fundamentally different or better, because South Asia will have to contend with the reality or possibility of war, climate change, and larger populations that are likely to absorb gains in economic output.
Some lump in the five countries of Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) with South Asia to form a region known as South and Central Asia, but these countries are best understood as distinct. Their modern history goes back to the Soviet Union, when they were component republics, gaining their independence in 1991, when the Soviet Union unraveled. There are important differences, in particular between the energy-rich nations (Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan) and the countries that are poorer, less stable, and less connected to the world (Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan). What these countries (with the partial exception of Uzbekistan, which is introducing a number of economic and political reforms) have in common is authoritarian political systems, a large state role in their economies, considerable corruption, and close ties to Russia and China.
INDIA AND PAKISTAN
Any discussion of South Asia begins and ends with India. In addition to its rising population, India’s economy is large and growing, in recent years at the robust rate of around 7 percent annually. India’s economy is the world’s seventh largest and will soon be in the top five, trailing only the United States, China, Japan, and Germany (overtaking France and the United Kingdom in the process). It was not always thus; Indian economic growth averaged only 3 to 5 percent annually (quite low for a developing country) for its first four decades following independence. India’s
economy is only about one-fifth the size of China’s, even though they have comparable populations and started from a similar base half a century ago. It was not until 1991 and the adoption of market-oriented reforms that India’s economy began to accelerate, thirteen years after China adopted its own set of market-oriented reforms and began its economic ascent. But even with these reforms, India’s economy continues to be held back by corruption, poor infrastructure, and complex political and legal bureaucracies. These realities have discouraged foreign investment. Also reducing the impact of economic improvement is the large and fast-growing population; gains in output are largely offset by increases in population. India’s GDP per capita is only around $2,000, which does not even merit a ranking in the world’s top hundred by that metric.
India has seen social as well as economic progress. Life expectancy has more than doubled since independence in 1947. Literacy has more than quadrupled over that same period. In the past fifteen years, India has made remarkable strides in lifting its people out of extreme poverty. But even so, poverty remains widespread, several hundred million Indians are illiterate, and inequality is stark. Billionaires live alongside slums. India has made a huge push to extend electricity into its remote villages, but roughly 200 million Indians still do not have regular access to electricity. Half the people on the planet who lack access to basic sanitation or toilets live in India. Caste, or the stratification of Hindus into tiered social groups according to birth, has reduced social and economic mobility and continues to weigh down India, especially in rural regions. In many ways, it is helpful to speak of “two India’s,” one relatively modern, urbanized, and middle class, another more traditional, rural, and poorer.
With the exception of a short period in the mid-1970s, India has maintained a robust democracy since it gained its independence. For much of its modern history, India was led by the secular, center-left Indian National Congress, or Congress Party, whose leaders were associated with resistance to British rule and governed the country in the decades following independence. In this century, however, it is the Bharatiya Janata Party, a party with a nationalist Hindu identity, that has emerged as a major political force at the national and state levels. Such an exchange of power is in principle welcome because it is essential for the institutionalization of democracy; in this, India resembles Japan and Mexico, two other countries headed for decades by one party that have similarly evolved into more pluralistic polities.
Pakistan, whose name is an acronym derived from the country’s component parts, has not fared as well as India either economically or politically. Its economy is barely more than one-tenth that of India’s, and at just over $1,500 its GDP per capita places it near the bottom 25 percent of all countries. Politically, Pakistan has been and remains a democracy in name only. Real power is held by the army and the intelligence services. Elected politicians, other than those who are retired military officers, tend to exercise little authority.
Bangladesh is often overlooked but should not be. It is a more important country than Pakistan in terms of global trade. Bangladesh is second only to China when it comes to exports of ready-made garments; U.S. trade with Bangladesh is greater than its trade with Pakistan. It is deeply embedded within European companies’ supply chains and with many American brands and retailers.
Bangladesh has also quietly delivered significant improvements in human development to its citizens. It is doing better than both Pakistan and India on many development measures. Bangladesh has solved its border dispute with India, has taken a strong stance against terrorism, and is the host for nearly a million Rohingya refugees fleeing Myanmar (Burma). Less positively, Bangladesh has suffered from dysfunctional and, at times, authoritarian leadership, but its democracy seems to be strengthening. Its high population density is also a problem, with the equivalent of half the population of the United States packed into an area smaller than Wisconsin. The country is also ground zero for a likely climate refugee crisis given that its densest areas of population are at sea level on the coast.
HISTORY
The modern history of the region has its roots in the British Empire. India, which included what we now call Pakistan and Bangladesh, was its jewel. But World War II left the British exhausted, and that, coupled with the rise of nationalism in India, a strong desire for self-rule, and an effective, nonviolent resistance movement led by Mahatma Gandhi, spelled the end of the colonial period. As was often the case elsewhere when the colonial period came to an end, violence ensued. Many of India’s Muslims, led by Mohammed Ali Jinnah, sought independence not just from Great Britain but from India. Gandhi and the Indian National Congress saw India not as a Hindu country but as a democratic, secular society and initially resisted partition. But after much fighting and communal violence between Hindus and Muslims that cost as many as one million lives and created as many as twenty million refugees, Pakistan got its wish and became an independent country.
But the birth and separation of the two former colonies did not bring stability. Many Indians, viewing themselves as a secular and tolerant democracy, never accepted the need for a separate country based on religion; many Pakistanis never came to trust their larger neighbor. In addition, India and Pakistan disagreed over boundaries, in particular over Jammu and Kashmir, a Muslim-majority region (often referred to simply as Kashmir) on the Indo-Pakistani border. Pakistan faced additional challenges because it originally consisted of two separate parts—East Pakistan and West Pakistan—that were separated by India’s territory.
As is the case with the Middle East and the Israel-Arab and Israel-Palestinian disputes, it is possible to speak of the region’s modern history in a shorthand of wars—1947, 1965, 1971, and 1999—and periodic near wars. Kashmir was at the center of many of these, although the 1971 conflict was triggered by widespread repression in East Pakistan that in turn led to a massive influx of refugees into India. This demographic pressure in turn led to an Indian military intervention designed to end the flow of refugees and permanently separate western from eastern Pakistan, with the latter becoming the separate country of Bangladesh. The most recent crises have involved differences over Kashmir or Indian reactions to Pakistani support for acts of terrorism within India.
South Asia was also a venue of Cold War competition. The United States hoped that India would become a model of non-Communist development and an alternative to China. India was one of the largest recipients of U.S. foreign aid. India, however, was not interested in being a poster child for American development strategies, and embraced a position of nonalignment, spurning a formal alliance with both the West and the Soviet bloc, although it often was close to the Soviet Union in practice. India’s leaning in the direction of the Soviet Union also reflected the large Indian government role in the country’s development and its mistrust of Pakistan and America’s close relationship with Pakistan. Ironically, the U.S. relationship with Pakistan, while at times too much for India, was rarely if ever enough for Pakistan, which viewed the United States with suspicion given U.S. unwillingness to stand by it unconditionally.
GEOPOLITICS
What has made the Indian-Pakistani pattern of conflict more significant than it already was is the fact that both developed nuclear weapons. India and Pakistan now represent two of the world’s nine nuclear weapon states. India first tested a nuclear device in 1974, in part as a response to China’s development of nuclear weapons. India and China fought a short war in 1962 that China won easily, and the two continue to view each other warily. The border between them remains in dispute, despite dozens of rounds of negotiations. But whatever the reason for India’s nuclear program, Pakistan followed suit, both to deter any Indian threat and to compensate for its inability to match India’s conventional forces.
The existence of nuclear weapons adds a whole new layer of concern to Indo-Pakistani friction in that one of the two (most likely Pakistan given its position of conventional military inferiority, its development of low-yield
or tactical nuclear weapons, and its refusal to rule out being the first side to use nuclear weapons) might be tempted to actually use them. Pakistan is thought to have the world’s fastest-growing nuclear arsenal. There have been several crises that led to wars, and the possibility exists for nuclear weapons to be introduced in a war growing out of historical resentments, the dispute over Kashmir (which intensified in 2019 following India’s decision to revoke much of its autonomy), or Pakistan’s harboring (and, at times, outright support) of terrorists who target India. There is also the fear that Pakistan could lose control over one or more of its nuclear weapons or nuclear material due to political instability and the divided loyalties of some of its soldiers, some of whom are suspected of sympathizing with radical Islamic groups and terrorists. Pakistan is also a proven proliferation risk, because the principal architect of its nuclear program, A. Q. Khan, sold information on nuclear weapons to North Korea, Libya, and Iran.
AFGHANISTAN
Afghanistan has had its own overlay of geopolitics. While not a British colony in the formal sense, it was a venue of British influence and, during the nineteenth century, an arena of competition between Great Britain and Russia. Several wars were fought between British (and Indian) soldiers and Afghan troops loyal to the ruling emir in the nineteenth century as Great Britain sought to shape local politics. Afghanistan declared its independence in 1919.
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