Asia's Reckoning ─ China, Japan, and the Fate of U.S. Power in the Pacific Century

A history of the combative military, diplomatic, and economic relations among China, Japan, and the United States since the 1970s—and the potential crisis that awaits them

Richard McGregor’s Asia’s Reckoning is a compelling account of the widening geopolitical cracks in a region that has flourished under an American security umbrella for more than half a century. While American power in the Pacific has successfully kept the peace, it has also cemented the tensions in the toxic rivalry between China and Japan—consumed with its endless history wars and entrenched political dynasties. The combination of these forces with Donald Trump’s unpredictable impulses and disdain for America’s old alliances now threatens to upend the region and accelerate the unraveling of the postwar order. If the United States helped lay the postwar foundations for modern Asia, now the anchor of the global economy, Asia’s Reckoning will reveal how that structure is now crumbling.

With unrivaled access to archives in the United States and Asia, as well as to many of the major players in all three countries, Richard McGregor has written a tale that blends the tectonic shifts in diplomacy with the domestic political trends and personalities driving them. It is a story not only of an overstretched America, but also of the rise and fall and rise of the great powers of Asia. The about-turn of Japan—from a colossus poised for world domination to a nation in inexorable decline in the space of two decades—has few parallels in modern history, as does the rapid rise of China—a country whose military is now larger than those of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan combined.

The confrontational course on which China and Japan have increasingly set themselves is no simple spat between neighbors: as Beijing has long rebuffed Washington’s efforts to sign up to the postwar order, the United States would be involved on the side of Japan in any military conflict between the two countries. The fallout would be an economic tsunami, affecting manufacturing centers, trade routes, and political capitals on every continent. Richard McGregor’s book takes us behind the headlines of his years reporting as the Financial Times’s Beijing bureau chief to show us that American power will ultimately stand or fall in the decades to come on its ability to hold its ground in Asia.

Richard McGregor is a journalist and an author with extensive experience in reporting from east Asia and Washington. A 2015 fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., his work has appeared in the International Herald Tribune and Foreign Policy and he has appeared on the Charlie Rose show, the BBC, and NPR. His previous book, The Party, won numerous awards, including the 2011 Asia Society book of the year and the Asian book of the year prize from Japan’s Mainichi Shimbun.