About the Asia Strategic Forum
Strategic attention to Asia has been one of the major casualties of the American-led war on terrorism. Yet the rise of Asia merits sustained and focused attention: The current explosive China-led spurt in economic growth that follows decades of spectacular expansion of many Asian nations will bring into being within twenty years the world’s largest regional economy. Further, despite the hopes of American foreign policy leaders that the world will converge toward a democratic capitalist model, Asian nations will require years of change before real convergence. To date, they have successfully taken different paths toward prosperity. The multiple forms of the Asian model embrace various forms of state-led growth, do not feature comparable established legal traditions, and display highly developed cultures in which the individual is not the ethical and legal core. Protracted prosperity and technology may have made the world interdependent, but it is far from convergent.
In this interdependent but non-convergent world, we cannot afford continued inattention to the first large truly successful non-western region since the industrial revolution. We must begin a disciplined discussion on the rise of Asia and the global political economy. The Asia Strategic Forum has been established to re-stimulate strategic attentiveness to Asia by establishing a venue that will provide a home for this dialogue in a true partnership with scholars and leaders from Asia and the Pacific Rim.
The Forum, which has been established under the leadership of the University of Washington with the support of its Northwest constituency, consists of two components. The first is a consortium of Asian and Western universities which will provide the neutral ground for hosting conferences concerned with a long-term international policy agenda for the region and establish the core of scholars and specialists around which the main activities of the Forum will be built. The second component of the Forum will be the Council on Asian Affairs, composed of business, political and diplomatic leaders drawn primarily from the Pacific Rim. Members of the Council will give public and political voice to both the policy options produced by the Forum and to the ongoing strategic debate. The Forum will also undertake a robust outreach effort to move the ideas generated by Forum members into the policy and larger communities via the web, policy briefings, and the media. Funding for the Asia Strategic Forum is sought from multiple sources on a multilateral donor basis.
The Forum’s approach is unprecedented not only in that it includes Asian thinkers as core members of the dialogue, but that in contrast to the consensus building meetings and the formal governmental discussions that currently abound, the Forum’s discourse will focus on basic strategic and structural issues (e.g. regionalism, cross cultural conflict resolution, and a post 9/11 northeast Asian security regime). These topics will be considered not only in terms of their immediate importance but from the broad, long-term and historical perspective necessary to set an agenda appropriate to the political and economic integration of Asia into the global system. The successful integration of Asia into the global system is a long term challenge, and the Forum will seek out and cultivate the next generation of voices on both sides of the Pacific by involving young leaders, scholars and students in its activities. With these assets, and a unique focus, the Forum is prepared to meet its ambitious, yet apt, mission.
April 2005
Download the Asia Strategic Forum mission statement -- MS Word Document