Hard Interests, Soft Illusions: Southeast Asia and American Power

2. Behind Beliefs: Hard Interests, Soft Illusions

16 2 BEHIND BELIEFS Hard Interests, Soft Illusions As the tides of the Pacific War turned against Japan in 1944, Prince Konoe Fumimaro wrote that “leftist revolution” is “as frightening, or more frightening, than defeat.”1 Not long afterwards, most of the Japanese elite embraced the external power that had defeated their country in war and cemented an enduring, friendly relationship with the United States. The prince’s assessment of the relative seriousness of the two threats facing the established order in Japan was prescient: under the American occupation, substantial elite continuity was maintained and any prospect of “leftist revolution” firmly extinguished.2 Across the sea, in China, a similar moral priority was accorded to domestic regime interests by the Communist Party, for whom “China’s territorial and administrative integrity under the ‘bad’ GMD [Guomindang] state was worth nothing,” as Michael Sheng has written.3 These two examples, although drawn from particularly acute conflicts, suggest a more general insight: perceptions of external threat are tied to assessments of what they mean for particular domestic actors. Evaluative beliefs about the United States—whether it is a benign hegemon, for example, or a destabilizing potential threat—cannot be divorced from the interests, position, and perceptions of the believer. 1. Quoted in Schaller 1985, 5–6. 2. Borden 1984; Dower 1999; Schaller 1985. 3. Sheng 1997, 190. See also Chen 1994. BEHIND BELIEFS 17 This chapter sets out the argument for seeing core evaluative beliefs about the United States held by members of the foreign policy community in Southeast Asia as ultimately driven by the political and material interests of ruling elites and their key constituencies, mediated by the career interests of foreign policy professionals. Their particular interests, however, tend to be represented as broadly encompassing national interests or even shared regional interests in loosely defined goods such as stability and welfare. This occurs, in part, because of a human tendency to form self-serving beliefs but also because of identifiable features of the environment in which foreign policymakers and professionals operate. The epistemic cues prevailing in the foreign policy community—information, the nature of foreign policy work, and standards of professional expertise—make it easier and more natural to form certain beliefs about the United States rather than others. Affective influences tend to work in the same direction. The beliefs that emerge are “illusions” in the sense that external measures of validity and probability are not central to their formation or maintenance. Interests: Political, Economic, and Professional American military, political, and economic power has served the tangible interests of many Southeast Asians. These interests are real, and the benefits accruing from the exercise of American power over the last sixty years are not illusory. Indeed, it would be rather strange if policymakers and foreign policy practitioners persistently failed to perceive their interests correctly over many decades. Their interests, however, cannot sensibly be defined in terms of the “national interest” or the incentives created by the distribution of power in the international state system. Just as perception is a process that ultimately resides in the individual, so perceptions of interest, threat, and opportunity are inherently personal . The “national interest” that is repeatedly invoked by policymakers does not exist in any objective, determined fashion.4 Influential actors get to define the national interest, and it is most plausible that they do so in terms of their own interests. To be sure, powerholders all have constituencies whose support they need to maintain, and they construct political coalitions with this in mind.5 4. This general maxim is foundational in approaches to international relations that emphasize domestic institutions and interests. Constructivist theories argue the case from a systemic perspective . See, e.g., Finnemore 1996. These arguments are, of course, contested by structuralist approaches. 5. How narrowly policymakers will construct their “winning coalitions” remains subject to theoretical and empirical debate. See Riker 1962 for an early statement. 18 CHAPTER 2 Political constituencies and coalitions vary in terms of how broad they are and in terms of what they demand as the price for their support. Thus policymakers may at times define national interests in ways that correspond with the interests of a broad majority of people in their country. But while no political leader can afford to neglect all sectors of potential support, most are strategically selective in building and maintaining their support bases. And in Southeast Asia, political leaders have governed for most of...