"The result of US efforts in South America, therefore, has been to fragment the region into two blocs, and the same is likely to happen in Asia. Ever since the US realized that it had chosen the wrong region to be regional with, it has been trying to win a seat at the Asian table. The US finally got it with the TPP, simply because China had become aggressive in asserting its territorial claims in the South China Sea, the South China Sea, and vis-à-vis India and Japan.
Many Asian countries joined the TPP to “keep the US in the region” in the face of Chinese heavy-handedness. They embraced the US in the same way that East Europeans rushed to join NATO and the European Union in the face of the threat, real or imagined, posed by post-Soviet Russia."
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