Jaques Hersh: The USA and the Rise of East Asia Since 1945: Dilemmas of the Postwar International Political Economy

Throughout my career as a specialist on American-East Asian relations I have struggled with the harsh reality that most Americans are indifferent toward Asia and largely unconcerned with international affairs generally.Although Americans have fought bloody and brutal wars in Asia on three occasions, they remain an Atlantic oriented people when they look abroad -which they do as infrequently as possible.The recent course of American politics, particularly the 1992 presidential election campaign, attests to this disinclination to focus on foreign affairs and embrace Washington's global responsibilities.But Americans apparently are not alone in narrowness of vision and disinterest in Asia.What other judgment can be reached when a Danish professor publishes a book that purports to discuss the rise of East Asia since 1945 but talks more about Western Europe and the former Soviet Union than any part of Asia, and in East Asia deals almost exclusively with Japan?Given the rapid economic growth of Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and the People's Republic of China, it is puzzling that they are barely mentioned in this volume.The democratization that has begun in Taiwan and South Korea as well as the burgeoning defense capabilities of all the states in the region are certainly part of any "rise" worth analyzing.But it may be that the paucity of consideration of the peoples who comprise the East Asian community reflects not just the author's lack of interest but also a lack of expertise.There are repeated errors scattered through the book.For instance, there are few in the U.S. or even Japan who would call Tokyo's responses to U.S. trade demands "pliant" (p.114).It is not fair to say that Pan-Asianism convinced neither Japanese nor other Asians of higher Japanese purposes prior to World War II.(99)In fact, Pan-Asianism appealed to Chinese revolutionaries eager to end China's semicolonial status as it did to the Japanese who assisted them (see for example Marius Jansen's The Japanese and S u n Yat-sen, 1954) and to Vietnamese anxious to throw the French out.Large-scale Japanese access to Chinese markets did not follow U.S. defeat in Vietnam but

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