By Robert Farley
Framing the Trans-Pacific Partnership as an urgent issue for U.S. national security is frankly unproductive.
As reported by Prashanth Parameswaran, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter has joined the chorus in favor of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Carter has made explicit the national security “turn” in the TPP debate by analogizing the agreement to the construction of a new aircraft carrier.
The reformulation of the TPP conversation as a national security issue is puzzling, but isn’t necessarily new. David Petraeus made the same case for the TPP last year, arguing that American credibility depended on offering our friends and allies the security and predictability of a multi-lateral trade agreement. Patrick Cronin makes a similar case, although his argument (like that of Petraeus) is a conceptual mess, conjuring terrors of Australia and Japan realigning around Beijing, and implying that changing the way that Vietnam handles American intellectual property regulation will somehow have an effect on Chinese expansion in the South China Sea. Michelle Flournoy and Ely Ratner made roughly the same argument in the Wall Street Journal.
Who are these people trying to convince? The national security “turn” in the TPP conversation is unlikely to carry much weight abroad, and so must be aimed at a domestic audience.
Read the full story at The Diplomat