U.S. foreign policy in Asia since 9/11: temporary alliances or permanent changes?

• Author: Thacker-Kumar, Leena

Few readers would challenge us if we stated that in the past generation the center of gravity in global industry and trade has shifted from the United States and Western Europe to the Pacific Rim. Even so, except in times of crisis, the world's lone superpower pays Asia only sporadic attention. Has American foreign policy toward Asia changed significantly since 9/11? The authors of this study argue that despite a few key departures in recent years, U.S. policy toward Asia has changed and will change little in the near future. However, major power shifts on the Asian horizon, especially those centering on the rise of China, Japan's search for a role in Asia, and the nascent economic integration of the region, may force future U.S. policy makers to deal with changed Asian regional power relationships.

"On September 11, [2001] the world changed!" or so shouted CNN countless times every day for several months thereafter. The horrific terrorist attack, which took the lives of nearly 3,000 people at the World Trade Center in New York City, at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, and in the United Flight 93 plane crash near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, was an event almost as shockingly unexpected in 2001 as was Pearl Harbor in 1941. As America began to adjust to the new reality of the "War on Terrorism," (1) observers started to discuss the true meaning of 9/11. Was it, as President George W. Bush suggested, an assault on American civilization? Could it have been a reaction to U.S. political and economic hegemony, especially as perceived by radical Muslim fundamentalists? Realists might have expected a major reaction to the "unipolar moment," in which America is temporarily the unchallenged and sole global superpower. Numerous scholars have questioned why American power has not yet been balanced, and their answers range from Kenneth Waltz's suggestion that other powers have already started to do so, to William C. Wohlforth's assertion that, given America's overwhelming power and distance from other powers, it is easier for potential rivals to cooperate (or put up) with the U.S. (2)

Could 9/11 have been anticipated years before it happened? The Asian connection is particularly important here, since there were several warnings of the possibility of a major attack from both international terrorism experts and from Philippine investigators of Southeast Asian terror groups connected with Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network. (3) Instead of a thorough examination of this question, U.S. foreign policy focused on the War on Terrorism to the exclusion of most other concerns. This manifested itself perhaps most clearly in Asia. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, U.S. policy in that region consisted mainly of lining up allies to support its anti-terrorism policies. As the overall focus of the War on Terrorism shifted to the Iraq War beginning in 2003, U.S. policy toward Asia basically returned to pre-9/11 patterns. (4)

So, what is the essential American approach to Asia? As during the Cold War, Washington's Asia policy is based on bilateral ties with key allies, especially Japan, (5) and the forward deployment of U.S. military forces in Japan and South Korea (and, to a lesser extent, Australia). Throughout the Cold War era, America behaved as a status quo power in Asia, more interested in regional stability and economic growth than instituting major changes in the region. Even its most vigorous interventions, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, were fundamentally defensive in nature. To be sure, there were a number of departures in U.S. policy during the Clinton and current Bush administrations. The most important has been the shift from diplomacy to intervention, particularly in the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions, but those are outside East and Southeast Asia, and even (depending on how one defines the region) South Asia. America has improved its relations with the "front-line states" in the struggle against terrorism, mostly in South and Southeast Asia. Most noteworthy are Pakistan, Indonesia, and the Philippines. More recently, the Bush administration significantly improved U.S. relations with India and accepted its status as a nuclear power. (6)

Actually, Asia is much more complex than a single-minded focus on terrorism would suggest. It is being shaped by a number of powerful forces, most notably economic globalization, the ongoing revolution in information and communication, and the growing importance of global economics in the lives of ordinary people. Most Asian governments recognize these facts, and view economic issues as far more important than terrorism. The nature of international relations has also become much more complicated than in the relatively simple Cold War era, as economic power and transnational relations shape foreign policy outcomes more than ever before. (7) In the early 1990s, Francis Fukuyama, a professor of international political economy at Johns Hopkins University, famously suggested that, with the end of the Cold War and the triumph of American-style capitalism, the major struggles of history have been resolved. In his most recent work, however, Fukuyama recognizes that economic modernization (i.e., globalization) produces conditions that lead to radical fundamentalist reactions. (8) The early twenty-first century international system is thus giving birth to a complex new era of history, and few but American neoconservatives still claim that any particular political economic ideology will dominate it.

U.S. foreign policy may be more complicated in Asia than perhaps in any other region. It is as much shaped by ad hoc triangles among major and regional powers as by formal alliances or even traditional bilateral relations. Growing web-like relations to deal with specific concerns such as security on the Korean Peninsula or free trade among the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) add another layer of complexity. Also, major power relations have changed significantly, as Russia and Japan have lost relative power, and China and India have gained both power and influence throughout the region. At the same time, the growing ranks of middle powers seeking stability, but bedeviled by a variety of internal political or local security challenges, can either make international decision making more time-consuming and difficult or provide building blocks for effective regional coalitions. Such middle powers include South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Pakistan. The minor players, principally North Korea, Taiwan, and Burma, are generally viewed as the problem children of Asia. Their ability to create instability allows them to punch far above their weight class.

Since 9/11, the U.S. military has enhanced its cooperation with two key allies in East Asia, Japan and South Korea. Japan has changed its Self Defense Force (SDF) law twice, allowing for the first peacetime dispatch of its military forces to assist U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and to help with post-Iraq War nation-building activities in Samawah.(9) U.S. relations with its two Asian friends hinge as much on the renewed crisis over North Korea's development of nuclear weapons as events in South Asia or the Middle East. Both Tokyo and Seoul were alarmed by Bush's inclusion of North Korea in his "axis of evil" formulation, put forth in his 2002 State of the Union address. Among other things, they hope that their assistance to America in Afghanistan and Iraq will give them leverage in convincing the Bush administration to tone down its persistent anti-Pyongyang rhetoric, and open the kind of quiet, constructive dialogue with the inscrutable Kim Jong Il regime to diffuse ongoing tension on the Korean Peninsula. The six-party talks in Beijing have proved frustrating to all participants, as several rounds of negotiations accomplished little, and the North Koreans have been able to paint themselves as more flexible and reasonable than the Americans. (10) A tentative deal in September 2005 floundered as the parties could not agree to terms. A series of North Korean missile tests in July 2006 aggravated the situation. While alarmed, many observers believed that the poor performance of the Taepodong 2 missile indicated that Pyongyang is a long way from being a global threat, and saw the tests as North Korea's way of demanding direct talks with the U.S. (11) Washington may come around to the need for an imperfect arrangement along the lines of the Agreed Framework that settled the 1994 Korean crisis. (12) Such an agreement could, after a few years, lead to a "grand bargain" involving the exchange of normalized U.S.-North Korean relations for Pyongyang's scrapping of its nuclear program. That might induce a more stable and peaceful regime on the peninsula and gradual economic change in North Korea.

With the realization that the world has changed and that vital American interests are at stake, there has been a shift in traditional international alliances. Immediate post-9/11 relations between the U.S. and both Russia and China have focused on various areas of cooperation, although basic disagreements continue. The U.S. and Russia achieved unprecedented cooperation during the early stages of the war in Afghanistan and the fight against international terrorism. Russian President Vladimir Putin did not initially object to...