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Evan Feigenbaum @EvanFeigenbaum
, 11 tweets, 5 min read Read on Twitter
1/4: This is correct and is too-often ignored in debates about the supposed "decline" of the United States in Asia. ASEAN alone has received more than $274 billion in US cumulative investment. But -- and, in my view, it is a very big "but" -- it also risks missing the point.
2/4: US economic involvement is growing in absolute terms but receding in relative terms. Trade with the US comprises a diminishing share of nearly every Asian country’s total trade. Yet the US has focused mainly on security rebalancing to the exclusion of economic rebalancing.
3/4: The issue is not 𝘣𝘶𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴. What's at stake are rules, norms, standards and strategic momentum. The US has withdrawn from TPP and rejects regional approaches even as efforts have been underway to organize some of those approaches on a pan-Asian basis excluding the US.
4/4: This is a multi-administration problem, as I fretted to @BonnieGlaser in this @ChinaPowerCSIS podcast. But it is now an acute challenge to US strategy in Asia and it is harder to deploy US leverage in the context of messages that say "America First." chinapower.csis.org/podcasts/power…
4/4a: I have been fretting about this for 15 years, both in and out of government. This is a problem of long vintage. More old hand-wringing essays follow:
4/4b: An essay on "The New Asian Order: And How America Fits in" from @ForeignAffairs: foreignaffairs.com/articles/east-…
4/4c: A @CFR_org monograph, co-authored with @Rmanning4, on "The United States in the New Asia": cfr.org/report/united-…
4/4d: An essay, also with @Rmanning4, on "A Tale of Two Asias" in @ForeignPolicy: foreignpolicy.com/2012/10/31/a-t…
4/4e: A follow-up essay on "The Problem with Two Asias" in East Asia Forum: carnegieendowment.org/2013/01/18/pro…
4/4f: An essay in @TWQgw on "Why America No Longer Gets Asia": csis.org/analysis/twq-w…
4/4g: An essay on @MacroPoloChina on US posture/policy in Asia in the face of China's highly strategic brand of revisionism: macropolo.org/reluctant-stak…
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1: Since there's been some enthusiasm for encouraging an oppositional choice between the US and China, i.e., Country X or Y should "choose," we may apparently get an interesting empirical test with Bolsonaro ...
2: These lines jumped out at me: "The Brazilian president-elect and his inner circle believe that the US can be trusted to offset any losses involved in their pivot away from China." ...
3: "To counterbalance Brazil’s losses from a confrontation with China would require major US concessions on trade and investment ... "
Read 9 tweets
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1: Really, the US would do a hell of a lot better by leveraging addition and multiplication instead of subtraction and division. It has a lot to offer. And the BUILD Act helps. But it is not going to get anywhere by trying to write China out of Asia's story as rhetoric or policy.
2: In my humble opinion, there are multiple unforced errors here, both implicit and explicit. One is the directly comparison of US offerings to China's. America isn't China and shouldn't be comparing apples to apples. We offer something different.
3: Yes, there are two models on offer. But they won't apply equally in all situations, sectors, or countries. The US does some things very well that China can't or won't. But China does some things that the US doesn't. Including in sectors where the US isn't active.
Read 26 tweets
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1: I worry sometimes that too much of our narrative about modern Asia is overly Sinocentric -- Chinese advance, Chinese growth, Chinese initiative ... and then US/allied reaction. But this misses much of the story of Asia's last three decades.
2. For example, it has become fashionable to ascribe efforts to build a pan-Asian economic/institutional order to rising Chinese assertiveness or, more precisely, to Chinese ambition. And that is a simple, straightforward enough narrative. But it is just one part of the story.
3. Thus contemporary Asian regionalism for instance—the desire to forge at least some cohesion out of the region’s enormous diversity—has found expression not just in China but across Asia and over many decades.
Read 13 tweets

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Asia Reassurance Initiative Act (#ARIA) was signed into Law.

Look fwd to seeing the implementation details.
Text:
It is the policy of the United States to develop and commit to a long-term strategic vision and a comprehensive, multifaceted, and principled United States policy for the Indo-Pacific region that—
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Madison was wrong on this. The Anti-Federalists argued that a limitation on the size of the legislature would lead to only men of celebrity or wealth being elected; that is, people who were *not* representative of the people. They were correct. That's what happened.
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CHINA, you made me do this
-President Trump (probably)

Statement from the President

@drawandstrike @ThomasWictor @HNIJohnMiller @catesduane @rising_serpent @_ImperatorRex_ @Debradelai @GodlessNZ @almostjingo

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At dinner, I learned more about corruption + racism built into society by our masters. A book we discussed (Zinn) was used as part of this "Left" resource's bibliography. I had to share. [A thread]

@BlackSocialists - thoughts on this resource?

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If you haven't been in school for a while (or are in a terrible school), some of the words might trip you up. Dictionary.com and Wikipedia.org are two good resources to help you.
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"Trump has used Harley-Davidson as an example of a US business that is being harmed by trade barriers. Yet Harley has warned consistently against tariffs, saying they would negatively impact sales"

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