Conclusion
All this places a greater premium on the structures, within East Asian countries, through which leaders can develop policy, be held accountable to their people, and build and maintain cross-border relationships that allow respective national objectives to be promoted and negotiated peacefully – and with as much of a sense of common purpose as the countries can identify. In the case of Japan and China, there has been some evidence over the past year of a greater bias towards managing these problems than towards allowing them to destabilize the region; and towards finding a way not to allow historical and economic rivalries to tear things apart. There is much less evidence of such a process for Japan and South Korea.
In part, the maintenance of collaborative relations depends on continued economic benefits, equitably disseminated, in order to prevent the populist-driven erosion of essential social and political values, whether democratic or technocratic. But populism is not simply a reflection of economic difficulties, nor is it rooted purely in disaffection towards elites. Managing the tensions in societies that encourage a shift towards movements of this kind requires active political leadership: it means politicians neutralizing populism and, sometimes, where the tools are available to them, using it to try to secure their own ends. It will require continued investment in mechanisms to ensure that multilateral solutions are found to global and regional problems – whether these are economic, financial, security-related or environmental. It will also require investment in bilateral confidence-building measures to ensure that the network of multilateral contacts underpinning policy development is not undermined by tensions between specific actors. It will also involve maintaining, reinforcing and expanding the links between civil society within the region. As long as President Trump occupies the White House, it will be as important for Japan to invest in such activity in Washington as in Beijing and Seoul. We should not assume that the underlying problem will disappear when, in early 2021 or early 2025, Trump eventually gives way to his successor.