THE PETER WALL INSTITUTE PRESENTS:
Dr. Bruce Cumings
ANARCHIC EAST ASIA AMID A
FLOURISHING REGIONAL ECONOMY:
WHY STATE TO STATE RELATIONS ARE SO BAD,
AND ECONOMIC PROSPECTS SO GOOD
Friday,
May 29, 2015
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
UBC Robson Square,
Conference Room,
800 Robson St,
Vancouver, BC
Dr. Bruce Cumings will examine recent
conflicts over islands – more often piles
of rocks – in the East China Sea and the
South China Sea. He argues that China,
for unclear reasons and without much
success, has embarked on a policy of
bullying its neighbors. Meanwhile the
Obama administration has been trying
to get Japan and South Korea to work
together to contain North Korea and
China, again without much success.
None of this, however, has had much
impact on the extraordinary health of the
economies in this region, which are likely
to constitute (together with the American
Pacific Coast) the core of the world
economy for the rest of the century. One
reason, he suggests, is that East Asia
is still on an American tether, 70 years
after the Pacific War ended in Japan’s
defeat. In other words, the US provides
essential security for the region and so
towers over any possible antagonist as
to make war or even significant military
conflict unlikely.
Dr. Cumings is Gustavus F. and Ann
M. Swift Distinguished Service Professor
in the Department of History at the
University of Chicago. His research
and teaching focus on modern Korean
history, twentieth-century international
history, US–East Asian relations, East
Asian political economy, and American
foreign relations. He has just completed
Dominion from Sea to Sea: Pacific
Ascendancy and American Power,
published by Yale University Press. He
is currently working on a single volume
on the origins of the Korean War, and
a book on the Northeast Asian political
economy.