America Is Caught in an APEC Hustle : Asian members expect a high U.S. security profile while they profit from intra-regional ties.

The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit last week represents an attempted relaunch of the transpacific relationship. Its declaratory style recalls President Nixon’s ill-fated designation of 1973 as the “Year of Europe,” about which Henry Kissinger later wrote, “We did not know what we were letting ourselves in for.” President Clinton’s initiative deserves a better fate but he needs to address some searching questions if his new enthusiasm for Asia is not to turn to ashes.

A cruel dilemma lurks behind U.S. plans to transform APEC into a more structured organization. Both the United States and APEC’s Asian members speak of the necessity of keeping the former engaged in Asia but agree on little else. For the United States, engagement brings the opportunity to secure a larger slice of the fast-growing intra-Asian trade and to warn the Europeans against intransigence on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade; for the Asians, the United States is an interloper, welcome only so long as it shoulders the main regional security burden and keeps its markets open to Asian products.

In Seattle, the lure of export contracts excluded any serious examination of transpacific security issues beyond a ritualistic endorsement of the U.S. presence. Given APEC’s economic format, this was understandable. But, sooner rather than later, security needs to be on the table, as it is not self-evident that the present arrangements are in America’s best interests.

Today, the United States annually spends per capita $850 more on defense than Japan. Naturally, the Japanese and other Asians want this to continue. The U.S. umbrella allows them to concentrate their resources on education and industrial R & D. They have, therefore, been scratching around for a means to prolong America’s free-spending commitment to Asian defense. The U.S. embrace of APEC is a heaven-sent opportunity. It baits the United States with promises of an export-led jobs cornucopia and pushes to the back burner the long overdue review of the security relationship.

Central to this review is China and the U.S attitude toward China’s seemingly inexorable rise to Asian military and economic preeminence. If ever there was a time for the United States to cement a strategic relationship with China, the time is now. Yet APEC pulls in the opposite direction. The United States’ geographically peripheral position puts it at a disadvantage. It will constantly have to purchase its Asian credentials and leverage in hard cash. As the past 50 years in Europe have shown, the obvious way to do this is through security guarantees. Herein lies the dilemma. With the demise of the Soviet Union, against whom are these guarantees aimed? China, the very country with which the United States most needs a non-adversarial relationship to secure those export jobs.

America’s Asian partners well understand their need to come to terms with China’s increasing importance. Japan, Korea, and Taiwan are the leading investors in China. They are expanding their bilateral relations and forging closer economic ties. No concern for human rights for them.

The danger is that the price of closer APEC arrangements will be that the United States is denied the opportunity to act similarly. Unlike the rest of Asia, the United States will be expected to keep military spending high and to sound the trumpet on human rights. The United States alone will incur Chinese opprobrium, leaving the rest of APEC to benefit from investments and contracts.

It is absolutely right that Asia should rapidly move up the scale of America’s foreign-policy priorities. But soaring rhetoric and idle threats will accomplish little. The Chinese know that, barring a spectacular outrage, next year’s renewal of most-favored-nation status is already assured. The Clinton Administration’s eagerness to secure high-tech sales, together with big-business lobbying and concern over the damaging implications for Hong Kong, will see to that. Furthermore, China’s goodwill is essential if the festering boil of North Korea’s nuclear program is to be lanced.

It is important that Clinton’s Asia initiative does not founder in the manner of Nixon’s “Year of Europe.” The Administration must quickly decide on its strategic objectives. It needs to close the gap between Asian and U.S. aspirations and look security issues, particularly as they affect China, squarely in the eye. Otherwise, important commercial, security and human-rights goals will be consumed in an acrimonious blaze.

Rudyard Kipling penned the epitaph, “A fool lies here who tried to hustle the East.” This is a salutary warning. Except that in this case, it is the Asian members of APEC that are doing the hustling.