For Asia, U.S Transition Raises Trade and Defense Questions
Philip Bowring International Herald Tribune
Saturday, December 23, 2000
HONG KONG Few in Asia expect President-elect George W. Bush's team of Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice to make significant foreign policy changes. Washington has permanent interests, not permanent friends.
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Nor is it realistic to expect a new cohesion. A plural and democratic global power cannot have a fully coordinated foreign policy. Interests, obligations and sympathies are too divergent and often in conflict.
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The Bush administration also may face an additional problem: If there is a U.S. recession, trade tensions with East Asia, and China in particular, could overshadow the most carefully crafted diplomacy.
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The plus side for Asian governments should be less lecturing by Washington than has been the case with Madeleine Albright and, to a lesser degree, Al Gore and Bill Clinton. General Powell gives the impression of being an Eisenhower-style coalition-builder. Ms. Albright has been a forceful but sometimes stridently ideological exponent of her view of the U.S. world role.
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There is some concern, however, that because of their past experience the main administration players will not give Asia the attention it feels it merits. General Powell and Mr. Cheney may want to capitalize on Gulf War relationships to see if Washington can occupy a more effective role in the Middle East than Mr. Clinton, for all his efforts, has been able to play. Ms. Rice may want to give more focus to European and Western Hemisphere issues.
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China will always be on a Bush radar screen, but other Asian questions may seem remote. Mr. Cheney has talked of a new consistency in dealings with China. This is needed, but difficult to achieve given the tussle between commercial, diplomatic and strategic interests.
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The key Northeast Asian questions coalesce around theater missile defense. Though still more a phrase than a reality, missile defense is at least symbolic of a U.S. determination to maintain a two track China policy, developing economic and social links with the mainland while helping Taiwan to protect itself.
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The missile defense question will also help define the future U.S. relationship with Japan.
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Economic problems and a domestic political vacuum have caused Japan to be sidelined. Many in Washington appear to believe that its influence is in permanent decline. But the strengthening of U.S.-Japan defense cooperation has been a quiet achievement of the second Clinton administration.
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Japan's own defense posture and future need, if any, for strategic weapons will be set in response to the United States.
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With or without rapprochement in Korea, few believe that missile defense is primarily to deal with threats from missile-owning rogue states like North Korea. Indeed, the new administration will need to address whether Washington's preoccupation with missile sales has handed too many bargaining counters to Beijing, Pyongyang and Moscow, while holding up normalization of relations with Iran and doing nothing to reduce weapons competition on the subcontinent.
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General Powell inherits improved relations with a more outward-looking India. But the United States faces a difficult choice in dealing with a near bankrupt Pakistan. Should it be punished for its military coup, for fomenting violence in Kashmir and for backing for the Afghan drug trade and the Taleban? Or might that risk its descent to the ranks of failed states? Policy on Pakistan and Afghanistan also has a bearing on that toward Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, and to Russia, Iran and the Central Asian republics.
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In Southeast Asia, Washington faces several messy situations, headed by that in Indonesia. There are trade and investment relationships to nurture but these countries do not carry major medium-term strategic implications. Nor is there much that the United States can do now anyway except act benignly and hope that the region avoids fragmentation, endemic economic crisis or enhanced religious conflict.
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The era of lecturing the region about economic reform and political democratization may be over. The United States faces debt problems of its own and while democracy has proved useful in some countries, it has been no panacea for national ills.
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