Creating a Pacific Community: A Time to Bolster Economic Institutions

Frank B. Gibney

From Foreign Affairs, November/December 1993

Article preview: first 500 of 2,444 words total.

Summary:  By the end of the decade U.S. trade and investment flows across the Pacific will be double transatlantic levels. President Clinton should use the November summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation to galvanize American economic efforts in the Far East and to ease trade tensions.

During his July trip to Asia, President Clinton went further than any of his predecessors in pledging America's help to create "a new Pacific community." He underscored this by proposing an informal summit conference with leaders of the other 14 members of the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation organization (APEC); hence the upgrading of APEC's minister-level meeting in late November in Seattle. While promising support for regional security and democratization, Clinton made clear that the summit's topics would be largely economic. "Our nation," he said, "is ready to be a full partner in Asian growth."

The statement may prove to be a historic one. Few have any doubts left about the continuing expansion of the Asia-Pacific economies and their importance to the United States. More than 40 percent of American trade is with the Pacific region, and this figure shows every sign of increasing. By the year 2000 trade and investment flows across the Pacific will be double the transatlantic volume. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s the American consumer was the engine of growth that fueled various East Asian "miracles." In the future, the big businesses and new middle-class consumers of the region offer the best possible chance for an increase in U.S. exports-both trade and investment-as well as mutually profitable exchanges of technology, communications and education. But recently strong negative perceptions-driven by growing American protectionism, the overselling of NAFTA as an exclusive North American trade "bloc," suspicion of great power hegemony among the ASEAN countries and resurgent nationalism in both China and Japan-have turned many Asians to thinking of the United States less as a partner and more as a threat.

The United States itself has contributed to the confusion. While praising Pacific economic development, promising a continued security presence and predicting a rosy cross-oceanic future, the United States has neglected to develop a strong government infrastructure worthy of this goal. Nor have business and nongovernmental organizations adjusted to the fact that the economic and cultural scheme of things in the Asia-Pacific world-a kaleidoscopic mix of new "developmental" capitalism and old Confucian tradition-is quite different from the more familiar atmosphere of American relations with Europe. Nonetheless, as Asia-Pacific peoples prosper, a growing middle class presses for more democratic freedoms. Old-fashioned Asian authoritarians continue to send their youth to study at U.S. universities. And a pervasive pop culture throughout the Asia-Pacific region betrays American, rather than European, origins.

The active participation of the United States is vital to the continued growth and peace of the Pacific Basin. Despite Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad's recurrent suggestions of yen-dominated Asian trade blocs, few Asians (the Japanese included) seriously contemplate an all-Asian trade bloc that would recreate the hegemonic East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere of World War II. But the United States needs a working organization-if not a Pacific community-to make its participation effective.

APEC'S WEAKESS

APEC is small, obscure and undermanned; with an annual budget of $2 million, a European Economic Community it is not. This is a purely consultative forum, not ...

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