The Gathering Storm: China's Challenge to US Power in Asia

Abstract

The United States has been the most powerful state on the planet for many decades and has deployed robust military forces in the Asia-Pacific region since the early years of the Second World War. The American presence has had significant consequences for Australia and for the wider region. This is how the Australian government sees it, at least according to the 2009 Defence White Paper: ‘Australia has been a very secure country for many decades, in large measure because the wider Asia-Pacific region has enjoyed an unprecedented era of peace and stability underwritten by US strategic primacy’.1 The United States, in other words, has acted as a pacifier in this part of the world. However, according to the very next sentence in the White Paper, ‘That order is being transformed as economic changes start to bring about changes in the distribution of strategic power’.2 The argument here, of course, is that the rise of China is having a significant effect on the global balance of power. In particular, the power gap between China and the United States is shrinking and in all likelihood ‘US strategic primacy’ in this region will be no more. This is not to say that the United States will disappear; in fact, its presence is likely to grow in response to China’s rise. But the United States will no longer be the preponderant power in the Asia-Pacific region, as it has been since 1945.

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