I just published article on the Summit of the Americas in Lima, Peru.  Although the article was written before the missile strike in Syria, and doesn't capture the impact of the action on the summit agenda, I believe that the basic analysis of the conservative trend in the region is consistent with what happened at the summit, and the article's arguments about the agenda for the Americas may continue to be of use to you as a point of reference. This article was originally published by the Global Americans.

Spring has been a bit tardy this year in the US, and I hear many other places, but not in Asia.  The title of a recent Brookings meeting at Northwestern University was “Japan, the United States, and the Future of Asia”  but the topic was Korea.  I posed the question of whether or not we are experiencing a false spring. Talks between the two Koreas, the US and China are certainly a hopeful development, but do they mask fundamental and growing divisions between the major powers in the Pacific? Together, these countries comprise half of global GDP.

Money is a near-universal social institution. It  evolved to support human cooperation and to control and coordinate the life of humankind. Like other core institutions, such as marriage and language, the forms that money takes may differ widely. The values and norms governing money’s use, and the practices associated with it, also vary widely.

For the individual, money is also a psychological symbol. Money allows each person to enjoy the fruits of others’ work. For many billions of people, obtaining money is the sole purpose of their everyday life.

The recent removal of term limits for the presidency from the Chinese Constitution represents a further tightening of President Xi JiPing’s grip on power.  While he was not up for reelection until 2019, term limits were an obstacle to his grandiose plans for establishing China as a major economic, military and political superpower over the next few years or even decades.   While the rise of China as a global power was inevitable, it has been facilitated by the vacuum left by the rapid decline of the U.S. global position under President Trump.