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798 The wild card is the attitude of the U.S.,
799 which has the capacity to function in much
800 the same way that Great Britain **once** did in
801 maintaining the European balance of pow-
802 er. The stability of the Asia-Pacific region,
803 the underpinning of its vaunted prosperity,
804 is not a law of nature but the consequence
805 of an equilibrium which will need increas-
806 ingly careful and deliberate tending.

807 In Asia, there is no pretense of collec-
808 tive security or of cooperation based on
809 shared domestic values, even on the part of
810 the few existing democracies. The empha-
811 sis is all on equilibrium and national inter-
812 est. Military expenditures are already ris-
813 ing in all the major Asian countries.

814 In the next century, China's political
815 and military shadow will fall over Asia and
816 will affect the calculations of the other
817 powers, however restrained actual Chi-
818 nese policy may prove to be. The other
819 Asian nations are likely to seek counter-
820 weights to an increasingly powerful China
821 as they already do to Japan. Though they
822 will disavow it, the nations of Southeast
823 Asia are including the heretofore feared
824 Vietnam in their grouping (ASEAN) largely
825 in order to balance China and Japan. And
826 that too is why ASEAN is asking the U.S. to

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<table>
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td>827</td>
      <td>remain engaged in their region.</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>828</td>
      <td>During the Cold War, Japan basked in the protection of the U.S. A determined economic competitor, it paid for freedom of maneuver in the economic field by subordinating its foreign and security policies to Washington's. As long as the Soviet Union could be perceived as the principal security threat by both countries, it made sense to treat American and Japanese national interests as identical.</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>838</td>
      <td>That pattern is not likely to continue.</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>839</td>
      <td>With Korea and China gaining in military strength, and with the least impaired portion of Soviet military power located in Siberia, Japanese long-range planners will not indefinitely take the absolute identity of American and Japanese interests for granted. When every incoming American administration begins its term by proclaiming a reassessment of existing policies and when confrontation over economic issues becomes the rule rather than the exception, it is difficult to argue that American and Japanese foreign policy interests can never diverge. In any event, Japan's perspective differs from America's because of geographic proximity to the Asian mainland and historic experience. Therefore,</td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>

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856 the Japanese defense budget has been

857 creeping upward until it has become the

858 third largest in the world.

859 Clinton's proposal for a more institu-

860 tionalized Pacific Community on the Euro-

861 pean model was received with polite aloof-

862 ness, largely because the nations of Asia do

863 not view themselves as a community. They

864 do not want an institutional framework

865 that might give potential Asian superpow-

866 ers or even the U.S. a major voice in their

867 affairs. They favor keeping America suffi-

868 ciently involved so that, in an emergency, it

869 can help ward off threats to their indepen-

870 dence. But they are too suspicious of pow-

871 erful neighbors and to some extent of the

872 U.S. to favor formal, Pacific-wide

873 institutions.

874 The American role is the key to helping

875 Japan and China co-exist despite their sus-

876 picions of each other. In the immediate fu-

877 ture, Japan, faced with an aging population

878 and a stagnating economy, might decide to

879 press its technological and strategic superi-

880 ority before China emerges as a superpow-

881 er and Russia recovers its strength. After-

882 ward, it might have recourse to that great

883 equalizer, nuclear technology.

884 Close Japanese-American relations will

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<table>
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td>885</td>
      <td>be a vital contribution to Japanese moderation and a significant reassurance to the other nations of Asia. Japanese military strength linked to America worries China and the other nations of Asia less than purely national Japanese military capabilities. And Japan will decide that it needs less military strength so long as an American safety net exists. A substantial American military presence in Japan and Korea will be needed. In its absence, America's commitment to a permanent role in Asia would lack credibility, and Japan and China would be increasingly tempted to pursue national courses of action which, in the end, could well be directed against each other and all the buffer states in between.</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>886</td>
      <td>887</td>
      <td>888</td>
      <td>889</td>
      <td>890</td>
      <td>891</td>
      <td>892</td>
      <td>893</td>
      <td>894</td>
      <td>895</td>
      <td>896</td>
      <td>897</td>
      <td>898</td>
      <td>899</td>
      <td>900</td>
      <td>901</td>
      <td>902</td>
      <td>903</td>
      <td>904</td>
      <td>905</td>
      <td>906</td>
      <td>907</td>
      <td>908</td>
      <td>909</td>
      <td>910</td>
      <td>911</td>
      <td>912</td>
      <td>913</td>
      <td>Good American relations with China are the prerequisite for good long-term relations with Japan, as well as for good Sino-Japanese relations. It is a triangle which each of the parties can abandon only at great risk. It is also an ambiguity with which the U.S. is not totally comfortable, since it runs counter to the American tendency to label nations neatly as either friend or foe. But with economic growth rates approaching 10% annually, a strong sense of national cohesion, and an ever</td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>

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914 more muscular military, **China** will show

915 the greatest relative increase in stature

916 among the major powers.

917 China welcomes **U.S.** involvement in

918 Asia as a counterweight to its feared neigh-

919 bors, Japan and Russia, and <---> to a lesser de-

920 gree <---> India. Yet an American policy that

921 seeks simultaneously friendship with Bei-

922 **jing and** with countries that **Beijing** per-

923 ceives as potential threats <---> which is the

924 correct U.S. stance <---> requires a careful and

925 regular dialogue between **the U.S. and**

926 **China.**

927 For four years after the events of Tian-

928 anmen Square in 1989, this dialogue was

929 inhibited by the American refusal to en-

930 gage in high-level contacts <---> a measure

931 never employed against the Soviet Union

932 even at the height of the Cold War. Human

933 rights moved to the center of the Sino-

934 American relationship.

935 The Clinton Administration wisely re-

936 stored high-level contacts; the future of

937 Sino-American relations depends on the

938 substance of these exchanges. Clearly, the

939 U.S. cannot abandon its traditional con-

940 cern with human rights and democratic

941 values; the problem is the degree to which

942 all aspects of Sino-American relations are

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943 made conditional on them. China finds
944 condescending the implication that Sino-
945 American relations are based not on recip-
946 rocal interests but on American favors **that**
947 can be shut off at Washington's discretion.
948 Such an attitude makes America appear
949 both unreliable and intrusive, and unreli-
950 ability is the greater failing in Chinese eyes.
951 China might be prepared to make some
952 human-rights concessions, provided they
953 can be presented as emerging from its own
954 free choice. But American insistence on
955 publicly prescribing conditions is per-
956 ceived in China as a **humiliating** attempt to
957 convert its society to American values and
958 as a lack of American seriousness. It sug-
959 gests that America has no national interest
960 in the Asian equilibrium as such. But if
961 America cannot be counted on for that pur-
962 pose, China will have no interest in making
963 concessions to it. The key to Sino-Ameri-
964 can relations <---> paradoxically, even on hu-
965 man rights <---> is a tacit cooperation on glob-
966 al, and especially Asian, strategy.

967

968 subhed tk

969 When, in 1821, John Quincy Adams

970 warned Americans against the penchant to

971 slay ``distant monsters,'' he could not have

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972 imagined the sheer number and magni-
973 tude of monsters that would exist in the
974 postCold War world. Not every evil can be
975 combated by America, even less by Ameri-
976 ca alone. But some monsters need to be, if
977 not slain, at least resisted. What is most
978 needed are criteria for selectivity.
979 America's leaders have generally
980 stressed motivation over structure. They
981 have placed more emphasis on affecting
982 the attitudes than the calculations of their
983 counterparts. As a result, American society
984 is peculiarly ambivalent about the lessons
985 of history. American films often depict how
986 some dramatic event transforms a villain
987 into a paragon of virtue (sometimes cloy-
988 ingly so) <---> a reflection of the pervasive na-
989 tional belief that the past has no final claim
990 and that new departures are always possi-
991 ble. In the real world, such transformations
992 are rarely observed in individuals, even
993 less so among nations which are compos-
994 ites of many individual choices.
995 The American habit of rejecting history
996 extols the image of a universal man living
997 by universal maxims, regardless of the past,
998 of geography, or of other immutable cir-
999 cumstance. Since the American tradition
1000 emphasizes universal truths rather than

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1001 national characteristics, American policy-
1002 makers have generally preferred multilat-
1003 eral approaches to national ones: the agen-
1004 das of disarmament, nonproliferation, and
1005 human rights rather than essentially na-
1006 tional, geopolitical, or strategic issues.
1007 A country with *this* idealistic tradition
1008 cannot base its policy on the balance of
1009 power as the sole criterion for a new world
1010 order. But it must learn that equilibrium is
1011 a fundamental precondition for the pursuit
1012 of its historic goals. And these higher goals
1013 cannot be achieved by rhetoric or postur-
1014 ing. Foreign policy *is* conducted by a politi-
1015 cal system that emphasizes the immediate
1016 and provides few incentives for the long
1017 range. Leaders are obliged to deal with
1018 constituencies that tend to receive their in-
1019 formation *through* visual images. All this
1020 puts a premium on emotion and on the
1021 mood of the moment *in a time* that de-
1022 *just when the very moment* require
1023 *and an analysis of capabilities*.
1024 At a time when America is able neither
1025 to dominate the world nor to withdraw
1026 from it, when it finds itself both all-power-
1027 ful and totally vulnerable, it must not aban-
1028 don the ideals which have accounted for its
1029 greatness. But neither must it jeopardize

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1030 that greatness by fostering illusions about
1031 the extent of its reach. World leadership is
1032 inherent in America's power and values,
1033 but it does not include the privilege of pre-
1034 tending that America is doing other nations
1035 a kindness by associating with them, or that
1036 it has a limitless capacity to impose its will
1037 by withholding its favors.
1038 The fulfillment of America's ideals will
1039 have to be sought in the patient accumula-
1040 tion of partial successes. The certitudes of
1041 physical threat and hostile ideology charac-
1042 teristic of the Cold War are gone. The con-
1043 victions needed to master the emerging
1044 world order are more abstract: a vision of a
1045 future that cannot be demonstrated when
1046 it is put forward and judgments about the
1047 relationship between hope and possibility
1048 that are, in their essence, conjectural. The
1049 Wilsonian goals of America's past <---> peace,
1050 stability, progress, and freedom for man-
1051 kind <---> will have to be sought in a journey
1052 that has no end. ``Traveler,'' says a Spanish
1053 proverb, ``there are no roads. Roads are
1054 made by walking.''

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