Asia in Washington: Exploring the Penumbra of Transnational Power

9. Global Implications

9 Global Implications Washington, as we have seen, is a complex, fluid, political community—one whose boundaries far transcend the formal institutions of the American nation-state. It includes, conspicuously, a penumbra of power surrounding the U.S. government that performs important global functions in its own right. Both the informal and formal sides of Washington are continually evolving. Indeed, political Washington has changed dramatically over the three decades and more since Ronald Reagan served as president. It has changed even more profoundly since Franklin D. Roosevelt and his associates began forging the modern presidency eight decades ago. Within America’s national capital, the countries of Asia occupy a pivotal yet precarious place. They represent collectively the most dynamic and rapidly growing actors in the international system. Yet those nations and their leaders are also traditional outsiders—peripheral, until recently, to the core global governance structures of international affairs. How a rising Asia interacts with all of Washington—including, critically, those parts beyond the U.S. government—is thus a central determinant of stability and change in international affairs and a seminal issue for both policy and theory. This chapter explores how the day-to-day functioning of Washington , in its varied interactions with Asia, is quietly reshaping the world as we know it. The chapter summarizes, first of all, the distinctive sociopolitical features of America’s national capital in comparison with other major global political cities. Such a comparative perspective helps clarify 253 09-2538-1 ch9.indd 253 3/12/14 4:15 PM 254 Global Implications why Washington as a policy community is generally more congenial to Asian interlocutors than are such European and Asian alternatives as London, Paris, Moscow, and Beijing. The chapter then summarizes Washington’s concrete significance for Asia as a whole and how varied foreign national approaches to the U.S. capital differ within Asia itself. Based on this summary of earlier findings in the book, this chapter considers how Washington’s unique local character has affected the functioning of the international political economy as a whole, especially over the past twenty years. The distinctive nature of the Asia factor within Washington conceived as a transgovernmental and transnational political community, I argue, constrains American hegemonic power, while also rendering both Washington and the international system as a whole less hierarchical, more open, and more stable than they would otherwise be. Washington as a Global Political City: Comparative Perspectives As discussed in chapters 1 and 2, Washington today has three major structural characteristics rendering it distinct from other major global political centers. These traits in turn profoundly influence Washington’s functioning as a political-economic community, distinct from the American nation-state itself. First, Washington has an unusually parochial yet egalitarian heritage for a major national capital, having never served historically as the seat of a major formal empire. Second, and related to the foregoing, Washington is remarkably pluralistic and open, allowing nonresidents and informal local actors a multitude of access routes to influence. This openness has become accentuated since the 1980s by the widespread privatization of governmental functions, by an increase in the number of former officials working in local research institutions , and by the broad geographical sweep of local political-economic activity, with the rise of the Beltway and of the Dulles and BaltimoreWashington corridors. Third, Washington has an expanding multilateral dimension, due to the local clustering of increasingly important global institutions, such as the World Bank and the IMF. Most of the other major national capitals—London, Paris, Rome, Moscow, and Beijing among them—served for much of their history as the seat of substantial, and generally cosmopolitan, empires. The 09-2538-1 ch9.indd 254 3/12/14 4:15 PM Global Implications 255 European capitals, in particular, had well-established aristocratic courts, powerful bureaucracies, and a clearly defined hereditary elite, making them both exclusivist and sophisticated in their response to outside forces. Not so Washington. At its foundation more than two centuries ago—and indeed for a century and more thereafter—Washington was a remarkably parochial town, as we saw in chapter 1, with distinctly limited governmental organization and international exposure. It hosted, for example, no resident foreign embassies at all until after the Civil War. The domestic side of official Washington, to be sure, grew steadily during the 1930s. Yet it was not until after World War II that the foreign diplomatic and cultural presence in...