The Problem with the Pivot: Obama's New Asia Policy Is Unnecessary and Counterproductive
![handle is hein.journals/fora91 and id is 1112 raw text is: The Problem With the Pivot
Obama's New Asia Policy Is
Unnecessary and Counterproductive
Robert S. Ross
EVER SINCE the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping opened up his coun-
try's economy in the late 1970s, China has managed to grow in power,
wealth, and military might while still maintaining cooperative and
friendly relations with most of the world. Until a few years ago, that is,
when Beijing seemed to change tack, behaving in a way that alienated
its neighbors and aroused suspicion abroad. In December 2009, for
example, Beijing's resistance to compromise at the UN Climate Change
Conference angered European countries and the United States. Then,
following the January 2010 sale of U.S. arms to Taiwan, the Chinese
government suspended a senior U.S.-Chinese security dialogue for
the first time and announced unprecedented sanctions against U.S.
companies with ties to Taiwan (although it is not clear that the sanc-
tions caused meaningful damage). In July of that year, Beijing angrily
protested plans for U.S.-South Korean naval exercises in the Yellow
Sea, and in September, it excoriated Japan for detaining the captain of
a Chinese fishing boat that had rammed a Japanese coast guard ship in
disputed waters. To cap off this series of unsettling episodes, Beijing
voiced excessive hostility toward democratic countries and imposed
economic sanctions on Norway after the Nobel Prize committee
awarded the Chinese democracy activist Liu Xiaobo the Peace Prize
ROBERT S. Ross is Professor of Political Science at Boston College
and an Associate at the John King Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies
at Harvard University He is the author of Chinese Security Policy: Struc-
ture, Power, and Politics.
[70]](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/fora91&div=116&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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The Problem with the Pivot: Obama's New Asia Policy Is Unnecessary and Counterproductive
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