Pacific Asia, comprised of Northeast Asia, Greater China, and Southeast Asia, has surpassed the combined production of the United States and Europe, and its intraregional economic cohesiveness exceeds that of either the EU or North America. Pacific Asia has emerged gradually and without major conflict, but it should be taken seriously as a region. China is primarily a regional power, but in a prosperous region deeply interconnected to the rest of the world. The United States tends to view China as a lone global competitor, but its global presence and strength rest on its centrality to Pacific Asia. Understanding China in its region is the first task of this book, followed by the challenge of rethinking the global order in terms of a multinodal matrix rather than a bipolar competition of great powers. This requires background on the evolution of the Pacific Asian configuration, including China’s premodern centrality as well as the splintering of the region by European colonialism. Rethinking is aided by commentaries from four of Asia’s leading thinkers about international relationships.

The United States and China are the primary nodes of the multinodal world order. Together they are the middle third of the global economy, with the world’s biggest military budgets. Their parity makes rivalry inevitable because they are one another’s greatest counterpart. But their parity is asymmetric. China’s power relies on its demographic scale and on its Pacific Asian integration, while the US remains the center of the familiar global system that it created and it is the avatar of the developed world. While a Cold War is unlikely, the dangers posed by global rivalry are profound, ranging from nuclear war to failure to cooperate on global problems. The primary nodes also face asymmetric challenges. The US faces the challenge of adjusting to a central but not hegemonic global role. China faces the challenge of domestic tolerance and a mutually beneficial integration of Greater China and, more generally, of Pacific Asia. Beyond the primary nodes, regional reduction of uncertainties can contribute to the stabilization of world order. Cooperation founded on mutual respect is the prerequisite of successful global governance in a post-hegemonic world.

To a hard-nosed “realist” reader, the scenarios of growing international coordination and pragmatic institution-building described in the preceding chapters will no doubt seem like an idealistic fantasy. From such a reader’s perspective, we are likely to see a very different sort of future unfold in the second half of the twenty-first century – a geopolitics based on continued rivalry, arms races, and frantic competition for dominance among China, the United States, and Russia, alongside the restless jockeying of new powers like India, Brazil, Japan, and perhaps a more tightly consolidated EU. Some prominent scholars of international relations subscribe to this view, and this chapter summarizes their arguments about the prospects of geo-strategic affairs over the coming decades. In such a scenario of “business as usual,” unfortunately, the planet-level instruments for managing our four mega-dangers would be distressingly weak, and the opportunities for large coalitions of nations to come together successfully in coordinated, long-range projects will be rare.