Veteran diplomat Evan Feigenbaum on U.S. policy in a changing Asia
Sinica Podcast
Kaiser Kuo
4.8 • 676 Ratings
🗓️ 17 December 2020
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week on Sinica, Kaiser is joined by Evan Feigenbaum, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he oversees research in Washington, Beijing, and New Delhi on a dynamic region that encompasses both East Asia and South Asia. Evan also served as deputy assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian Affairs under Condoleeza Rice during the second George W. Bush administration, and as vice chairman of the Paulson Institute, before joining Carnegie. Evan offers his unique perspective on how American policy over the last two decades has failed to keep up with changes happening in Asia, and how the increasing economic integration of the region has meant that the U.S. faces the threat of marginalization and relegation to a unidimensional role as a security provider. He offers useful ideas that the incoming Biden administration would do well to consider.
Recommendations:
Evan: The documentary Statecraft: The BUSH 41 Team, available on Amazon Prime, and the cooking podcast Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Radio.
Kaiser: The Ministry for the Future: A Novel, by Kim Stanley Robinson.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Cynica podcast. |
| 0:15.6 | Weekly discussion of current fares in China produced in partnership with SubChina. |
| 0:19.6 | SubChina is simply the best way there is to keep |
| 0:21.2 | on top of all the news coming out of China, especially if you subscribe to our email newsletter, |
| 0:25.9 | SubChina Access. And check out subchina.com for a wide range of reported stories, columns, opeds, |
| 0:32.2 | videos, and of course podcasts. It's a feast of business, political, and cultural news |
| 0:37.4 | about a nation that |
| 0:38.6 | is reshaping the world. I'm Kaiser Guo, and I am coming to you today from Chapel Hill, North |
| 0:44.0 | Carolina. Many of us who study China and Asia and who've watched in horror or discussed as |
| 0:50.0 | the Trump administration cast aside the norms and forms of diplomacy, imperiled longstanding |
| 0:55.3 | alliances, and engaged in all sorts of gratuitous insults and provocations of Beijing, especially |
| 1:00.3 | in the final year of the presidency, were naturally relieved by the results of last month's |
| 1:05.8 | U.S. presidential election, but things haven't stood still in the region while everyone awaits inauguration |
| 1:12.0 | day. On November 15th, just a little over a week after the presidential racist outcome became |
| 1:16.8 | manifestly clear, the regional comprehensive economic partnership or R-SEP agreement was signed |
| 1:22.3 | a virtual summit hosted by Vietnam, creating the largest trade block in history. The 15-member agreement |
| 1:29.4 | includes all 10 members of ASEAN, plus the three largest economies in Asia, China, Japan, and South |
| 1:35.1 | Korea. Talk of the significance of ARSEP and the conspicuous fact that the United States is a member |
| 1:40.9 | of neither of the major regional trade agreements, the other, of course, being the CPP, |
| 1:45.7 | naturally caught the attention of my guest today, |
| 1:48.0 | Evan Feigenbaum, who promptly tweeted out a thread |
| 1:50.5 | that was just packed with all sorts of ideas |
... |
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