Hard Interests, Soft Illusions

Southeast Asia and American Power

Natasha Hamilton-Hart

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9780801464508
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In Hard Interests, Soft Illusions, Natasha Hamilton-Hart explores the belief held by foreign policy elites in much of Southeast Asia—Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, and Vietnam—that the United States is a relatively benign power. She argues that this belief is an important factor underpinning U.S. preeminence in the region, because beliefs inform specific foreign policy decisions and form the basis for broad orientations of alignment, opposition, or nonalignment. Such foundational beliefs, however, do not simply reflect objective facts and reasoning processes. Hamilton-Hart argues that they are driven by both interests—in this case the political and economic interests of ruling groups in Southeast Asia—and illusions.

Hamilton-Hart shows how the information landscape and standards of professional expertise within the foreign policy communities of Southeast Asia shape beliefs about the United States. These opinions frequently rest on deeply biased understandings of national history that dominate perceptions of the past and underlie strategic assessments of the present and future. Members of the foreign policy community rarely engage in probabilistic reasoning or effortful knowledge-testing strategies. This does not mean, she emphasizes, that the beliefs are insincere or merely instrumental rationalizations. Rather, cognitive and affective biases in the ways humans access and use information mean that interests influence beliefs; how they do so depends on available information, the social organization and practices of a professional sphere, and prevailing standards for generating knowledge.

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BELIEFS ABOUT AMERICAN HEGEMONY IN SOUTHEAST ASIA

There is little effusive sentimentality about the United States among foreign policy elites in Southeast Asia today. More than sixty years have passed since President Manuel Roxas of the Philippines declared that the safest course for his newly-independent country was to follow in the “glistening wake” of America.1 His view was emphatically rejected by many Southeast Asians at the time and does not resonate in a region formally committed to independence and norms of noninterference.2 Extravagant statements professing a kindred spirit and shared vision sometimes still adorn official speeches and communiqués, but these appear intended for diplomatic consumption only. Leaders and foreign policy thinkers in Southeast Asia more often seem to identify with Lord Palmerston’s dictum: “Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests.” They generally paint themselves as rational and pragmatic, dealing with external powers according to the dictates of national interest rather than sentiment. Yet behind the apparently hard-headed calculations of interest lie beliefs that cannot be explained as straightforward responses to a set of external conditions. Rather than being the product of formal reasoning, assessments of probability, or self-aware attempts to navigate tradeoffs and uncertainties, many core beliefs informing foreign policy orientations reflect commitments and biases that are political, cognitive, and affective. Beliefs in this sense are both powerful and independent.3

This book investigates one such set of beliefs: beliefs about the international role and power of the United States held by foreign policymakers and practitioners in six Southeast Asian countries. Their beliefs are the basis on which they define some countries as potentially threatening and others as relatively benign. Such beliefs are foundational in the sense of making possible specific foreign policy decisions as well as underlying broad foreign policy orientations of alignment, opposition, or nonalignment. With some qualifications and exceptions, majorities in the foreign policy communities of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, and Vietnam see the United States as a relatively benign international power. Although they may dislike many aspects of U.S. foreign policy, it is close to axiomatic in foreign policy circles that the United States is, “overall,” a benign and stabilizing power. This belief underlies Southeast Asian support for a regional order in which the United States has exercised predominant power and is thus instrumental in sustaining American power in the region.4 Beliefs therefore matter. But what drives the beliefs themselves?

For those who share a belief in the benign nature of American global predominance, it may seem unnecessary to explain why some people believe the United States to be benign. If people manage to see an external reality more or less as it is, why bother to explain this? This book argues that foundational foreign policy beliefs are not straightforward reflections of an external reality and in many cases cannot be tested against an external reality. They inevitably reflect the interests and position of the believer. They depend on implicit tradeoffs that are not only incommensurable but also affectively disturbing. They frequently rest on attitudinal positions of liking or disliking and affective (feeling) dispositions, neither of which can be considered accurate or inaccurate. This does not mean that beliefs are insincere or merely instrumental rationalizations. Interests influence beliefs, but how they do so depends on available information, the social organization and practices of a professional sphere, and the prevailing standards for generating knowledge.

Quite a lot changes if beliefs are understood in this way. Rather than seeing responses to American power as primarily dependent on what the United States is or does, this approach directs our attention to those holding beliefs about the United States. For this book, it means locating foreign policy elites in domestic contests for political power and material advantage and specifying the ways in which American actions have affected domestic contenders for power. Understanding the beliefs of foreign policy elites in Southeast Asia also requires paying attention to the conditions under which they operate: the practical demands of their work, the information that is most abundant and available to them, and the standards of evaluation and reasoning to which they are exposed. Ultimately, this provides greater leverage for explaining shifts in beliefs about the United States—and divergent beliefs across different groups of people—than approaches that focus mostly on American material capacities, motives, or actions. American power and the uses to which it is put matter, but to understand responses to the United States, we need to look at the local processes through which beliefs are fashioned.

American Primacy

The United States has made no secret of its claim to primacy in Asia. The United States Pacific Command, based in Hawaii, displays on its website a map of the Pacific Rim and the Indian Ocean. The parts marked in red—from New Zealand and Australia in the south to Japan and China in the north, an area that includes India and all of Southeast Asia—are designated its “Area of Responsibility,” while the “Area of Interest” is colored blue: Canada, the western part of South and Central America, the Middle East, and the east coast of Africa.5 This graphic, public depiction of claimed responsibilities by the United States generally passes without comment in the region, in contrast to the speculation, frequently tinged with suspicion, regarding the power projection capacities of the Chinese military.6 Other indicators of the U.S. claim to primacy are not hard to find: they are written in major policy documents, and every American president since the early 1990s has made explicit assertions of primacy.7 Although official statements since 2009 have given more space to the need to work with allies and friends, the military might of the United States continues to make it more than merely first among equals. For the time being, no other country comes close to matching its firepower, force projection capacities, technological sophistication, or economic wealth.8

This global American preeminence has endured for nearly two decades and unambiguous signs that other countries are actively seeking to balance against the United States are hard to find. This has led to a whole series of coinages, from “soft balancing” to “pre-balancing” and “hedging,” to describe what might be indicators that the rest of the world wants to see the scales weighted more evenly.9 Yet against such signs, there is an equally telling accumulation of evidence that much of the world has been fairly content to live with American primacy. In the last twenty years, a long list of countries has offered increased access to the U.S. military in terms of basing or other facilities, while only a few have chosen to reduce such access.10 Despite the widespread condemnation of American foreign policy and military adventurism in the years between 2001 and 2008, many governments stepped up programs of bilateral cooperation with the United States. This is not inconsistent with a simultaneous desire to see the “taming” of American power—a reduction in its unilateralism and aggression, greater respect for international law and multilateral institutions, and less hypocrisy on issues such as human rights.11 Nonetheless, in the absence of decisive moves to help shore up potential countervailing centers of power, enhanced cooperation on issues ranging from counterterrorism to bilateral preferential trade agreements and facilitation of American military operations speaks in favor of the idea that many governments still see the United States as the “indispensable nation” more than as a potential threat.12

The United States and Southeast Asia: Elite Views and Continued Cooperation

Foreign policy elites in Southeast Asia, a region that has lived with American hegemony since the end of World War II, appear to see the United States in a relatively positive light. In 2004, when worldwide approval of the United States was at its lowest, and majorities in many countries were citing the United States as the greatest threat to international peace and stability, a group of Southeast Asian foreign policy experts was brought together by the Asia Foundation to voice opinions on American foreign policy. The rapporteur, a prominent Singaporean diplomat, reported some concerns but embedded them within the larger judgment that “Southeast Asia appreciates the indispensable role which the United States has played in the maintenance of regional security and its positive role in spurring the region’s rapid social and economic development. . . . Since the end of World War II, the U.S. has provided Southeast Asia with a security umbrella that has been a stabilizing factor for the development of the region.”13 There is, of course, likely to be a pro-American bias in a group of respondents selected by the Asia Foundation. However, similar references to the United States playing a positive, if not indispensable, role in ensuring regional security and prosperity over the past sixty years are commonplace in Southeast Asian foreign policy circles.14

Increased attention to American unilateralism and aggression in the wake of 2001 dented this apparent consensus in the foreign policy community only minimally. American foreign policy certainly had plenty of Southeast Asian critics in this period, but as several accounts of bilateral relations have concluded, countries in the region put whatever feelings of “unease” they may have felt behind them and moved to cement their ties with the United States.15 The chairman of a Singaporean think tank asserts, “Most in Asia do not desire an end to U.S. primacy. Indeed, U.S. presence is what they have known, lived with, and largely prospered from over the past few decades. The overarching wish of Asian states is instead that the present hour of U.S. primacy continues to provide stability and show benevolence for all, even in the face of post-9/11 exigencies and imperatives.”16 Similarly, a scholar at a security think tank notes, “American predominance and leadership continue to be acknowledged and valued generally in Southeast Asia” despite “reduced comfort” due to the Iraq War and the Bush administration’s “style of conducting business.” Nonetheless, “Southeast Asians by and large prefer U.S. dominance.”17 Although not usually acknowledged so explicitly, a hierarchical regional order led by the United States appears to be accepted by most Southeast Asian governments, just as it has been—with some caveats—by China and Japan.18

Elite perceptions of a benign America do not necessarily resonate with public opinion in Southeast Asia. Indeed, consonant with declining American standing globally in the years after 2001, the United States was distinctly unpopular in some Southeast Asian countries at this time.19 Public opinion polling data, however, are volatile and tend to capture views that may be superficial and disconnected from policy and behavior.20 In most Southeast Asian countries, according to Simon Tay, “Despite some negative public opinion in many societies and perhaps private doubts, anti-Americanism has not been entrenched as state opinion. Asian leaders have instead responded quite promptly, whether as true allies or opportunistic ambulance chasers, to align their own agenda with that of the United States.”21

Singapore stands out among Southeast Asian countries as the most consistent and unequivocal in its support for U.S. foreign policy after 2001. It sent a small noncombat unit to Iraq, increased counterterrorism and military cooperation with the United States, and concluded a bilateral preferential ...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• 1. BELIEFS ABOUT AMERICAN HEGEMONY IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
• 2. BEHIND BELIEFS
• 3. THE POLITICS AND ECONOMICS OF INTERESTS
• 4. HISTORY LESSONS
• 5. PROFESSIONAL EXPERTISE
• 6. REGIME INTERESTS, BELIEFS, AND KNOWLEDGE
• APPENDIX
• References