EDITORIAL – MARCH 2025 – Asia could thrive in shifting world order

Who would have imagined it?

Long-overdue reform to the rules-based international order has not been driven by Russia, China or any nation bristling with rival values.

Instead, the United States itself is overhauling asystem it set up 80-years ago which, for far too long, has been operating well past its sell by date.

Equally significant, the decision came not from the jackboot of a superpower dictatorship, but from the ballot box of the world’s strongest democracy.

At last month’s Munich Security Conference, American Vice President JD Vance cut through diplomatic niceties by accusing the European mindset of being more a danger to Western values than threats from Russia and China.

He was specifically referring to measures against free speech, whether on social media or prayer outside abortion clinics. The central message of his attack on this bastion of Western democratic values was that Europe has become anti-democratic.

‘The crisis this continent faces right now,’ Vance said,‘the crisis I believe we all face together, is one of our own makings. If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you.’

Whatever the rights or wrongs of the flurry of statements coming out of Washington,Europe has suddenly found itself in the dilemma Asia has been facing for many decades: How closely should it be beholden to the United States’ security umbrella?

At many levels, Asia is better placed than Europe to handle this new American era. Theregion has no shared values above the priority of trade and it does not rely heavily on American security in the way that envelopes Europe.

And there is another critical cultural element that sets Asia apart. Unlike Europe, the region does not do big international wars.

The Muslim, Mongol and other invasions are from centuries ago. The Pacific War evolved from Japan’s learning from and imitating European colonisers, then attempting to claim Asia as its own. And the more recent 20^thcentury wars in Vietnam, Korea and elsewhere were encouraged from outside the region by the Soviet Union, Europe and America.

Left to its own devices, Asia has internal tribal, ethnic and border conflicts, but nothing to match the level in global rivalry and destabilisation initiated by the West.

The modern concepts of conflict prevention and universal values began with the 1940s’ creation of the United Nations and were given a boost in the 1990s with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

But these ideas failed to keep pace with the time, specifically voices from a wealthier and better educated Global South pushing for reform of global institutions.

The result has been the tearing up of benchmarks that the West holds dear.

International law has little relevance now that Moscow occupies a swathe of Ukraine, Beijing controls much of the South China Sea and Washington is warning of itsintention to expand into Canada, Greenland and Panama.

Today, power, pragmatism and leverage prevail over the rule of law.

In the same vein, America’s view on human rights is now based on what is beneficial to the United States, not what is written into the UN charter. Washington’s early announcements of the redevelopment of Gaza is but one example.

Asia, therefore, has an opportunity to rewrite creeds that it has long challenged with the central question on whether the rights of the individual should supersede the rights of the community.

Unlike the West, with its recent catastrophic interventions, Asia has much experience in understanding its own limits. Having lived in the front lines of the Cold War, it understands first-hand tragedies that come from bad thinking in faraway capitals.

In Asia, different systems of government have had to rub along together without one claiming a moral superiority to the other.The region has become skilled at understanding competing outside interests such as the importance of balancing Chinese trade, and of American security. 

Unlike Europe, secured through NATO, Asia has never enjoyed an unequivocal reliance on US military support. The policy of constructive ambiguity over Taiwan is a case in point.

The first Trump administration prepared Asia for what is now unfolding. Donald Trump’s re-election with a solid mandate suggests that America’s redirection is no flash in the pan lasting a mere four-year electoral cycle.

Asia will need far less readjustment than Europe to US global disengagement, giving the region an opportunity to stand on its own two feet, project its own values and contribute fully to the re-writing of the world order.