Albright is certainly guilty as charged. She is a European scholar, both in the sense of her expertise and also of her background (Czech). Her scholarly writings reveal an interest in and familiarity with European history and politics. But surely the job of secretary of state requires no particular specialization. Indeed, it probably helps to have the ability to look beyond whatever particular background one brings to that office. George Marshall was a military man and Dean Acheson a lawyer, but they were impressive secretaries of state because they transcended their professional biases and looked broadly at the world. The one Asia hand who did become secretary of state was Dean Rusk, who presided over the Vietnam War. Perhaps too much knowledge can be a dangerous thing.
In any event, what does it mean to have a background in European history and politics? Most broadly, it means that you have studied the history of a region in which a group of nations, nestled close together, became increasingly rich and ambitious. These countries built up their military forces and asserted themselves abroad. Geopolitical tensions were exacerbated by national chauvinism, historical rivalries and border disputes among all these countries. Add to that a volatile mix of political systems–from ancient monarchies to communist regimes to liberalizing democracies–and you had a recipe for constant instability, crises and violence. And in fact over the last 400 years Europe was the world’s greatest producer of both wealth and war.
Welcome to East Asia today, economically the fastest-growing part of the world. Almost all of the major countries in the region–Japan, China, South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia–have been expanding their economies at a furious pace for the last 20 years. The most dramatic example is, of course, China, which has quadrupled its gross national product in the last two decades and will probably become one of the world’s wealthiest countries in the next decade.
As the nouveau riche are wont to do, East Asian countries have begun showing off. They buy and build ever-increasing quantities of weapons from all over the world. Asia’s share of global arms imports has risen from 15 percent in the early 1980s to more than 35 percent today. In an atmosphere in which every other world power is cutting defense budgets, Japan, China, Taiwan and Malaysia are all spending at least 20 percent more on defense than they were three years ago.
With wealth comes pride. The countries of East Asia are increasingly boastful about their history, culture and traditions. Some of this takes the form of anti-Western rhetoric–from Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew and Malaysia’s Mohammed Mahathir–but much of it is reflected in the relations of these countries with one another. Historical animosities are nursed, negotiating positions hardened and old border disputes revived. And there is an unending series of border disputes between, as Princeton’s Aaron Friedberg notes, “Japan and Russia, Russia and China, China and India, Japan and China, Japan and South Korea, Laos and China, China and Burma, India and Pakistan, Cambodia and Vietnam, China and Vietnam, China and Taiwan, Indonesia and Timor, Malaysia and the Philippines, and–in the case of the Spratly Islands–China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Taiwan together.”
Add to this picture widely varying political systems and styles of leadership–from the Leninists in Beijing to the populists in Taipei; from the autocratic dictatorships of Southeast Asia to the one-party democracy of Japan–and you have East Asia’s present. It looks a lot like Europe’s past. If Mrs. Albright remembers her European history, it will serve her well when she deals with East Asian crises. In fact, America must play a role in Asia for the next 50 years much like the one it played in Europe for the last 50, as a deterrent against aggression and domination.
Ironically, the place where a background in European affairs may prove least useful in today’s world is–Europe. After hundreds of years of carnage, Europe seems to have been transformed in the five decades after 1945. Its countries are now all contented, bourgeois social democracies with stable democratic systems. While national rivalries still exist, of course, they rarely take the course of arms races or border disputes. Once obsessed by military balances, Europe’s statesmen now prepare against invasions of Polish carrots and English beer. Economics has literally become the coin of the realm, with the European Union creating an ever broader and deeper institutional framework to govern the lives of its member-states. It may not last, but this is Europe’s present.
If Mrs. Albright wishes to understand the Europe of 1997, she might be better off looking beyond its past. After all, that’s what the Europeans have done.
