Sutter, Robert G. ‘Introduction’. In The United States and Asia: Regional Dynamics and Twenty-First-Century Relations, by Robert G. Sutter, 1-18. London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2015.

Sutter, Robert G. ‘Introduction’. In The United States and Asia: Regional Dynamics and Twenty-First-Century Relations, by Robert G. Sutter, 1-18. London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2015.

• The author finds that China is constrained in the Asia Pacific because of the US and its allies. It recommends that the USA engage with China on mutual issues while continuing to challenge China in all areas of disagreement. It endorses the Obama administration's policies on these grounds (10).
• The Asia Pacific is of immense political and economic importance to the USA, being home to the world's fastest-growing economies and the US's only near-peer competitor: China. Under the Obama administration, the US refocused on the Asia Pacific, concentrating on that region and abandoning a prior focus on Pakistan and Central Asia (1).
• American interests are still imperiled in Afghanistan and the Middle East by the rise of ISIS and other extremist organizations following the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War. In the Asia Pacific, North Korea poses a general security threat, while China represents a potential challenge following tensions over Taiwan, the South China Sea, and territorial disputes with Japan and South Korea (2-3).
• Allies in the Asia Pacific and elsewhere are frightened of American resolve, as recent US foreign policy has been characterized by sudden swings between bellicosity and isolation, as reflected by the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and 2003, and equally sudden withdrawals in 2009 and 2014. This is contrasted with inaction over Syria and Ukraine (3).
• The US has tried to navigate regional tensions in the Asia Pacific, especially between China and Japan, by remaining neutral in all diplomatic spats and territorial disputes (3). 
• Chinese and American economic interests are closely linked, as the US seeks to benefit through capital investment in Chinese growth, while China depends on American export markets. China thus wants the US to continue to support free trade, from which they benefit (4).
• While China benefits from the liberal and pro-market regional order in the Asia Pacific, it does not fully contribute to it and engages in a number of economic practices, like suppression of currency value, that subvert regional norms. This means that China exploits the regional order, knowing other countries cannot retaliate without risking that order (4).
• The Obama administration sought to bolster this regional order and end Chinese exploitation by creating the TTP, which would have held all member countries accountable to certain high standards (4).
• China has sought to undermine this plan by proposing its own free trade group with much lower standards, the Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific [FTAAP], or a similar group, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership [RCEP], that excludes the United States (4-5).
• This plan has wavered under domestic pressure and the unwillingness of Republicans in Congress to give President Obama the authority to negotiate the TPP without congressional oversight (5).
• American-Chinese relations experienced a massive transformation following the end of the Cold War, which ended both the ideological divide between the countries and the Soviet threat that first inspired American-Chinese rapprochement. The crackdown of the Democracy Wall protesters in Beijing in 1989 soured American impressions of China during this early period and lead US politicians to call for an end to American friendship with China (6).
• This tension developed into the Taiwan Strait crises of 1995 and 1996. The intensity of the military standoff in the Straits surprised by the American and Chinese governments, prompting President Clinton to attempt to restore ties with China and de-escalate tensions. These negotiations were partially successful, but many gains were scuttled by the fiasco of the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999 (6).
• Although it entered government expecting continued conflict with China, the George W. Bush administration presided over a major improvement in relations with China including a normal partnership and a mutual understanding of ignoring points of tension, like Taiwan, in favor of enhanced economic cooperation (7).
• The Obama administration tried to build on George W. Bush's legacy in China, focusing on incorporating China into the international legal order and getting it to accept certain norms of behavior. These efforts, including a proposed G-2 framework, largely failed as China viewed these as schemes to restrict Chinese power by shackling it to the US (7).
• President Obama's initiatives in China were poorly received. His conciliation during his first term was read as American weakness, and his 'pivot to Asia' in 2011 was interpreted as a threat to China and introduced new acrimony into the US-China relationship (7).
• During the second Obama administration, fewer compromises on core issues like North Korea and Chinese currency manipulation. This Chinese stubbornness was attacked in the Republican primaries in 2012, leading China to believe that America was hostile to its interests. Since this time, China has become increasingly sure that America is a hostile nation and has been more willing to use force or its threat in regional politics (7-8).
• Despite a general perception that Chinese-American relations are tense and acrimonious, there were much more serious tensions between the US and China under the Clinton and Bush presidencies, during which there were serious military escalations in the Straits of Taiwan. Unlike then, it is now fairly clear that China will not use military force to settle maritime disputes with Japan, South Korea, or Philippines (9).
• The recommendations from the IR scholarly community on future American relations in Asia have been conflicted and contradictory (9-10).
• In the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, IR scholarship endorsed realist propositions about unipolar systems and predicted that the fall of the USSR would trigger new rivalries in Asia, including between the USA and its former allies. This same intellectual trend predicted that China's rise both meant American decline and would result in a conflict between the two powers (10).
• Liberal IR scholars generally endorsed a view of a 'great divergence' of Chinese interests that affect all areas except economics (10) -- the author views this 'great divergence' as outdated, asserting that the US and China now conflict over economic issues (8-9). They recommend involving China in multilateral organizations (11).
• David Kang posited a thesis that Asian Pacific IR would be peaceful and bolstered by the legitimacy of Chinese power, because Dr. Kang claimed this was how IR under the Ming and Qing dynasties had functioned. This view was endorsed by Chinese diplomats and scholars, who claimed that China had always ruled via legitimate cultural hegemony, not force (11).
• John Fairbank and Benjamin Schwartz challenged this view, asserting that -- if it ever existed -- this tributary system had been destroyed in the Chinese Revolution. Modern scholars, like Samuel Kim, tend to agree with the view that any historical Chinese exceptionalism has ended, while still questioning whether the region will function according to realist power politics (12).