What America needs is a new self-containment policy

By Tom Plate

What America needs is a new self-containment policy

As China's Jiang Zemin welcomed Bush, the U.S. president embraced the reality that Beijing cannot be relegated to a back seat. Associated Press

It was a good week, sort of. President Bush, in Asia, actually seemed to be listening. That was clear in his quick climb-down on the North Korean issue. His inclusion of that Stalinist state in his "axis of evil" speech had been troubling those with the most to lose by war — our South Korean allies.

But now he appears to have ruled out U.S. military action. This is progress. Let's just hope that the harsher rhetorical environment created by his administration hasn't ruled out diplomacy as well.

Tokyo was a listening-and-learning stop, too. A year ago, the Bush people were touting Japan as the Great Britain of Asia, the ever-trustworthy ally working hand-in-hand. Now on a deep economic slide, Japan may become the Argentina of Asia. So Bush admirably emphasized the positive — the Koizumi government's unprecedented military contribution to the anti-terror effort in Central Asia. That's a winning issue. But the United States is playing a weak hand if it believes that Koizumi can deliver on the economy in his weakened position. Bush surely returned to Washington more aware than ever of Japan's limitations — and of America's, in conceptualizing new roles for allies without consulting them first.

Bush must wonder about his Asian policy when China turned out to be an easier drive-by than either Japan or Korea. In Beijing, Bush embraced the reality that China cannot be relegated to a back seat, in the effort to jack up Japan, as this administration once sought.

It was actually comforting to see the young Texan, the least traveled new president in memory, hobnobbing with China's leaders in Beijing, even as some advisers had urged him to return home after Tokyo and Seoul. He made the right call by being there.

So why was the distinguished head of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government propounding last week in Los Angeles — in the very midst of Bush's laudable weeklong Asian swing — that American foreign policy, in Asia especially, is in potential trouble?

Because, says Harvard Dean Joseph Nye, America tends to become politically vulnerable when it is militarily successful. America's triumph in Afghanistan should not prompt celebration but caution. "Afghanistan is the ultimate proof, many in Washington think, that unilateralism works," said Nye in Los Angeles. "So, we don't have to pay attention to anyone else, right?"

Nye, speaking to the California-based Pacific Council on International Policy, the West Coast's premier forum for issues of Asia and Latin America, accepts that America's power in the world is almost unprecedented.

But inadvertently, says Nye, we motivate others to want to gang up on us when we act as if we will do what we want, whenever we want, without caring what others think: "You need a slow and painstaking process of cooperation with civilians across all borders if you want to contain terrorists. If you alienate people everywhere, why would they help?"

In his incisive new book, "The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone," Nye advocates a U.S. policy that seeks to mesh American national interest with that of the world, not clash with it. "If we act arrogantly and unilaterally," he says, "we will create festering resentment worldwide."

While a Defense Department official under the Clinton administration, Nye helped develop the now-classic formulation of America's posture abroad as a balancing act between Asia and Europe — evidenced by the twin facts of 100,000 U.S. troops stationed in both places. The Bush administration endorses this idea, too. "But how do we use our super power now to advance our interests so that at the end of this century, when we are not so powerful, we are still very influential?" asks Nye.

One way is honest introspection. After the end of World War II and the rise of the Soviet empire, George F. Kennan — a former U.S. diplomat turned academic — developed the concept of a containment policy for the communist threat. World peace, he postulated, would be best achieved by containing the communists. Now that the Soviet empire is gone, Nye is positing a self-containment policy: World peace and order can be achieved only if we Americans contain ourselves. We are the good guys of the world only so long as enough of the rest of the world agrees.

Alas, the idea of a U.S. self-containment policy will not be nearly as hard a sell in Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing as in Washington. Not to mention Texas.

Tom Plate, whose column appears regularly with The Honolulu Advertiser, is a professor at UCLA. (www.asiamedia.ucla.edu)