Andres Gentry on Foreign Policy Oceans Apart

A few days ago, China-based blogger Andrés Gentry reacted to a post by Belgravia Dispatch on foreign policy disagreements across the Atlantic.

Belgravia Dispatch has a nice (and sharply worded!) summary of the foreign policy discussions happening on both sides of the Atlantic. While I appreciate the amount of time he spends on talking about French and German foreign policy aspirations, at the end of the day it all sounds more like a coda for an era past than anything else....

Well, here's one indicator of the future: in discussions about East Asian international relations I have never, not once, read anyone ask what France's, much less Germany's, opinion is....

Anyways though, the world stage moves more and more away from the European peninsula. The Economist has recently run a survey on India and China, the US and Japan have just released a joint statement declaring they will work together to safeguard Taiwan, the 6-nation group trying to deal with North Korea includes no European nations [except Eurasia-spanning Russia], the democratic changes sweeping the Middle East owe to a Coalition that Old Europe deliberately cut itself out of, and in last December's Indonesian tsunami it was the US, Japan, India, and Australia working together to help those affected by the natural disaster. These are the contours of the new world that is being made.

I wouldn't be too quick to write off the EU in Asia. It now wants in on the six-party talks and is likely soon to resume arms sales to China.