THERE seems to be wide global relief that United States President Donald Trump — seen as a disaster not just for his country but the world at large — will soon be history.
Those with a kinder view of Trump may say he set out to be the "disruptor-in-chief" and in that capacity has chalked up some success in the past four years. The most important bilateral relationship, that between the US and China, will likely never be the same again, thanks to Trump.
One of the most important jobs of the new Biden presidency may be repairing America's standing in arguably the most pivotal region today: East Asia. It is a task one hopes the new US administration takes on with the greatest humility.
For if there is one thing the world has looked askance at the US in recent years, it is at how a country once universally looked up to now looks so ordinary, like the rest of us. Political risk used to be a curse visited upon benighted nations that most of us are in, but now applies equally to the US.
The most consequential (and tragic) result of this may well be how ordinary citizens of China increasingly view the US today with barely disguised contempt, which must strengthen Chinese President Xi Jinping's resolve that abjuring the democratic path is absolutely the correct one for China.
Except China's inexorable rise would not have happened without it adopting reforms, particularly economic ones, and that given how the rise happened through its interlocking embrace with the US, its obstinate determination not to be persuaded to relax its mercantilist economic policies rebounded negatively on the US. The precipitous deterioration in the Sino-US relationship, even perhaps Trump's election, is therefore almost in equal parts US- and China-made!
A sufficiently humbled US must therefore take a far more nuanced approach to its international democracy-promotion efforts. The democratic model — warts and all — may still be by far the more globally attractive political model, but as the US itself currently is experiencing, the economic and political interplay within each nation impacts greatly its democratic trajectory.
Thus, it may be entirely appropriate for the US to keep pressuring China on the latter's sorry human rights record given the latter's great advances economically and not for the sake of interfering with China politically as China keeps arguing, but rather because China's sustainable political/economic progress going forward cannot but affect us all.
One size, however, does not fit all other nations, especially those with a lot more headway to climb economically, compared with China. A country like the Philippines, for example, seems perpetually an economic laggard despite, ostensibly, its political democracy.
Philippine political democracy has led to scant evidence of desperately needed economic liberalisation so that if outside pressures are to be brought to bear on it, it should be so the country attends to economic reforms rather than the conventional focus on its political imperfections.
Democratic stability will only come with the arrival of a solidly middle-class society, which only sustained economic prosperity can create. Thus, applying only political pressure on developing countries may look like putting the cart before the horse.
A lighter US approach politically, as with a Vietnam that currently focuses more on economic advancement, may be the more appropriate recipe for the US to apply in its democracy-promotion project abroad.
The US itself is now laid low politically perhaps because it has for too long assumed that safeguarding its democracy is the be-all and end-all. Political complacency meant wise economic policymaking and the need to make tough choices were neglected.
Political dysfunction follows, and soon enough, the rot may require some drastic and painful actions to stem further rot before the country can be on the mend.
Thus, while it is true that any US administration's first job going forward is to self-correct, much of the world still depends on America's better angel in furtherance of the overall global good. The hope is that a US that has become more like the rest of us will be a more empathetic superpower.
The writer views developments in the nation, region and wider world from his vantage point in Kuching, Sarawak