The Japanese Challenge to the American Neoliberal World Order: Identity, Meaning, and Foreign Policy (review)

[ 180 ] asia policy The Japanese Challenge to the American Neoliberal World Order: Identity, Meaning, and Foreign Policy Yong Wook Lee Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008 • 304 pp. This book presents an analysis of the nature and evolution of the Japanese challenge to the U.S.-led neoliberal world economic order since the mid‑1980s. main argument Japan’s historically and socially constructed conception of an appropriate model of economic development—one that emphasizes the role of the state—has led Japan to challenge the U.S.-led neoliberal world order. Japan has challenged the U.S. in various international financial and development forums, such as the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation), reaching a high point in Japan’s proposal for an Asian Monetary Fund (AMF) that intentionally excluded the U.S. from membership during the Asian financial crisis of 1997–98. In the wake of the Asian financial crisis, Japan established the Tokyo-based Asian Development Bank Institute as a center for alternative development and monetary paradigms, thereby challenging the IMF’s global prescriptions. policy implications • Japan’s AMF proposal has constituted the beginning of the so-called post‑crisis “new Asian regionalism.” The main characterization of new Asian regionalism is increased formalization/institutionalization of economic integration among East Asian states that tends to exclude the U.S. from membership. ASEAN +3 (China, Japan, and Korea) and the East Asia Summit are examples of such regionalism. • As long as East Asia (members of ASEAN +3) is defined in relation to the proponents and opponents of the U.S.-led neoliberalism, this book predicts that the very discursive condition that generates the conception of East Asia has an effect of excluding the U.S. from Asian regional institution‑building efforts on financial and monetary issues. ...