Address
of
His Excellency Fidel V. Ramos
President of the Philippines
Before the East-West Center on the working visit to Colombia and the United States of America
[Delivered in Manoa, Hawaii, November 27, 1995]
America’s role
in East Asia
FROM YOUR VANTAGE POINT here on these lovely islands, even to doubt whether the United States will remain an Asia-Pacific power seems no less than ridiculous.
But perspectives shift with longitude—and I must tell you that concerns about America’s staying power—specifically, concerns about the strength of the U.S. commitment to intervene in future regional crises—are beginning to preoccupy most countries in East Asia.
In its own interest
Over this past generation, the regional stability underwritten by the United States has given our countries the leisure to cultivate economic growth. Now the fear is widespread among them that the U.S. is turning inward—that it will revert to the isolationism which has characterized its foreign policy throughout much of its history.
I must add that we of the Philippines believe the United States will remain in the Asia-Pacific—and not out of altruism, but in its own interest.
You more than any others realize how the tilt of U.S. population away from its Atlantic coast, the influx of Asian migrants, and the attraction of East Asian trade and investments have made your country a true Asia-Pacific power.
And so it cannot afford to leave the Asian continent in the hands of a single dominant power—any more than it could tolerate Western Europe’s being in the same situation.
America’s role in East Asia is my topic here this afternoon. Let me summarize the four points I wish to make before I elaborate on them:
First, over the foreseeable future, the United States must remain the fulcrum of East Asia’s balance of power.
Second, economic competition between the United States and East Asia is not “winner-take-all” but a game both sides can win. A vigorous American economy is just as good for East Asia as it is for Americans themselves.
Third, now that political values have become just as important as traditional security concerns and economic interests in the relations between countries, I ask you not to underestimate the power of America’s democratic ideals to help shape East Asian political systems.
Fourth, America’s military hegemony in the post-Cold War period gives it the historic opportunity to bring political morality to international relationships—to shape a moral world order. And this is a chance America must grasp—before it slips away.
Now let me take up these four points one by one.
Fulcrum of the East Asian balance of power
Over these last 50 years, the sustained U.S. presence in East Asia—and its willingness to mediate East Asia’s conflicts—have ensured that there would be no repetition of the Korean War and that the Vietnam War “dominoes” would fall the other way.
By interposing itself between the Chinese Civil War protagonists across the Taiwan Straits, the U.S. presence enabled Beijing and Taipei to cool off their enmities—and in fact to cooperate in the South China growth triangle with Hong Kong. The United States has also acted as a buffer between Japan and China—and between them separately and the Soviet Union.
The Cold War’s end has not ended the usefulness of the American presence. Over the foreseeable future, the United States must remain the main prop of the East Asian balance of power—if only to preserve the bubble of stability that keeps East Asia’s “economic miracle” going.
In this role, the United States has no competitor. Its military presence is—uniquely—acceptable to all the powers with legitimate interests in the region.
Over the future we contemplate, Russia’s energies will be directed inward—to problems at home—and to relationships with its commonwealth neighbors in the former Soviet Union.
Meanwhile, fifty years after the Pacific War, Japan has neither completely reconciled with East Asia nor decided on its new role in the region.
China will be East Asia’s most serious concern
China—over these next 25 years—by the World Bank’s estimate, will become the world’s largest economy. Over this next quarter-century, China will unavoidably press—politically and militarily—on East Asia, even if Beijing made no effort to build up its capability to project power beyond its strategic borders.
How China exercises its political and military clout must concern us all. (The opposite possibility—of China’s economic collapse and its reversion to “warlordism”—is if anything, even more alarming.)
The Allies in Western Europe solved a roughly similar problem by integrating postwar Germany into the European Union. So must we endeavor to integrate China into the Asia-Pacific community—economically through the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and politically through the ASEAN Regional Forum—if we are to have lasting regional stability.
Only with America’s help—only with America’s leadership—can this be carried out successfully.
China and the United States—the “elephant” and the “whale” Walter Lippmann once called them—one a land and the other a maritime power, so that their interests were not antagonistic but complementary.
But today, the elephant is learning to swim: China is building itself a blue-water navy. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, America’s political and military dominance has been unchallenged. Is China gearing up to become the only counterforce to U.S. hegemony in the post-Cold War world?
Over these past 15 years or so, China has set aside its historical grievances, its ideological mission and its geopolitical ambitions in its pursuit of economic growth. Will it return to these causes once its economic growth is assured?
China’s encroachment into Mischief Reef—part of our Kalayaan (Freedom) group of islets in the Spratlys—should warn us that China claims nearly two million square miles of land in adjacent countries; and that it also has unresolved territorial or maritime disputes with Russia, India, North Korea, Tajikistan, Japan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia—any one of which could spark off a local conflict.
Containment or engagement?
How are we—its neighbors—to deal with China?
The debate rages between those who urge “containment”—after the way the West restrained an expansionist USSR in the early years of the Cold War—and those who believe China’s “engagement” into our peaceful network of economic and political institutions to be the better course.
We in the Philippines believe we must apply one or the other response as the emerging situation demands.
We must discourage any Chinese aggressiveness, yes, but we must also encourage every trend that ties the Chinese economy more tightly to those of its neighbors in the Asia-Pacific.
Obviously, we cannot approach today’s China with preconceived notions when this huge and complex country—a civilization in itself—is in the middle of such an epochal transition. This is why the ASEAN states refuse to commit themselves prematurely to the proposal for “prepositioning” U.S. matériel.
This caution is partly a lesson remembered from the colonial period—when the weak were wise to stay away from the quarrels of the strong. But it also results from an appreciation of the chance that the dismantling of the American naval and air bases removes a potential provocation to ASEAN’s giant neighbor—and invites China to live and let live with Southeast Asia.
Meanwhile, even the reduced U.S. deployments close to the ASEAN region are a counterweight enough in the region’s security balance.
Some say that, if Beijing should continue encroaching on the South China Sea, then this aggressiveness will accelerate security cooperation among the Southeast Asian countries—and between them and the United States.
But, for the moment, the ASEAN states are betting that interdependence and intensified cooperation will preempt the rise of long-standing political antagonisms.
Economic interdependence may not by itself prevent conflicts, but it does raise the cost—and the threshold—for using force, especially among the great powers.
Japan, our other main concern
About Japan, we of the Philippines have two basic concerns. The first is that the alliance between Japan and the United States must be preserved; and the second is that Japan must find a political role in the world proportionate to its economic power.
Like all the other Southeast Asian countries, we want Japan’s alliance with the United States to continue—although we now accept that the alliance must be redefined into something closer to a genuine partnership.
There is an inherent anomaly—similar to the original West European effort to keep apart the two Germanys—in today’s Japan remaining a strategic client of the United States. This can only fan an unhealthy kind of nationalism in a country acutely aware of both its economic strength and its cultural uniqueness—increasing the danger that the trade disputes of the United States and Japan would spill over into their security relationship.
The Philippines supports—within the context of United Nations reforms—Japan’s bid for a permanent seat in the Security Council.
We see this as enhancing Japan’s integration into the world community. And we are reasonably confident Japan’s political role will be exercised on the side of peace—if only because the Japanese people have suffered so much of war.
To sum up this section—we of the Philippines believe any dilution of the American commitment to East Asian stability will severely undermine regional confidence—put an end to the region’s economic miracle—and perhaps set off an arms race that could have incalculable, tragic consequences for all of us.
Economic ties between U.S. and East Asia
Let me now turn to the economic ties between the U.S. and East Asia.
Economic interdependence among the Asia-Pacific countries has largely been market-driven: only now are the APEC governments trying to manage it. And the key to the region’s tremendous growth has been the shift to free-market economies among its democratic and authoritarian states alike.
Already the United States exports more to East Asia than it does to its traditional markets in Europe and Latin America.
And East Asia’s market is becoming even more attractive.
By the year 2000, the World Bank estimates that half the growth in the global economy will come from East Asia alone. In five years’ time, one billion East Asians will have significant consumer spending power; and, of these, 400 million will have average disposable incomes as high as their European or American counterparts, if not higher.
This means the economic dimension to Asia-Pacific relationships will be stronger than it is already.
Like the rest of us, the United States must redefine its concept of national security in economic and cultural terms.
Like the rest of us, America’s place in the future world will be determined just as much by the creativity of its workpeople and the daring of its entrepreneurs as by the devastating power of its weapons.
Since virtually all of its trade deficit comes from its East Asian commerce, the United States is looking for a new sense of fairness in its economic relationships with the Asia-Pacific.
No zero-sum contest
Over the past 50 years the U.S. security umbrella—and the rich U.S. market—have enabled East Asia to prosper. Now American leaders argue that Americans must see their country as sharing in this prosperity—if American taxpayers are to continue supporting their country’s continued security engagement in the region.
We of the Philippines have no problem at all with this proposition—particularly since we do not regard economic rivalry as a winner-take-all or zero-sum contest. In economic competition, everybody wins—and even the relative “loser” ends up richer than when he started.
Since it takes two to trade, a strong American economy is as good for us in East Asia as it is for you in America.
In sum—we do not want an underperforming, undersaving, underinvesting American economy any more than you do—if only because a weakened American economy will trigger off strong protectionist tendencies in the United States.
The U.S. as an influence on East Asian democratization
Ladies and gentlemen:
Over this past half-century, a spacious sense of its self-interest has impelled the United States to help shape East Asian development—in fact, to make it happen.
And this enlightened self-interest derives from the very idea that is America. Its founding fathers saw their country as a venture greater than just another national enterprise. They saw their country as bringing a message of revolutionary enlightenment to humankind.
That revolutionary message has not lost its relevance—particularly for East Asian peoples who—as they become richer and more secure—are demanding respect from their rulers—and a say in how they are governed.
Authoritarian regimes may seek their legitimacy by sponsoring capitalist growth. But economic development cannot—forever—substitute for democracy. And it is to the idea of America that East Asia looks—in its groping for freedom. Look at how the Chinese student-militants of 1989 dared to raise a 30-foot plaster model of the Statue of Liberty on Tiananmen Square.
During the Cold War, America was sometimes accused of a cynical willingness to sacrifice democracy abroad to preserve democracy at home. Now, at last, America can reconcile power and morality in its foreign relations.
Despite a decline in its relative wealth, capacity and influence the U S today is the world’s only superpower. And it is at the cutting edge of a revolution in both military technology and doctrine which promises to preserve its military preeminence in the world for at least another generation.
Because of its hegemonic power, America “can afford the luxury of attending to principle.” America can be to the world what its founders meant it to be—the ultimate refuge of all those “yearning to breathe free.”
Worthwhile causes for American idealism
And—although the ideological challenge from messianic Communism has collapsed—there is no lack of worthwhile causes for American idealism.
We are as far away from a stable—and moral—international order as we were at the end of World War II. Far too many regions of the world are still subject to regimes of varying barbarism; while other national societies are disintegrating in anarchy.
If only America can gather its resolve, it can also lead the global community to begin dealing with the tremendous income disparities among nations—and alleviating the mass poverty of regions like South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
Then there is the care and protection of the global environment—a task so susceptible to the free-rider axiom that it needs exceptional leadership to organize effectively and equitably.
In these vital missions of reawakening America to its historical role—and of propagating in the Asia-Pacific the ideals and values America stands for—this center of intellect and scholarship will continue to play an ever-increasing role.
Throughout its time on earth, humankind has been striving for the ideal society. Unless we of the Asia-Pacific and America embark on a win-win direction, that ideal may forever remain beyond our grasp.
But, if America remains true to its original sense of revolutionary enlightenment, perhaps it can lead the world to approximate that ideal: to banish pain and fear and hunger—to bring a measure of peace and prosperity to every region—to enable every nation to discover the extraordinary possibilities of ordinary people.