** 
**Low Energy and High Friction: 
**How Domestic Determinants ShapeU.S. National Security Policy 
**in the Asia-Pacific
** 
by
 
Stephen D. Wrage
 
 
 
Stephen D. Wrage is Associate Professor of Political Science at theUnited States Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland.
 
 
 
 Introduction: Questions of Method
            The earliest seriousscholarship on the domestic determinants of American foreign policy was JamesRosenau�s.  In the introduction to his1966 edited book, *Domestic Sources ofForeign Policy*, he wrote, �The links between the domestic sources and theresulting behavior�foreign policy�are not easily observed and are thusespecially resistant to coherent analysis.�[1]  In a work a year later, he added, 
 
Most scholarly treatments of foreign policy are either case studies orinstitutional analysis; that is, they are concerned either with the effects ofmany sources in a particular situation or with the effect of a single source ina variety of situations.  Rare is thework that traces and assesses the relative contribution made by many sources inmany diverse situations.  The number ofnon-governmental factors that can shape a society�s foreign policy isstaggering, and , accordingly, the task of piecing them together into a coherentwhole is extraordinarily complex.�[2]
This essay aims to assess many sources in many diverse situations,posing questions that Rosenau warns are �resistant to coherent analysis� anddealing with cause and effect links that �are not easily observed� where thenumber of factors to consider is �staggering� and �the task of piecing themtogether. . . . is extraordinarily complex.� Even if expectations about the findings cannot be high, the effort iswell worth attempting.RecentScholarship
            In the last five yearstwo studies, concurrent in most of their findings, provide the best availableguides for this inquiry.  In 1992through 1994, David A. Deese of Boston College convened a series of meetingsaiming to �delineate the political changes transforming the American foreignpolicy process since the 1960s.�[3]  In 1995, Harry Harding of George WashingtonUniversity and Bruce Jentleson of Duke University brought together anothergroup of scholars at the Aspen Institute in Wye, Maryland for much the samepurpose.  The Aspen Institute studycentered on two case studies, one on international response to violence in EastTimor and one on the debate over Most Favored Nation (MFN) trading status forChina.
            Both groups found thatany such inquiry must take into account a huge and rapidly expanding array offactors, much more extensive even than Rosenau had considered.  Among the intangibles (and unmeasurables) tobe included are national character and world view as well as the prevailingpopular vision of America�s global role. This may derive in great degree from the current national mood, whichitself seems to bear some relation to scores of other factors such as thenation�s recent economic performance, the recentness or distance in time from awar, immigration and demographic shifts, widely held perceptions of the trendsin global affairs, etc.
            Both studies stressthat one must also consider changes in the policy making process, to include anincrease in the number of actors and participants, a blending (and dilution) oftraditional national security issues with humanitarian, commercial andenvironmental issues, a trend toward much greater involvement of the public andof non-governmental organizations (NGOs), a greater part played bytransnational organizations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), adiminished role for the specialized elites from academia and think tanks and arise in the power of Congress and of the media, generally at the expense of thetraditional policy makers in the executive branch. 
            The Deese studyoptimistically welcomed the proliferation of actors and of forces shaping U.S.foreign policy, hailed the increase in pluralism, was very hopeful about theprospects for foreign policy by broad-based consensus, and heralded the welcomearrival of what it called �deliberative politics.�  The Harding group reached much more nuanced and reservedconclusions about what they called �the growing cacophony of the Americanpolitical process.�  They endorsed the findingof the Deese study that �the foreign policy-making process in the United Statesis in a state of fundamental transformation,� and they described thattransformation as follows:
 
Previously, foreign policy was determined in a highly elitist process,in which the executive branch made policy, with bipartisan support from Congressand in consultation with a relatively small group of foreign policy specialistsoutside government.  Today, foreignpolicy is the product of a much more pluralistic process, in which Congressplays a far more important role, and in which organized interest groups outsidegovernment attempt to persuade both Congress and the executive branch to adopttheir favored positions on key issues. In addition, Washington no longer has a monopoly on the conduct of U.S.foreign relations.  Decisions made byprivate institutions and by local governments now have a major impact onAmerica�s relations with foreign societies.[4]
            Those two studiescertainly were right to discern a �new politics of foreign and nationalsecurity policy,� though cacophony appears greater than deliberativeness.  This paper will speak to the matters theabove studies raise in turn: first the intangibles--national character, worldview and national mood--then the somewhat more observable matters involving expandedparticipation in the policy process.AmericanCharacter and World View
            The essence of theAmerican character in foreign policy is captured in a few basic propositionsthat have endured since the earliest days of European settlement.  The most central of these dates back toGovernor John Winthrop, leader of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who declared in1630 that �We are as a city upon a hill. . . . the eyes of all the world areupon us. . . .  We bear a light unto theworld.  We should not hide our lightunder a bushel.�  It is remarkable thatin 1980, 350 years later (a long span in America�s history) Ronald Reagan wasrepeating the same �city on a hill� phrase. 
            Twined around this viewis a second basic proposition: that America is the �New Jerusalem,� the �NewCanaan� or the �New Israel,� a promised land given by God and meant as a model(and a rebuke) to the nations of Europe which, like Babylon or Sodom, arefallen, corrupt, abandoned by God and meant to be redeemed by the �New Eden.�[5]  Asia (principally China), by contrast toEurope, was �somnolent,� destined to be awakened by Americans� idealistic anddemocratic vitality.  Though this idearesonated particularly in the days of the Puritans and later in the GreatAwakening, it was also strongly alive in the minds of Theodore Roosevelt�sgeneration and can be heard today in the voices of the Christian fundamentalistright.  Both these propositions presentforeign affairs as a drama and the world as a stage on which America works itswill (which is God�s will) magnanimously and irresistibly
            The notion that Americais a light unto the world, �the primitive and precious model toward which allthe world shall move,� as Thomas Jefferson called it,  �the last, best hope of earth,� in Abraham Lincoln�s words, isthe most fundamental element of the American character.  Even in its more secular expressions, itcreates in Americans an expectation that all nations will in significant waysreplicate the �American experiment for all mankind.�  Looking for replicators, U.S. citizens perceived in Simon Bolivaror San Martin �the George Washington of Latin America� or �the GeorgeWashington of the Andes,� and Louis Kossuth, leader of the revolt of Hungariansagainst Austrian rule in 1848, was labeled in newspaper editorials �the GeorgeWashington of the Danube.�
            Obviously Asia is hardto contain in this framework of assumptions. Nonetheless, some newspapers called Chiang Kai-shek �the GeorgeWashington of China,� and many Americans felt a great sense of puzzlement andbetrayal when China followed Mao.  Theydemanded to know, �Who lost China?�--as though it had been destined to beAmerica�s at least in the sense that it would follow America�s lead andexample.  The same thinking ledAmericans to read the post-war recovery of Japan as proof of the compellingattractiveness of the American model and of its power to transform a fallenimperial system into a prosperous democracy. 
            In the 1950s and 60s,the rejection of the American model by former colonies in Asia and Africacaused much surprise and distress as Americans wondered, �Why are intellectualsin Africa and Latin America and Asia reading Marx and Lenin?  Why aren�t they reading Jefferson andMadison?�  John Kennedy called on astrong belief in the transformative power of the American example to sellCongress and the American people on such programs as the Peace Corps, theAlliance for Progress and the space race. In the 1970s the shocks of Vietnam and Watergate and the revelations ofCIA misdeeds put the American example in a much less flattering light, but the�global wave of democracies� Ronald Reagan discerned in the 1980s reignitedthis expectation that America would find imitators around the world, as did thefailure of communism in Central Europe and the Soviet Union.  In the 1990s, after the Cold War�s end, theconfidence is muted, yet one can sense the same expectancy in the Americanmind.  For example, it is secretedbetween the lines in Thomas Friedman�s best-seller *The Lexus and the Olive Tree*, in which practices and innovationsidentified with the U.S. and particularly with American corporations andSilicon Valley take the world by storm and transform it irresistibly for thebetter.
            These fundamentalthemes in the American character express themselves in foreign policy in theform of two responses to the world, and Americans tend to embrace one or theother alternately, in pendulum swings of opinion.[6]  They at times emerge as a propensity tocrusade, to transform the world through aggressive and optimistic endeavors,but the crusades generally lapse in less than a decade into phases ofdisengagement and aloofness.  Kennedy�stime and Reagan�s were touched by the spirit of the crusade, and Kennedy�srhetoric expressed the crusading spirit forcefully:
 
�Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we willpay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, opposeany foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.�  
            Crusaders may set outin a spirit of global extroversion to �pay any price,� but this is usuallyfollowed by a retraction, a popular tendency toward disengagement from theworld.  Kennedy�s aggressiveexpansiveness was followed by Nixon�s detente and retraction.  Reagan�s revitalization of the Cold War wasfollowed by Clinton�s introverted and minimalist foreign policy.  At times of national introversion, Americansask, �If our model is compellingly attractive, why go abroad attempting topropagate it?  Indeed, why riskcorrupting or otherwise endangering �the primitive and precious model towardwhich all the world shall move�?�  Thisintroversion reaction particularly sets in after a great effort like a war,especially a protracted struggle like the Cold War.  There can be little doubt that the United States is currently ina phase of introversion.[7]The CurrentNational Mood
            The national mood todayreflects such post-war weariness and wariness of involvement.  Recent polls do not suggest that Americansare outright isolationist, but it is hard to put a much more positive label ontheir mood.  James M. Lindsay of theBrookings Institution prefers the only slightly less severe term  �apathetically internationalist.�  Americans are in favor of engagement in theworld, but only vaguely so.  Over 60percent of Americans polled in 2000 said the U.S. should �stay involved inworld affairs,� but �only two to three percent name foreign policy concerns asthe most important problem facing the country, and Americans have troubleidentifying issues that concern them. When the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations asked people in 1998 toname �the two or three biggest foreign-policy problems facing the United Statestoday,� the most common response by far, at 21 percent, was `don�t know.��[8]
            Political leaders,Lindsay points out, �worry less about what the public thinks about an issuethan about how intensely it cares,�[9]and the presidential campaign gave evidence that the public is no more thanlistlessly interested in foreign affairs. The two candidates, guided by their polls, gave national welfare reformand payment for prescription drugs for the elderly much more attention thanYugoslavia, where we have close to 10,000 troops, or Israel, where over 300died in street fighting, or Russia, which seems to be in a state of dangerousdeterioration.  The foreign policy issuethat commanded most attention was National Missile Defense, perhaps because ofits promise to hold the world at bay.
            Lindsay holds thatapathetic internationalism �encourages politicians, who naturally gravitatetoward issues that matter to the public, to neglect foreign policy.�  He observes that �both the Senate ForeignRelations Committee and the House International Relations Committee havetrouble recruiting members,�[10]in part because those are difficult committees from which to raise funds butalso because Americans are perceived by their representatives as indifferent toforeign affairs.  �This apatheticinternationalism is reshaping the politics of American foreign policy . . .distorting policy choices to favor the noisy few over the quiet many. . ..  [It] �empowers squeaky wheels, . . ..  [because] when there are a few peoplewho will die for the issue, and no one else gets anywhere close to that, theycan have their way.�[11]  It also makes it harder for presidents tolead, because when there is little attention and little strong feeling attachedto an issue, there are no great costs involved in defying the party leadershipand / or the President.  The House ofRepresentatives refused to vote support for the bombing in Kosovo, for example,even though more than 60 percent of the population declared that they supportedthe air campaign.  This may have beenbecause polls also revealed that only one in nine Americans reported that theyfollowed the news about Kosovo �very closely.� In a similar way, even though over 80 percent of Americans polledsupported the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), and even though PresidentClinton and 62 senators had earlier asked that it be withdrawn from theratification process (to avoid certain defeat), the Senate nonetheless voted toreject it and so sent it down to permanent defeat.  The polls also revealed that half those surveyed admitted theyhad heard nothing about the Senate�s consideration of the CTBT.[12]  �Left unchecked,� Lindsay warns, �theseimpulses will prevent the United States from capitalizing on its great power.�[13]  
            At least one analystwarns that the spirit of the American populace may change from aversion tointernational involvement to actual antipathy. William Schneider, a contributing editor to the *Atlantic Monthly*, senses that spirit growing since the end of theCold War:
 
Instead of being driven by a clear-cut, overriding sense of nationalinterest, foreign policy is now becoming �politics as usual�. . . .  That means Americans may no longer seeforeign policy as a cause, an expression of great national purpose.  Instead, they may see it as another area ofcomplex contending interests, domestic as well as foreign.  If that happens, Americans may not just loseinterest in foreign policy.  They mayactively rebel against it. . . .�[14]
            Of course popularindifference and unawareness of foreign affairs is not a new trait amongAmericans.  They have long relied on thecontinental size of their country and its fortunate location between broadoceans and non-hostile neighbors to shield them from the consequences ofinattention.  What may be new, accordingto Hofstra law professor Peter Spiro, is a spreading of the indifference oraversion to foreign policy from the general populace to the informedelites.  Spiro discerns a growingrespectability for isolationism due to the ascendancy of what he calls �The NewSovereigntists.�  He finds amongacademics, editorial writers, high-level bureaucrats and congressional staffersa consensus against the kind of eager commitment to global leadership that JohnKennedy 40 years ago symbolized and stimulated.  He points out that Clinton �could muster only about 40 out of 200members of his own party in the House of Representatives to support his forlornsearch for the authority necessary to negotiate additional trade agreements,�[15]and he offers many examples of rhetoric from journals and editorials citingAmerica�s size and power as reasons why it can and should �go it alone� andwithhold U.N. dues, refuse to sign on to such initiatives as the peacekeepingmission to East Timor or the treaty for the establishment of a permanent warcrimes court or the environmental standards outlined in Kyoto.[16]
            The impact, then, ofthe intangibles of national character, vision and mood is to produce a foreignpolicy of low energy and low drive. There is little vision articulated by the leadership in part becausethere is little enthusiasm or even interest among the populace.  There are few initiatives striking enough tofigure in a presidential campaign in part because there is little publicresponse and because it is so difficult to muster presidential authority andparty discipline to put new initiatives over the top or through the Congress.  The new president will have to work hard todraw together the political capital and the enthusiasm to sustain an activeforeign policy, and what is true for foreign policy as a whole will also be sofor national security policy toward the Asia Pacific. Changes in thePolicy-Making Process and the Rise of the New Politics
            If the intangibleelements of national character and mood make for little drive in Americannational security policy in the Asia-Pacific, developments on the other side ofthe inquiry, changes in the policy making process, make for plenty offriction.  One can certainly say that inrecent years policy-making has become more democratic in the sense that thereare many more voices and less autocratic control from the top down.  It is less certain, however, that democracyis a great thing in foreign policy making. We have it on the authority of Alexis de Tocqueville, a great admirer ofdemocracy in America, that �foreign politics demand scarcely any of thosequalities which a democracy possesses, and they require, on the contrary, theperfect use of almost all those faculties in which it is deficient.�[17]  
            Some trends of changein the foreign policy-making process have been underway for 30 years.  The trend toward a more assertive Congressbegan when the presidency was weakened by the scandal surrounding Watergate andthe defeat in Vietnam.  A succession ofacts of Congress regarding Asia show the challenges the legislative branch hasposed to the executive branch.  In 1970Congress repealed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, depriving President Nixon of themandate they had granted President Johnson to use force in Southeast Asia.  In 1973, both houses overrode Nixon�s vetoto pass the War Powers Act, restricting the commander-in-chief�s power to sendtroops into combat without coming to Congress for a declaration of war.  In 1974 Congress refused to grant mostfavored nation trading status to the Soviet Union as part of a demand thathuman rights (in this case the right of Soviet Jews to emigrate) berespected.  Similar congressional actionwith regard to China would follow in later years.  In 1975 Congress required that all American forces be withdrawnfrom Vietnam, and that they be removed at a faster pace than the executivewould have preferred.  By 1979, theUndersecretary of State William D. Rogers observed in frustration, �Foreignpolicy has become almost synonymous with lawmaking.  The result is to place a straitjacket of legislation around themanifold complexity of our relations with other nations.�  Six years later President Reagan complained,�We have got to get to the point where we can run a foreign policy without acommittee of 535 telling us what we can do.� In the same years Congress reorganized itself to greatly increase thenumber of committees and in the process broke the power of the party leaderswho had once directed affairs with baronial authority.  In 1986 political analyst and columnistDavid Broder observed, �There are 165 different people in the House and Senatewho can answer to the proud title �Mr. Chairman.��[18]
            It can be argued that amore involved Congress makes for policy that more closely reflects the desiresof all the people.  In practice,however, it has often made for policy that reflects the strong desires of the constituenciesof a few members of Congress who carry out a form of �single issue politics,�as when a few members from heavily unionized districts may be very stronglycommitted to blocking a free trade measure. Moreover, it is difficult for members of Congress to be sufficientlyinformed and attentive to foreign and security affairs to be responsible andeffective.  Individual congressmendevelop considerable expertise on security affairs, like Senator Sam Nunn ofGeorgia and Representative Les Aspin of Wisconsin, but most of their peers havenowhere near their depth of knowledge, nor do they have the leisure to educatethemselves.  
            Under the rules of theSenate, a single actor, informed or not, can stymie all action on a bill.  They permit essentially endless debate (a 60percent supermajority is required to close out discussion on an issue, andbusiness cannot go forward until all would-be speakers have been heard orexhausted) and they allow a single senator to put a �hold� on any legislation,meaning it is not to be brought up for final action until he or sheagrees.  This makes compromisenecessary, and policies may be compromised to the point of meaninglessness orunworkability.  In the halls of Congress,it is easy to play a preventer role, so easy that an executive working with Congressmay find it impossible to carry out an active and energetic foreign policy.
            Charles Kegley andEugene Wittkopf point out that President Truman famously kept a sign on hisdesk that declared, �The buck stops here.� There is no such desk in Congress. 
 
Over half of the standing committees in both the House and Senate havebroadly defined jurisdictions that give them some foreign affairsresponsibility.  Unlike the executivebranch, where policy debates take place in private with a single individual,the president, often making the final choice, congressional debates areperforce public, with final choices made by counting yeas and nays, and withdecision making diffuse.  Under theseconditions, policy consistency and coordination are most unlikely.[19]  
            With the breakdown ofauthority of party leaders since the 1970s and 1980s, various members of theHouse and Senate have grown more willing to form into cross-party coalitions ofshort duration on issues such as normalizing trade with China, blocking participationin peacekeeping in East Timor or opposing the nuclear reactors deal with NorthKorea.  These coalitions may includevery unusual partners (for example, Democrats whose constituents includeliberal human rights activists and labor unions whose members are concernedover imports from China may team with conservative Republicans whoseconstituents include anti-Communists and anti-abortion activists distressed atChina�s one-child policy).  Thecoalitions cannot be sustained because they are not institutionalized intoparties or established as part of the platform of the two dominantparties.  They are sufficient, however,to block action on an issue through the end of a legislative term.
            The rise of Congress asan actor in foreign and national security policy has facilitated the increasedparticipation of other actors in the same process.  Interest groups energetically work to influence members of theHouse and Senate, and in recent years they have learned how to address theirconcerns to members of the various departments of the executive branch and tothe general public.  These interestgroups may be economic in nature and include unions such as the AFL-CIO orUnited Auto Workers and major multinational corporations such as GeneralElectric and Daimler-Chrysler; they may be identity-based and include the CubanAmericans, Vietnamese Americans and Jewish Americans; they may be essentiallypolitical in character and include Amnesty International, Asia Watch orGreenpeace; or they may be governmental and include both state and localgovernments (the California World Trade Commission was represented at the mostrecent meetings of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) and thegovernments of foreign powers. 
            As the seats at thetable increase in number and the voices increase in volume, the onceauthoritative single voice of the executive is muted.  Even the executive branch is a more pluralistic entity than itwas as cabinet departments once little involved in foreign and security policybecome important players.  I. M. Destlerof the University of Maryland argues that the primarily economic departmentslike Treasury and Commerce have become so important in security policyformulation that they should be granted a higher status, perhaps by melding theNational Security Council and the National Economic Council into a NationalPolicy Council.  This would reflect, heargues, the inseparability of security affairs and economic affairs, and offoreign affairs and domestic affairs.[20]  
            Power appears to be shiftingfrom the executive branch into new directions, some of them hard to distinguishat first.  Thomas Friedman, New YorkTimes columnist and apostle of globalization, argues that corporations,investors, currency speculators, mutual fund managers and other finance figuresare huge and little recognized makers of policy whose power will be felt evenmore in the coming four years.  In *The Lexus and the Olive Tree*, he findsthat policy is made by �the electronic herd�--his phrase to sum up all of theseactors and capture the speed with which they can use the Internet to gatherinformation and act on it.[21]
            It is hard to assessthe power and impact of Friedman�s �electronic herd,� but it is clear that thelast few years have witnessed an increase in the power and scope of one largefinancial actor, the International Monetary Fund (IMF).  Robert Zoellick, former Assistant Secretaryof the Treasury, Undersecretary of State and Deputy Chief of Staff in the BushWhite House, captures both the growth of that organization�s power and thedifficulties associated with that growth:
 
The IMF�s power has been expanded [by the Asian economic downturn.]  It is now the source of macroeconomic policyadvice, the lender of last resort, and even the dictator of microeconomic, structural,and trade reforms.  Given the IMF�swide-ranging roles, the institution has become the target of criticism.  It is accused of bailing out recklessinvestors, taking the side of the rich against the poor, being America�spuppet, and adopting much tougher standards for East Asian nations while bowingto political pressure for lenient handling of Russia.  IMF officials are also accused of incompetence.  Though some of these accusations may havemerit, no institution is ready take the IMF�s place in supplying the capitalthat in the right circumstances can help counter financial panics and givecountries a breathing space to implement reforms. Yet the IMF has not acquiredthe political legitimacy to go with its economic clout.  Its evolving roles have not been understood,or accepted, by the U.S. Congress.[22]  
            It is difficult, then,even to list all the relevant actors, or even varieties of actors, in themaking of American national security policy today.  It is possible to conclude, however, that the one obvious productof the proliferation of actors and interests and lines of influence is anincrease in friction: greater difficulty getting anything decided anddone.  Match a high level of frictionwith a low level of drive and one at least risks arriving at a dull stasis.The CurrentSituation, and a Little Speculation
            Into this condition oflow drive and high friction, an administration full of new personalitiesarrives.  It seems certain that the newadministration will be aggressively challenged in all that it does, thoughnational security policy in Asia may be less a battleground than other mattersmore contested in the campaign such as health care and tax cuts.  The new administration�s predecessor certainlyfaced serious opposition even though Clinton decisively won two elections andenjoyed, even during the course of his impeachment hearings, high popularityratings.  President Bush must expect tofeel the pressure of all the forces described above exerting their influence onthe making of foreign policy, plus fierce partisanship from Democrats angryover an election whose results they contested by every possible means.  Not only will Mr. Bush lack the cushion of astrong endorsement from the electorate, he will suffer a shadow over hislegitimacy having lost the popular vote and gained the White House throughrecourse to the courts.
            The speed and secrecywith which Bush chose his cabinet suggests he will have little patience ortalent for the kind of pluralistic, consensus-seeking policy process that thispaper argues has emerged in the national security field in recent years.  He has made it clear that he seeks to have�the most disciplined White House in decades,�[23]and what he seeks in his closest staff he will want to find elsewhere throughouthis government.  Disappointment andclashes seem inevitable.[24]
            President Bush willinherit an obstreperous Congress.  JamesLindsay points out that �45% of current Senators and 61% of currentrepresentatives took office after 1992. They have known only fractious relations with the commander in chief [the President.]�[25]   On the other hand, the lead members of hisnational security team, Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld, arereassuring, unobjectionable choices who do not promise to be the source of manynew initiatives.  None of them has theambitious, egocentric, power-seeking style of a Henry Kissinger, a ZbigniewBrzezinski or an Al Haig.  
            *The Economist* predicts that Secretary of State Powell will remainsteadfast in his resistance to new commitments and his reluctance to sendtroops into conflict areas overseas.  Heopposed the use of force in Iraq, calling instead for economic sanctions andsuggesting they be allowed several years to work, and he supported an early endto the fighting.  He opposed the use oftroops in Bosnia and criticized the bombing campaign against the Serbs.  �Nobody really thinks [the West] has a vitalinterest [in Bosnia], Powell said.[26]  National Security Advisor Rice is likely tobe equally resistant to troop commitments, and she has already speculatedpublicly that the troops deployed to Yugoslavia ought to be withdrawn.  What will this reluctance mean in Asia?  Not that the U.S. would want to pare downtroops in Japan or Korea, but possibly that it would cede some of its role inEurope to the Europeans and turn its attention more toward the Asia-Pacificregion.  So *The Economist* suggests: �Some Europeans, it seems, would dearlylove to start a �reverse Monroe Doctrine�: We run Europe; you run the rest ofthe world (though they are notably reluctant to put their defense spendingwhere their mouth is).[27]
            In Donald Rumsfeld theDefense Department gets a close associate of the influential Vice President,Richard Cheney, a fellow corporate executive used to running a tight ship, anda strong proponent of missile defense, having chaired the commission thatassessed the ballistic missile threat to the U.S. and concluded that NorthKorea and Iran were closer to having weapons capable of striking American soilthan the intelligence agencies had reported.
            Rumsfeld will find aU.S. military that has been operating throughout the 1990s at a very high tempoand under diminishing funding.  ElliotCohen of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies argues thatover the past 10 years the military�s budget has dropped from $382 billion (intoday�s dollars) to a current $279 billion. It needs to replace planes that in some cases are more than 30 years oldand it suffers difficulties in recruiting enlisted people and retaining juniorofficers.  More generally, Cohen says,�American strategy still relies on a Cold War-derived understanding of militarypower and fails to focus on the challenges of the new century: homelanddefense, a rising China, and what can only be termed ��imperial policing��(which he later in the article refers to as �peace-maintenance operations�).[28]  Cohen calls for a shift of attention fromthe rest of the world to Asia:  
 
The objective should be to have�and no less important, be seen to have�adecisive edge over any major competitor, most likely China.  To remain dominant over China, the UnitedStates must not only shift its attention to the Pacific but also start thinkingin entirely new ways about technology, logistics, and operations. For nearlyhalf a century, the American military organized itself to fight a short,extremely intense battle in Europe from large, fixed bases dispersed overrelatively short distances.  Whatever afuture war in Asia might look like, that will not be it.  Winning a conflict in Asia will meanlong-range warfare, with dispersed, mobile, or concealed basing, and the kindsof forces that can sustain a long, perhaps only intermittently violent, clashin the air, at sea, and in space.[29]
            U.S. forces will remainin Asia, as reaffirmed by Admiral Dennis C. Blair, the Commander-in-Chief inthe Pacific, who last month outlined his vision of American purposes in theregion.  Although he set only long-rangeand general aims, he described a very active and demanding process designed tomove the security structure of the region from a wheel (America the hub fromwhich bilateral agreements extend like spokes) to a web in which the U.S.fosters �security communities� of which it is both a member and a securityguarantor for some other members. Rejecting �zero-sum balance of power mindsets,�[30]he endorsed ideas developed by Karl Deutsch in the 1950s when the notion of aEuropean community first was being explored. Deutsch held in 1957 that security communities can be founded in anyenvironment in which states share �dependable expectations of peaceful change.�[31]  In Admiral Blair�s eyes, then, the Americanrole is to make such expectations dependable. This requires an engaged, energetic, committed and continual program ofpreventive diplomacy backed by the evident readiness to use force and involvingmany security guarantees.  It remains tobe seen whether the new administration will be able to shape the national mood,the political consensus and the budgets required for the sort of programs Blairand Cohen outline.
            If the military ispoorly funded at the current juncture, the conduct of U.S. foreign relations isunderfunded.  Richard N. Gardner, formerambassador to Italy and member of the Secretary of State�s Overseas PresenceAdvisory Panel, points out that with a gross domestic product near $10 trillionand a federal budget over $1.8 trillion, the total allotment by Congress forall non-military costs of managing U.S. national security in 2001 comes to $20billion,[32] or onepercent of the budget.  Congress hasresisted additional spending on foreign relations in almost every categoryexcept for the improvement of security at American embassies overseas.  
            A pattern emerges: lowdiplomatic outreach, embassy protection, missile defense, protests in Seattleand Washington against the interdependence that has come with the globalizationof communications and trade . . . all these suggest a wish to keep the outsideworld at bay.  After the longest periodof uninterrupted economic expansion in its history, the nation seems to feelself-sufficient, secure and detached from global affairs.  This attitude was encouraged by the wayAmericans seemed insulated from the economic downturn that struck Asia.[33]  The U.S. economy never faltered in its steadygrowth and job creation.  That apparentimmunity may be showing signs of ending. The Federal Reserve Board has become concerned enough about shrinkinglevels of production and sales that it for the first time lowered interestrates in mid month and did not wait for its usual month-end Open MarketCommittee meeting.  On January 3 andagain on March 20, 2001, it lowered the prime rate by a very substantial halfpercentage point as unemployment edged to 4 percent.  Conclusion
            The current situationof high friction and low drive in national security policy toward Asia is allthe more regrettable as this may be a moment when more energetic leadership bythe U.S. in Asia could be useful. America clearly has a central role to play, a role only more central sinceJuly 1997 and the economic downturn.  Inthe candid analysis of the late academic Michel Oksenberg:
 
No country benefited in absolute terms [from the downturn, but] theUnited States gained relative to the other major powers.  It became more central to regional stabilityand prosperity than at any time since the early 1960s.  Its markets are recognized as pivotal to allcountries in the region as they seek to export their way out of their decline.. . .  [A]ll countries acknowledge andwelcome the role American forward-deployed forces play in maintaining stabilityin the region--China remains reluctant to acknowledge this openly, primarilyout of concern that those forces could be used to defend Taiwan.  No one is speaking any longer of America�simminent demise as an Asia Pacific power.[34]
            But does Americapossess the resources, particularly the commitment, consensus and freedom ofaction, to play this role?  Oksenbergdoubts it.
 
Contrary to expectations of the early 1990s, the future still seems tobelong to the United States.  The regionis placing greater hopes on the United States than Washington has the wisdom,resources, and will to sustain.  TheUnited States is in an overexposed position. It lacks a prescription for swiftly returning the region to rapidgrowth.  U.S. markets are inadequate toenable all the affected countries simultaneously to export their way to rapidgrowth.  U.S. domestic politics probablypreclude it from playing the role others expect of it.  While the Asian model is in disrepute, thereis no rush to embrace the American one.[35]
            Thecurrent American mood of reluctant engagement, and especially �the new politicsof foreign and national security policy,� are formidable obstacles to energeticAmerican leadership in the Asia Pacific. Yet Oksenberg is probably right in saying the U.S. �is more central toregional stability and prosperity than at any time since the early 1960s.�   Under these circumstances it is worthremembering that in the 1960s, Senator J. William Fulbright warned of America�s�arrogance of power� in Asia.  The1960s, however, were a time when America was in one of its extroverted phases,and that was an era when a decisive and assertive foreign policy was easier tosustain.  It would be a sad irony if, in2010, people looked back on this decade as a time when Americans were notarrogantly powerful but rather were distantly ineffectual--a time when theUnited States failed to rise out of its indifference and to overcome thecomplexities of its policy process to play its necessary role in theAsia-Pacific.

[1]  JamesRosenau, Domestic Sources of Foreign Policy (New York: Free Press,1967), p. 2.
[2]  JamesRosenau, �Pre-Theories and Theories of Foreign Policy,� in Approaches toComparative and International Politics, ed. R. Barry Farrell (Evanston:Northwestern University Press, 1966), p. 32. 
[3]  David A.Deese, ed., The New Politics of American Foreign Policy (New York: St.Martin�s Press, 1994), p. v.
[4]  HarryHarding, Final Report of the 89th American Assembly: Public Engagementin American Foreign Policy (Queenstown, MD: Aspen Institute, 1995), p. 3.
[5]  Ernest LeeTuveson, Redeemer Nation: The Idea of America's Millennial Role(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), passim.
[6]  Robert E.Osgood, Ideals and Self Interest in America's Foreign Relations(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950), pp. 1-23.
[7]  On cyclesof introversion and extroversion, see Frank L. Klingberg, �Cyclical Trends inForeign Policy Revisited in 1990,� International Studies Notes 15, no. 2(Spring 1990.)
[8]  James M.Lindsay, �The New Apathy: How an Uninterested Public Is Reshaping ForeignPolicy,� Foreign Affairs 79, no. 5 (September-October 2000), p. 4.
[9] James M. Lindsay, �The New Apathy: How anUninterested Public Is Reshaping Foreign Policy,� Foreign Affairs 79,no. 5 (September-October 2000), p. 2.
[10] James M. Lindsay, �The New Apathy: How anUninterested Public Is Reshaping Foreign Policy,� Foreign Affairs 79,no. 5 (September-October 2000), p. 4.
[11] James M. Lindsay, �The New Apathy: How anUninterested Public Is Reshaping Foreign Policy,� Foreign Affairs 79,no. 5 (September-October 2000), p. 5.
[12] James M. Lindsay, �The New Apathy: How anUninterested Public Is Reshaping Foreign Policy,� Foreign Affairs 79,no. 5 (September-October 2000), p. 3-8.
[13] James M. Lindsay, �The New Apathy: How anUninterested Public Is Reshaping Foreign Policy,� Foreign Affairs 79,no. 5 (September-October 2000), p. 2.
[14]  WilliamSchneider, �From Foreign Policy to �Politics as Usual�,� in The New Politicsof American Foreign Policy, ed. David A. Deese (New York: St. Martin�sPress, 1994), p. x.
[15]  PeterSpiro, �The New Sovereigntists: American Exceptionalism and Its FalseProphets,� Foreign Affairs 79, no. 6 (November-December 2000), p. 13.
[16]  It is alittle startling to find Walter A. McDougall, editor of *Orbis* and authorof the well received new history of American foreign relations, PromisedLand, Crusader State, say in the concluding chapter of that book, �TheUnited States ought simply to close... all its do-gooder agencies [by which hemeans foreign aid programs].  If thepresident and Congress agree that transfers of money are needed to grease theskids for diplomacy (that is, to bribe foreign leaders) or perform a service ofinterest to the United States (for example, dismantle Soviet warheads), let theState or Defense Department dispense such funds from its own budget.�  Walter A. McDougall, Promised Land,Crusader State (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997), p. 210.  
[17] Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America,ed. Harvey C. Mansfield (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), p. 219.
 
[18]  David S.Broder, �Who Took the Fun Out of Congress?� The Washington Post NationalWeekly Edition, 17 February 1986, sec A, p. 9.
[19]  CharlesKegley and Eugene Wittkopf , American Foreign Policy: Pattern and Process(New York: St. Martin�s Press, 1996), p. 435.
[20]  I. M.Destler, �A Government Divided: The Security Complex and the Economic Complex,�in The New Politics of American Foreign Policy, ed. David A. Deese (New York:St. Martin�s Press, 1994), pp. 143-5.
[21]  Thomas L.Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization (NewYork: Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2000), p. 187.
[22]  RobertZoellick, �Campaign 2000 -- A Republican Foreign Policy,� Foreign Affairs79, no. 1 (January-February 2000), p. 38.
[23]  Mike Allenand Dana Milbank, �Cabinet Chosen Quietly, Quickly: Process Presages Effort toBuild a Disciplined Administration,� The Washington Post, 7 January2001, sec. A. p. 1.
[24]  �Aides tosome congressional leaders, who can help make Bush�s life better or moremiserable, said their bosses were miffed that they were not consulted orinformed sooner.� Mike Allen and Dana Milbank, �Cabinet Chosen Quietly,Quickly: Process Presages Effort to Build a Disciplined Administration,� TheWashington Post, 7 January 2001, sec. A, p. 1.
[25] James M. Lindsay, �The New Apathy: How anUninterested Public Is Reshaping Foreign Policy,� Foreign Affairs 79,no. 5 (September-October 2000), p. 6.
[26]  TheEconomist, �The World In Their Hands,� 23 December 2000, p. 29.
[27] The Economist, �The World In Their Hands,� 23December 2000, p. 30.
[28]  Eliot A.Cohen, �Domestic Sources of American Security Policy,� in The DomesticSources of American Foreign Policy, eds. Eugene R. Wittkopf and James M.McCormick (New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), pp. 41, 46.
[29] Eliot A. Cohen, �Domestic Sources of AmericanSecurity Policy,� in The Domestic Sources of American Foreign Policy,eds. Eugene R. Wittkopf and James M. McCormick (New York: Rowman andLittlefield, 1998), p. 45.
[30]  Dennis C.Blair and John T. Hanley, Jr., �From Wheels to Webs: ReconstructingAsia-Pacific Security Arrangements,� The Washington Quarterly 24, no. 1(Winter 2001), p. 9.
[31]  E. Adlerand M. Barnett , eds., Security Communities (Cambridge, UK: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1998), p. 78.
[32]  Richard N.Gardner, �The One Percent Solution: Shirking the Cost of World Leadership,� ForeignAffairs 79, no. 4 (July-August 2000), p. 3.
[33]  FewAmericans expressed much concern about the economic downturn in Asia and manyactually were excited as its seemed to create a demand for more accountabilityand democracy among the urban middle class in many countries.  They assumed that more open, pluralistic,accountable and democratic societies must be on the way.  Congress constrained the president in hisresponse to the crisis.  Robert Zoellickpoints out the irony: �The U.S. has been put in the odd position of not grantingthe president authority to extend (and protect) the open trading system at theexact moment the U.S. is promoting open trade and market solutions to Asia�sproblems.�  Zoellick, �Campaign 2000 --A Republican Foreign Policy,� Foreign Affairs 79, no. 1(January-February 2000), p. 40.
 
[34]  MichelOksenberg, �The Asian Strategic Context,� in Robert Zoellick and PhillipZelikow, America and the East Asian Crisis: Memos to a President  (New York: W.W. Norton, 2000), p.  9-10.
[35] Michel Oksenberg, �The Asian Strategic Context,�in Robert Zoellick and Phillip Zelikow, America and the East Asian Crisis:Memos to a President  (New York:W.W. Norton, 2000), p.  14.**********