SFS Professor Explores U.S. Power in Asia
Is U.S. leadership declining in the Asia-Pacific region? And will the country remain economically influential in the region? A new book by
Walsh School of Foreign Service professor
Robert Sutter explores those topics and more in “The United States in Asia” (Rowman and Littlefield 2008).
Sutter, a visiting professor of
Asian studies at Georgetown, says he considers and challenges the widely held view that U.S. influence in the Asia-Pacific is in decline with its leadership role threatened by a range of political, economic and security problems.
“The problems of the United States in Asia have focused heavily on negative reactions to Bush administration foreign policies, such as the U.S. government’s handling of the global war on terrorism, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, efforts to curb Iran’s and North Korea’s nuclear weapons development and related security issues,” says Sutter.
In the book, Sutter questions whether these negative reactions have truly diminished the United States' strengths. “Those seeing the United States’ decline in Asia tend to emphasize the weaknesses and limitations of the U.S. without giving adequate attention to U.S. strengths,” Sutter writes. “They also tend to emphasize the strengths of rising Asian powers, notably China, without adequate attention to the limitations and weaknesses of these powers.”
Sutter says recent U.S. difficulties have not fundamentally undermined the main foundations of the leadership, power and influence that the United States has exerted in the region for many years.
“The way ahead for the United States in the Asia Pacific is far from smooth, and the room for improvement in U.S. policies and practices is large,” Sutter writes. “However, the foundation of strategic and economic overlapping interests between the United States and the governments of the region remains strong.”
Sutter suggests that carefully considered and executed U.S. policies that reflect sensitivity to the interests of the Asia-Pacific governments seem likely to go far in repairing some of the damage to the U.S. image in the region.
Mark Borthwick, director of the
United States Asia Pacific Council at the East-West Center, says Sutter’s book draws a compelling argument for why the United States will remain a key part of the region.
“We’ve been hearing for years that the U.S. position in the Asia-Pacific is in decline, in reverse correlation with the rising prominence of China,” he says. “Sutter’s masterful study lays aside this simplistic perspective in favor of a strongly historical, multidimensional view of U.S. relations with the Asia-Pacific and a clear understanding of the fundamental forces shaping the region.”
Robert Sutter has been visiting professor of Asian studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, since 2001. Prior to taking this full-time position, Sutter specialized in Asian and Pacific Affairs and U.S. foreign policy in a U.S. government career spanning 33 years and involving the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of State and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
For many years, he also served as the senior specialist and director of the Foreign Affairs and National Defense Division of the Congressional Research Service. And he served as national intelligence officer for East Asia and the Pacific at the U.S. Government’s National Intelligence Council and the China Division director at the Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research.
Sutter obtained his doctorate in history and East Asian languages from Harvard University and taught part-time for more than 30 years at Georgetown, George Washington, Johns Hopkins universities and the University of Virginia. He has published 17 books, more than 100 articles and several hundred government reports dealing with contemporary East Asian and Pacific countries and their relations with the United States.
