The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) is pleased to invite applications for four types of fellowship in contemporary Asia studies for the 2022-23 academic year.

The Center offers postdoctoral fellowships that promote multidisciplinary research on contemporary Japan, contemporary Asia broadly defined, health or healthcare policy in the Asia-Pacific region, and a fellowship for experts on Southeast Asia. Learn more about each fellowship and its eligibility and specific application requirements:

Postdoctoral Fellowship on Contemporary Japan

Hosted by the Japan Program at APARC, the fellowship supports research on contemporary Japan in a broad range of disciplines including political science, economics, sociology, law, policy studies, and international relations. Appointments are for one year beginning in fall quarter 2022. The application deadline is January 3, 2022.
 

There are many reasons to fear an impending Chinese attack on Taiwan: Intensified Chinese aerial activity. High-profile Pentagon warnings. Rapid Chinese military modernization. President Xi Jinping’s escalating rhetoric. But despite what recent feverish discussion in foreign policy and military circles is suggesting, the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan isn’t one of them.

Some critics of President Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan argue the move will embolden Beijing because it telegraphs weakness — an unwillingness to stick it out and win wars that China will factor in when deciding whether to attack Taiwan, which it considers to be part of its territory.

The reality is, though, that the U.S. departure from Afghanistan will more likely give pause to Chinese war planners — not push them to use force against Taiwan.

The Chinese Communist Party’s stated goal is “national rejuvenation”: Regaining China’s standing as a great power. Chinese leaders and thinkers have studied the rise and fall of great powers past. They have long understood that containment by the United States could keep China from becoming a great power itself.

Luckily for Beijing, the Afghan war — along with Iraq and other American misadventures in the Middle East — distracted Washington for two decades. While China was building roads and ports from Beijing to Trieste, Italy, fueling its economy and expanding its geopolitical influence, the United States was pouring money into its war on terrorism. While Beijing was building thousands of acres of military bases in the South China Sea and enhancing its precision-strike capabilities, the U.S. military was fighting an insurgency and dismantling improvised explosive devices.

In many ways, it was just dumb luck that Mr. Xi and his predecessors, thanks in part to the war in Afghanistan, could build national power, undermine international norms, co-opt international organizations and extend their territorial control all without the United States thwarting their plans in any meaningful way.

But the end of the war in Afghanistan could bring these good times — which the Communist Party calls the “period of important strategic opportunities” — to an abrupt end. Sure, over the past 10 years American presidents tried to get back into the Asia game even as the war continued. Barack Obama asserted we would pivot to Asia back in 2011. Donald Trump’s national security team made great power competition with China its top priority.

But neither went much beyond paying lip service. The withdrawal shows Mr. Biden is truly refocusing his national security priorities — he even listed the need to “focus on shoring up America’s core strengths to meet the strategic competition with China” as one of the reasons for the drawdown.

Such a refocusing comes not a moment too soon. Chinese expansion and militarization in the South China Sea, deadly skirmishes with India, its crackdown in Hong Kong and repression in Xinjiang all point to an increasingly confident and aggressive China. In particular, Chinese military activity around Taiwan has spiked — 2020 witnessed a record number of incursions into Taiwan’s airspace. The sophistication and scale of military exercises has increased as well. These escalations come alongside recent warnings from Mr. Xi that any foreign forces daring to bully China “will have their heads bashed bloody” and efforts toward “Taiwan independence” will be met with “resolute action.”

The U.S. policy toward Taiwan is “strategic ambiguity” — there is no explicit promise to defend it from Chinese attack. In this tense environment, U.S. policymakers and experts are feverishly considering ways to make U.S. commitment to Taiwan more credible and enhance overall military deterrence against China. A recent $750 million arms sale proposal to Taiwan is part of these efforts, as is talk of inviting Taiwan to a democracy summit, which undoubtedly would provoke Beijing’s ire.

Some have argued that America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan undermines efforts to signal U.S. support for Taiwan. On the surface, it may seem as if the U.S. withdrawal would be a good thing for China’s prospects at what it calls “armed reunification.” Indeed, this is the message the nationalist Chinese newspaper The Global Times is peddling: The United States will cast Taiwan aside just as it has done with Vietnam, and now Afghanistan.

However, the American departure from Afghanistan creates security concerns in China’s own backyard that could distract it from its competition with the United States. Beijing’s strategy to protect its global interests is a combination of relying on host nation security forces and private security contractors and free-riding off other countries’ military presence. Analysts have concluded that China is less likely than the United States to rely on its military to protect its interests abroad. Beijing appears committed to avoiding making the same mistakes as Washington — namely, an overreliance on military intervention overseas to advance foreign policy objectives.

Now there will be no reliable security presence in Afghanistan and undoubtedly broader instability in a region with significant economic and commercial interests for China. Chinese leaders are also worried that conflict in Afghanistan could spill across the border into neighboring Xinjiang, where Beijing’s repressive tactics have already been the cause of much international opprobrium.

The reality is, the United States stayed much longer in Afghanistan than most expected. This upsets China’s calculus about what the United States would do in a Taiwan crisis, since conventional wisdom in Beijing had been that the painful legacy of Somalia would deter Washington from ever coming to Taipei’s aid.

But U.S. interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq have called these assumptions into question. Taiwan, with its proportionately large economy and semiconductor industry, is strategically important to the United States. U.S. power and influence in East Asia are reliant on its allies and military bases in the region and America’s broader role as the security partner of choice. If Taiwan were to fall to Chinese aggression, many countries, U.S. allies included, would see it as a sign of the arrival of a Chinese world order. By comparison, Afghanistan is less strategically important, and yet the United States stayed there for 20 years.

This does not bode well for any designs Beijing might have for Taiwan.

It’s true that China would benefit from a home-field advantage given Taiwan’s proximity, and that Beijing’s arsenal is far greater than Taiwan’s. China, too, would likely enjoy more domestic public support for any conflict than the U.S. would for yet another intervention.

But if China has any hope of winning a war across the Strait, its military would have to move fast, before the United States has time to respond. Chinese planners know that the longer the war, the greater the U.S. advantage. Unlike Chinese production and manufacturing centers, which can all be targeted by the United States, the American homeland is relatively safe from Chinese conventional attack. China is far more reliant on outside sources for oil and natural gas, and thus vulnerable to U.S. attempts to cut off its supply.

And the Chinese economy would suffer more: Since the war would be happening in Asia, trade would be bound to be disrupted there. The United States would need to stick it out for only a short time — not 20 years — for these factors to come into play.

A call on Thursday between Mr. Biden and Mr. Xi hinted at the stakes — the two “discussed the responsibility of both countries to ensure competition does not veer into conflict,” according to the White House.

Chinese leaders already expected a tense relationship with the Biden administration. Now they are faced with the fact that the United States might have the will and resources to push back against Chinese aggression, even if it means war.

So, while there may be other reasons to oppose the end of the war in Afghanistan, the impact on China’s Taiwan calculus is not — and should not be — one of them.

Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to Hanoi on Tuesday, August 24, as part of a high-stakes visit to Southeast Asia this week that aims to bolster economic and security ties with U.S. partners in Singapore and Vietnam. Ms. Harris is the first U.S. Vice President to visit Vietnam.

Vietnamese online newspaper VnExpress spoke with APARC Southeast Asia Program Director Donald K. Emmerson about the significance of Harris’ visit. The following is an expanded version of the interview.  

VnExpress: What does the visit mean to the United States, to Vietnam, and to the U.S.-Vietnam relationship?

Emmerson: U.S.-Vietnam relations have steadily and markedly improved in recent years, especially in the security realm. A case in point is the recent visit of the U.S. secretary of defense. The first-ever visit to Hanoi by a sitting American vice-president, Kamala Harris, is meant to further strengthen U.S.-Vietnam relations. Their importance will be underscored by Kamala Harris’s status in the U.S. government, second only to President Biden’s. Their scope will be advanced by the prominence of nonmilitary topics on her agenda.

The two governments have agreed to call their relations “comprehensive.” By attending to economic and social cooperation as well as security matters, the visit will better illustrate that inclusive label. It is even possible that the United States and Vietnam could, in the not too distant future, upgrade their relationship by calling it not only “comprehensive” but “strategic” as well.

VnExpress: In Hanoi, Harris will launch the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention regional office in Southeast Asia. Why did the United States choose Vietnam for the CDC regional office? And what is your assessment of the Vietnam-U.S. medical cooperation, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Emmerson: In the realm of health, Vietnam offers a record of achievement and challenge. Based on official statistics, Vietnam appears to have countered the virus more effectively than most Asian countries. Yet it still needs to deal more thoroughly with the consumption of wildlife sold in wet markets where future viruses can bridge the gap from animals to people. COVID-19, which began in neighboring China, has killed nearly 4.5 million people worldwide and worsened the lives of almost everyone on the planet. A regional office of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Vietnam could reduce the threat of future pandemics while helping to strengthen health systems and policies throughout Southeast Asia.  

VnExpress: What do you think about Vietnam's role in the region and in the world?

Emmerson: Nearly five decades have passed since the end of Vietnam’s successful “Resistance War against America” in 1975 and the failure of China’s invasion of Vietnam in 1979. The challenge for Vietnam going forward will be to maintain the resilience and autonomy that it has earned at such a high cost in lost lives. Kamala Harris’s visit can contribute to that goal. If and as inter-state peace continues to prevail in East Asia, one can also hope that Vietnam’s leaders will feel less threatened and thus possibly less obliged to curtail the rights and freedoms of their own people.  

As for Vietnam’s role in the region (and, indirectly, the world), one priority could be for Hanoi to coordinate its policies on the South China Sea with those of other Southeast Asian claimant states and possibly with other states who use the sea and also oppose China’s campaign to control its waters.

The Pacific islands are known for their tropical climate, lush landscape, and rich cultures, but as coterminal student Ma’ili Yee has learned, they also form a backdrop to multiple geostrategic agendas in the Pacific Ocean region. In her recent research, Yee focuses on the vital economic, military, and geopolitical roles the Pacific island nations play at a time when the U.S.-China great power competition is generating renewed interest in the region.

Yee received her BA in International Relations in 2020 and is completing her MA in East Asian Studies this summer. She has been interested in Sino-U.S. relations in the South Pacific and noticed the scarcity of materials that incorporate Pacific Islander perspectives on the geopolitical developments in the region and how the island nations are affected by and responding to the tensions in the U.S.-China relation. She set out to study these issues.

Yee’s research over the past year has been supported by the Shorenstein APARC Diversity Grant. As part of its commitment to promoting inclusion and racial justice at Stanford, APARC established the grant in summer 2020 to support students from underrepresented minorities interested in studying contemporary Asia. Yee is the grant’s inaugural recipient.

Yee originally intended to use the grant to conduct field research in Fiji and Tonga but had to adjust her plans due to restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. She ended up studying primary source materials shared online by country members of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), an inter-governmental organization that aims to enhance cooperation between countries and territories of the Pacific Ocean region, including the formation of a trade bloc and regional peacekeeping operations.

Multiple Islands, One “Blue Continent”

Yee’s research reveals that Pacific island nations do not share the same strategic and diplomatic agendas of traditional powers. Rather, in recent years, they have developed a more assertive diplomatic posture, becoming highly involved in promoting blueprints that are vital to their objectives and creating their own framework for defining strategic priorities in the Pacific region. Most importantly, as Yee explained in a recent presentation to the APARC community, Pacific island nations reject being viewed as pawns in a power game by larger states, particularly amidst the intensifying U.S.-China competition.

Against the framework of the Free and Open Indo-Pacific, island nations have endorsed a collective framework they call the Blue Pacific. The Free and Open Indo-Pacific, which was introduced by Japan and later formalized by the United States, is a strategic vision that often privileges the Indian Ocean over the Pacific Ocean and prioritizes U.S.-led maritime concerns.

By contrast, the Blue Pacific vision is grounded in Pacific island nations’ perspectives. It emphasizes the opportunity to leverage their collective oceanic presence and focuses on their concerns, foremost of which are climate change and sustainable development. The Blue Pacific advocates for a long-term foreign policy commitment to act as one “Blue Continent” while also calling for greater international coordination. PIF member countries are currently developing these priorities in their vision for the future, the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent. “The uncertainty of COVID-19,” write PIF Members, “only reinforces the need for a long-term strategy for how we work together as one Blue Pacific.”

By consolidating their interests as a unified political bloc, Yee concludes, Pacific Island nations now exercise significant agency in determining the trajectory of their region and using their voices to shape multilateral initiatives such as the Paris Agreement. External powers who seek to exercise influence in the Pacific Ocean region would do well to develop reciprocal relationships with island nations and consider their goals, she says.

Yee's research also examines the opportunities for fintech to promote sustainable development in the Pacific Ocean region and as an area for potential collaboration and competition amongst world powers as U.S.-China tensions continue to unfold.

“I am grateful to APARC for this Diversity Grant and for allowing me to do this kind of work,” says Yee. “It really would not be possible without such support, so it was cool to see this resource come out last summer.”