Asia in Washington: Exploring the Penumbra of Transnational Power

3. The Washington Factor in Asia

3 The Washington Factor in Asia Washington is a cosmopolitan city that interacts with its counterparts throughout the world. Many of its international relationships, together with their overall structure, have implications for the global political system because of Washington’s standing as the capital of the world’s preeminent superpower. It is Washington in both dimensions— as the American national capital and as a global political city—that I consider in this chapter. Its significance in the local political life of America’s partner nations clearly varies, both with the nature of their ties to the United States and with the character of their sociopolitical linkages to Washington itself. The Washington factor looms especially large—with special implications for international relations that I later discuss—among the nations of Asia. Historically the Asian countries as a group have been on the periphery of international affairs, although many of them rank individually among some of the most rapidly growing and most dynamic in the world today.1 Their explosive recent growth—accompanied by rising military power, in many cases—has given Asian nations substantial latent influence: power resources, in the parlance of international relations theory. How and why that latent influence is translated into actual suasion on matters of importance to Asian nations and their partners is of prime importance for global affairs, yet remarkably little empirical work or theorizing has been done on the topic. Indeed, the role of Asian actors in Washington—and their motives for playing their respective parts in the city’s political and economic life—are an increasingly 64 03-2538-1 ch3.indd 64 3/12/14 4:17 PM Washington Factor in Asia 65 crucial aspect both of the overall Washington equation and of broader international dynamics. The process of translating power resources into global influence is, of course, a complex interaction between the influencing parties and the influenced. In this chapter I consider the role that the United States—and by extension Washington, as a sociopolitical community transcending the American state—plays in Asia. In doing so, I hope to gauge Washington ’s power resources on the far side of the Pacific and the impulses within Asia toward transnational influence. In addressing these questions , I focus particularly on the major nations, from India to the east (figure 3-1). (In chapter 4, I examine the converse functional role that Asia plays in Washington, before considering the impact of ethnic politics on Asia’s Washington role in chapter 5.) ARABIAN SEA B AY OF BENGAL ANDAMAN SEA PHILIPPINE SEA SOUTH CHINA SEA EAST CHINA SEA SEA OF JAPAN MONGOLIA NORTH KOREA IRAN KAZAKKHSTAN LAOS MYANMAR BHUTAN C H I N A NEPAL THAILAND PAKISTAN AFGHANISTAN TAJIKISTAN I N D I A KYRGYZSTAN UZBEKISTAN TURKEY ARMENIA IRAQ OMAN UAF SAUDI ARABIA MONGOLIA NORTH KOREA SOUTH KOREA IRAN TAIWAN JAPAN KAZAKKHSTAN LAOS PHILIPPINES VIETNAM CAMBODIA BRUNEI M A L A Y S I A I N D O N E S I A SINGAPORE MYANMAR BANGLADESH BHUTAN C H I N A NEPAL THAILAND MALDIVES SRI LANKA PAKISTAN AFGHANISTAN TAJIKISTAN I N D I A KYRGYZSTAN UZBEKISTAN TURKMENISTAN TURKEY ARMENIA GEORGIA AZERBAIJAN IRAQ OMAN UAE SAUDI ARABIA Figure 3-1. America’s Asian Interlocutors 03-2538-1 ch3.indd 65 3/12/14 4:17 PM 66 Washington Factor in Asia In assessing first the Washington factor in Asia, I explore the economic , political, and geostrategic meanings that the United States has had for Asia over the two centuries and more since American independence , along with the evolving symbolic role of Washington. In doing this analysis, I note important nuances of difference, both among countries and over time, in the importance that Washington is accorded across Asia. These differences in turn shape the profile of Asian activities in Washington. Broadly speaking, I find that Washington’s importance for Asia has been particularly substantial since World War II, that it rose sharply in the early postwar years, that it stabilized around the 1960s, and that it then rose further during the 1990s, after the cold war. I also find that the functional significance of Washington itself for Asia has recently broadened substantially. Originally just a site for formal communication with the U.S. government, America’s capital city has become a prime arena for global intelligence gathering, for personnel training and orientation , for legitimation in intra-Asian conflicts, and even for setting domestic intra-Asian...