Asia has witnessed overall stability as well as rapid and sustained economic growth in recent decades, allowing the Asian Miracle to take place.
Peace and security do not emerge by accident or as a gift from a single country, as the region realizes on its journey to prosperity. It is the outcome of the region’s countries cooperating towards a common future.
As a result, Washington’s strategy to foment splits and sell bloc conflict to Asia should be vigorously rejected.
President Joe Biden of the United States will begin a four-day journey to South Korea and Japan on Friday, his first trip to Asia as president, but not the first time his government has pushed to stoke divides and hostility in Asia.
Despite Washington’s claims to be working to “promote a free and open Indo-Pacific,” the IPEF is effectively another exclusive US-led economic bloc attempting to construct hurdles to international rules in order to constrain China and perpetuate US economic hegemony.
Some Asian nations have already raised worries that the IPEF is “mainly a political project aimed to challenge China, rather than a real and intelligent economic policy integration programme,” according to a recent analysis by the US Center for Strategic and International Studies.
According to South Korea’s JoongAng Daily, Washington plans to use the IPEF to economically suffocate China while also aiming to fight China militarily through the Quad geopolitical bloc, which includes the US, Japan, India, and Australia, in order to achieve a “dual-track” strategy.
What causes anxiety and alarm is that the notion that Japan and the US will jointly face China has already been widely discussed even before the US leader arrives in Japan.
Politicians in both nations should remember that bilateral collaboration between Japan and the US should not lead to bloc conflict, much less compromise China’s sovereignty, security, or development objectives.
Biden’s journey to Asia comes on the heels of the recently finished US-ASEAN conference, which was yet another failed attempt by Washington to persuade Asian countries to join its side.
