On June 5, 2017, the Carnegie Moscow Center hosted an open discussion on major power relationships in the Asia-Pacific region with John McCarthy, former Australian ambassador to Vietnam, Indonesia, Japan, and India.

Ambassador McCarthy posited that the United States has played a formative role in the Asia-Pacific region since World War II. He noted that since the inauguration of Donald Trump, U.S. foreign policy has been defined mainly by unpredictability in major issues such as those relating to North Korea and the South China Sea, to the detriment of America’s allies in the region. This, along with Washington’s impending withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TTP), will cause the United States to lose its economic and geopolitical impact on the region over the next few years. Therefore, McCarthy expects that liberal states such as Australia, Japan, and South Korea will have to make their own political decisions—independently of the United States—with the aim of strengthening the Asia-Pacific region.

Ambassador McCarthy also observed a growing complexity in the region resulting from the economic and political rise of China, which has been bolstered by the “One Belt, One Road” program recently launched by Beijing. According to McCarthy, this program reinforces Asian economic and political dependency on China, but also serves as a geopolitical stabilizer in western China and other regions of Asia.

Please click here to read the full “Power dynamics in the Asia-Pacific” article on the Carnegie Moscow Center website by Griffith Asia Institute Advisory Board Chair, Ambassador John McCarthy and Dmitri Trenin, Director, Carnegie Moscow Center.