For decades, an American security blanket made Asia safe for business. With 100,000 troops and fleets of aircraft and warships, the US military presence guarded commercial sea lanes, suppressed an arms race, boosted anticommunist allies, and generally promoted tranquility in a region with deep rifts between nations. Now that some of Asia's biggest economies are in free fall and others badly wobbling, the US strategy may be put to the test. US officials are now watching for signs that corporate collapses and currency crashes may spark social or political unrest from Indonesia to the Korean peninsula.
Most people are still too stunned and hypnotized by the immediate economic problems.
For Americans, the stakes are high. The impacts, they say, may be worse because Asia has no NATO pact to provide confidence and a collective means of containing strife. That's a pretty predictable recipe for some serious turmoil. Since the end of the cold war, US security policy has been to promote economic growth as a bulwark against Asia returning to the rivalries, insurgencies, and social unrest that had long wracked the region. Washington has been looking to bolster its approach by broadening defense cooperation with Asian states.