WP330 | The Asia Pacific’s “Age of Uncertainty”: Great Power Competition, Globalisation and the Economic-Security Nexus

Abstract

We live in an “age of uncertainty”. On the one hand, a power transition seems to be upon us: China has risen, the United States’ resolve and commitment are uncertain, and other regional powers with different political systems are also resurgent. On the other hand, unprecedented globalised inter-dependence creates connectivity and vulnerability in equal measure. Alongside these trends, the onset of the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” promises rapid and unpredictable technological change that could revolutionise defence, economic, and social organisations and relations. Amid these rapid and seemingly chaotic shifts, the inter-connections between economics and security not only become more complex, but also more urgent and significant. In what follows, the most important elements of our age of uncertainty are distilled. The paper then sketches three ways in which the economic-security nexus needs to be understood and managed in the Asia Pacific if we are to weather the ongoing transition.

About the Author

Prof Evelyn Goh is the Shedden Professor of Strategic Policy Studies at the Australian National University, where she is also Research Director at the Strategic & Defence Studies Centre. She has published widely on US-China relations and diplomatic history, regional security order in East Asia, Southeast Asian strategies towards great powers, and environmental security. These include The Struggle for Order: Hegemony, Hierarchy and Transition in Post-Cold War East Asia (Oxford University Press, 2013); “Great Powers and Hierarchical Order in Southeast Asia: Analyzing Regional Security Strategies”, International Security 32:3 (Winter 2007/8):113-57; and Constructing the US Rapprochement with China, 1961-1974 (Cambridge University Press, 2004). Her most recent edited volume is Rising China’s Influence in Developing Asia (Oxford University Press, 2016), and her latest book (co-authored with Barry Buzan) is Re-thinking Sino-Japanese Alienation: History Problems and Historical Opportunities (Oxford University Press, 2020).

Prof Goh moved to Australia and the ANU in August 2013, and has held previous faculty positions at Royal Holloway University of London (2008-13); the University of Oxford (2006-8); and the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore (2002-5). She has held various visiting positions, including Public Policy Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center, and Southeast Asian Fellow at the East-West Center, both in Washington DC. Major project grants include a UK Economic & Social Research Council Mid-Career Fellowship (2011-12); an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant (2019-2022); an East Asia Institute Fellowship (2011); and research grants from the British Academy, MacArthur Foundation, Sasakawa Peace Foundation, and Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation.