Week: Expert Opinion

Posts from our partners at Project Syndicate and guest writers

Which Asian Century?

War Memorial of Korea – honor guard ceremony and museum exhibits – Seoul, South Korea, courtesy of Expert Infantry/Flickr

NEW YORK – It has become something of a cliché to predict that Asia will dominate the twenty-first century. It is a safe prediction, given that Asia is already home to nearly 60% of the world’s population and accounts for roughly 25% of global economic output. Asia is also the region where many of this century’s most influential countries – including China, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea, Indonesia, and the United States – interact.

But to point to Asia’s growing importance says nothing about its character. There can be two, very different Asian centuries, and the one that emerges will have profound consequences for the region’s peoples and governments – and for the world.

One future is an Asia that is relatively familiar: a region whose economies continue to enjoy robust levels of growth and manage to avoid conflict with one another.

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Food for All

Tetra Pak School Milk in Indonesia, courtesy of Tetra Pak/Wikimedia Commons

LONDON – With food prices having doubled in the past decade, food security is back on the international agenda. How can the world produce more to feed the next billion people? How can agricultural yields be raised? What is the best way to develop aquaculture?

Unfortunately, this focus on the supply side misses half the problem. The world already produces more than twice the number of calories that the human population requires. An estimated one-third of global food production is wasted. In poor countries, food is lost due to inadequate storage and gaps in the supply chain (for example, a lack of refrigeration); in rich countries, food is also wasted in the supply chain, and consumers throw a lot of food away.

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Arming the Elephant

Indian Air Force Embraer EMB 1451, courtesy of PL Tandon/Flickr

NEW DELHI – The rise in US arms sales to India is being widely cited as evidence of the two countries’ deepening defense relationship. But the long-term sustainability of the relationship, in which India is more a client than a partner, remains a deep concern for Indians. Does the recently issued Joint Declaration on Defense Cooperation, which establishes intent to move beyond weapons sales to the co-production of military hardware, mark a turning point, or is it merely a contrivance to placate India?

The factors driving the strategic relationship’s development are obvious. Since 2006, bilateral trade has quadrupled, reaching roughly $100 billion this year. And, over the last decade, US defense exports to India have skyrocketed from just $100 million to billions of dollars annually.

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Diagnostics for Global Health

Measles Vaccination in Merawi Province, Ethiopia, courtesy of DFID/Flickr

CORVALLIS, OREGON – In developed countries, most people take for granted that when they are sick, they will have access to timely diagnosis and treatment. Indeed, while the diagnostic process – which typically involves sending a sample of blood, urine, or tissue to a laboratory for analysis – may be cumbersome and expensive, health-care providers and sophisticated laboratories remain widely available. As a result, the disease burden in the developed world has declined substantially.

By contrast, in the developing world, millions of people die each year from treatable diseases like malaria, owing to the lack of sophisticated laboratories and alternative diagnostic tests. But there is reason for hope: Advances in the field of microfluidics have the potential to transform health care by allowing “gold standard” laboratory-based testing to be transferred to the point of care (POC).

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Asia’s Middle Eastern Shadow

President Obama During the First U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Washington, July 2009. Source: The White House: A Dialogue with China

TEL AVIV – In 2010, then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced America’s eastward shift in global strategy. The United States’ “pivot” to the Asia-Pacific region was required not only because of the security threats posed by the rise of China, but also as a consequence of America’s long and costly obsession with the Middle East.

The Middle East has long confronted the US with formidable challenges, which ultimately exceeded America’s imperial capacities and sapped public support. But the real question now is whether America is still able and willing to uphold its global pretensions. After all, Asia is no less a demanding theater than the Middle East. Indeed, dealing with it might require reconciling the pivot to Asia with an ongoing presence in the Middle East, if only because the two regions have much in common.

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