Resolving contradictions: US primacy and the ‘rules-based’ order

Abstract

East Asia's stability and prosperity throughout most of the post-war period has been a function of continuing US security guarantees on the one hand and US trade and investment ties on the other. The strategic stability and economic opportunity provided by the US over the last 70 years has made broadly shared prosperity not only possible in the region, but also sustainable. And given the central leadership role played by successive US administrations throughout this period of military, economic and political US primacy, the regional order's character and development has to a very high degree always reflected both the US liberal vision of the strategic means and ends that should guide interstate relations, and the core US interests and concerns shaped by that vision. The nature of the post-war international order more broadly, and Asia's regional order in particular, has undergone adjustment and change driven in large part by changes in policy priorities and thinking in Washington. It is important to recognize, however, that the uncontested longevity of these orders has depended not only on US material power, but also on acceptance by other states of the principles and norms they are founded on (both formal and tacit) and continued confidence in the US commitment to upholding them. East Asia's relatively peaceful evolution under a stable, US-led order thus cannot be explained by only the US's unrivalled material power advantages, although they clearly have been an entirely necessary condition for Washington's influence and persuasion in the region. What has made US leadership both effective and long-term in Asia, in addition to its 'brute' material sources, has been the willingness, for the most part, of various US administrations to support and participate in a carefully calibrated Goldilocks-type liberal 'rules-based' order, one that has been liberal enough to promote core liberal values and defend sovereign independence and equality, but not so liberal to be intolerant - beyond at least what Bull describes as the normal level of great power interference1 - of the concerns of less liberally inclined societies and political systems.