THE METAPHOR OF THE TWO SUNS
By Tom Plate
But is America, still at the center of the universe, sending out more
heat than light?
© 2003 Asia Pacific Media Network
HONG KONG -- Machiavelli wrote that to keep order, it’s best if the Prince is both feared and loved. But if only one option is available, fear works better.
The perception one gets from traveling through Asia is that Washington is mainly feared, Japan is going to be feared whether it wants to be or not, and China hasn’t yet figured out its geopolitical philosophy, so, at the moment, it is neither feared nor loved.
China, a work in progress, can also be explained with an apt metaphor courtesy of Singapore’s George Yeo, who has the intellectual depth of a political philosopher but a day job as Singapore’s minister of trade and industry. Since the Cold War’s end, he posits, the geopolitical universe has had but one sun at the center -- the United States. All planets orbit around its gravitational pull. But a second sun is starting to edge into this solar system -- China.
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