The Japanese Journal of American Studies, No. 18 (2007)

America in East Asia:
The Rise and the Waning of a
Benevolent Hegemon Image

Victor SUMSKY*

THUS SPOKE COMRADE STALIN (AN INTRODUCTION)“We never forget that the United States of North America is a capitalist country. But among the Americans there are many physically andmorally healthy people, healthy in their whole approach to work, to business. This businesslike attitude, this simplicity is what makes us sympathetic.”
This statement belongs to a cool-headed opponent of the UnitedStates—a Soviet leader well aware, among other things, of the US rolein instigating the Russo-Japanese War and of American intervention in
the Russian Far East in 1918–1920. Thus spoke Joseph Vissarionovich
Stalin in a famous interview with the German writer Emil Ludwig on
December 13, 1931.1 Stalin’s surprisingly balanced attitude towards
America may serve to remind a student of East Asian politics about the
benevolent hegemon image (or BHI for short) that the US had enjoyedin that part of the world for decades.
Copyright © 2007 Victor Sumsky. All rights reserved. This work may be used,with this notice included, for noncommercial purposes. No copies of this work
may be distributed, electronically or otherwise, in whole or in part, without
permission from the author.
*Head of Section, Institute of World Economy and International Relations, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia

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Although elements of the BHI were already in place by the middle ofthe twentieth century, its real power became clear only after 1945. The
author’s purpose is to trace the origins of this image and to explain its
consolidation, against some very heavy odds, during the period of theCold War. Further, the American triumph of the early 1990s will be portrayed as the turning point in the fortunes of the BHI. The analysis willcontinue into the present, with the focus on the signs of the waning of
the BHI, and will end up with a speculation on the nature of the benevolent hegemony.
TRACING THE BHI ORIGINSIn the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in the age of Asia’s
political and cultural awakening, the United States seemed to be all thata subjugated non-European nation might aspire to be—a colony that had
revolutionized itself into a democratic republic, a land of innovators andpioneers, an expanding economy and a power on the rise.
To be sure, it had already displayed its imperial instincts openly andboldly, but ﬁrst and foremost in the Western Hemisphere. In East Asia
the United States was not perceived as the looming predator, despite theseizure of the Philippines.
Looking for the origins of the BHI in that era, one might point to a setof interrelated moves and developments that contributed to its emergence (apart from the well-known fact that World War I resulted in theenormous growth of America’s global power and prestige).
The call for an Open Door policy in China and practical efforts in that
direction are a major item on this list. Based on the idea that any external participant in the exploitation of that land should compete with theothers on an equal basis and enjoy no privileges, the Open Door policy
mostly reﬂected America’s late coming to the table of Asia’s repartition.
At the moment of its formation and for quite some time after, the US
simply lacked the capacity to copy the stronger powers—in other words,
to cut out for itself a special zone of inﬂuence in China, backing it up by
military muscle. In a way, though, the Open Door policy worked against
China’s partition, giving the US an image of a relatively benign force
among hardened imperialist rivals. Unable to impose its will on them,
the United States was trying to bind them through a multilaterally
accepted norm adding a non-egoistic touch to what was essentially a selfserving course and making it look like a matter of principle.

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Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points (1918) belonged to the same class of
initiatives that combined emphatic idealism with calculated realism at
its core. Once again, the US offered such a program of action to othergreat powers that, if implemented to a sufﬁcient degree, would haveundercut their abilities to compete politically, economically and militarily with America. Wilson’s point 5, dealing with the colonial issue
and calling for its free and impartial solution, was quite typical of this.
Much like the Open Door policy, it effectively made for the abolition ofmonopolistic control by colonial powers within their colonies in favorof America’s access to their resources and markets. It was, stated bluntly,
an exercise in anti-colonialism by the neocolonialist. Nevertheless, by
the standards of the time and from the perspective of other Western states
point 5 was hardly a typical statement. And if it resonated widely among
the dependencies, it was also because the United States seemed to beobeying its own prescriptions in the Philippines—the country that became its possession at the turn of the twentieth century, after the SpanishAmerican and Filipino-American wars.
What the US had established in the Philippines had the appearance ofa self-dismantling colonial regime, set up ostensibly to train the natives
in the art of democratic politics. Playing on the image of benevolence—in fact the term “benevolent assimilation” has become integral to theperiod’s vernacular—the brand of US colonial rule appeared to be something truly unique. Starting as early as 1907, local political parties wereallowed to compete for seats in the colonial legislature. In less than adecade a pledge to grant independence to the Philippines was includedin the Jones Law (1916), followed by a no-nonsense Filipinization of thecolonial administrative structure. Further developments resulted in theformation by 1935 of the Commonwealth of the Philippines—a dominionlike entity supposed to become a sovereign republic after a transition
period of ten years. For other colonialists of East Asia—the British, theFrench, the Dutch and, naturally, the Japanese—this was nearly a scandal. Dutch ofﬁcials suppressed publication of news from the Philippines
in Indonesian papers and were rumored to view the CommonwealthPresident Manuel Quezon as even “more subversive . . . than Marx,
Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin rolled into one”—a gross but telling exaggeration.2
In reality, the Americans were led into these unorthodox policies by
their own inexperience combined with the speciﬁcs of the local situation.
Grabbing the archipelago in the midst of the ﬁrst anti-colonial revolution

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in Asia, they could not pacify it by sheer repression. Some positive
response to the demands of the Filipinos, weary of the conservative
Spanish rule and heavily politicized in the process of ﬁghting it, wasneeded too. Many American experiments in neocolonial social engineering were rooted in that need.
None of this is to deny that during the last few years preceding the
Paciﬁc War the Philippines served as an encouraging example to muchof Asia. This is what we want in India, said Mahatma Gandhi to Carlos
Romulo, a prominent Manila journalist and a future foreign secretary of
his country, as they discussed the peaceful road toward Commonwealthstatus and Filipino independence outlined in the Tydings-McDufﬁe Law.
Gandhi’s words reﬂected not only his admiration for the achievement of
the colonized but his acknowledgement of the colonial master’s wisdom.3
If World War I turned America into one of several globally importantcenters of power, World War II propelled it to absolute dominance in theWestern world. To maintain this position and to use it as a basis for still
greater expansion, the US found it necessary to wage and win what is
known as the Cold War, with East Asia as a major battleground.
COLD WAR AND THE BHI’S CONSOLIDATIONThe nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki turned out to beboth a ﬁnal shot in a ﬁght with the Japanese and a prelude to America’s
nearly half-a-century confrontation with the USSR (whom Harry
Truman tried to scare with his newly acquired weapon). Though nuclear
strikes were not to be repeated, their shadow—and the shadow of those
who ordered them—hung over the rest of the Cold War era. In addition,
America’s East Asian record of that period included acts of aggression,
lost battles, the promotion of political purges, the empowerment and perpetuation of dictatorial regimes. Nonetheless, the US did manage, inthese circumstances and with such a record, to build up its BHI. The
question is: who would perceive the US hegemony as benevolent andwhy?
In seeking answers it might be useful to take into account the shapeand the images of some other regional players during the ﬁrst Cold War
years. Japan’s occupation of East Asian lands in the 1930s and 1940s
had infuriated the locals and left a very bitter memory. But Japan was
now militarily destroyed and humiliated. Old colonial powers had been

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badly weakened by the recent all-European upheaval and, no matter how
hard they tried, could not turn back the tide of national liberation sweeping across the region. Neither the Soviet Union with all the damage
inﬂicted on it by the Nazis, nor the People’s Republic of China rising out
of its civil war ashes were capable, realistically speaking, of posing serious economic challenges, let alone direct military threats, to the UnitedStates.
But, burdened though they were with domestic problems, neither
Communist regime was in a defeatist mood. On the contrary, having justmanaged to prevail in struggles of historic proportions, they each feltthat the future belonged to them, behaved assertively in the international
arena and inspired a militant following worldwide. Since the US ruling
elite was sticking then as now to the logic of preemption, its response
was loud and forceful. Systematic demonization of the Communist opponents (made easier by the repressive aspects of Stalinist and Maoist policies)—and, by implication, a portrayal of an anti-Communist America
as the Force of Good—became an integral part of the US containment
strategy.
With America as its commander-in-chief, the anti-Communist crusade
was conceived as a comprehensive military, political, economic and cultural effort of all who joined it. Geared to the use of hard and soft power
on a multilateral scale, this bigger-than-life enterprise was ostensibly
aimed against “the inﬁdels,” but in reality served as the vehicle for an
unprecedented global expansion of the United States. Today, with theacuity of hindsight, one ﬁnds more and more reasons to believe that such
expansion was actually the ﬁrst and real priority of the whole operationof containment.4
East Asia’s share of typical Cold War troubles was enormous. Nonetheless few would dispute the fact that the American strategy of containing Communism helped to bring about the East Asian economic
miracles and the beginnings of East Asian regionalism, thereby changing the region beyond recognition.
The starting point was Japan. In Washington’s view, the former
enemy’s quick reconstruction was an antidote against the rise of local
Communism and an essential precondition for the desired regional order.
The US military shield and political guidance provided a security framework for the captains of the Japanese industry to resume their work and,in a matter of years, transform the collapsed economy into a booming

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one. Treating Japan in this way, the Americans performed a double service to the rulers of East Asian non-Communist states. On the one hand,
the reemergence of Japanese militarism as a threat to the region was forestalled. On the other, a reinvigorated Japan was now a valuable sourceof the capital, know-how and ideas that its less developed neighbors
badly needed.
South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore led the rest of theregion in mastering these lessons and transforming themselves into “thenewly industrialized economies” (NIEs)—but not before the US substantially intervened in the ﬁrst two of them, taking Chiang Kai-shek’snationalist government in Taiwan under its wing, going to war in Korea
and establishing a permanent military presence to the south of the 38th
parallel. Like Japan, these “four dragons” needed foreign outlets for theirexport-oriented industries, and the US kept its market open for theirproducts as it had for those made in Japan.
If the aftermath of the Korean War proved conducive to the growth of
the ﬁrst-generation NIEs, then America’s wars in Indo-China indirectly
prompted the accelerated modernization and the process of regional integration for another group of countries.
Developments in Vietnam in the mid-1960s compelled the US to
acknowledge that its reliance on puppets in ﬁghting Communism was
futile. To step out of this mess without provoking the spread of “the Red
Menace” to neighboring countries, the Americans needed a barrier—achain of stable political regimes sympathetic to each other and friendly
towards Washington. Demand generated supply: The Association ofSoutheast Asian Nations (ASEAN), initially comprising Indonesia,
Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, was launched in1967. Unlike SEATO, ASEAN was not a military bloc, and all its members belonged to the region itself.5 While this reﬂected the desire of the
Association’s founders for more independence in their external affairs,
their well-known anti-Communism left no doubts as to where they stoodon the Cold War front.
In time it became clear that the Association’s members were united
by a deeper resemblance in their political, economic and ideologicalaspirations. A somewhat similar model of capitalist modernization was
evolving in each of the ASEAN ﬁve. Guarantees of political stability
were provided by rightist authoritarian regimes who ruled with various
degrees of repression and rigidity. Much like in Japan and the NIEs, production and services were developing within the framework of export-

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oriented, mixed economies, combining market freedoms with a healthy
dose of state regulation. Ideology was dominated by ofﬁcial nationalism
which, having no tolerance for leftism, was moderate enough so as not
to alienate foreign capital. American, Japanese, and later NIEs investors
were treated with special care.
Impressive economic growth lasting for almost three decades (withthe notable exception of the Philippines in the 1980s and some minor
interruptions in other cases) was an obvious result of this strategy. No
less signiﬁcant were the signs that some ASEAN states were transforming themselves into viable subjects of history, to the point that national
statehood in the region was becoming stronger. Characteristically, thiswas not at all detrimental to ASEAN as a regional body. According to
Amitav Acharya, Southeast Asians had been nurturing “the nationalist
vision of regionalism” well before the birth of their Association.6 Developing this idea in his own way, Alexey Bogaturov once noted thatthese nations, aware of their individual weaknesses, “embraced the ideaof asserting the national self of each of them by joining their efforts. . . .
While the European integration offered the gradual elimination of stateborders, the East Asian one was aimed at their reinforcement and painstaking mutual ‘grinding-in’ of the nations in order to avoid future quarrels that may reduce their capabilities.”7
Meaningful as they were, the East Asian changes that are outlined
above acquired a new dimension after Richard Nixon’s visit to Beijing(1972). Conducted on the anti-Soviet basis and thus putting the USSR
as America’s number one adversary under new pressure, the US-China
rapprochement also prepared the ground for the opening up of theChinese economy, the four modernizations policy, the endorsement ofprivate initiative in the PRC and, eventually, the biggest East Asian
miracle of them all. The increasing acceptance of China in the region
and its new contacts with Japan, the ASEAN members and even Taiwan,
were looked upon as another remarkable sign of the times. Despite theirstaunch anti-Communism, East Asian leaders were too pragmatic to missthe full importance of the switch from Maoist revolutionism to the reformism of Deng Xiaoping. The opportunities of doing business with
China were also not to be ignored. On the political plane the 1979–1991
attempts to resolve the Cambodian conﬂict brought together the US, its
old East Asian allies and the PRC in ways unthinkable in the midst of
America’s Indo-China adventure.
As the Cold War came to an end, there was hardly a doubt that Japan,

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the NIEs, most ASEAN members and China were among the top beneﬁciaries of this period in history. Mindful of sweeping generalizations,
one might nevertheless suggest that sufﬁcient sectors in the ruling elites
and the growing middle classes of these countries, even perhaps somemen in the street, did have reason to view the US as the benevolent hegemon of East Asia. Not so the peasants of Vietnam whom this hegemon
tried to bomb into the Stone Age, nor the resistance ﬁghters in East Timor
annexed by Indonesian generals with the blessing of Gerald Ford andHenry Kissinger.
A TURNING POINT IN THE BHI STORY
What could have strengthened America’s BHI more than the Cold War
victory? If the answer is “Nothing,” then what about the noticeable signsof this image’s erosion so soon after the triumph? A comparison of theviews and intentions typical of East Asian and American leaders in theimmediate post-Cold War period provides a clue to this puzzle.
The East Asians were interested, above anything else, in sustaining
their economic dynamism and avoiding any political instability thatmight disrupt it. Longing to preserve a status quo in this very basic sense,
they imagined that a sudden disappearance of what used to be known as
the Soviet threat might prompt an American military withdrawal fromthe region. Local and external analysts hypothesized that this would create a power vacuum and provoke a disruptive competition to ﬁll it. They
feared for the peace and prosperity of the region from the aggravation ofsome dormant but potentially harmful conﬂicts (such as the multilateral
dispute over the sovereignty of the South China Sea islands). Some drewup pessimistic scenarios in which Japan, or China, or both, no longer
restrained by the US presence and Cold War obligations, succumb totheir latent imperial instincts and opt for aggressive regional strategies
ruinous to the whole neighborhood. America’s presence was consideredso vitally important to the region that when in 1991 Manila legislators
voted for the evacuation of the US bases from the Philippines, other
ASEAN countries immediately offered the US Navy and Air Force
access to sea ports and air ﬁelds (though not in the framework of permanent basing).
This is not to say that the American habit of imposing its own humanitarian standards on the rest of the world was not provoking allergic
reactions among East Asians. They also had an impression that, having

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adopted in the late 1980s the Australian idea of creating a structure topromote economic integration and trade in the whole of Asia-Paciﬁc,Washington was striving to secure its pre-eminence in the newly emerging body. In fact, Malaysian Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamad said
as much by his 1990 counterproposal to convene the East Asian Economic Caucus (EAEC) without the US, Canada, Australia and New
Zealand. And if eventually the ASEAN countries joined the Asia-Paciﬁc
Economic Cooperation forum (APEC) and approved the American program of energizing it at the summits in Seattle (1993) and Bogor (1994),
they were, in all probability, motivated by the desire to keep America
engaged in East Asia. Simultaneously, however, they were making clear
their intention to become collectively a stronger and more autonomous
player. This is seen in the policy of ASEAN’s enlargement through theadmittance to full membership of the Indo-Chinese states; the launch of
the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF, 1994) focused on issues of AsiaPaciﬁc security, with the Association in “the driver’s seat”; and the AsiaEurope Meeting (ASEM, 1996) where the EU members represented the
Old World, while the members of ASEAN plus China, Japan and South
Korea represented Asia.
In the meantime, US policymakers demonstrated in words and deeds
that their post-Cold War agenda was rooted in the adamant desire to preserve in perpetuity the status of “the only superpower” and to convert
their late twentieth century geopolitical victory into mammoth geo-economic gains. Globalization sermons with their anti-statist themes, calls
for instant political democratization, and adoption of free trade and economic liberalism were aimed at achieving both purposes. Old anti-Soviet
alliances were being refashioned and overhauled to make them handy
for nipping in the bud any future attempt to challenge the US hegemony.
Neo-conservative think-tanks kept trying to identify potential challengers before it was too late.
The early (and often mutually contradictory) manifestations of thisline in East Asia included hypercriticism of Japan (or “Japan-bashing,”as they called it) for alleged practices of unfair trade and economic
advantages due to strategic dependence on the US; unnecessarily provocative approaches to the hotbeds of tension on the Korean Peninsula
and in the Taiwan Straits; and attempts to draw Japan, South Korea andTaiwan into the development of East Asian Theater Missile Defense.
The latter efforts exposed the US perception of the PRC as a state thatwas grooming itself for global rivalry with the United States. Assessments

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VICTOR SUMSKYof this kind, circulating among the temporarily out-of-power Reaganites,
obviously inﬂuenced the treatment of Beijing by the Clinton administration. Its diplomacy was not well calibrated, liable to variations andnot too popular in the region.
At the same time the behavior of East Asians themselves was provoking more and more displeasure across the Paciﬁc. The expectations
that APEC would work as a tool for opening up East Asian economies
were not being fulﬁlled. At the APEC summit in Osaka (1995) theJapanese, the representatives of ASEAN and other Asians managed toinsist that they themselves would determine the speed of their trade liberalization. Wishing to add the debating of international security issues
to the APEC mandate (and outﬂank the ARF whose prerogative it was),the Americans ran into further resistance. ASEAN’s offer of membership to Myanmar, whose military rulers were depicted in the West as theworst human rights violators, angered Washington still more. Anotherhot issue was the mistreatment of East Timorese by Jakarta, periodicallydenounced by the US Congress. Weary of these reprimands, the informal leader of ASEAN boldly returned the favor. In 1997, months before
its ﬁnancial collapse, the New Order regime refused to buy an F-16
squadron from the US and announced instead the purchase of Russianﬁghter planes. From the US point of view, this was strengthening a badtrend. Just two years before, in 1995, Kuala Lumpur resisted American
arm-twisting and came to an agreement with Moscow over the supplyof eighteen MIG-29s. Following Malaysia’s and Indonesia’s examples,Thailand and the Philippines also started taking an interest in Russian
military hardware.8
Unusually frequent rifts and clashes of opinions between the US and
the ASEAN members were hardly a matter of coincidence. Trans-nationalist, radically pro-market scenarios of globalization were incompatible
with the efforts to strengthen national statehoods in the ASEAN zone.
These countries were told to discard the model of modernization that had
shown its efﬁciency, and to do so with the work of modernization stillin progress. Refusing to obey, they tried to defend their choice throughthe concept of Asian values. This attempt to explain the speciﬁcs of socialtransformations in the region got a pointedly lukewarm reception in
Europe and America.
Booming East Asian capital markets of the mid-1990s served as asmokescreen to cover the growing differences between the US and theregion. But this same boom, made possible by hasty ﬁnancial liberal-

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ization in several countries, allowed transnational currency speculators
to hit them like never before.
THE ASIAN CRISIS AND THE BHI EROSION
The strictly economic aspects of the crisis that started with the crashof the Thai baht on July 2, 1997, have been described too often to warrant a retelling. Today most victims of that crisis have improved theirmacroeconomic performance. China, untouched by the ﬁnancial havocof the late 1990s, continues to grow with amazing speed, while Japan is
ﬁnally out of an unusually lengthy recession. Many observers tend to see
the Asian Crisis as a thing of the past. This may be correct if one views
it as a moment of dangerous instability for a number of currencies andbanking systems. But those who approach it in a less technical and more
holistic manner and take into account the entire spectrum of its consequences, be they social or psychological, domestic or global, may notshare this conclusion. Among the present day phenomena observable in
East Asia that can and should be linked to the shock of 1997–98 are theweakening of ASEAN as well as nation state structures in some of its
member countries. Not to be overlooked are various manifestations of
the middle-class disillusionment with ofﬁcial politics, the rise of extremism in religious, particularly Islamic garb, coupled with denunciationsof the whole globalization project and the US role in promoting it.
Though the BHI erosion started fairly soon after the US triumph in theCold War, it was the Asian Crisis that turned this process into somethingalmost palpable. The reasons lie in Washington’s own reaction to thetroubles of its long-time friends.
To the US, this crisis, at least initially, was a kind of reward for theregional discomforts it had endured in the early 1990s. Failing to impose
its prescriptions on East Asian economies through APEC, it now pursued
the same objective by relying on the International Monetary Fund. IMF“assistance” came along with a set of such well known conditions aslimits on budgetary expenses, mass bankruptcies of insolvent companies
and the admittance of foreign investors to segments of domestic economies previously inaccessible to them. Nevertheless, pressing circumstances forced the leaders of Thailand, Indonesia and South Korea toaccept these packages.
The dire impact of the crisis not just on ASEAN, but on the wider
forums for regional security and multilateral cooperation was not too

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worrisome for Washington. Not playing a central role in ARF and excluded from ASEM, it did not have much to lose in that sense. Instead,the US exploited the sharpened sense of vulnerability in East Asia byoffering increased military aid to some in exchange for greater access totheir naval and air facilities, training grounds and maintenance centers.
These moves added greater ﬂexibility to the American military presence
and at the same time shortened the strategic lead on which the US held
its regional partners.
While Washington was making these gains, the crisis victims were becoming increasingly unhappy with IMF stabilization programs. Ample
evidence in the Fund’s history showed that such programs could only
aggravate the situation that initially pushed the borrowers to this creditorof last resort. There were also suspicions that the US and the Fund were
trying not so much to save the local economies as to bail out big foreign
investors who faced the prospect of heavy losses. Finally, the IMF-prescribed restructuring might easily end up with the dirt-cheap sale of thebest local banks and production units to transnational dealers, and the
reduced capacity of the states in crisis to determine their own economic
policies.
On top of that, the Clinton administration blocked the initiative ofJapan and Taiwan to create the Asian Monetary Fund (which was designed to grant assistance with no IMF-like conditions), and employed
the IMF for purposes of regime change in Indonesia. Next Vice President
Al Gore who represented the US at the November 1998 APEC summit
in Kuala Lumpur urged the Malaysians to disobey their duly constituted
government for its temerity in rejecting the Fund’s dictate.
Whether or not Washington realized what these policy moves were
doing to its reputation is anybody’s guess. But if it acted in full awareness, then it was practically notifying everyone that a benevolent hegemon image was not necessary for the One and the Only Hegemon.
Painful as it was, the double trauma of the crisis and the US reaction
to it did not reduce the leaders of East Asia to fatalism. In December
1997, right after the ASEAN summit in the Malaysian capital, its participants were joined by counterparts from China, Japan and South Korea.
Next year a similar session took place in Hanoi. In 1999, the same group
met in Manila to issue its Joint Statement on Cooperation in East Asia.
In 2000, in Singapore, it expressed the intention to create a regional free
trade area. Though these and further meetings were outwardly focusedon issues of economic cooperation, the whole of the ASEAN+3 or 10+3

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process, as it has been called, was loaded with discernible political meanings, and some ofﬁcials gladly took the chance to highlight the latter. For
instance, Malaysia’s Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar warmly welcomed ASEAN+3 as the reincarnation of the East Asian Economic
Caucus idea, knowing all too well that the US Assistant Secretary ofState for East Asia and the Paciﬁc Stanley Roth had proclaimed that idea
dead.9In the late 1990s a spontaneous East Asian move away from the UnitedStates would have been more than understandable. But cautious and calculating regional leaders would have never dragged their countries into
a quarrel with America for purely emotional reasons. By all indications,
their maneuvers were based on a sober assessment of what was goingon.
Each of the Northeast Asian economic heavyweights welcomed
ASEAN+3 as a chance to show a friendly face to Southeast Asia anddraw it closer in this time of trials. ASEAN’s own motives seemed a bit
more complex. No other country in the region had suffered from the crisis like Indonesia. Being ASEAN’s core member-state for three decades,it had lost the capacity to play this role in the foreseeable future, and thatloss had to be compensated. Entertaining no illusions about US benevolence, the Association was presumably trying to help itself by forming
a set of special external partnerships to overcome the crisis and prevent
its recurrence. Moreover, these partnerships were supposed to keep
ASEAN members from drifting apart and losing the beneﬁts of togetherness. Those chosen to get involved in this project were China, Japanand South Korea. The ﬁrst displayed immunity to stock and currency
exchange fevers and, refraining from devaluating the yuan, earned thegratitude of its neighbors. The second remained a major investment andﬁnancial assistance provider to the countries of the region in spite of its
stagnating economy and failure to form the Asian Monetary Fund. The
third, incurring heavy losses in 1997, had managed to develop such productive capacity and was so active in the ASEAN area, that to neglect itwould have been unwise.
On the diplomatic front ASEAN was courting this trio much like
Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines had courted Indonesia
some thirty years ago. Back then Indonesia with its size, ambitions anddevelopment potential was offered the role of the group’s unofﬁcial
leader and the stage on which to play the role. The major requirement
had been that Indonesia lead in a non-aggressive way, without hampering

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the dignity and rights of the followers. It now seemed that ASEAN was
making a somewhat similar proposition to China and Japan. To stay face
to face with either of these two would have been less than comfortable
for the Association. By contrast, having formed a group with both China
and Japan (who often saw things differently but still looked destined tocoexist) ASEAN might be able to appeal to the one in case of difﬁculties
with the other, or to mediate between them when they disagreed witheach other. Most important, within such a framework ASEAN would bealmost obliged to sustain its own internal cohesion as a precondition of
being on a more or less equal footing with the Asian giants.
As for the goal that inspired all the ASEAN+3 participants (namely,
joining forces for the sake of common prosperity and stability), it seemed
legitimate and anything but unexpected. What was unusual was the factthat a new page in the history of East Asian regionalism was being
opened against the wishes of the United States.
LONELY AT THE TOP (AND NO LONGER BENEVOLENT)At the dawn of the millennium the United States sits alone on top of
the world. Its presence in East Asia, as in many other parts of the planet,
is multidimensional and solid. The end of its hegemony is still not insight. Yet, had the US given itself the task of thoroughly destroying theimpression about its benign attitude towards the rest of the human race,
it could have limited itself to doing simply what it has been doing since
9/11. Acting under the guise of ﬁghting terror, eliminating “the outpostsof tyranny” and introducing the world of Islam to democracy, the Bushadministration has not only demonstrated disregard for internationallaw, a unilateralist stance in global affairs and readiness to wage preemptive and preventive wars. It has codiﬁed these into principles in “TheNational Security Strategy of the United States of America” (2002).10
Yet Washington’s determination to get rid of its enemies and remake
the world in its image has not been rewarded with the successes beﬁtting
its supposed omnipotence. Osama bin Laden walks free. Afghanistan
and Iraq are yet to be paciﬁed. Neither North Korea nor Iran is ready to
bow to American pressure.
What is questionable is not just the efﬁcacy of speciﬁc American
moves, but America’s fundamental capacity for constructive relations
with other nations and, from their perspective, the historical wisdom ofsustaining close relations with America. None among the East AsianAMERICA IN EAST ASIA

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countries has had such a long history of political, economic and culturalinteractions with the US as the Philippines. It cannot be mere coincidence that this same country is suffering today from a severe social polarization, an oligarchic grip on its government and an appalling shortageof economic dynamism.
A predisposition towards political and economic options that contradict or ignore American priorities is reﬂected in phenomena of regional importance. Among the examples are Seoul’s disagreements with
Washington about what comprises an optimal approach to Pyongyang,
and lively discussions without US input and participation about the needfor an Asian currency unit. And then, of course, there is the process thatrecently led from ASEAN+3 to the 1st East Asian Summit (Kuala
Lumpur, 2005), with a prospect of using the latter as a basis for the future
East Asian Community.
Disapproval of US behavior is expressed with remarkable frankness
even at the highest ofﬁcial level. “Who is the real terrorist? Well, it’s
America . . . In fact, the US is the King of terrorists because of its war
crimes in Iraq. The US condemns terrorists but itself carries out terror
acts on Iraq,” said the Indonesian Vice President Hamzah Haz in 2003.
At about that time 74 percent of his compatriots who took part in a corresponding opinion poll were reportedly worried by the prospect of the
US military threat to their country.11
The importance of these facts is underscored by the emergence of aforce that has not yet acquired hegemonic proportions but whose statureis nevertheless growing constantly. This is, naturally, China, perceived
by a considerable number of regional players as not devoid of benevolence. Without going into the details of its present “charm offensive” inEast Asia, sufﬁce it to note how smartly and opportunely it displays thequalities that Bush’s policymakers reject. Only lately a believer in multilateralism, Beijing has become a masterful user, interacting with its
neighborhood in a lively way and putting relations with the neighbors
on a sound legal basis. Its contributions to the well-being and integration of East Asia are doing much to enhance China’s image as a supporter, not disrupter, of the status quo.
Although the overall regional potential of the US is still relatively
greater, China now holds the political initiative. Unless China stumbles
over something, a US effort to grab the initiative back will not be easy.
Will the US resign itself to the rise of this new rival, or will it try toundercut it? Judging by all that is known about the instincts and outlook

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of American ruling elites, they are more likely to pick the second option.
If so, then the predictions about another Great Game or another Cold
War are not quite hollow, and the region’s future is less than bright.
A major variable in any East Asian scenario is the state of relations
between China and Japan. The current strains in this relationship areoften attributed to the overlapping of historical wrongs, painful memories and nationalist feelings that arise on both sides as each longs for new
international prominence.
The problem, however, is more complicated. Tokyo, with its declaredintentions to be a more independent international player, does not see
the strengthening of its alliance with Washington as contradictory tothese intentions. But Beijing obviously does. It is against this backgroundthat Mr. Koizumi’s visits to the Yasukuni Shrine where all of Japan’s
war dead (including A-class war criminals) are consecrated arouse more
and more anger in China. Of course, these visits, as well as Japanese history textbook revisions to correct the record of Japan’s incursions, may
be quite irritating in themselves. But are they creating bilateral strains,or are they just steeling China’s ﬁrm refusal to accept Japan’s contradictory posture? And if China is so unreceptive to the Japanese bid formembership in the UN Security Council, then is not this posture at least
partly to blame? Does China after all need a new Security Council member whom it expects to vote in unison with the US?
Working to build up its relations with Beijing and Washington, Tokyo
cannot rely on just its own impressions and assessments of these two.
Being linked as closely as it is to East Asia, Japan needs to take into
account the opinions about the US and China that dominate in the region.
If the present trends are correctly described in this article, then someday
the opinion that America’s benevolent hegemony is history will get theattention it deserves among the Japanese leaders, and appropriate conclusions will follow.
CONCLUSIONSThis rich and graphic material offers a base for generalizations that
may be valid beyond the regional limits that frame the discussion in thispaper:• A benevolent hegemony is a contradiction in terms and by nature cannot be stable and permanent.

AMERICA IN EAST ASIA141

• A benevolent hegemon image signiﬁes that a hegemony has not yet
reached its full development.
• A fully developed hegemon does not care about attributes or apologetics. It is not ashamed of using naked power, feels no need to appear
benevolent or to cultivate in others a perception of its benevolence.
THUS SPOKE PROFESSOR TARLE (A POSTSCRIPT)
Putting ﬁnishing touches to this text, I cannot resist the temptation to
make one more statement and ask another question. The BHI erosion was
as much a product of circumstances beyond the US control as an outcome of America’s self-punishing but fully conscious actions. Where is
the logic in this kind of behavior?
Just as my introduction was built around a meaningful citation, anothermemorable quote will bring this paper to a close. The author is Evgeny
Tarle (1875–1955), a brilliant Russian and later Soviet historian who
penned in the 1930s a volume of essays on the genesis of European colonialism. Describing the Invincible Armada’s catastrophe of 1588, Tarle
noted that for Spain this expedition was essentially a preemptive move
aimed at crushing potential contenders for supremacy on the high seas.
He summarized his observations in the following passage: “Pretty often
in the history of feudal and capitalist states it happens that, when the ruling classes start to realize that time is working against them, they launcha military offensive in too much of a hurry and in this very way accelerate
their own end.”12
Tarle’s message is that for a hegemony, self-destructiveness, fed bydisproportionate concerns about self-preservation and overemphasis on
preemptive actions, is the norm rather than an aberration. If this is so andif hegemonies are inherently self-destructive, capable of damaging themselves in ways that no external enemy is able, then two more points arise.
• A loss of benevolence shows that a hegemony, no matter how mighty
its appearance, is already operating in a self-destructive mode.
• While statistics, depicting imbalances of power, may suggest that ahegemon is much stronger than its potential adversaries, it is worth
remembering that in a phase of self-destruction a hegemon is playing
against itself, too. And the stronger it is, the stronger it can play against
itself.

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VICTOR SUMSKY

NOTES
I.V. Stalin, Sochineniya [Works], vol. 13 (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoye izdatelstvo
politicheskoy literatury, 1951), 114.
2
Theodore Friend, Between Two Empires: The Ordeal of the Philippines, 1929–1946(Manila: Solidaridad Publishing House, 1969), 170.
3
Carlos P. Romulo, Mother America: A Living Story of Democracy (Garden City,
N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1943), 117.
4
For a consistent development of this theme see A.I. Utkin, Amerikanskaya imperiya[American Empire] (Moscow: EKSMO, 2003), ch. 3.
5
SEATO, standing for Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, was established in 1954
with the participation of Australia, Great Britain, France, New Zealand, Pakistan, thePhilippines, the US and Thailand.
6
Amitav Acharya, The Quest for Identity: International Relations of Southeast Asia
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 43–51.
7
A.D. Bogaturov, Velikiye derzhavy na Tikhom okeane. Istoriya i teoriya mezhdunarodnykh otnosheniy v Vostochnoy Azii posle vtoroy mirovoy voyny (1945–1995)[Great Powers on the Paciﬁc: History and Theory of International Relations in East Asia
after World War II, 1945–1995] (Moscow: Konvert–MONF, 1997), 201–02.
8
D. Litovkin, “Dorogu indoneziyskim SU prolozhili malayziyskiye MIGi” [The Way
for the SUs to be Sold to Indonesia was Prepared by the MIGs Sold to Malaysia],
Izvestiya (Moscow) 7 August 1997; D. Kosyrev, V “Moskvu priyezzhayet potentsialnyi
pokupatel rossiyskikh istrebiteley” [A Potential Buyer of Russian Fighter Planes Comes
to Moscow], Nezavisimaya Gazeta (Moscow), 10 September 1997; I. Korotchenko,“Moskva predlagayet oruzhiye Bangkoku” [Moscow Offers Weapons to Bangkok],
Nezavisinaya Gazeta, 24 October 1997; C. Bickers, “Bear Market: Russia Wants to Be
Top Arms Supplier to Asia,” Far Eastern Economic Review (Hong Kong), 4 September
1997, 25–26.
9“America’s Asia Point Man: Roth Defends APEC, Engagement and Al Gore,”
Asiaweek (Hong Kong), 19 February 1999; S. Oorjitham, “ASEAN+3=“EAEC”,
Asiaweek, 15 March 2000.
10
The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, September 2002
<http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.pdf>. For an analysis of reactions to the Bush
Doctrine in East Asia see: Amitav Acharya, “The Bush Doctrine and Asian Regional
Order: The Perils and Pitfalls of Preemption,” Asian Perspective (Seoul), 27, no. 4(2003): 217–47.
11
M. Baker, “Southeast Asia Turns on Bush,” Age (Melbourne), 20 March 2004; E.
Economy, “China’s Rise in Southeast Asia: Implications for Japan and the UnitedStates” <http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=6350>.
12
Ye. V. Tarle, Ocherki istorii kolonialnoi politiki zapandoyevropeiskikh gosudarstv(konets XV-nachalo XIX v.) [Essays on the History of West European States’ Colonial
Policy, Late Fifteenth-Early Nineteenth Century] (Moscow: Nauka, 1965), 92.
1