The Keystone of World Order

In September 1901, President William McKinley addressed the new century's world trade fair in Buffalo, New York, declaring, "God and men have linked nations together [and] no nation can longer be indifferent to any other." McKinley's attempt to move his country away from George Washington's advice, to avoid entering any "entangling alliance," was unfortunately preempted by his assassination the following day. That task fell to his successor, Theodore Roosevelt, to get the United States to recognize "the increasing interdependence and complexity of international political and economic relations [that] render it incumbent on all civilised and orderly powers to insist on the proper policing of the world." Forcing the United States to assist with the "proper policing of the world" took the next half-century. During that time, everyone had to endure U.S. efforts to police and protect the world against the dangers of communism.

Should the United States, at the dawn of a new century, heed George Washington's call to withdraw from all entangling alliances or, alternatively, others' advice to consolidate its Cold War victory, become the primary global power, and prevent the rise of any rival? What kind of role would we, the countries of Southeast Asia, wish to see the United States play, that of a withdrawn and isolated follower or an assertive and hegemonic global power? A highly desirable role for the United States in East Asia would be as the "keystone" of the world order, and more specifically of the East Asian region. ¹ For the most part, Europeans treat the notion of sustained U.S. engagement in world affairs with either ambivalence or outright disdain. The mood in East Asia--with the possible exception of China--is significantly different.

Traditional U.S. allies--Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore--have long perceived the United States as the region's great stabilizer and "honest broker," albeit not a disinterested one. The end of the Cold War did little to change this perception, notwithstanding the forced closure of U.S. bases in the Philippines. At the time, rampant fears of an imminent reduction in the U.S. military presence compelled a senior State Department official in 1991 to allay Asian concerns of Washington's intentions. "Our adaptation to new circumstances must not be interpreted as withdrawal. America's destiny lies across the Pacific; our engagement in the region is here to stay." ² East Asians, for the most part, acknowledge the value of the United States as a "virtual buffer state" among the interests, actual or perceived, of regional powers such as China, Japan, and the two Koreas. The possibility that this perceived value might dissipate in the foreseeable future is highly unlikely, particularly in light of an ascending China.

Nonetheless, casting the United States as the region's keystone or pillar is not without problems. After all, the United States is, among many other things, the land of the Monroe Doctrine and Madonna, where modern faith in the possibility of radical disjuncture from Old World cynicism (the doctrine) shares space with the postmodern virtue of endless reinventions of identity (the artiste). U.S. "exceptionalism" may be grasped as emancipation from the fetters of history; in a sense, it is to rewrite history by reinventing the United States and, by extension, the world. We recall, for example, Madeleine Albright's impassioned plea, issued at her Senate confirmation hearings, that "we [the United States] must be more than audience, more even than actors; we must be the authors of the history of our age." ³

On one hand, such high-minded ambition--some would even say arrogance--is anathema to many East Asians, ⁴ especially those who take issue with the evangelistic zeal of U.S. foreign policy makers to remake East Asia into an annex of Americana, or, failing that, an authoritarian Other: modern in the economic sense, but primitive in social and political realms...