Transcript Harinda Vidanage PhD

South Asia: Interrogating Newness
why?
Harinda Vidanage PhD
The 2012 forecast is unique in that it is not a forecast
for one year in a succession of years, all basically framed
by the same realities. Rather, it is a year in which the
individual forecasts point to a new generational reality
and a redefinition of how the world works.
2012 may not be the conclusion of this transformative
process. Neither was 1991 the conclusion. However, just
as 1991 was the year in which it became clear that the
old world of the Cold War no longer functioned, 2012 is
the year in which it will become clear that the Post-Cold
War world has come to an end, being replaced by
changed players and changed dynamics.
http://www.stratfor.com/forecast/annual-forecast2012
Trivia
•
Over the next few decades, almost all of the world’s growth in energy
consumption, urbanization, automobile usage, airline travel, and carbon emissions
will come from emerging economies. By mid-century, the number of people living
in what will be (by then) high-income economies will rise to 4.5 billion, from one
billion today. Global GDP, which currently stands at about $60 trillion, will at least
triple in the next 30 years.
•
By mid-century, India and China will account for 2.5 billion of the 3.5 billion
additional people with advanced-country incomes. By themselves, they will cause
global GDP to at least double in the next three decades, even in the absence of
growth anywhere else.
•
For India and China separately, and certainly together, sustainability is no longer
mainly a global issue; it is a domestic challenge to long-term growth. Their growth
patterns and strategies, and the tradeoffs and choices they make with respect to
lifestyle, urbanization, transportation, the environment, and energy efficiency, will
largely determine whether their economies can complete the long transition to
advanced-income level
(Spence 2011)
Context
Asian Century Vs. Pacific Century
New competition, New alliances, New
ideological framings (Democratic Vs
Authoritarian or Governance )
Use of Soft and Smart power
Globalization / Transnationalism: Internal and
External features
Asian Century
Asia’s return to the center of world affairs is
the great power shift of the twenty-first
century. In 1750, Asia had roughly three-fifths
of the world’s population and accounted for
three-fifths of global output. By 1900, after
the Industrial Revolution in Europe and
America, Asia’s share of global output had
shrunk to one-fifth. By 2050, Asia will be well
on its way back to where it was 300 years
earlier. (Joseph Nye 2011)
Indian Ocean
The Indian ocean region is more than just a
stimulating geography. It is an idea because it
provides an insightful visual impression of Islam, and
combines the centrality of Islam with global energy
politics an the importance of world navies, in order
to show us a multi-layered, multi polar world above
and beyond the headlines of Iraq and Afghanistan; its
also an idea because it allows us to see the world
whole, with in a very new and yet old framework,
complete with its own traditions and characteristics,
without having to drift into a bland nostrums about
globalization
(Kaplan 2010)
What is changing?
The cold war forced an artificial dichotomy on
area studies in which the Middle East, the
Indian subcontinent, and the Pacific rim were
separate entities. But as India and China
became more integrally connected with both
South East Asia and Middle east through
energy, trade and security arrangements, the
Map of Asia is re-emerging as a single organic
unit, just as it was during the epochs in history
– manifested now by an Indian Ocean map.
( Kaplan 2010)
Asia today is home to some of the poorest nations
and most of the fastest-growing nations in the
world. Nepal, Afghanistan and Bangladesh are
among the poorest nations in the world’s league
table in terms of per capita GDP. India is home to
the largest number of people who live on less than
one dollar a day. At the same time, in terms of
annual growth rate of per capita GDP over the last
two decades, the fastest growing nation in the
world is China, followed by Vietnam and India. In
terms of population growth Asia’s phase of rapid
increase is probably in the past; the African nations
are the ones putting on the fastest additions to
population nowadays. (Basu 2009)
http://www.project-syndicate.org/
Will Pakistan implode? Whatever happened to "Asian values"?
Is there a Pacific arms race? Will China's rise swamp Asia's
smaller economies? Will the Taliban's revival bring chaos to
Central Asia? Can Japan ever establish relations of trust with
its neighbors?
Sixty percent of the world's population resides in the
countries extending from Afghanistan to the micro-states of
Oceania. Immense and immensely diverse, Asia now confronts
the simultaneous challenges of modernization and
globalization. This compels not only awareness of the wider
world, but also accommodations that may clash with
embedded values. Modernization offers real material gains,
but also incites serious internal divisions.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton delivers remarks on
"America's Pacific Century" at APEC Leaders Week in Honolulu, Hawaii
on November 11, 2011
Video
America's Pacific Century Hilary Clinton
November 2011
The future of politics will be decided in Asia, not Afghanistan or Iraq,
and the United States will be right at the center of the action.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/10/11/americas_pacific_c
entury
New Competitions/New Alliances
• Emergence of a new alliance in Asia Pacific
• Possible new Cold war
• Call to look beyond Middle East as a security strategy
• China’s String of Pearls
• Indian expansion of blue water navy
• Cultural shaping
• Economic structures
• Global imaginary and migratory movements
Soft and Smart Power
• Focus on new forms of power distribution in
new global arrangements
• Same is important to look at national and
regional power arrangements. (Ex working of
democracy, social movements)
• Charm offensives based on cultural products
(Cultural centers / Cinema)
Globalization/ transnationalism
• Markets, brands, image
• Internal/ External Dichotomy
• People’s movements Actual/Virtual
• Identity: national, regional, global, gender, class,
race, religion, sexual orientation, avatar, social
network
• Peoples lives and futures increasingly bound
together by common challenges and the global
consciousness.