The TPP and the Pivot: Economic and Security Nexus

Abstract

As a Pacific power and stakeholder in Asian regional stability, the United States has uneasily found its leadership under competition and even challenge from China after the turn of the century. On the economic front, there has been a confluence of three developments, the robust and seemingly unstoppable economic growth and the accumulation of huge foreign exchange reserves in China, the Heisei recession and its aftermath in Japan, and more recently the U.S-triggered global financial crisis in 2007–2009 and the sluggish economic recovery in the United States. As a result of these ebbs and flows, economic and financial resources have shifted massively in favor of China, and China is emerging as the new economic hub in the region that is becoming highly interdependent. On the security front, the US devotion to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and hence its inattentiveness to Asia, and the military buildup in China during the last decade have altered the parameters of the security environment in the Asia Pacific. American security commitments to its Asian allies were diluted by a decade-long neglect of increasing apprehension in many Asian countries facing, for some right on their doorstep, a rising and assertive China. The US pivot-to-Asia initiative (the Pivot) and its push for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (the TPP, a “high-quality” free trade agreement) are the first step to rebalance US security and economic leadership in the Asia Pacific. This chapter contends that there are compelling reasons for the United States to conjoin the two enterprises, the Pivot and the TPP.