PERSPECTIVES ON ASIA : America Sits Out at Its Own Risk : Don’t let failures elsewhere blind us to a chance for a multilateral approach to security and economic issues.

This week President Clinton will host the first summit meeting of Asian-Pacific leaders. The President’s initiative, which coincides with the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Seattle, signals new U.S. support for multilateral cooperation on security as well as economic issues in the Pacific.

Americans, discouraged by the United Nations’ failures in Somalia and Haiti and NATO’s passivity in Bosnia, may question why our country should help create multilateral arrangements in the Asia-Pacific region. The answer is that--unlike Somalia, Haiti or Bosnia--Asia-Pacific really matters to the United States, strategically and economically.

The United States has had a military and political commitment to East Asia since the end of World War II. Today we have bilateral alliances with South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Australia and the Philippines, buttressed by about 100,000 troops stationed in the region. Although originally intended to deter Soviet aggression, these forces have also served to maintain regional stability and keep sea lanes open.

With the disappearance of the Soviet threat, however, the Asian countries have become uncertain about our commitment. No Asian nation, not even North Korea, wants the United States to withdraw. They fear that if we pull out, intraregional arms races and rivalries between China and Japan might destroy the peaceful environment on which their prosperity depends.

It’s no secret that U.S. economic power has slipped in relation to Japan and other Asian nations and that Americans are preoccupied with solving domestic problems. In the absence of a Soviet threat, how can an American President justify to Congress and the public the need to fund a military presence in the Pacific?

The best way for the United States to demonstrate the permanence of its commitment to the Asia-Pacific region is to transform its role from sole protector to active partner in regional security cooperation. Asians will understand that by sharing financial burdens and military risks, the United States is not evading its responsibilities but rather placing them on a politically and economically sound footing.

Unlike in other parts of the world, our security role in the Pacific is directly tied to our nation’s economic interests. Forty percent of American foreign trade is with East Asia, where dynamic economic growth is a bright spot in an otherwise gloomy global economy. Should Asians sense that we have abandoned them militarily, they might reject the open economic cooperation of APEC and instead create an “Asia for the Asians” trade bloc. To keep the region’s fast-growing economies open to our exports, we need to reassure Asians that we are there to stay.

There is talk in Asian capitals about using economic incentives to maintain U.S. security presence in the region. The Japanese and others believe that greater American investment and exports will induce us to remain politically and militarily involved in Asia to protect our economic interests. In the short term, keeping them guessing about U.S. intentions might give us greater flexibility in bilateral trade negotiations, but in the longer term, a pullback will cost America business in Asia.

In addition to furthering U.S. strategic and economic interests, multilateral security cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region is eminently feasible. Unlike in Somalia, Haiti and Bosnia, the agenda for Pacific multilateralism is not nation-building--something we don’t know how to do. Instead, it involves coordinating relations among nations--something we do well.

Except for a few disputes over small islands, the East Asian nations do not have conflicting interests or threaten one another. Yet in recent years, to hedge against a possible U.S. military withdrawal, they have spent more money on weapons than any region in the world except the Middle East. Recognizing the danger of arms races, they are now asking us to join them in a multilateral security dialogue with the goal of building trust to prevent war.

Encouraging Asian-Pacific multilateralism will not require us to send our troops into dangerous situations under international commands. No one in Asia is envisioning a full-blown multilateral alliance such as NATO or peacekeeping with integrated force structures. What Asians have in mind is far more modest: a set of overlapping subregional and regional forums similar to the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe for discussing security issues and exchanging information about military intentions and capabilities.

The momentum toward Asian multilateralism is now building. If Americans adopt a timid attitude toward that because of negative experiences in other parts of the world where our stakes are not as high, we risk being shut out of Asian markets and allowing regional arrangements to develop in ways that do not accord with our interests. This is one region where U.S. multilateral statesmanship makes good sense.