In April, the IHT/NYT columnist Roger Cohen gauged the public opinion of Asia in sweeping, clumsy strokes. While "Europe votes Democrat", he argued, "Asia tends Republican". Supposedly, Asians see the world more in terms of "classic balance-of-power equations, driven by the might and self-interest of nations, than through the post-sovereign European prism of international institution-building and soft power." According to Cohen, Asians would view a Democratic administration under Barack Obama with a good deal of uncertainty and very little optimism.
Enter the Asia Society, an institution with at least a bit more Asia-savvy than Cohen. In a poll conducted of Asian leaders and intellectuals, Barack Obama comfortably outstripped McCain for reasons as easily understood in Europe as in Asia. As the Indian newspaper editor and writer MJ Akbar said, "Obama represents the American dream, the future... and it would be a sad day indeed were Americans to choose the past over the future." Predictably, Indonesian thinkers saw great merit in how Obama would remake the image of America in the eyes of the Muslim world, in part because Obama first learned of tolerance and diversity in Indonesia. Japanese foreign policy expert Kunihiko Miyake believed that Obama represents "a change in the way America sees itself... and I think it's a positive thing and many Japanese agree with me." Filipina scholar Carolina Hernandez highlighted Obama's charismatic appeal to Asia's millions of young, internet-savvy America observers. Even the supposedly Republican-friendly Indian IT industry is "rooting for Obama".
To understand "Asia" is not to reduce the continent and its people to the motivations of its states. Cohen - and watery pundits of his ilk - are all too eager to build their columns from empty paradigms. In this case, Asia is "statist" while Europe is "post-statist". Chinese and Indian foreign ministers may trumpet national sovereignty while European leaders press for integration. But do their statements necessarily reflect greater public opinion? The collapse of the Lisbon Treaty in Ireland suggests otherwise.
Cohen often writes with subtlety about Europe. He should have the grace and the sense to extend the same sophistication to Asia.