Luis Enrique Ascui Eliot Cohen, director of strategic studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, Washington.

Changes in the U.S. outlook and assumptions since the end of the Cold War are affecting how the country will address global security issues, a U.S. professor specializing in war studies said Feb. 23.

Eliot Cohen, director of strategic studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, Washington, noted that adapting to the end of the Cold War had been a slow process, taking well over a decade.

In its place has come an era yet to be defined. “So far, we have only defined it in terms of what it is not, calling it the post-Cold War era. I think the best term is the age of surprises. It has been one surprise after another,” Cohen told an audience here at the Asia Pacific Security Conference.

Cohen, who participated in the conference’s second panel discussion, “Strategic Trends in the Asia Pacific,” believes this poses a “tremendous challenge” for defense planners, as they must adjust to the fact that there will be other surprises and more unpredicted events.

The United States will tackle this new era based on assumptions that are very different from those it held during the Cold War, said Cohen. “We are out of the deterrence game,” he said. “Some conflicts can be deterred, others cannot.” The United States also “looms much, much larger” in the international system than it did 20 years ago.

Within Asia, it will continue to have a “complex” relationship with China. Cohen warned: “Here, there is significant opportunity for very serious miscalculations of the views of each side, especially on Taiwan.”

But strengthening U.S. relationships with countries like Japan and India are positive developments, said Cohen. “American engagement in Asia will become deeper, I think. The sheer dynamism of this region as a producer and a consumer will prompt this. And the region has two rising powers with China and India.”

Cohen added, however, that it would be a mistake to believe America has a master plan for Asia. Rather, the United States is engaged in a more global and broad quest to cultivate its core interest: “the inducement of societies that are both stable and free.”

The Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, a think-tank affiliated with Singapore’s Nayang Technological University, and Asian Aerospace Pte. Ltd. jointly produced the conference. Defense News is the official media partner for the event.

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