Traders stand near a screen showing the Indonesia Stock Exchange Composite Index during the first day of trading for 2012 in Jakarta January 2, 2012. Courtesy Reuters/Stringer.

It’s been a fascinating year for Asia. The region has continued to consolidate its role as the essential player driving global recovery. Developing Asia, including China, India, and the major ASEAN economies, maintained robust growth, in contrast to the advanced economies’ collective anemic growth over the same period.

But 2012 promises to be more fraught as domestic politics take command amid new challenges to growth.

Here are twelve trends I see coming for Asia in 2012—risks, opportunities, and emerging patterns that will shape Asia during the next twelve months, and beyond.

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A Pakistani policeman keeps watch near a Pakistan-China friendship billboard in Islamabad February 3, 2002. (Claro Cortes IV / Courtesy Reuters)

 I’ve written a think piece for Foreign Affairs on two subjects:

(1) China’s calculus in Pakistan, or, as the editors asked me, “Could China’s calculus ever change and, if so, what would change it?” and

(2) China’s approach to risk management, which, I argue, increasingly includes an effort to balance three baskets of risk: geopolitical risk, political risk, and investment risk.

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Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger delivers a speech in front of a picture of late U.S. President Richard Nixon meeting with late Premier Zhou Enlai during a ceremony in Shanghai to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the "Shanghai Communique." (China Photo/Courtesy Reuters)

Can the United States and China cooperate to forestall threats to stability? A new CFR report, Managing Instability on China’s Periphery, asks this question in the context of fragile states and regions that share borders with China—specifically North Korea, Myanmar, Pakistan, and Central Asia. I participated in the project, which included workshops with Chinese specialists assembled by Peking University. I also wrote the report’s chapter on Central Asia.

The project is interesting because the U.S. and China actually have a long history of cooperating in places along China’s border. Just take recent tensions over Afghanistan, for example. These strains belie the degree to which Beijing and Washington worked jointly to defeat the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. Washington encouraged Chinese support for the Afghan mujahideen, and the two countries cooperated in other unprecedented ways during the conflict.

But that was then.

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The author chats with Chinese traders in the Kara-Suu Bazaar, near Osh, Kyrgyzstan, October 2006. (Photo from the author)

I have a new article out in The Washington Quarterly, with a slightly provocative title, “Why America No Longer Gets Asia.”

It’s a think piece. And so it probably won’t be 100 percent persuasive to 100 percent of its readers in 100 percent of its aspects. But the article pulls together the strands of a lot of themes I’ve harped on in recent years, from speeches I was giving while at the State Department to a few years’ worth of articles and blogs. I also worked on an array of projects directly related to these themes while serving in the U.S. government, especially during the period from 2003 to 2007.

Here’s the headline: Asia is reintegrating, but the United States simply isn’t adapting quickly enough. And it is essential to adapt U.S. policy to the contours of change in Asia if the United States wishes to remain vital and relevant there.

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Photo Courtesy of REUTERS/Jim Young

Richard Holbrooke, the president’s special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, says that Washington and Beijing are “talking about common strategic symmetry.” “We’re consulting them. We’re sharing information,” Holbrooke told POLITICO. And the administration has intensified U.S. outreach to China as its level of concern about stability and extremism in Pakistan has increased.

So, does China share Washington’s concerns? Not really.

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