Photographs and audio are now available from the October 20, 2014 event “To Lose Without Fighting? The U.S., China, Southeast Asia and the South China Sea.” The event featured Bill Hayton, a BBC journalist and author of the book The South China Sea: The Struggle for Power in Asia, from Yale University Press. The event was moderated by Kristy Kelly, Associate Research Scholar at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute.
Hayton’s talk, co-sponsored by the APEC Study Center, Southeast Asian Student Initiative (SEASI), and the Asian American Journalists Association at Columbia, illuminated the main ideas in his book, which is about how the United States may “lose without fighting” in Southeast Asia.
The phrase is a turn on Sun Tzu’s famous “to win without fighting,” and acts as a point of departure for discussing possible U.S. responses to Chinese “provocations” in the South China Sea. Hayton calls for caution in assuming that China takes deliberate action to fractionalize U.S. alliances in the region. Rather, he argues, Chinese motivations can be understood in other ways, such as through historical context and national self-interest.
To listen to a recording of the lecture, please click here.
