Asia always has occupied a romantic corner in the minds of Americans, who have viewed it as a part of the world suffused with adventure, mystery, and exoticness.
More particularly, relations with Asia go back as far as our history, from the beginnings of trade with China in the 1780s, to Japan's opening to the United States in the 1850s. U.S.-Asian relations continued into the twentieth century, from our underwriting of East Asian security in the 1920s through World War II and the two subsequent major wars.
Few can doubt that Asian has again become increasingly important to the United States, particularly during the last two decades. President George Bush must now rewrite American foreign policy. Although policymakers have created a largely Eurocentric perspective for many years, it is time to shift the focus, however slightly, to prepare the United States for its Pacific Century.
There are sound reasons for doing so. In 1987, U.S. trade with Asia totaled almost $241 billion, compared with $170 billion with Europe. America's markets in Europe, moreover, have been steadily shrinking, with the continent's share of U.S. exports down by nearly 12 percent between 1970 and 1985. By the end of this century, American trade across the Pacific is expected to be at least double that of trade across the Atlantic.
Japan, the Republic of China on Taiwan, and South Korea, respectively, are America's second, fifth, and seventh largest trading partners. Japanese direct investment in the United States alone was $34 billion in 1987, while U.S. direct investment in Japan was almost $15 billion. While Japan maintains its place on the top of the list of America's Asian trading partners, our trade with other Asian nations has grown almost as quickly. South Korean exports to the United States, for example, grew from $21.3 to $47.3 billion (122 percent) between 1981 and 1987, while Korean imports from the United States grew from $26.2 to $41 billion (56 percent) during the same period. By 1986, U.S. commerce with Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Indonesia already had surpassed the 1980 levels of bilateral trade with Japan. Between 1970 and 1985, the share of total U.S. exports consumed by the "Asian Tigers"--South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan
--increased by 85 percent.
During this period, U.S strategic stakes in the region have grown. With improvements in the Soviet forward military projection potential and a more aggressive Soviet diplomatic and political strategy, the United States currently faces a far more complicated security environment in East Asia than it did 20 years ago. In particular, the Soviet-inspired "peace offensive" and the independent constraints imposed by several nations in the region have complicated U.S. planning for deployment of nuclear weapons in the western Pacific.
To address this challenge, the United States has adhered to a policy of deterrence through deployment of forces to its forward bases, particularly in Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines. These bases, in which the United States maintains an increasingly valuable strategic investment, are charged with the responsibility of bringing countervailing forces, supported by nuclear weapons if necessary, against any aggression in the
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