The commonalities are considerable. They all take the US very seriously, admire its institutions of higher learning, and know it better than they do most parts of Asia. They value the stability provided by an economic and security order underpinned by a robust US presence. They see the strategic need for this presence, including the alliances. Though sensitive to the power shift underway, they don’t see US-China conflict as inevitable and resist efforts to force a choice between the US and China. Southeast Asia benefits from the presence of several external powers that prevents dominance by any one of them. They all see the virtues and limitations of the multiple species of Asian regionalism and seek to engage the US in several, but not all, of them. All generally approve of the approach of the Obama administration in altering the tenor of US-Asia relations.
Yet as the Tay-Koh exchange indicates, the differences are equally interesting. They focus on four main issues.
First, reading the trend line of the global balance of power. Koh makes the case that China may be up and the US down at the moment, but that in the near term the US will “bounce back from this adversity as it had from all its previous adversities.” And it will rebound not as a hegemon but as the “undisputable leader of the world.” The history that he sees as a guide is the past century. Mahbubani has trumpeted the case that Asia’s ascendance will not be reversed. His historical time frame is the vast civilizational shifts that have produced an unprecedented moment when a strong Asia and a strong West intersect. Desker speaks of a “Beijing consensus” already challenging a “Washington Consensus” without predicting the long-term outcome. Tay’s world order is already multipolar where soft power is as important as hard power. Though all agree that leadership in a multipolar context looks different than in a unipolar one, they are not of a single mind about whether that multipolar era has arrived.