Evan A. Feigenbaum Profile picture
Aug 20, 2019 6 tweets 7 min read Read on X
1/6: Thanks, and agree 100%, so it's not a rejoinder but a fact. Sadly, the US doesn't coordinate that especially well anymore. More important, I've argued over many years that the US seems oblivious to longer-term structural changes, in Asia especially, altering the landscape.
2/6: From 2011 (before the Belt and Road existed or Xi Jinping had yet taken power): Some of the writing of a more integrated Asia was already on the wall. I explored why the US had lost the plot in this essay, "Why America No Longer Gets Asia" in @TWQgw: csis-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/le…
@TWQgw 3/6: From 2009: Two decades of post-Asian Financial Crisis ideas threatened to marginalize the US (or alter its role without major adaptations from Washington). I explored with @Rmanning4 in this @CFR_org monograph on "The United States in the New Asia": cfr.org/asia-and-pacif…
@TWQgw @Rmanning4 @CFR_org 4/6: From 2012: The collision of security and economics similarly threatened traditional US roles in Asia. The US has since compounded this problem with TPP withdrawal and Trump trade policies. This @ForeignPolicy essay, "A Tale of Two Asias" explored: foreignpolicy.com/2012/10/31/a-t…
@TWQgw @Rmanning4 @CFR_org @ForeignPolicy 5/6: From 2015: The US risked misidentifying the sources of its competition by conflating long-term structural trends in Asia with short-term "Sinocentric" trends. Explored in an essay on "The New Asian Order" in @ForeignAffairs: foreignaffairs.com/articles/14284…
@TWQgw @Rmanning4 @CFR_org @ForeignPolicy @ForeignAffairs 6/6: From 2018: The US had, in my view, finally lost the plot in Asia, whining a lot while competing too little and confusing some causes with effects. This @MacroPoloChina essay, "Reluctant Stakeholder," explored and built on some of my earlier arguments: macropolo.org/analysis/reluc…

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More from @EvanFeigenbaum

Sep 2, 2023
1: Blasts from my past. Have spent 15 years writing on (1) why "US vs. China" bipolarity is the wrong frame for the future of Asia; (2) the collision of economics and security; and (3) why pan-Asian ideas and institutions aren't "made in China." Here are some of my favorites. Image
2: From 2011, when Xi Jinping was barely out of the provinces and two years before China proposed the Belt and Road: Asia is being reconnected after a multicentury hiatus; the US is losing the plot and risks being marginalized; China isn't the only actor. csis.org/analysis/twq-w…
3: From 2012, written with my friend @Rmanning4: Security Asia and Economic Asia are diverging; the US is essential to the former but risks fading in the latter; China isn't the only actor. foreignpolicy.com/2012/10/31/a-t…
Read 12 tweets
Jun 9, 2023
1: No, it really isn't fine. For one, it infantilizes third countries. And it doesn't reflect the complex experience many of them have had with China. BRI is not "a debt and confiscation program," although there are indeed very troubling cases. Above all, whining isn't competing.
2: The irony is that the US doesn't need to do this. There is plenty of suspicion of Chinese intent across the world today, including the Global South. Experience is an good teacher, so governments are learning and bargaining differently with China while mass publics demand more.
3: We have an entire initiative at @CarnegieEndow digging into complex lessons from around the world. And one of these is that local players are learning how to compel or persuade Chinese players to adapt to local ways, not simply accepting "Chinese" ways. carnegieendowment.org/specialproject…
Read 15 tweets
Mar 19, 2023
1: Some background from me for the Xi trip to Moscow, where I expect Beijing to reinforce an entente that is both unsentimental and directed largely at shared ambivalence about (1) US foreign policy, (2) tools of US statecraft, e.g., sanctions, and (3) backfooting Washington.
2: A piece I wrote on Day 1 of Putin's war in Ukraine. I argued that Beijing faced irreconcilable interests and therefore had to choose among them or tack back and forth under the glare of international scrutiny. carnegieendowment.org/2022/02/24/chi…
3: This piece drew in part on personal experience with Beijing's response to Putin's aggression in Georgia in 2008, when I had only recently been the senior US official for Central Asia. Comparing 2022 to 2008 is instructive for seeing the evolution of Beijing's lean into Moscow.
Read 12 tweets
Feb 27, 2023
1: Here's a new paper in our seven region @CarnegieEndow #ChinaLocalGlobal initiative. Yuan Wang from @DukeKunshan and @Hangwei_Li ex @SOASpolitics explore how differing media norms in Kenya and Ethiopia yielded differing PR strategies by Chinese firms. carnegieendowment.org/2023/02/27/afr…
2: The paper focuses on the corporate communication strategies of three Chinese state firms involved in two flagship rail projects in Africa: the Standard Gauge Railway in Kenya, constructed by CRBC, and the Addis Ababa–Djibouti Railway in Ethiopia, constructed by CCECC and CREC.
3: Drawing on fieldwork they argue that these Chinese state firms exhibited divergent paths. CRBC has learned and adapted, largely because of Kenya's vibrant media environment and watchdog journalism; CCECC and CREC didn't because Ethiopia lacks naming and shaming by local media.
Read 33 tweets
Jan 7, 2023
1: We’ve added a whopping 11 new scholars to our Washington-based @CarnegieEndow Asia programs over the last three years - six full-time and five nonresident scholars. They are brilliant, innovative, and disruptive to conventional wisdom. If you don’t read their work, you should! Image
2: Our unique #IndianOceanInitiative and our islands program are both led by the amazing @darshanabaruah. Her work explores maritime security, India’s naval strategy, island agency in shaping great power competition, and maritime partnerships. carnegieendowment.org/experts/1253
3: We've also done a major buildout in our work on Asian technology futures, not least by welcoming @mattsheehan88, who deeply understands China's tech ecosystem. He studies China’s AI ecosystem - and the role of technology in China’s political economy. carnegieendowment.org/experts/2116
Read 19 tweets
Nov 19, 2022
1: A few folks asked me to elaborate on this. I'll try. And please note that I don't mean to pick on the Kahl speech per se, since his speech isn't really about China. But the way China is framed there is (1) endemic in US rhetoric but (2) spectacularly ineffective, in my view.
2: To be blunt, experience and intuition tell me that Washington is delusional if thinks this kind of stark, binary message on China is going to work in most regions of the world - inclusive of, but not limited to, the Middle East and North Africa.
3: Of course, one problem is that big powers are self evidently self-interested. So calling China “transactional and opportunistic” while presenting the US as purely “altruistic” will presumably be laughed out of the room in most global capitals.
Read 17 tweets

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