The Asian Legacy in Focus

It is not surprising that President Bill Clinton, who campaigned on the slogan, "It's the economy, stupid," was ranked by Americans in a 1994 Gallup Organization poll as one of the poorest foreign-policy presidents since World War II, trailing John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and Jimmy Carter. Interestingly, the same quadrennial survey four years later showed that, by his second term, he was deemed by Americans to be the country's top postwar foreign-policy president, bar none.

In the early years of his presidency, Clinton honed in "like a laser beam" on economic issues because, he said, that was what the American people had hired him to do. His foreign policy, to the degree that he had one, was only an extension of his domestic policy: It was aimed at opening up overseas markets in order to increase U.S. exports and to create "jobs, jobs, jobs."

By all accounts, Clinton assumed office with little interest in, and perhaps not much knowledge of, foreign affairs, which he considered to be of little importance. His foreign travels were also limited. As governor of Arkansas, he had traveled to Taiwan, but had never been to mainland China. Reflecting Clinton's own ignorance, National Security Adviser Anthony Lake, at the beginning of the new administration, publicly lumped China together with Iran, Iraq, Libya, and North Korea as "backlash states." Clinton paid little personal attention to foreign policy and would pay in later years for his inattention.

Early Missteps

Clinton's approach was inevitable to an extent. With no Soviet Union with which to compete, the United States was forced to look to its domestic needs, rather than subjugate those interests to fuel a global rivalry. Even Henry Kissinger, a Cold War veteran, endorsed Clinton's approach while speaking in favor of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA): "Now we live in a world in which the ideological challenge has disintegrated and a new architecture needs to be created, and NAFTA is the first and crucial step in that direction." Moreover, the inexorable logic of the globalization of the world's economies also meant that the United States--like all nations--had a stake in other countries' economies.

Beyond the NAFTA debate, however, Clinton focused on Asia once he took office. Clinton and his top advisers said they would redirect U.S. foreign policy to this region because it was the world's fastest-growing area and had the most economic opportunities for U.S. business. While he was assistant secretary of state, Winston Lord explained, "Asia and the Pacific are now the most lucrative terrain for American exports and American jobs, and therefore the most relevant region of the world for the president's domestic economic agenda." Nor was this policy limited to regional specialists; then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher stated in 1993, "The primacy of opportunity for the United States in Asia is a statement of fact." This, then, is a large part of Clinton's legacy: his focus on Asia. For that reason, it is worth looking at his regional legacy in particular detail.

Clinton's decision to give geoeconomics a higher priority than geopolitics quickly led to a crisis in U.S. relations with Japan, the world's second largest economy. Clinton, like Bush, wanted to reduce Japan's large trade surplus with the United States. But Clinton adopted a confrontational approach--many would say a bullying approach--which caused trade friction to reach new heights, putting the overall relationship with Japan, including the military alliance, at risk.

"We have put our economic competitiveness at the heart of our foreign policy," the president said in his 1994 budget address. Clinton put relentless pressure on Japan to increase imports of U.S. products, such as autos and auto parts. He gave little sign of appreciating that, in a free economy, governments are not supposed to dictate to consumers what products to buy. For one thing...