THE foreign policy successes of United States President Bill Clinton are few; his problems with the domestic economy are legion. He has a burning need to show international leadership in a manner calculated to prove he is doing his best for American exports and jobs.
From Mr Clinton's standpoint, the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation(APEC) forum may appear to offer the ideal vehicle for such a display of statesmanship. But Mr Clinton should think carefully before dragging East Asia screaming and kicking into a formal Pacific economic community cum trading bloc it neither wants nor needs.
At the very least, he should wait until after this week's crucial vote on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which he still stands a good chance of losing, before pushing his vision of APEC. Why risk further foreign and trade policy humiliation in the same week? Asian countries are unlikely to want to commit themselves to a new, improved APEC if the president cannot deliver an even more ambitious regional agreement in his own back yard.
Asian reluctance is based on more fundamental issues than NAFTA. It flows from a profound distrust of American motives both in wishing to dominate APEC and in trying to use it as a weapon against the restrictive trade policies of the European Community (EC). Like the Europeans, Asian countries are divided over the extent to which they would support opening their markets to the US while America protects key areas of its own economy. The siren voices of protectionism - from anti-NAFTA rhetoric by former presidential candidate Ross Perot, to trade unions worried about jobs, to environmentalists lobbying against free trade with countries whose environmental standards are below those of the US - is particularly galling to Asia's newly industrialised economies. Many would prefer a more informal arrangement less open to manipulation by Washington.
The United States is, of course, not a newcomer to the Asian trading scene. However, it is only recently that the focus of so much of its policy making has shifted from the Atlantic to the Pacific. It is only recently that it has realised the immense opportunities Asia now affords for trade (and therefore for the US economy). Its obsession with developing regional trading blocs as a counterweight to the EC and as a potential alternative to the ailing General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) is more recent still.
The US is still on a learning curve in dealing with a dynamic Asia. It should not try to run the show before it can walk.
