Go East, America

National Review, August 17, 1992

AMERICA is a Pacific power. The Japanese know this. The Chinese know it. The Soviets knew it, which is why they were so keen on Vietnam and the Cam Ranh Bay Naval Base (built by the United States). Indeed, the Far Eastern Economic Review, the premier magazine of the region, recently editorialized on the riots in Los Angeles under the headline, "Eastern Pacific Troubles." America itself often seem to be the only one that does not recognize its critical interests in a part of the earth that accounts for half the world's population and a third of its trade.

In spite of the headlines generated by a petulant Manila intelligentsia, sentiment among the people throughout Asia is overwhelmingly for a stronger American role. They believe that America is the only power that can be trusted in the region because it is the only one without expansionist tendencies. As the former prime minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, put it, the alternative to a dominant America in Asia is an Asia subordinate to the Japanese, Chinese, or Russians.

None of these alternatives would give us a stable Asia conducive to overall peace and prosperity in the world. Three of the four tigers (Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea) depend on the United States for their largest market. Taiwan and South Korea depend on the United States for their defense. Following the withdrawal from Subic Bay in the Philippines, Singapore has offered itself as a base for the American fleet; and Hong Kong now looks to the U.S., not Britain, as the best guarantor of its de facto independence after 2997. Even Japan, dependent as it is on oil imports, recognizes that a strong Seventh Fleet remains a necessary condition for trade and the mutual enrichment that comes with it.

The other ingredient is an American commitment to supporting GATT's aim of a free trading order. Most American effort is wasted on the futile and potentially explosive use of trade sanctions to get Japan to open its markets. Instead of playing into protectionist hands, Washington would do better to underscore support for GATT with positive bilateral initiatives: pushing for Taiwan's entry into GATT and preventing the emergence of a hostile, Tokyo-dominated trade bloc. In an Asia where Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan all enjoyed bilateral free trade with the U.S., Japan would be forced either to acquiesce or to retreat into an inefficient and ultimately self-defeating Robinson Crusoe economy. Were Washington to couple this initiative with free-trade arrangements with the newly emerging East European nations, it would simultaneously quash any protectionist hopes held by the mandarins of the European Community.

None of these measures imposes new spending burdens. None of them requires special acts of generosity. What they do demand is an America that knows its interests in an integrated world and realizes that the price for having no policy is forever reacting to the policies chosen by rivals and foes.