Asia Letter: As U.S. influence wanes, a new Asian community
Jane Perlez International Herald Tribune Thursday, November 4, 2004
JAKARTA As Washington prepared to begin a new administration, it is hard not to notice the legacy of America's shrinking influence in Asia over the last four years.
.
A profound rearrangement is under way, with China and its expanding economy leading the charge, and in some instances, it's to the exclusion of the United States.
.
"The fact is American clout in Asia is decreasing," said Morton Abramowitz, a former U.S. ambassador to Thailand and Turkey. "We're no longer the colossus."
.
No longer will Asia be a disparate group of countries that the United States can dominate, he said. Instead, the region is working inexorably toward building a community, with China as its hub, that is likely soon to resemble the European Union.
.
At the same time, the central banks of China and Japan are holding $1.3 trillion of U.S. government debt, a position that gives Asia quite a bit of leverage, economists say.
.
This new interdependence requires some new thinking, said William McCahill 2nd, the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing during the last Clinton term and now a member of the Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr law firm in Beijing.
.
"When China's foreign exchange reserves, parked in Treasury bills, funds U.S. budget deficits, should the U.S. treasury secretary be haranguing the Chinese to revalue their currency?" McCahill said. "When U.S. universities, companies and research establishments depend on Chinese scientists to advance basic research and develop new technologies, should U.S. visa polices restrict their travel?"
.
Is anybody in terror-obsessed Washington paying attention?
.
Secretary of State Colin Powell was in Beijing and Seoul last week, but the visit seemed as much about avoiding the poisonous last moments of the presidential campaign as about real diplomacy.
.
More vividly, Richard Holbrooke, considered a possible secretary of state if John Kerry were elected, said at Harvard last week that the China-U.S. nexus was now America's most important bilateral relationship.
.
Abramowitz and Stephen Bosworth, a former U.S. ambassador to the Philippines and South Korea, are co-writing a book that they hope will jolt policy makers. They will look at the new order in East Asia that is being driven not only by China's economic surge but, increasingly, by its diplomatic dexterity.
.
China - with a thank-you from President George W. Bush's Washington - is playing host to the six-party talks on North Korea. As Powell learned, Japan and South Korea are developing more conciliatory approaches than the United States on the North's nuclear challenge.
.
What is most striking about the diminution of American influence in Asia is how quickly Chinese diplomacy has capitalized on Washington's obsession with terror and the Middle East.
.
One senior Asian diplomat who values the United States presence in the region for keeping the balance of power described Chinese diplomacy since the mid-1990s as "consistent, subtle and creative." During the same period, he said, the "U.S. has been out to lunch."
.
Once leery of multilateral diplomacy, Beijing is now using it to exclude an almost passive United States from a variety of forums, said James Przystup, senior fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University in Washington.
.
The State Department has historically opposed the creation of organizations in East Asia that exclude the United States. Thus, when Malaysia's former president, Mahathir bin Mohamad, proposed an East Asian Economic Community in the early 1990s, Washington rallied its Asian allies to stop it.
.
Now, Mahathir's successor, Abdullah Badawi, is promoting the same idea, but this time around, it was initiated by Beijing. Indeed, said Przystup, China is sponsoring research by a network of Asian research organizations whose role is to study and promote the concept of the East Asian Economic Community. There has been nary a peep from the United States.
.
And speaking of exclusion, the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations has generally been regarded by the United States as a sleepy inward-looking collection of motley countries.
.
But China has discovered Asean in a big way and proposed an enlivened configuration adding China, Japan and South Korea to the group. For now there is an Asean plus one. The one, naturally is China. At the 2003 annual meeting, China signed the group's Treaty of Amity and Cooperation and joined in the good behavior document, Declaration of Conduct in the South China Sea.
.
This year, the meetings between the group and China have taken on a dizzying pace. Przystup has figured that, of the 35 important meetings of Asean in the last three months, 19 were with China. "The meetings are not only about diplomacy but also about an Asian bond fund and institutionalizing a currency-swap mechanism to prevent a recurrence of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, and Western intervention," Przystup said.
.
An important result of the new bonding came last week. Both sides said they had agreed to eliminate tariffs on merchandise trade, a step toward creating an free-trade zone in Asia. The deal will be signed, no doubt with much fanfare, at the Asean summit in Vientiane later this month.
.
China has been able to make these strides not only because the United States is distracted, but because it has never been less popular in Asia.
.
"I think today, circa Nov. 1, 2004, respect for the United States is at a historic low," said Noordin Sopiee, the chairman of the Institute for Strategic and International Studies in Malaysia.
.
"The key factor that underlies U.S. unpopularity - and the U.S. has never been more unpopular - is not any specific policy, but the simple fact that the U.S. is number one. That makes everybody uncomfortable."
.
Noordin said he believed there were some "perceptive" officials in Washington who understood China's reach in East Asia. "But everyone in America, from top to bottom, seems captured and confined by a particular American world. Everyone else, the rest of mankind, seems to live in a different world."
.
When it comes to writing the diplomatic history of the Bush administration, the war in Iraq and American fears of terror will dominate. But it will also certainly be recorded that this was the period when American influence in Asia, the driving force of the region in the second half of the 20th century, began its downward spiral and America did not see it.
.
E-mail: pagetwo@iht.com
.
See more of the world that matters - click here for home delivery of the International Herald Tribune.
< < Back to Start of Article JAKARTA As Washington prepared to begin a new administration, it is hard not to notice the legacy of America's shrinking influence in Asia over the last four years.
.
A profound rearrangement is under way, with China and its expanding economy leading the charge, and in some instances, it's to the exclusion of the United States.
.
"The fact is American clout in Asia is decreasing," said Morton Abramowitz, a former U.S. ambassador to Thailand and Turkey. "We're no longer the colossus."
.
No longer will Asia be a disparate group of countries that the United States can dominate, he said. Instead, the region is working inexorably toward building a community, with China as its hub, that is likely soon to resemble the European Union.
.
At the same time, the central banks of China and Japan are holding $1.3 trillion of U.S. government debt, a position that gives Asia quite a bit of leverage, economists say.
.
This new interdependence requires some new thinking, said William McCahill 2nd, the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing during the last Clinton term and now a member of the Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr law firm in Beijing.
.
"When China's foreign exchange reserves, parked in Treasury bills, funds U.S. budget deficits, should the U.S. treasury secretary be haranguing the Chinese to revalue their currency?" McCahill said. "When U.S. universities, companies and research establishments depend on Chinese scientists to advance basic research and develop new technologies, should U.S. visa polices restrict their travel?"
.
Is anybody in terror-obsessed Washington paying attention?
.
Secretary of State Colin Powell was in Beijing and Seoul last week, but the visit seemed as much about avoiding the poisonous last moments of the presidential campaign as about real diplomacy.
.
More vividly, Richard Holbrooke, considered a possible secretary of state if John Kerry were elected, said at Harvard last week that the China-U.S. nexus was now America's most important bilateral relationship.
.
Abramowitz and Stephen Bosworth, a former U.S. ambassador to the Philippines and South Korea, are co-writing a book that they hope will jolt policy makers. They will look at the new order in East Asia that is being driven not only by China's economic surge but, increasingly, by its diplomatic dexterity.
.
China - with a thank-you from President George W. Bush's Washington - is playing host to the six-party talks on North Korea. As Powell learned, Japan and South Korea are developing more conciliatory approaches than the United States on the North's nuclear challenge.
.
What is most striking about the diminution of American influence in Asia is how quickly Chinese diplomacy has capitalized on Washington's obsession with terror and the Middle East.
.
One senior Asian diplomat who values the United States presence in the region for keeping the balance of power described Chinese diplomacy since the mid-1990s as "consistent, subtle and creative." During the same period, he said, the "U.S. has been out to lunch."
.
Once leery of multilateral diplomacy, Beijing is now using it to exclude an almost passive United States from a variety of forums, said James Przystup, senior fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University in Washington.
.
The State Department has historically opposed the creation of organizations in East Asia that exclude the United States. Thus, when Malaysia's former president, Mahathir bin Mohamad, proposed an East Asian Economic Community in the early 1990s, Washington rallied its Asian allies to stop it.
.
Now, Mahathir's successor, Abdullah Badawi, is promoting the same idea, but this time around, it was initiated by Beijing. Indeed, said Przystup, China is sponsoring research by a network of Asian research organizations whose role is to study and promote the concept of the East Asian Economic Community. There has been nary a peep from the United States.
.
And speaking of exclusion, the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations has generally been regarded by the United States as a sleepy inward-looking collection of motley countries.
.
But China has discovered Asean in a big way and proposed an enlivened configuration adding China, Japan and South Korea to the group. For now there is an Asean plus one. The one, naturally is China. At the 2003 annual meeting, China signed the group's Treaty of Amity and Cooperation and joined in the good behavior document, Declaration of Conduct in the South China Sea.
.
This year, the meetings between the group and China have taken on a dizzying pace. Przystup has figured that, of the 35 important meetings of Asean in the last three months, 19 were with China. "The meetings are not only about diplomacy but also about an Asian bond fund and institutionalizing a currency-swap mechanism to prevent a recurrence of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, and Western intervention," Przystup said.
.
An important result of the new bonding came last week. Both sides said they had agreed to eliminate tariffs on merchandise trade, a step toward creating an free-trade zone in Asia. The deal will be signed, no doubt with much fanfare, at the Asean summit in Vientiane later this month.
.
China has been able to make these strides not only because the United States is distracted, but because it has never been less popular in Asia.
.
"I think today, circa Nov. 1, 2004, respect for the United States is at a historic low," said Noordin Sopiee, the chairman of the Institute for Strategic and International Studies in Malaysia.
.
"The key factor that underlies U.S. unpopularity - and the U.S. has never been more unpopular - is not any specific policy, but the simple fact that the U.S. is number one. That makes everybody uncomfortable."
.
Noordin said he believed there were some "perceptive" officials in Washington who understood China's reach in East Asia. "But everyone in America, from top to bottom, seems captured and confined by a particular American world. Everyone else, the rest of mankind, seems to live in a different world."
.
When it comes to writing the diplomatic history of the Bush administration, the war in Iraq and American fears of terror will dominate. But it will also certainly be recorded that this was the period when American influence in Asia, the driving force of the region in the second half of the 20th century, began its downward spiral and America did not see it.
.
E-mail: pagetwo@iht.com
iht.com |
