International Law in the Obama Administration\u27s Pivot to Asia: The China Seas Disputes, the Trans- Pacific Partnership, Rivalry with the PRC, and Status Quo Legal Norms in U.S. Foreign Policy

The Obama administration’s “pivot” or “rebalance” to Asia has shaped the Obama administration’s impact on international law. The pivot or rebalance has been primarily about regional security in East Asia (principally, the challenges of coping with a rising and more assertive China—particularly in the context of disputes over the South China Sea—and resulting concerns among regional states), and secondarily about U.S. economic relations with the region (including, as a centerpiece, the Trans-Pacific Partnership). In both areas, the Obama administration has made international law more significant as an element of U.S. foreign policy and has sought to present the U.S. as defending and promoting status quo international legal norms, largely against challenges posed by China. This approach has been somewhat more plausible on security / South China Sea issues than on economic / TPP issues. At the end of the Obama administration, significant uncertainty looms about the prospects for this aspect of the Obama-era approach international law and the international and domestic conditions that helped to produce it

China\u27s Rise, the U.S., and the WTO: Perspectives from International Relations Theory

What do China’s dramatic economic rise, engagement with the World Trade Organization (“WTO”) (and other established features of the international economic legal order), and rising assertiveness in external relations tell us about China’s past and likely future relationship to status quo international economic legal institutions and the norms they instantiate? What do these developments indicate about prospects for those institutions and norms? In China’s Rise: How it Took on the U.S. at the WTO, Gregory Shaffer and Henry Gao offer, or point us toward, answers to these questions. They do so on a grander scale than their relatively modest title indicates. In doing so, they engage seriously (if at times implicitly) with international relations theory and provide rich, original empirical support from fieldwork interviews. Their discussion of the relatively recent past—and its legacy—provides grounds for optimism among those who favor an institutionally robust and liberal international economic legal order. Yet, their analysis also finds, or suggests, ample reasons for pessimism in recent behavior and experiences of China and the U.S. in the WTO, and other developments in China, the U.S., and U.S.-China relations. This response supplements and complements Shaffer and Gao’s analysis. The history of China’s participation in the WTO, and the largely liberal order of which the WTO is a key element, is ambivalent—perhaps more than can be conveyed in an account that gives center stage to Chinese informants who have favored adherence to international norms and participation in international institutions. The future may be more fraught than can be fully captured in a relatively brief final section of an article that focuses primarily on evaluating the past. This response addresses these issues from perspectives of international relations theories (many of which Shaffer and Gao note) and their application to China’s engagement with the WTO and related matters. The sections that follow are arranged, roughly, from least to most pessimistic (except for a final subsection)