Why Is There No NATO in Asia? Collective

Why is ThereNo NATO inAsia? CollectiveIdentity, Regionalism, and the Originsof Multilateralism Christopher Hemmer and PeterJ. Katzenstein

Regionalgroupings and regional effects are of growing importance in world politics.Although often described in geographical terms, regions are political creationsand not Ž xedby geography. Even regions that seem most natural and inalterableare products of political construction and subject to reconstruction attempts.Looking at speciŽ c instancesin which such constructions have occurred cantell us a greatdeal about the shape and the shaping of internationalpolitics. Inthe aftermath of World War II, theUnited States attempted to create and organizeboth a NorthAtlantic and a SoutheastAsian region. The institutional forms oftheseregional groupings, however, differed dramatically. With its North Atlantic partners,the United States preferred to operate on a multilateralbasis. With its SoutheastAsian partners, in contrast, the United States preferred to operate bilat- erally.Why? Perceptions of collective identity, we argue,played an underappre- ciatedrole in this decision. Shaped by racial, historical, political, and cultural factors,U.S. policymakerssaw theirpotential European allies as relatively equal membersof asharedcommunity. America’ s potentialAsian allies, in contrast, were seenas part of an alien and, in important ways, inferior community. At the beginningof theCold War, thisdifference in mutualidentiŽ cation, in combination withmaterial factors and considerations of efŽciency, was ofcriticalimportance in deŽning the interests and shaping the choices of U.S. decisionmakers in Europe and Asia.Different forms ofcooperation make greater or lesser demands on shared identities.Multilateralism is a particularlydemanding form ofinternational coop-

Forcriticisms andsuggestions of earlier draftsof thispaper, we wouldlike to thank Tim Borstelmann, SteveBurgess, Allen Carlson, Jeffrey Checkel,Matthew Evangelista, Martha Finnemore, Judith Gen- tleman,Mary Hampton, Robert Keohane, Jonathan Kirshner, Masaru Kohno,Stephen Krasner, David Lai,Walter LaFeber,David Laitin, Kier Lieber,Rose McDermott,Matthew Rhodes, Thomas Risse, Jae-JungSuh, and Chris Way. We alsoare gratefulto the editors and reviewers of IO whosecareful readingshave greatly improved this paper. The views expressedhere are thoseof theauthors alone and donotnecessarily reect theviews oftheAir War Collegeor anyother U.S. government department or agency.

InternationalOrganization 56,3, Summer 2002,pp. 575– 607 ©2002by The IO Foundationand the Massachusetts Instituteof Technology 576 InternationalOrganization eration.It requires a strongsense of collective identity in addition to shared interests. Thiscase is of more than passing historical interest. In recent years, realist and liberaltheorists of internationalrelations have debated, more than once, the relative importanceand ef Ž cacyof materialcapabilities versus institutions in worldpolitics. Realistshave argued that international anarchy and the security dilemma it creates makeinternational institutions epiphenomenal or, at best, marginal to worldpolitics. Liberalshave claimed instead that institutions have noticeable effects that can amelioratethe security dilemma. After theend of the Cold War andthe collapse of theSoviet Union, neorealist theory, for example,expected the North Atlantic Treaty Organization(NATO) todisintegrate quickly. Neoliberalism did not. Instead, neoliberalsargued that NATO helpedcreate conditions that were conduciveto peacein Europe after 1945 and that, therefore, NATO was likelyto prosper and endure.1 Morethan a decadehas passed since the end of theCold War and,far from disappearing,NATO isexpanding. Theempirical research program of neoliberalinstitutionalism remains, however, largelyrestricted to asmallpool of successfulWestern institutions such as NATO, theGeneral Agreement on Tariffs andTrade/ WorldTrade Organization (GATT/ WTO), orthe European Union (EU). 2 Evenin these cases, neoliberal theory encountersuncomfortable dif Ž culties.Why did the Warsaw Pactnot persist as uncertaintyincreased in Eastern Europe ’ssecurityenvironment in 1989 –90? And whydid NATO ratherthan the Organization for Securityand Cooperation in Europe becomeEurope ’spreferredsecurity regime in the 1990s? An exclusive focus on unmeasuredinstitutional ef Ž cienciesthat are created by a stipulatedlowering of transactioncosts and a varietyof institutionalasset speci Ž citiesrisks slighting the causalimportance of material capabilities and collective identities. “Institutional assets,” writesCeleste A. Wallander, “affectthe costs and effectiveness of alterna- tivestrategies, but they do not determine purpose. ”3 Neoliberalinstitutionalism ’scentralclaim —thatinstitutions develop when states foreseeself-interested bene Ž tsfrom cooperationunder conditions that are propitious for overcomingobstacles to cooperation —remainsin need of further testing and reŽ nement. “Asingle,deductive model is a bridgetoo far, ” concludeBarbara Koremenos,Charles Lipson, and Duncan Snidal, further stating that “Bedrock preferencesare constant —ahallmarkassumption and limitation of the rational approach.”4 Securityarrangements in Asiaremain a puzzle.Multilateral institutions faileddespite the presence of self-interested bene Ž tsfrom cooperation.Even though,as in Europe, multilateral security arrangements would have provided information,reduced transaction costs, made commitments more credible, and establishedfocal points for coordinatingpolicies, after 1945 the U.S. government

1. See DufŽ eld1998; Haftendorn, Keohane, and Wallander 1999; and Wallander 1999 and 2000. 2.Kohno 1996. 3.Wallander 2000, 712. 4.Koremenos, Lipson, and Snidal 2001, 1065, 1074. NoNATO inAsia 577 optedfor ahub-and-spokessystem of bilateral alliances in Asia with the United Statesat the center. “If NATO was sosuccessful in Europe, ” asksMasaru Kohno, “whywas itnotcopied in East Asia in theaftermath of WorldWar II? ”5 Neoliberal theory,by itself, offers nocompelling answer to this question. Neitherdoes a realistanalysis that focuses exclusively on capabilities and interests.Realist scholars are right to insist that the main U.S. interestswere served wellby forming a setof bilateralalliances in Asia. 6 Butthey remain silent on the issueof why those interests favored multilateral arrangements in Europe and bilateralones in Asia. Material capabilities alone offer littlehelp in answering the questionof why there was noNATO inAsia. Strictformulations of both liberalism and realism are less convincing than eclecticvariants that also incorporate important insights from constructivisttheory. 7 Eclecticexplanations highlight the causal importance of socialfacts such as power statusand threat perceptions, in addition to the material facts and ef Ž ciency considerationsstressed by rationalistapproaches. Eclectic explanations also under- cut reiŽ cationssuch as thedistinction between domestic and international levels of analysis.Theoretical eclecticism cuts against the paradigmatic organization of most contemporaryscholarship on internationalrelations. Thinking in termsof schools of thought,as James Fearon and Alex Wendt argue, at the very least can “encourage scholarsto be method-driven rather than problem-driven in their research, which mayresult in importantquestions or answers beingignored if they are not amenable tothepreferred paradigmatic fashion. ”8 Toliberalism, constructivism adds consid- erationof the effects identities have on both formal and informal institutions. To neorealism,it adds consideration of the effects of ideational rather than material structures,speci Ž callythe effects of identity on actor interests. 9 Inthe second section of this article, we brie  ycontrastthe policies the United Statespursued in Europe and Asia during the early Cold War. Althoughstrikingly littlecomparative work has been done contrasting U.S. foreignpolicy in Asia and Europe,in thefollowing section we brie  yexploreexplanations that can be gleaned from theexisting literature on why the United States preferred multilateral orga- nizingprinciples in Europe and bilateral ones in Asia. Next, we putforward three eclecticexplanations that combine the material and ef Ž ciencyfactors stressed in realistand liberal explanations with social factors stemming from thedifferent levelsof identi Ž cationAmerican policymakers felt with regard to their European andAsian allies. Finally, we exploresome of the theoretical and empirical impli- cationsof thisargument.

5.Kohno 1996, 7. 6. Ibid., 29–33. 7.See Wendt1999; Ruggie 1998; and Katzenstein 1996b. 8.Fearon and Wendt 2001, 1. 9.See Adlerand Barnett 1998; Neumann 1999; and Acharya 2000and 2001. 578 InternationalOrganization

ConstructingRegions and Regional Institutions After1945

Whenthe U.S. Senate Ž rst beganto debatethe issue of aformalU.S. commitment toEuropefollowing World War II, SenatorHenry Cabot Lodge, Jr. was puzzledas hiscolleagues began to discuss the relationship between the United States and its potentialEuropean allies as a regionalone. “Certainly,” he argued, “the United Statesand Western Europe ” couldnot be part of thesame region. “Certainly,” they could,Senator Arthur Vandenberg responded, “becausethis is a NorthAtlantic region.” Thisexchange initiated a shortdebate over how far theconcept of aregion couldbe stretched. Could a regionbe anythinga statewanted it to be, or did3,000 milesof ocean render absurd any talk of acommonregion? 10 Thisbrief exchange underscoresthe fact that regions do not just exist as material objects in the world. Geographyis notdestiny. 11 Instead,regions are social and cognitive constructs that canstrike actors as more or less plausible. Thecreation of NATO andthe Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO) form anaturalparallel that has sparked surprisingly little attention from studentsof internationalpolitics. 12 Comparingthe two offers thehistorian of international relationssomething like a naturalexperiment. In the early Cold War, theUnited Statesinitiated a numberof regional alliances to help organize some recently deŽ nedregions. The form oftheseregional alliances, however, varied signi Ž cantly. TheUnited States consistently treated the newly minted North Atlantic region differentlythan the newly minted Southeast Asian region. In Europe, it opted to promotea multilateralframework. The United States preferred to deal bilaterally withits Asian allies. Why? Because most of thesecondary literature on thecreation ofthesetwo alliances predates the current theoretical concern with the question of bilateralismversus multilateralism, it is not very illuminating on this issue. Notingthat more than two states make up the SEATO alliance,much secondary literaturetreats it asa multilateralalliance. SEATO, however,is not multilateral in thesame sense as NATO. 13 First,the language of thetreaty commitment is much weaker.Instead of the NATO commitmentto collective defense as outlined in articleV, whichstates that an attack on one will be considered an attack on all, articleIV oftheSEATO treatymerely classi Ž essuch an attack as a threatto peace andsafety. Furthermore, in SEATO theUnited States made it clear that it retained itsprerogative to act bilaterally or unilaterally. This was formalizedin the Rusk- Thanatjoint statement of 1962, in which the United States stressed that its commitmentto Thailand “doesnot depend upon prior agreement of all the other partiesto the treaty, since the obligation is individual as well as collective. ”14 Organizationally,the differences were justas apparent. In SEATO, therewas no

10.U.S. Senate 1973,14 –19, 315–17. 11.Paasi 1986. 12. DufŽ eld 2001, 69–72. 13.Ruggie 1997, 105. 14.Rusk and Thanat 1962, 498 –99. NoNATO inAsia 579 uniŽ edcommandand no speci Ž callyallocated uni Ž edforces;and any actions taken underSEATO auspiceswere handledindividually by themember states and not by theinstitution as a whole. 15 U.S. policymakerscontemplated the possibility of establishingan AsianNATO. Indeed,many of its prospective members favored the creation of a NATO-type institution. 16 TheUnited States, however, remained adamantly opposed to using NATO asthe model and even discouraged the use of the phrase SEATO, fearing unwantedcomparisons of the acronyms. As onemember of theU.S. StateDepart- mentwrote to John Foster Dulles: Inaccordance with your suggestion . ..we haveattempted to get away from thedesignation “SEATO” soastoavoid fostering the idea than an organization isenvisioned for SEA[SoutheastAsia] andthe Paci Ž csimilarto NATO. ...In spiteof ourefforts, the designation “SEATO” hasstuck. . .. Isuggestthat we acceptthat “ SEATO”is hereto stay and that we continue to makeclear in our substantivediscussions that so far as theUS isconcerned, the SEA Pactis not conceivedas a parallelto NATO (emphasisin original). 17 Inthe following section, we discussexisting arguments regarding the rise of multilateralor bilateral institutions to see what they can offer inthe way of explanationfor whythe United States treated NATO andSEATO sodifferently.

Universal andIndeterminate Explanations

Eventhough most studies of thesecurity arrangements the United States sought to createafter World War IIareregionally limited to Europe or Asia, many seek to explainthe rise of multilateral or bilateralinstitutions with universal explanations. OnceEurope and Asia are placed in a comparativeperspective, however, the problemwith these explanations becomes obvious. As universalexplanations, they areunable to account for theregional differences in U.S. policy.A secondset of explanationsfor America ’spreferencefor multilateralmechanisms in Europe and for bilateralmechanisms in Asia is underdetermined. The opportunities and con- straintsto whichthese accounts point as thedriving force behind U.S. choicescould havebeen satis Ž edbyeither bilateral or multilateralsecurity arrangements. There- fore,by themselves, these explanations are insuf Ž cient.

UniversalExplanations Morethan any other scholar, John Ruggie has drawn our attention to theimportance ofmultilateralism as a novelsocial institution in twentieth-century diplomacy.

15.See Modelski1962, 38 –39;and Webb 1962, 66. 16.See Lundestad1999, 208; Kohno 1996, 29; and Kim 1965,65 – 66. 17.U.S. Department ofState 1984,740 – 41. 580 InternationalOrganization

Ruggiefocuses mostly on Europe in this context. 18 He interpretsthe expansion of multilateralprinciples after World War II asthe result of theU.S. “visionas towhat constitutesa desirableworld order. ”19 Accordingto this view, the United States has pushedmultilateral principles abroad for anumberof reasons.The principles are a convenientmask for U.S. hegemony.They duplicate U.S. domesticorder. And they areconsistent with the U.S. viewof itself. 20 Whilethis explains why the United States may Ž ndmultilateral principles attractive, it cannot explain why the United Statespushed multilateralism much more in Europethan in Asia. Ruggie notes this difference,but does not attempt to account for itbeyond noting that it “was not possible” toembrace multilateralism in Asia. 21 Anne-MarieBurley offers asimilarlyuniversal explanation. 22 FollowingCharles Maier,23 Burleyargues that U.S. supportfor multilateralismwas anattempt to apply thelessons the United States had learned from theGreat Depression on an internationalscale. In essence, Burley argues, the United States attempted to implementa globalNew Dealfollowing the war. However,this account suffers from thesame limitations as Ruggie ’s.It cannot explain why the United States appliedthese global principles differently in different world regions. As DavidLake notes,the United States projects its norms onto the global scene “in a highly selectivefashion that itself needs to be explained. ”24 Universalexplanations derived from studiesfocusing on U.S. policytoward Asia duringthe Cold War areequally limited. One such explanation highlights the unwillingnessof the United States to delegate authority. If theUnited States was goingto bear the largest share of theburden for themilitary defense of Asia,why shouldit cede control or limit its freedom of actionin a multilateralinstitution? 25 In thewords of one U.S. Departmentof Defense of Ž cial, a “NATO pattern ” in Asia would be “inimicalto US interestsin that it could . ..tendto reduce, without compensatingmilitary advantage, United States military freedom of action. ”26 Thisexplanation also fails to accountfor thedifferent policies the United States pursuedin Europeand Asia. Why would the United States accept the loss of control entailedin the creation of multilateral institutions in Europe, but not in Asia? A realistcould answer that the United States accepted this loss of control in Europe becausethe European states offered a “compensatingmilitary advantage. ” Such an explanationis undoubtedly partly correct. In their material power resources, Euro- peanstates offered more advantages to theUnited States than did Asian states. This, however,can only be partof thestory. During the early Cold War, theUnited States

18.See Ruggie1993 and 1994. 19.Ruggie 1994, 560. See alsoLegro 2000. 20.Ruggie 1994, 561 – 65. 21.Ruggie 1993, 4, 29. 22.Burley 1993. 23.Maier 1978. 24.Lake 1999,218. 25.See Kim 1965,68; and Webb 1962, 66. 26.U.S. Department ofState 1984,767 – 68. NoNATO inAsia 581 was sofar aheadof both the war-destroyed European states and the newly emerging statesof Asiathat any differences between these two regions was probablymarginal comparedto the huge gulf separating the United States from both.By itself, therefore,a generalunwillingness to cede control to weaker allies in multilateral institutionscannot explain the regional difference in U.S. policy.

UnderdeterminedExplanations StevenWeber ’simportantwork on theevolution of multilateralismin NATO argues thatU.S. policymakersbelieved a multipolarworld would be more stable than the bipolarworld they saw comeinto existence following World War II. 27 The only way for amultipolarworld to comeinto being, however, would be for centersof power toemerge that were independentof the United States and the Soviet Union. The UnitedStates promoted multilateralism in Europe, according to Weber, to encour- agethe emergence of an independent center of power that could usher in a more peacefulperiod of multipolarity. Thelogic of this argument, as Weber notes, would lead him to expect that the U.S. preferencefor multipolarityshould also have led it topromote the development ofindependent centers of power in Asia as well as in Europe. 28 Inpart, this expectationis con Ž rmed—theUnited States did try to restore Japan ’s power. However,in buildingup anindependentcenter of power in Asia, the United States choseto doso in termsof itsbilateral relationship with Japan, rather than in terms ofa regionalmultilateral institution. Thus by itself, the U.S. desireto see the emergenceof independentcenters of power has no directrelationship to thechoice betweenbilateral or multilateral security arrangements. Asecondunderdetermined explanation points to the hostilities that existed betweenJapan and its neighbors after 1945. Fearful of Japan ’sre-emergenceas an imperialistpower, many Asian states were hesitantto joinany Paci Ž calliancethat hadJapan as a member. 29 For example,John Foster Dulles discovered that many prospectivemembers of anyAsian alliance “havememories of Japaneseaggression thatare so vivid that they are reluctant to create a MutualSecurity Pact with Japan.”30 Yetfear ofJapandoes not offer acompleteexplanation for theU.S. decisionto workbilaterally in Asia.Germany ’spariahstatus following World War IIwas equal toifnot greater than Japan ’s.Yet this pariah status did not prevent the United States from supportingand pursuing multilateral initiatives in Europe that would soon includeGermany. 31 Therewere manycalls for theUnited States to rehabilitate Japanin the eyes of its neighbors so that it could become a memberof a wider

27.See Weber 1991and 1993. 28.Weber 1991,16. 29. See DufŽ eld 2001, 80– 81;and Kohno 1996, 31 –32. 30.Dulles 1952, 182. 31.Trachtenberg 1999. 582 InternationalOrganization

PaciŽ cpact.Such a policywould have required a sharperbreak with the past than GeneralMacArthur and the U.S. occupationof Japan were preparedto make, particularlywith respect to the political status of Emperor Hirohito. 32 In fact, the UnitedStates government never made the same efforts tointegrateJapan into Asia throughmultilateral institutions as it did for Germanyin Europe. 33 Hadthe United Statespushed its Asian allies to acceptJapan as hardas itpushedits European allies tointegrate with Germany, similar institutions might have evolved in the two regions.34 Athirdunderdetermined argument centers on the Eisenhower administration ’s New Lookpolicy. Central to this policy was reducingthe defense budget by limiting relianceon costlyground troops and focusing on alessexpensive nuclear deterrent. Someargue that the limited nature of theU.S. commitmentto SEATO  owed from the Ž scalconservatism and massive retaliation strategy of the Eisenhower admin- istration,reinforced by the lessons of the Korean War. 35 As Secretaryof State Dullesput it during Senate hearings on the SEATO treaty:

We donot expect to duplicate in this area the pattern of the NATO [organi- zation]and its signi Ž cantstanding forces. That would require a diversionof andcommitment of strength which we donot think is either practical or desirableor necessary.

Instead,Dulles emphasized the “mobilestriking power ” ofU.S. forcesthat need not andought not be easilypinned down at many points around the circumference of the communistworld. 36 Whilethis is aplausibleexplanation for whythe UnitedStates wanted to limitany groundcommitment to SEATO, itis lesscompelling as an explanationfor thelack ofmultilateralismin SEATO. At thesame time that the United States was creating SEATO, itwas alsotrying to limitits ground commitments and increase reliance on nucleardeterrence in Europe. In NATO, however,the United States attempted to do thismultilaterally through the sharing of nuclear weapons within the alliance. 37 Thuslimited ground commitments and a multilateralalliance structure could potentiallyhave been as compatible in Asia as in Europe. The United States, however,did not try to make them compatible in Asia. Insum, several universal or underdetermined explanations of the rise of multi- lateraland bilateral security institutions in Europeand Asia suffer from oneof two weaknesses.They offer accountsthat do not consider regional variations, or they identifyconstraints and opportunities for U.S. foreignpolicy that could have been satisŽ edby either bilateral or multilateral arrangements.

32.Bix 2000, 533 – 80. 33.Hampton 1998/ 99. 34.U.S. Department ofState 1984,425 –26. 35.See Marks1993, 51 –52;and Hess 1990,280. 36.U.S. Senate 1954,13 –14, 17. 37.See Trachtenberg1999, 147 –215;and Weber 1991,48 – 69. NoNATO inAsia 583

Eclectic Explanations:Power, Threats, and Identity

Toaccount for thedifferent policies pursued by the United States in building its alliancesin Europe and Asia after World War II, realistanalyses focus on the distributionof poweramong the United States and its putative allies and enemies, whileliberal explanations focus on therelative ef Ž cienciesof differentinstitutional forms. Whileboth approaches offer someinsight into NATO andSEATO origins, bothrely, often implicitly, on non-rationalistarguments about identity to maketheir casesplausible. As AlastairIain Johnston and David E. Spiro,among others, have arguedin their eclectic rendering of arealistanalysis, variables like power status and threatsare social facts, whose signi Ž cance,while anchored in material reality, cannotsimply be read off materialcapabilities. 38 Constructivistexplanations that focuson identity alone are similarly incomplete. Divorced from thematerial and efŽ ciencyfactors stressed by realistsand liberals, constructivist arguments about the importanceof identityrisk being empirically too thin and analytically too malleable. Ratherthan seeking to establish the superiority of one approach over another, we developeclectic explanations that offer compellinginsights into a speci Ž c empirical puzzle.

GreatPower Status Therelative weakness of the regional members of SEATO isa strongrealist argumentfor whySEATO was notformed along NATO lines.The discrepancy betweenthe power of theUnited States and the power of itsAsian allies may have madethe multilateral bargain an unattractive one for theUnited States. George Modelski,for example,argues that “inNATO thebene Ž tsand obligations are sharedfairly equally. In SEATO thedisparity between the great and small powers isgreater. . ..Mostof SEATO ’sconcreteoperations represent one-way traf Ž c to helparea states and not a two-waycooperative enterprise. ”39 If itis restricted to materialcapabilities only, however, this explanation encounters some problems. A hugedisparity between the United States and its regional allies existed not only in Asiabut also in war-destroyed Europe. Moreover, Japan was notinvited to join SEATO eventhough as a modernindustrialized state it potentially could have contributedmany resources to the  edglingalliance. Similarly, other regional states withstrong militaries, like South Korea and Taiwan, were notinvited to join the alliance.Material capabilities alone do not offer acompellinganswer for whythe UnitedStates did not pursue this course. Greatpower status, however, did matter. U.S. of Ž cialsbelieved that, despite currentdisparities in capabilities due to the ravages World War IIhadin  icted on Europe,their European allies would soon rebuild their strength, while their Asian

38.See Johnston1995; and Spiro 1999. 39.Modelski 1962, 39. 584 InternationalOrganization allieswould remain permanently weak. While U.S. policymakersmay have acted condescendinglyto their European partners, in comparison to their Asian allies, it was condescensiontempered by theexpectation of Europe ’srevival.Indeed, much ofU.S. policytoward Europe was drivenby the perception of theEuropean states asgreat powers. According to Steve Weber, President Eisenhower, one of the strongestproponents of multilateralism in NATO, “heldstrong views about the traditionalplace of Britain, France and even Germany as great powers in world politics.” Theirposition as “secondaryactors . ..was simplyunnatural. ”40 Most SoutheastAsian states, by way of contrast, were inthe late 1940s only at the thresholdof sheddingtheir colonial status and gaining national sovereignty for the Ž rst time. InAsia, the United States really had only one potential great power ally —Japan.41 However,an analysis focused solely on the material balance of power leaves importantquestions unanswered. 42 InAsia, why did the United States not ally with Chinaagainst the Soviet Union? The Chinese revolution and Mao ’svictoryin 1949 was ofcritical importance. A threatis rooted not solely in differential material capabilitiesbut also in the view of thedifference between self and other that shapes interpretationsof actor intentions and interests. Although conceivable in terms of materialbalance of power, for ideologicalreasons, communist China was nota plausiblealliance partner for theUnited States after 1949. Eclectic theorizing enrichesbalance of powerexplanations.

EfŽcient Responses to Threat Aliberalexplanation for whythe United States failed to push multilateralism in Asiafocuses on the different threats faced in Asia and Europe and the most institutionallyef Ž cientresponse to those threats. The military and civilian leader- shipin the United States was ingeneral agreement that Southeast Asia was less importantand less threatened than Europe. 43 Furthermore,the threat in Asia, it couldbe argued, was oneof national insurgencies rather than cross-border war. Thesedifferences suggest the appropriateness of differentinstitutional countermea- suresin the two regions. InEurope, the military structure of NATO was designedto hold off amassive Sovietoffensive. U.S. of Ž cialsexpected no large-scaleoffensive by eitherthe Soviet Unionor China in Asia. The primary problem for theUnited States in Asia was Ž ghtingcommunist insurgencies. Security arrangements designed to fend off a Sovietassault might not have been appropriate for dealingwith national insurgen- cies.Indeed, they may have been counterproductive. The varied nature of the internalsubversive threats faced by the different states may have made a “one-size-

40.Weber 1991,41. 41. DufŽ eld 2001, 77– 80. 42.Reiter 1996,41 –54. 43.U.S. Department ofState 1984,3, 831. NoNATO inAsia 585

Ž ts-all” multilateraldefense arrangement like the one built in NATO inappropri- ate.44 Inone of the few referencesto SEATO inhis memoirs, Eisenhower approvinglyquotes Churchill ’sbeliefthat “Sincesectors of the SEATO frontwere sovaried in place and conditions, he [Churchill] felt it best to operate nationally wherepossible. ”45 Itis importantto note, however, that different perceptions of threatwere tiedto questionsof identity.As DeanAcheson saw it,the threat to whichNATO responded was posed “notonlyto our countrybut also to thecivilization in whichwe live. ” “To understandthis threat, ” Achesoncontinued, one had to “goback more than 2000 years,to the very beginning of Western civilization. ”46 Or asUndersecretary of StateRobert Lovett put it, the “cement” ofthetreaty “was notthe Soviet threat, but thecommon Western approach and that Western attachment to the worth of the individual.”47 Itis evident that different threat perceptions often frustrated U.S. of Ž cials throughoutthe SEATO negotiations.One U.S. StateDepartment of Ž cial com- plainedthat Asian states were “preoccupied ” withinternal problems and “distract- ed” bymemoriesof colonialism.Thus “theidea that Communist imperialism is the immediateand major threat has been slow in taking hold. ”48 SecretaryDulles bemoanedthe fact that “thecountries which had won or were winningtheir independencefrom Westerncolonialism or Japanwere oftenmore concerned with pastdangers . ..thanthe threat of new peril. ”49 Historicalenmities, colonial legacies,and newly won state sovereignties affected how Asian elites viewed the communistthreat in Asia. In contrast to the Manichean vision of U.S. decision makers,Asian elites confronted a welterof relevant social facts rooted in the perceptionof selfand other. Adirectline from acertaintype of threat (cross-border Soviet attack) to a particularinstitutional form (multilateralism)cannot be drawn in Europe. The Europeansituation after World War II, similarto the situation in Asia, was also complicated.In the early days of NATO theUnited States neither expected nor feareda massiveSoviet assault. U.S. of Ž cialssaw thecreation of NATO asa politicalmove that bolstered the morale of European governments and thus helped themdeal with their internal troubles, and as ameansof reassuringother European statesagainst any resurgence of athreatfrom Germany. 50 Consideralso the development of these two alliances over time. While the multilateralnature of NATO grew overtime with the perceived probability of a potentialSoviet attack in Europe, the increased salience of cross-bordercon  ict in Asiafailed to have the same impact on U.S. relationswith its Paci Ž callies.The

44.Ibid., 1023 –24. 45.Eisenhower 1963, 368. 46.Jackson 2001, 429 –30. 47.Reid 1977, 133. 48.Murphy 1954, 516. 49.Dulles 1954, 743. 50.Gheciu 2001. 586 InternationalOrganization

KoreanWar inparticular intensi Ž edU.S. threatperception of the Soviet Union ’s rolein Europe. NATO ’smilitarybuildup and German rearmament became a politicaloption only after the onset of militaryhostilities on the Korean peninsula. InAsia, by way of contrast, the Korean War failedto spur any move toward increasedmultilateralism. Indeed, the two states most at riskof across-borderthreat from China(South Korea and Taiwan) were explicitlykept outside of SEATO. 51 Thesedifferent responses raise a dif Ž cultproblem for thosewho see a direct relationshipbetween a particulartype of threatand a speci Ž cinstitutionalresponse. Whydoes a conventionalwar (as theUnited States saw it)in Korea lead to a multilateralresponse in Europe, but not in Asia,the actual location of the Ž ghting? DespiteSoviet caution in Europe, a conventionalwar inAsia acts as acatalystfor thegrowth of multilateral security arrangements in Europe, but fails to have the sameeffect for U.S. allianceefforts inAsia.Similarly, when the United States in the 1960sinterpreted the Vietnam War asa conventionalcross-border attack, it too failedto spur the growth of multilateral alliance arrangements in Asia. Hadthe threat of a massiveSoviet assault on Europe never developed, and had theSoviet threat remained entirely one of internal subversion, NATO certainly wouldhave remained a muchweaker organization than the one that has developed. Thequestion, however, is whetherit is thenature of this cross-border threat that can explainthe U.S. preferencefor multilateralismin Europe. Fortunately, there is no reasonto rely purely on counterfactual speculation to answer this question. As the implementationof the Marshall Plan illustrates, the United States preferred to operatemultilaterally in Europe even when the Soviet threat was seenas one of internalsubversion rather than cross-border attack. In brief, whether the threat was oneof internal subversion or cross-border assault, the United States preferred to operatemultilaterally in Europe and bilaterally in Asia. FollowingStephen Walt ’sclassictreatment, threat is frequentlyinvoked in realist andliberal analyses. 52 Yet Walt’stheoryof threat is a majordeparture from neorealisttheory and pushes beyond rationalist styles of analysis.Speci Ž cally,in his analysisWalt moves a largedistance from materialcapabilities to ideational factors. Inhis analysis, ideology is a variablethat competes with others for explanatory power.Ideology is asystemof meaningthat entails the distinction between self and otherin the de Ž nitionof threat. The cost calculations that states make when they weighideological solidarity against security interests are thus not exogenous to their ideologicalaf Ž nities.Hence the threat perception of enemies is an explanatory variablethat does not offer acompellinganswer as much as it invites further investigation. 53 Explanationsstressing differences in the great power status of European and Asianstates or ef Ž cientinstitutional responses to the nature of thecommunist threat inEurope and Asia share an emphasis on the causal importance of identity —as a

51.U.S. Senate 1949,56 –59. 52.Walt 1987. 53.Katzenstein 1996a,27 –28. NoNATO inAsia 587 certainkind of powerand as aspeci Ž ckindof enemy.The following section builds upon and  eshesout these related explanations to provide a fulleraccount of the waycollective identity helped create regional con Ž gurationsin Europe and Asia that,respectively, included and excluded the United States.

Regions,Identi Ž cation,and Institutional Form Aborder,argued Georg Simmel, is not a geographicfact that has sociological consequences,but a sociologicalfact that takes geographic form. 54 Thesame can be saidof regions.Neither the North Atlantic nor Southeast Asia existed as geograph- icalfacts. Both were politicallyconstructed. 55 Thepolicy of the United States regarding the organization of both regions is puzzling.From arealistperspective, the U.S. preferencefor multilateralismin Europeafter World War II isquite surprising. As SteveWeber notes, a hegemoncan maximizeits bargaining leverage by forginga seriesof bilateral deals with its allies ratherthan tying its hands in amultilateralframework. 56 Conversely,liberals would probably Ž ndtheU.S. preferencefor bilateralismin Southeast Asia after World War IIthegreater puzzle. As Anne-MarieBurley notes, multilateralism is “the form to beexpectedfrom asetof internationalregimes established by a liberalstate. ”57 A satisfactoryexplanation must account for bothU.S. choices. Theeffects of collective identity are an important ingredient to any such explanation.The institutional forms theUnited States favored in Europe and Asia duringthe early Cold War were shapedby thedifferent levels of identi Ž cation that U.S. policymakershad with these newly constructed regions. Identi Ž cation, as MarthaFinnemore notes, “emphasizesthe affective relationships between actors ” and “isanordinalconcept, allowing for degreesof affectas wellas changesin the focusof affect. ”58 Anargument about the importance of identi Ž cationin driving U.S. policyin these two regions is consistent with what is perhaps the dominant psychologicaltheory about group identity and its effects —socialidentity theory. 59 Oncepeople identify themselves as part of a particulargroup, studies of social identityhave found, they treat members of that group very differently than those outsidethe group. For instance,when people distribute gains within a de Ž ned group, theytend to lookmore toward maximizing absolute gains; in dealing with outsiders theytend to focus more on relative gains and maximizing the differential between insidersand outsiders. 60 These Ž ndingshave been consistent across studies even with the  imsiestand most arbitrarily de Ž nedgroups. In short, identi Ž cationis the mechanismthat helps connect the construction of speci Ž cregionalgroupings in

54.Gienow-Hecht 2000, 488. 55.See Lewis andWigen 1997; and Polelle 1999. 56.Weber 1991,5 –9. 57.Burley 1993, 145. 58.Finnemore 1996, 160. 59.See Tajfel 1978;Tajfel andTurner 1986; and Prentice and Miller 1999. 60.Mercer 1995,239 – 40. 588 InternationalOrganization

Europeand Asia to particular institutional features —multilateralor bilateral —of particularmilitary alliances. Lookedat from theperspective of social identity theory, U.S. policiesin both regionsbecome less puzzling. Once the North Atlantic was constructedas aregion thatput the United States in a groupingof roughly equal states with whom it identiŽ ed,multilateral organizing principles followed closely. As ErnestBevin, the Britishforeign minister put it, bilateral relations imposed by the strongest power, similarto whatthe Soviets were doingin Eastern Europe, are “notin keepingwith thespirit of Westerncivilisation, and if we areto have an organism in the West it mustbe aspiritualunion . ..itmustcontain all the elements of freedomfor which we allstand. ”61 U.S. policymakersagreed, believing that the Europeans could be trustedwith the additional power a multilateralinstitution would give them and that theEuropeans deserved this increased in  uence. Lackingstrong identi Ž cation,the United States did not, however, apply the same liberalprinciples when it came to organizing the newly created Southeast Asian region.Once Southeast Asia, in the view of U.S. policymakers,was constructedas aregioncomposed of alienand, in many ways, inferior actors, bilateralism followed closely.U.S. policymakersdid not believe that the Southeast Asian states could be trustedwith the increased in  uencea multilateralinstitution would offer, norwas thereany sense that these states deserved such a multilateralstructure. Whatwas thebasis for theidenti Ž cationof theUnited States with Europe and the lackthereof in its relations with Asia? The available evidence is relativelysketchy andpermits only cautious inferences. In their identi Ž cationwith Europe, U.S. ofŽ cialstypically refer toreligionand democratic values as thebedrock of aNorth Atlanticcommunity. A commonrace is mentioned, though less often, perhaps becauseGermany ’sgenocidalpolicies in the 1940s had thoroughly delegitimated thatconcept in Europeanpolitical discourse. 62 Perceivedaf Ž nitiesof varioustypes reinforcedthe political trust rooted in common democratic political institutions, “we-feeling, ” and “mutualresponsiveness ” thatKarl Deutschand his associates havedescribed as central ingredients of theemergence of aNorthAtlantic security community,de Ž nedby the existence of dependable expectations of peaceful change.63 Inthe case of Asia,these various af Ž nitiesand trust were absent,religion anddemocratic values were sharedonly in afew cases,and race was invokedas a powerfulforce separating the United States from Asia.The U.S. preferencefor multilateralor bilateral security arrangements followed from thesedifferent con- stellations.

TheOrigin of the North AtlanticCommunity. Thecreation of the political conceptof the North Atlantic community is an excellent example of the process of identiŽ cationat work in U.S. politicsas well as a demonstrationof how

61.Jackson 2001, 428 –29. 62.See Horne1999, 454 –59;and Hunt 1987, 161 –62. 63.Deutsch et al.1957. NoNATO inAsia 589 issuesof identity are entwined with material factors and instrumental political calculations.The emergence of aNorthAtlantic region followed a dramaticchange intheprevalent image of theUnited States ’ placein the world that occurred during WorldWar II. Beforethe war, AlanHenrikson argues, maps were typicallydrawn withthe United States in the center surrounded by twooceans. However, the efforts toresupply Great Britain and to later transport large numbers of troops to Europe causeda changein thatcartographic and cognitive image. During and after the war, moreand more maps appeared that put the Atlantic in the center with the United Statesand Europe positioned on oppositesides. During World War II, theAtlantic associationthus became more natural. 64 Theshift to a “North” Atlanticfocus was givena boostafter 1945 when the Soviet Union pressured Norway to signa defense pact.Had the Soviet Union established a zoneof in  uenceover Norway itwould havegained a largewindow on the Atlantic and thus exposed Europe ’s northern  ank.65 Thecreation of thenew geographic category of “NorthAtlantic ” alsoserved clear politicalends and was insome ways the product of calculated political agency. MartinFolly, for example,argues that “theidea of a NorthAtlantic system was a strokeof genius ” onthe part of Ernest Bevin. 66 Inthe early 1940s, the British governmentembarked on apoliticalstrategy aiming to prevent a disengagementof theUnited States from Europeafter the end of the war. Bevinrecognized that the UnitedStates would hesitate to join a “European” alliance,but would feel much morecomfortable talking about sea-lanes, access to bases, and a “NorthAtlantic ” alliance.A NorthAtlantic focus meshed nicely with the U.S. military ’sconcernwith “steppingstones ” acrossthe Atlantic. Reliant on bases and stopping-off points for thetransportation of troopsand equipment across the Atlantic, the armed services ’ emphasison the importance of Iceland, Greenland, and the Azores also put the Atlanticin theforeground. 67 InU.S. domesticpolitics, the focus on aNorthAtlantic communityhad a two-foldadvantage. It promised to beaneasiersell to anelectorate anda Congresswary ofEuropean entanglements; 68 furthermore,the concept of ‘community’ establisheda basisfor identi Ž cationthat transcended military-strategic considerations. Terminologicalinnovation also suited Canada. Seeking to minimize bilateral dealingswith the United States, Canada opposed any sort of “dumbbell” shaped arrangementcombining a NorthAmerican and a Europeanpole. A NorthAtlantic arrangementwould allow Canada to use the European states as a balanceagainst the UnitedStates. It would also allow the Canadian government to portray its conces- sionsto the alliance as concessionsto a NorthAtlantic group of statesand not solely

64.Henrikson 1975. 65.Henrikson 1980. 66.Folly 1988, 68. 67.See Lundestad1980, 251; and Henrikson 1975 and 1980, 19. 68.Kaplan 1984, 2 –3, 7– 8, 10, 31, 41–42,52, 70, 78, 115 –17. 590 InternationalOrganization asconcessions to theUnited States. In short, a NorthAtlantic community meant that Canadadid not have to deal with the United States alone. 69 Itis important to note that this geographically de Ž nedcategory constrained, but didnot determine membership. If geographyis destiny, the inclusion of Italy, “unwashedby Atlantic waters, ” inNATO was clearlyan anomaly. 70 So was the subsequentaccession of Greeceand Turkey. Even after George Kennan acquiesced inthe creation of aNorthAtlantic treaty, he continued to oppose Italy ’sparticipa- tion.Only by limitingthe treaty to a strictgeographic area, Kennan reasoned, could theUnited States avoid provoking the Soviet Union and offending other allies by theirexclusion. As Kennansaw it, “theonly sound standard for membershipin the AtlanticPact was indeeda geographicone. ”71 Whilethe administration readily concededthat Italy was notin the North Atlantic, it continued to support Italy ’s inclusionbecause it was tooimportant to Atlantic defenses to be left out. 72 Italy’s inclusionamong NATO ’sfoundingmembers, along with that of undemocratic Portugal(given the strategic importance of theAzores), underscorethe importance ofeclectic explanations that encompass both strategic calculations and regional identities.In these two cases, the geographically de Ž nedregion and the sense of identiŽ cationwith fellow democracies proved less decisive than strategic calcula- tionsin determiningmembership. Italy ’smembershipended up beingconsequential, however,because even as it violated “the ‘natural’ geographicbasis of the North Atlantic,it hadthe subtle effect of extendingthe Atlantic concept itself to eventually includeboth the Western and the Eastern Mediterranean. 73 In 1948, ofŽ cialand public discourse regarding Europe saw amajorand sudden change.Before March 1948, a possibletransatlantic alliance was invariablydis- cussedunder the rubric of aEuropeanor aWesternEuropean alliance. After March 1948,however, the focus of of Ž cialdiscourse, as re  ectedin the documents producedat the time, shifted radically to anAtlanticor NorthAtlantic treaty system andcommunity. The public discourse, as indicated by thecoverage of the New York Times, underwenta similartransformation in late1948. For example,in theeditorial cartoonsoffered in the “Weekin Review ” section,the graphical opponent of the SovietUnion changes from Europe,to Western Europe, to the West, and Ž nally, by December1948, to the North Atlantic and NATO. Therelatively sudden emergence of this “NorthAtlantic ” focusdemonstrates that new regional identities can emerge quicklyif suitable material and ideational raw materialsare available. Consideringthe rapidity of thisshift to a NorthAtlantic focus, it is noteworthy thatU.S. StateDepartment of Ž cialsinsisted that the signatories of thetreaty did not inventthe North Atlantic region. They maintained instead that the treaty merely codiŽ eda politicalcommunity that had been in existence for centuriesand that

69.Reid 1977, 102 –10, 131–32. 70.Lundestad 1980, 242. 71.Kennan 1967, 411 –12. 72.See Acheson1969, 279; and Truman 1956, 248 –50. 73.Henrikson 1980, 19 –20. NoNATO inAsia 591 providedthe basis for mutualidenti Ž cation.In the words of DeanAcheson, NATO was “theproduct of at least three hundred and Ž ftyyears of history, perhaps more.”74 Yet,for allthe stress on the reality and long history of theregion, prior to 1948,with the exception of a few referencesto the International Civil Aviation Organization,State Department of Ž cialsnever talked about a NorthAtlantic region. Likegeography, history was notdestiny.

TheOrigins of Southeast Asia. SoutheastAsia as a particularlyde Ž ned region hasalso had a relativelybrief history. Before World War II, theregion had been knownby a numberof different names. Some divided the area into Chinese- in uencedIndochina, the Spanish-in  uencedPhilippines, and those areas strongly in uencedby Indianculture. Among European and U.S. diplomats,the region was oftenseen as an extension of eitherChina or Indiaand referred toas “furtherIndia, ” “greaterIndia, ” “Indo-China, ” or “theFar Easterntropics. ” Thepopular term in Japan was “Nan-yo” (southernseas) andin China either Nan-Yang or Kun-Lun (“LittleChina ” or “thelands of the Southern Ocean ”).75 Therise to prominenceof theterm “SoutheastAsia ” camewith Japan ’s occupa- tionof the area during the Paci Ž cWar. Theterm emerged to designate the areas southof China that fell to Japanese occupation. 76 Theprivate correspondence betweenRoosevelt and Churchill during World War II re  ectsthe gradual emer- genceof this regional designation. A Ž rst mentioncame in early 1941 when Rooseveltwrote about Japan ’sproposalto forgo any armed advance into the “SoutheasternAsiatic ” area,provided the United States made a similarpledge. Rooseveltfurther explained to Churchillthat the U.S. responsewas tosimplywarn Japanagainst taking any military moves in “South-EastAsia. ”77 After theUnited States entered the war anddecided to concentrate Ž rst on the Europeantheater, discussion of theregion faded. When attention shifted back to the Asiantheater, what to callthis region remained undecided. Churchill wrote in June 1943that it was timefor theAllies to think more about “theSouth East Asia (or Japan)front, ” andhe recommendedthe creation of anewcommand for thatregion. Later,Churchill reiterated this call, but now denoted the envisioned entity as “a new commandfor EastAsia. ” Here, practicalpolitical calculations heavily in  uenced the namingprocess as Roosevelt rejected Churchill ’scallfor auni Ž edEast Asian command,arguing that creating such a commandwould alienate Chiang Kai-shek, whocontrolled the China theater. To avoid such an offense, Roosevelt moved the focusback to “South-EastAsia. ” Churchillaccepted Roosevelt ’sworries about offendingChina and agreed that “perhapsit would be desirable to give the new commandthe title of ‘South-EastAsia ’ instead of ‘East Asia’.”78 At theQuebec

74.Acheson 1949, 385. 75.See Sar Desai 1997,3; Williams 1976,3 –5;andWarshaw 1975,1. 76.See Williams 1976,3; andWarshaw 1975,1. 77.Kimball 1984, 1:275 –76. 78.Kimball 1984, 2:248, 263, 275 –77, 282. 592 InternationalOrganization conferencein August 1943, the United States and Great Britain agreed to create a SoutheastAsian Command (SEAC). SEAC ’sareaof responsibility corresponded roughlyto what today is conventionally called Southeast Asia. After thevictory of communistforces in China, the hands-off policy the United Stateshad adopted after the Paci Ž cWar shiftedquickly. In Andrew Rotter ’s words, theTruman administration “ ‘discovered’ SoutheastAsia at the intersection of its policytoward China, Japan, Great Britain, and France. ”79 Bolsteringpro-Western forcesin theregion could help contain China, restore Japan ’seconomy,strengthen Britain,and halt the bleeding of France. U.S. policybecame “regionalized. ” “Americanpolicy makers, ” writesRotter, “nolonger regarded Southeast Asia as a disparatejumble of unrelatedstates, but as a regionthat had to be tiedto the most importantindependent nations of the Far Eastand Western Europe. ”80 SEATO, establishedin September of 1954, should be seen as an extension of thisregional- izationand the political attempt at tying the region to therest of theworld. Only two of SEATO’smembers,Thailand and the Philippines, were geographicallypart of SoutheastAsia. The other six members (Australia, France, Great Britain, New Zealand,Pakistan, and the United States) came from outsidethe region. Theinclusion of France and Great Britain and, to a lesserextent, Australia and New Zealandin SEATO raisesa numberof interestingissues. In one sense, it shows theimportance of a senseof identity in forming alliances. As theUnited States endeavoredto construct alliances outside of Europe, it sought the cooperation of Europeanstates even as European colonialism was collapsingin Asia. With Great Britainand France in the alliance, however, why not work multilaterally with them asthe United States did with NATO? Theanswer to this question points to the malleabilityof identity —asourceof weaknessfor explanationsthat focus only on identity.Looking to the post-war world, Franklin Roosevelt initially had hoped to workwith China rather than European colonial powers, in bringingstability to Asia. Whenthe victory of communist forces in China made that course impossible, the UnitedStates turned reluctantly to the European colonial powers as a distinctly second-bestsolution. Here isone area where the U.S. identi Ž cationwith its Europeanallies broke down. The U.S. governmentwas unwillingto identify itself tooclosely with the colonial practices of theEuropean states in Asia;this limited the degreeto whichthe United States wanted to workmultilaterally with the European statesin Asia.The pliability of this sense of identity —Americais like the Europeans inEurope,but not like the Europeans in Asia —showsthe limitations of explanations thatfocus only on collective identity and underlines the advantages of eclectic explanations.

NATO andSEATO. Basedon civilizational, ethnic, racial, and religious ties as wellas shared historical memories, identi Ž cationwith Europeans rather than with

79.Rotter 1987, 5. 80.Ibid., 165. NoNATO inAsia 593 thepeoples of Southeast Asia was consideredto be quite natural. These different levelsof mutual identi Ž cationare an important cause of the different institutional forms thatthe United States favored for itsalliances in Europe and Asia during the earlyCold War. Oneof themost striking aspects of thediscussions surrounding the formation of NATO isthe pervasive identi Ž cationof theUnited States with Europe. This aspect is exempliŽ edby the strident assertion that the North Atlantic already existed as a politicalcommunity and that the treaty merely formalized this pre-existing com- munityof sharedideals and interest. 81 Inpolitical debates in the United States, one foundconstant references to a “commoncivilization, ” a “community,” a shared “spirit,” “like-mindedpeoples, ” and “commonideals. ”82 As W.AverellHarriman put it, “thereis a spiritualemotion about this which is hard to emphasize . ..free menare standing shoulder to shoulder. ”83 Evenwhile criticizing the Truman administration ’soverallpolicies, the columnist Walter Lippman argued that the membersof the “AtlanticCommunity ” are “naturalallies of theUnited States. ” The “nucleus” ofthis community, according to Lippman,is “distinctand unmistakable ” basedon geography, religion, and history. 84 Therhetoric of the United States ’ Europeanallies similarly referred toa “spiritualconfederation of the West, ” protecting “Westernbastion[s], ” “thevirtues and values of our own civilization, ” and how the “NorthAtlantic Community is a realcommonwealth of nationswhich sharethe same democratic and cultural traditions. ”85 Thissentiment found ultimate expressionin the preamble of theNATO treaty,which af Ž rmedthe determination ofthemembers “tosafeguardthe freedom, common heritage and civilization of their peoples.” IdentiŽ cationhad an undeniable racial component. For example,former U.S. AssistantSecretary of StateWill Clayton hoped that NATO couldbe the Ž rst step intheformation of anAtlantic Federal Union. In his testimony in supportof NATO, Claytonexplicitly linked his support of closerU.S. andEuropean relations to racial groundsin addition to cultural ones. He arguedthat “myidea would be thatin the beginningthe union would be composed of all countries that have our ideas and idealsof freedom and that are composed of the white race. ”86 Inpart because Americans identi Ž edstrongly with Europeans, Europe was also judgedto be astrongally. Indeed, strong identi Ž cationwith Europe led the United Statesto consistently give very high and favorable estimates of the strength of its Europeanallies. 87 Throughoutthe Cold War, U.S. of Ž cialsdistinguished their NATO partnersfrom otheralliance members. Europe was seenas a “centerof world power” populatedby a “vigorous” peoplewho had been powerful in the past and

81.Hampton 1995. 82.See U.S.Senate 1973,87, 344; and U.S. Senate 1949,15, 197, 292. 83.U.S. Senate 1949,206. 84.Jackson 2001, 320 –21. 85.See Jackson2001, 427 –28;and Gheciu 2001, 3 –5. 86.U.S. Senate 1949,380. 87.Urwin 1995, 14. 594 InternationalOrganization wouldbe again in the future. 88 Lookingat what he called the “greatindustrial complexof Western Europe, ” PresidentEisenhower believed that America ’s At- lanticallies could not long remain intimidated by “190million backward ” Russians. Speakingspeci Ž callyabout the Eisenhower administration ’splanto create a multilateralnuclear sharing arrangement within NATO, Dullesargued that a unilateralU.S. nuclearguarantee could not be “asoundbasis for amajorcountry ’s security” andthat he simplycould not “contemplatea situationin whichthere were Ž rst andsecond class powers in NATO. ”89 TheUnited States ’ reactionto theformation of SEATO was verydifferent. U.S. debatesshow hardly a traceof identi Ž cation,and there are no equivalentstatements ofsharedideals or futurevisions of theAsian allies as great powers. Indeed, it isthe differences,not the commonalties, in civilization, race, ethnicity, religion, and historicalmemories that lead to the articulation of strong doubts about the current andfuture strength of these nations as parts of an Asian alliance. Even as colonialismwas ending,the colonial mindset remained strong. This outlook stemmedin largepart from thepersonal backgrounds of themen who dominated the U.S. foreignpolicy machinery after World War II. Drawn from eliteNew England prepschools, Ivy League universities, and Wall Street businesses and law Ž rms, the so-called “EasternEstablishment ” was thenin its heyday. These men, alternating betweentheir private and public sector careers, switching positions “likelines in a hockeygame changing on the  y,” venturedinto the post-World War IIworldwith aEuropeanand even an Atlantic bias. 90 Having “grownup andsucceeded in aworld markedby European power, Third World weakness, and nearly ubiquitous racial segregation, ” theycould accept such distinctions between Europeans and others withoutquestion. 91 Interestingly,when these men attempted to explain what they saw asthe more alien and dif Ž cultto understand behavior of theSoviet Union, they invariablystressed the “Asiatic” or “Oriental” natureof the regime. 92 As Senator JamesEastland viewed the nascentCold War, itwas astrugglebetween “eastern and westerncivilization, ” abattlebetween “theOriental hordes and a westernciviliza- tion2,000 years old. ”93 Amultilateralapproach in Europealso allowed American politicians to evadethe potentiallydelicate challenge posed by different ethnic voting blocs in the United States.With large numbers of Americans tracing their ancestry to different Euro- peancountries, attempting to play favorites or to make distinctions among these statesin American foreign policy would be ariskystrategy for electedpoliticians if thesedistinctions upset signi Ž cantethnic voting blocs. By treating all European alliesthe same, multilateralism offered a solutionto whatcould otherwise have been

88.See Jackson1967, ix; and U.S. Senate 1949,192. 89.Trachtenberg 1999, 147, 177, 194, 197, 210. 90.Isaacson andThomas 1986, 19 –31, 428. 91.Borstelmann 1999, 552. 92.See ibid.,552 –553;and Isaacson andThomas 1986, 306, 320. 93.Jackson 2001, 293. NoNATO inAsia 595 atrickybalancing act. Since Asian-American voting blocs were lessimportant duringthe early stages of the Cold War, asimilarelectoral dilemma did not arise withregard to U.S. foreignpolicy in Asia. 94 Therewere, ofcourse,segments in U.S. societythat had more interactions with andmaterial interests in Asia than Europe. Represented mostly by the midwestern and PaciŽ cwingsof the Republican party, these individuals called for an “Asia- Ž rst” strategyafter Pearl Harbor and continued to criticizeU.S. foreignpolicy into theCold War for payingtoo little attention to Asia. Part of theattention they gave toAsia was drivenby their desire to criticize the European-focused Eastern Establishmentthat dominated the Democratic Party, the presidency, and the foreign policyapparatus of theU.S. government.A largepart of this attention, however, was alsodriven by the commercial links Western businesses had forged across the PaciŽ candthe large number of American missionaries who had gone to Asia. 95 Whydid the preferences of Americanelites looking to Europeprevail over those of the Asia-Ž rsters? Inkeeping with our emphasis on the need for eclectic explanations,we Ž ndthatthe answer lies in acombinationof identityand material factors.Identifying with Europe, the Eastern Establishment not only had a prefer- encefor cooperatingwith and focusing on Europe,it alsocontrolled the institutional meansof power within the United States to implement such a foreignpolicy. The European-Ž rsters hadpolitical clout as “theforeign policy center was ownedby the Establishment. ..largelyfrom thenortheastern part of the United States. ”96 And theUnited States had “atraditionof selectingforeign service of Ž cers from theIvy League,and secretaries of stateand treasury from WallStreet. ”97 Inaddition, a large numberof the foreign service of Ž cers thatdid specialize in Asian affairs were purgedfrom thegovernment as a resultof the McCarthy Red Scare following the fallof China. Althoughrepresented by powerful Ž gureson the American political scene, like SenatorRobert Taft of Ohioand publishing magnate Henry Luce, himself the son ofAsian missionaries, Asia- Ž rsters were neveras in  uentialas their Eastern Establishmentrivals. 98 Furthermore,the opposition Republicans were spliton the issueof aEuropeanversus an Asianfocus, with the northeastern wing of theparty solidlyin the European- Ž rst campand the midwestern wing of theparty torn on the issue.Indicative of this split is the well-noted conversion of Senator Arthur Vandenbergof Michigan to supportof Truman ’sforeignpolicy, especially NATO. Thisconversion was, inpart,a resultof anadministrationstrategy, as Paul Nitze put it, “tobuild up Senator Vandenberg, as opposed to Senator Taft, and create a split withinthe Republican Party, and to driveour policy in between these two poles. ”99

94.See Cowhey1993; and DeConde 1992, 148 –151, 194. 95.See Wester Ž eld1955, 240 –68;and Purifoy 1976, 49 –73. 96.Destler, Gelb,and Lake 1988,22. 97.Cumings 1990, 95. 98.Cohen 2000, 177 – 80. 99.Fordham 1998, 370. 596 InternationalOrganization

Thisstrategy was favored,no doubt, by thegrowing international interests and the politicalin  uenceof theauto industry centered in Detroit. 100 Eisenhower’s victory overTaft in the Republican presidential primaries in 1952 indicated and solidi Ž ed thetriumph of theinternationalist (and Europeanist) wing of theRepublican party. Inexplaining why one set of ideas triumphs over another, many analysts have pointedto the importance of the “Ž t” betweenany particular idea and the general ideologicalcontext, existing political institutions, and pressing political concerns. As MarkLaffey and Jutta Weldes note, however, Ž tdoesnot simply exist; instead itis made by political actors. 101 Indeed,the stridency with which proponents of NATO stresseda pre-existingcommunity and common civilization can be seen as partof a deliberateconstruction of “Ž t,” drawingon both identity and material factors.A Europeanstrategy proved an easier sell to a nationthat saw itselfas an offshootof Europe and whose levers of power were inthe hands of men who identiŽ edclosely with Europeans. In addition, strong economic links between the UnitedStates and Europe provided ample material incentives. Althoughthe European- and Asia- Ž rsters disagreedover which region more deservedAmerican attention and resources, it is important to stress that this disagreementdid not involve a debateover multilateral or bilateral forms of internationalcooperation that the United States should adopt in theseregions. This ismost clear when one examines how Asia- Ž rsters thoughtabout their preferred policyin Asia.Their commitment to Asiadid not extend to a willingnessto pursue amultilateralpath in that region. Their interactions with Asians, especially as part ofChristianmissionary work, did not lead to thedevelopment of asenseof identity withAsian peoples that could serve as a basisfor amultilateralinstitution. The exact oppositeoccurred. Part of what made dealing with Asians rather than Europeans attractiveto Asia- Ž rsters was thesense that backward Asians could still be saved underAmerican tutelage. 102 Asianswere viewedas “barbarianbut obedient, ” and Asiawas thoughtof as “aregionof vastresources and opportunities, populated by dutifuland cringing peoples who followed white leadership. ” Thegoal was not multilateralcooperation among equals (or evensemi-equals), but one of unilateral U.S. dominance. 103 Thecase of theAsia- Ž rsters demonstratesthe indeterminacy of argumentslinking perceived interests and threats to particular institutional forms withoutconsideration of collective identity. Even those Americans who saw U.S. interestsmore tied to Asia than to Europe, and who believed that the Cold War wouldbe fought and won in Asia, did not reach for amultilateralframework for cooperationin this region. The belief that Asians were notonly foreign, but also inferior,helped push these individuals to supportunilateral or bilateral,rather than multilateral,policies in Asia.

100.Cumings 1990, 38, 92, 97. 101.Laffey andWeldes 1997,202 –203. 102.See Cohen2000, 179; and Purifoy 1976, 51. 103.Cumings 1990, 97, 93, 79 –97. NoNATO inAsia 597

Whenissues of identi Ž cation,trust, and power arose with regard to SEATO, they didso in the context of explaining why Asian allies could not have, and did not deserve,the same privileges that had been given to the European allies. After signinga bilateraltreaty with Japan, John Foster Dulles explained that, in the absenceof identi Ž cation,there could be noAsianequivalent of NATO. At thesame time,however, he included Japan and the Philippines on the list of nations with whichthe United States shared a commondestiny. 104 Thisindicates both the diversityof sources and the varying strengths of U.S. post-WorldWar IIidenti Ž - cations.Even though Japan and the Philippines were situatedoutside of whatDulles saw asa Western “communityof race, religion and political institutions, ” shared historicalexperiences (the war andsubsequent occupation of Japan and the colo- nizationof the Philippines) could provide some basis for identi Ž cation with particularAsian states. Identi Ž cationis a matterof degree, not an all-or-nothing proposition.If race,religion, and shared political institutions helped to put the UnitedStates ’ Europeanallies in a classahead of itsAsian allies, shared historical experiencessimilarly helped put certain Asian allies ahead of others. Thereis a strongnote of condescension in many of the U.S. discussionsof SEATO; thiscondescension did not exist with regard to NATO. ManyAmerican policymakersdid not see Asians as readyor suf Ž cientlysophisticated to enjoy the trustand the same degree of powerthat the United States had offered to European states.In one particularly vulgar example, in the context of possible economic aid tothe Philippines, one U.S. StateDepartment of Ž cialexplained that the United Stateshad to closelysupervise the use of suchaid, because as he saw it,they “were onlyone generation out of thetree tops. ”105 Thedenigration of the importance of Asia and the skill of Asians reached the highestlevels in theU.S. StateDepartment. While Dean Acheson was secretaryof statehe visited Europe at least eleven times, claiming at thesame time to be toobusy tomake even a singlevisit to East Asia. With the outbreak of war onthe Korean peninsulain June 1950, Acheson decided to actively support U.S. involvementin thewar primarilyto demonstrate American credibility to its new European allies. Withregard to the later war inVietnam,Walt Rostow attributed Acheson ’s eventual oppositionto American involvement to the former secretaryof state ’scalculation that it was “toomuch blood to spillfor thoselittle people just out of thetrees. ”106 Laterin his career, while re  ectingon his overall approach to Asians, Acheson maintainedthat “Istillcling to Bret Harte ’s aphorism, ‘thatfor waysthat are dark/Andfor tricksthat are vain/ TheHeathen Chinese is peculiar. ’ Butno moreso thanthe heathen Japanese. ”107 Achesonwas hardlyalone. An even blunter example of America’scondescensiontoward its potential allies in Asia can be found in a StateDepartment memo discussing the possibility of forminga generalPaci Ž c Pact:

104.Dulles 1952, 183 –84. 105.McMahon 1999, 58. 106.Isaacson andThomas 1986, 506 –507,648, 698. 107.Horne 1999, 457. 598 InternationalOrganization

Theplain fact is thatany exclusive Western joint action in Asiamust carry with itthe clear implication that we donot take the Asians very seriously and in fact regardthem as inferiors.We shallnot be ableto avoid this implication because thatis indeed our attitude. 108 Thedifference in identi Ž cationand the different U.S. policiesfollowed in Asia andEurope after World War IIwere notan aberration.In many ways, they were a continuationof U.S. wartimeattitudes that led to a “Europe Ž rst” strategy;the internmentof Japanese-Americans;a greaterdegree of hatredregarding America ’s Asianenemies (the Japanese) as opposedto Europeanopponents (usually the Nazis ratherthan the Germans); andthe basic decision, even before the war inEuropewas over,to use the atomic bomb against Japan Ž rst,not Germany. 109 Indeed,as Michael Hunthas argued, there is alongtradition in U.S. foreignpolicy of dividingthe world intoa racialhierarchy, with the United States and Great Britain at the top, followed byotherEuropean peoples, and with Asians, Latinos, and Africans further down the list.110 Whileovertly racial categories became less prominent over time and have beenreplaced in U.S. rhetoric,in recent decades, with allusions to cultural and civilizationalvalues, the basic hierarchy has remained the same. The men in charge ofhandlingthe United States ’ post-WorldWar IIforeignpolicy were noexceptions. FranklinRoosevelt likened “thebrown people of the East ” to “minorchildren ...whoneed trustees. ” Similarly,Harry Truman ’sprivatewritings often lavished greatpraise upon the British, while speaking dismissively of “Chinamen” and “Japs.” PresidentEisenhower placed “theEnglish-speaking peoples of the world ” aboveall others. As oneof his advisers put it, “theWestern world has somewhat moreexperience with the operations of war, peace,and parliamentary procedure thanthe swirling mess ofemotionally super-charged Africans and Asiatics and Arabs thatoutnumber us. ”111 U.S. decisionmakers ’ readyidenti Ž cationwith Europe and the perception of Europeas belonging to the same political community as the United States helped, togetherwith material and instrumental factors, move the United States to favor multilateralismin Europe. The weakness of identi Ž cationwith Asia and the belief thatthe Asian countries belonged to adifferentand inferior political community led toa U.S. preferencefor bilateralismin Asia.

Conclusion

Theorigin of the North Atlantic and Southeast Asian regions, as well as their institutionalforms, disclosea greatdeal about the shape and shaping of world politics.In this article, we havenot explored all empirical and analytical aspects of

108.U.S. Department ofState 1984,262. 109.See Dower 1986;Makhijani 1995; and DeConde 1992, 118. 110.Hunt 1987, 46 –91. 111.Ibid., 162 –64.See alsoLauren 1988. NoNATO inAsia 599 thisprocess. For example,we donotinvestigate fully the effects that the policies of theEuropean and Asian states had on U.S. foreignpolicy or the relationship betweeninstitutional form andthe success or failure of particular alliances. In addition,there remains a greatdeal of potentially valuable historical material that couldshed further light on the development of these regions and the historical variationof theUnited States ’ levelof identi Ž cationwith them beyond the snapshot focusof the post-World War IIyearsdiscussed here. Furthermore,analytical eclecticism leaves room for disagreementabout the shape ofparticularcausal arguments and the sequence in which variables interact. While instrumentalrationality and identity as well as material and social factors are intertwined,the particular combination of these factors in various concrete situa- tionsneed not be thesame. In the aggregate, these “explanationsare complementary ratherthan mutually exclusive, may be hardto distinguishempirically, and in some casesthere might not even be any fact of the matter to distinguish at all. ”112 The stridentinsistence on theexistence of aNorthAtlantic community, for example,and thequickness with which that concept was embracedby U.S. policymakerssuggest thatin Europe,the invocation of aNorthAtlantic collective identity probably played aninstrumental role in a situationin which the building blocks for amultilateral securityarrangement were morereadily available than in Asia. Members of the executivebranch and the United States ’ potentialallies were afterall trying to do everythingto rally a skepticalpublic and Congress to the arduous task of a prolongedengagement in Europe.This is not to deny, however, that those building blocksincluded, besides material factors, ideational ones such as asenseof shared Western,European, white, or democraticcultures. 113 Similarideational raw mate- rialsdid not exist in Asia, making any construction of aregionalidentity there far more difŽ cult.References to civilizational and racial differences with Asia were offeredand accepted as amatterof fact.This suggested that it was theseideational differences,not simply the material consequences of international anarchy, that mustbe taken into account in a compellingexplanation of how and why U.S. decisionmakers de Ž nedthe interests that informed their policy choices. NATO and SEATO thuswere notnatural objects re  ectedonly in the material realities of geography.Political actors constructed them through the instrumental political objectivesof potential member states (balancing U.S. preponderancein NATO in thecase of Canada,for example,or tyingthe United States to Europe on along-term basisin the case of Britain) and through the invocation of unquestioned ethnic or racialidentities (in U.S. domesticdebates). Thecausal structure of eclecticarguments need not be uniform.Such arguments refuseto grant primacy to any one analytical construct or paradigmatic orientation. We arguefor thetreatment of culture as a focalpoint to solve the problem of indeterminacyin games of strategicinteraction, culture as a sourceof information

112.Fearon and Wendt 2001, 29. 113.Jackson 2001. 600 InternationalOrganization for sendingand receiving signals, and culture as a sourceof symbolic resources to bedeployed in domestic political battles. We gobeyond these productive ways of thinkingabout culture by also focusingon culture ’srelevanceto constitutive processes,that is, to the creation and recreation of collectiveidentities. Rationalist theoriesof culturethat highlight focal points, information, and resources neglect the importanceof constitutive processes. Many strands of constructivist theory make theopposite mistake. They elevate constitutive processes a prioriabove all other causal in uences.In this paper, we seekto developa third,eclectic stance that grants constitutiveprocesses causal relevance rather than assuming irrelevance or asserting primacy. Apreferencefor eclectictheorizing contradicts the insistence on paradigmatic puritythat typi Ž esimportant analytical controversies in the Ž eldof international relations.A problem-rather than approach-driven style of analysis Ž ts the com- plexityof politicalprocesses that occur within speci Ž c contexts.114 Andit isinfull agreementwith how theoretically informed research is conductedin other areas of politicalscience and the social sciences more generally. Up to a point,abstract debatescan be usefulin elucidatingontological, epistemological, and methodolog- icalcontroversies. But it is the identi Ž cationof empirical anomalies and the constructionof disciplined, theoretically informed explanations with particular attentionto the speci Ž cationof causal mechanisms and multiple methods that pushesoutward the boundaries of knowledge. One substantial advantage of a problem-drivenapproach is to sidestep often repetitive, occasionally bitter, and inherentlyinconclusive paradigmatic debates. While a problem-focused,eclectic styleof analysishas many advantages, at this stage of our knowledge it does not, however,permit us to distinguish conclusively between different types of causal chains. Culturalconstructions of U.S. nationalidentity have resisted profoundly all notionsthat the United States might be anything else “butthe transplantation of a Europeancivilization on the North American continent. ” Withina dominant Anglo-Saxonculture, Asian-Americans have been denied recognition as Americans. From thisperspective, “the PaciŽ ccontrastssharply with an Atlantic region. Ties acrossthe Atlantic have derived their perceived cohesiveness ultimately from assumptionsabout a metahistoricalcultural af Ž nitybetween the United States and Europe.On the other side of thecontinent . ..thesame cultural self-image rendered the PaciŽ canalien territory, peopled by alien cultures that must be overcome. ”115 Multilateralismin Europe and bilateralism in Asia  owednaturally from this constructionof U.S. collectiveidentity. Explicitlyconsidering the role collective identities play in worldpolitics can help advanceour theoretical and empirical understanding of international relations. Collectiveidentities matter because they help shape the de Ž nitionof the actors ’

114.Jervis 1997. 115.Dirlik 1993, 315 –16.See alsoDeConde 1992, 10 –26, 50–52, 158–159, 193–194;and Skrentny n.d., 78–87. NoNATO inAsia 601 interests.An eclectic stance suggests that rationalist theories are more compelling whenthey are combined with constructivist insights into the importance of norms andidentities, as is true of explanations focusing on great power status and the presenceor absence of threat. In the 1990s, for example,rationalist theories that are eclecticin seeking to incorporate central insights of constructivism speak of the advantagesand disadvantages of strategies of “self-binding. ” Re ectingpurposive politicalchoices, self-binding may look advantageous from aliberalperspective. It prolongsU.S. hegemonyby lessening the threat the United States poses to others andeliminating the balancing process against the United States by lesser states. 116 Inthese explanations, however, the distinction between self and other remains undertheorized,and the effects of self-binding remain relatively weak. From a realistperspective it is inexplicable why a strongstate would choose to pool its sovereigntyin the interest of setting credible limits to the unilateral exercise of power,as Germanydid in supporting economic and monetary union. 117 Strategies ofself-bindingcannot be fullyunderstood without analyzing explicitly the content andchange in collective identities. Oncea regionis formed or once a particularinstitution is put in place, that constructionthen has effects on the future of regionaland global politics. There is agreatdeal of path dependency at work. In Europe, Italy ’sinclusionin NATO underlinesthe fact that a regionthat might not be snug and plausible at Ž rst may, overtime, be regarded as perfectly natural and set an important precedent. It is difŽ cultto conceive how a geographicallylimited “North” Atlanticcommunity, excludingall the Mediterranean countries, could have been expanded as readilyas NATO didin the 1990s. 118 Withexpansion, however, comes a newdanger to NATO’sidentityas a separatecommunity. As MichaelBrenner argues, with the SovietUnion defunct, communism dead, liberal democracy on the march, and NATO expandingeastward, “whatthen distinguishes the Atlantic partners? What justiŽ estheir banding together —asallies, as a diplomaticformation, as a brother- hood?”119 Lookingtoward the further expansion of NATO, JamesKurth has noted thatone of thestrongest arguments for allowingthe Baltic States into the alliance ispreciselybecause “thesecountries have represented the easternmost extension of Westerncivilization. ”120 Debatesabout regional de Ž nitionsand regional institutions are also occurring in Asiaand are similarly in  uencedby the choices made in the aftermath of World War II. Currently,East Asia and Southeast Asia are beginning to merge, through debatesand controversies, as MieOba and Susumu Yamakage note, 121 and through diplomaticinitiatives such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations plus 3

116.See Lake 1999,262; and Ikenberry 2001. 117.Grieco 1993,338. 118.Schimmelfennig 2001. 119.Brenner 1995, 233. 120.Kurth 2001, 15. 121.Oba andYamakage 1998,31. 602 InternationalOrganization process.And Southeast Asia and East Asia are nested in a moreencompassing Asian orAsian-Paci Ž cregion.It is notclear what to call that larger region because there isnoaccepted de Ž nitionof the Asia Paci Ž cRegion.Indeed there exists not even a standardconvention for writingit. Asia-Paci Ž c,Asian Paci Ž c, PaciŽ cAsia,Asia- PaciŽ c,Asia/ Paci Ž c, PaciŽ cRim,and Asia and the Paci Ž careall used. 122 A collectiveregional identity cast in a multilateralinstitutional form, however,has beenslower to emerge in Asia than in Europe. Looking to explain this difference, manyanalysts have pointed to some of the obstacles to multilateralism that were alsoseen as key during the early Cold War, includingcultural diversity, disparate economies,asymmetries in power, and historical animosities. 123 Tothese factors we wouldalso add the continuing lack of Asian-Paci Ž ccollectiveidentity and the lack ofinstitutional experiences that could have helped provide a senseof community. Undoubtedlyspurred by the growing in  uenceof Asian-Americans in the U.S. politicalprocess, 124 inrecent years U.S. policymakershave been increasingly callingfor thedevelopment of multilateral security communities in Asia.As ofyet, however,there have been few concretemoves by theUnited States. Instead of fully embracingmultilateralism and a commonAsian-Paci Ž cidentity,the United States haslimited its actions to calls for increasedmultilateral cooperation among the statesof Asia while the United States pursues what the U.S. ambassadorto South Koreacalls an “enrichedbilateralism. ” Whilethere is much talk of the common intereststhe United States has with other Asian states, the United States is still far from embracingan identity as a memberof anAsian-Paci Ž ccommunitysimilar to itsmembership in the North Atlantic community that would be neededto sustain a multilateralcommitment. 125 As thisdiscussion suggests, the United States ’ senseof identity continues to in uencethe direction of U.S. foreignpolicy, in combination,of course,with other factors.For example,recent debates over why the United States chose to intervene inKosovo but not in Rwanda intimately involve questions of America ’s identity. Whenasked about intervening in the former Yugoslaviaas opposed to halting genocidein Africa, GeorgeKennan warned against overburdening the United States withcommitments but also concluded that “Europe,naturally, is another matter. ” TheUnited States, Kennan reasoned, had to go after Milosevic because his “undertakingsstrike at the roots of a Europeancivilization of which we arestill largelya part. ”126 Whetherthe growing demographic presence and resulting electoralpower of Asian-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, and African-Americans willchange this sense of a European-focusedAmerican identity or whether these groupswill remain in somesense “perpetualforeigners ” remainsto be seen. 127 As

122.See Alagappa2000, 20; and Emmerson 1994,435. 123. See DufŽ eld 2001, 86– 89;Nolt 1999, 96 –100;and Simon 1993, 257. 124.Cohen 2000, 240. 125.Blair andHanley 2001, 7 –17. 126.Ullman 1999,8. 127.Watanabe 2001,643. NoNATO inAsia 603 thearguments we advancein this article indicate, however, the answer to this questionis likely to have a substantialimpact on the future of U.S. foreign relations.128

References

Acharya, Amitav.2000. TheQuest forIdentity: International Relations of Southeast Asia. Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press. ———. 2001. ConstructingA SecurityCommunity in Southeast Asia: ASEAN and the Problem of RegionalOrder. London:Routledge. Acheson,Dean. 1949.Statement ontheNorth Atlantic Treaty. Departmentof StateBulletin 20(508):385. ———. 1969. Present atthe Creation: My Years in the State Department. New York:W.W. Norton and Company. Adler,Emanuel, and Michael Barnett, eds. 1998. SecurityCommunities. Cambridge:Cambridge UniversityPress. Alagappa,Muthia. 2000. Asia-Paci Ž cRegionalSecurity Order: Introduction and Analytical Framework. Paperprepared for the Second Workshop, Security Order inthe Asia-Paci Ž c, 29 May–2June,Bali, Indonesia. Bix,Hermann P.2000. Hirohitoand the Making of Modern Japan. New York:HarperCollins. Blair,Dennis C., and John T. Hanley,Jr. 2001. From Wheels toWebs: Reconstructing Asia-Paci Ž c SecurityArrangements. TheWashington Quarterly 24 (1):7–17. Borstelmann,Thomas. 1999. Jim Crow ’sComingOut: Race Relationsand American ForeignPolicy in theTruman Years. PresidentialStudies Quarterly 29 (3):549– 69. Brenner,Michael. 1995. Conclusion. In Multilateralismand Western Strategy, editedby Michael Brenner,232 –36.New York:St. Martin ’s Press. Burley,Anne-Marie. 1993. Regulating the World: Multilateralism and the Projection of the New Deal RegulatoryState. In MultilateralismMatters: The Theory and Praxis of anInstitutional Form, edited byJohn Gerard Ruggie,125 –56.New York:Columbia University Press. Cohen,Warren I.2000. America’sResponseto China: A History ofSino-American Relations. 4th ed. New York:Columbia University Press. Cowhey,Peter F.1993.Elect Locally —Order Globally:Domestic Politicsand Multilateral Cooperation. In MultilateralismMatters: The Theory and Praxis of anInstitutional Form, editedby John Gerard Ruggie, 157–200.New York:Columbia University Press. Cumings,Bruce. 1990. TheOriginsof the Korean War. Vol. 2, TheRoaring of the Cataract 1947 –1950. Princeton,N.J.: Princeton University Press. DeConde,Alexander. 1992. Ethnicity,Race andAmerican Foreign Policy. Boston:Northeastern UniversityPress. Destler, I.M.,Leslie H.Gelb,and Anthony Lake. 1988. Breakdown: The Impact ofDomestic Politics onAmerican ForeignPolicy. In TheDomestic Sourcesof Foreign Policy: Insights and Evidence, editedby Charles W.Kegleyand Eugene R. Wittkopf,17 –29.New York:St. Martin ’s Press. Deutsch,Karl W.,SidneyA. Burrell,Robert A. Kann,Maurice Lee, Jr.,Martin Lichterman, Raymond E.Lindgren,Francis L. Lowenheim,and Richard W. Van Wagenen.1957. PoliticalCommunity and theNorth Atlantic Area: International Organization in theLight of HistoricalExperience. Princeton, N.J.:Princeton University Press. Dirlik,Arif. 1993. The Asia-Paci Ž cinAsian-American Perspective.In WhatIs ina Rim?Critical Perspectives onthe Paci Ž cRegionIdea, editedby Arif Dirlik,305 –29.Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.

128.See Nau 2002;Smith 2000; and Ikenberry 2001. 604 InternationalOrganization

Dower,John. 1986. WarWithout Mercy: Race andPower in the Paci Ž c War. New York:Pantheon Books. DufŽ eld,John S. 1998. WorldPower Forsaken: Political Culture, International Institutions, and German SecurityPolicy After Uni Ž cation. Stanford,Calif.: Stanford University Press. ———.2001.Why is There NoAPTO? Whyis There NoOSCAP? Asia-Paci Ž cSecurityInstitutions in ComparativePerspective. ContemporarySecurity Policy 22 (2):69–95. Dulles,John Foster. 1952. Security in the Paci Ž c. ForeignAffairs 30 (2):175– 87. ———.1954.The Issues at Geneva: Addressby Secretary Dulles. TheDepartment of State Bulletin 30 (777):739–44. Eisenhower,Dwight D. 1963 .TheWhite House Years: Mandate For Change: 1953 –1965. New York: Doubledayand Company. Emmerson,Donald K. 1994.Organizing the Rim: Asia Paci Ž cRegionalism. CurrentHistory 93 (587):435–39. Fearon,James, andAlexander Wendt. 2001. Rationalism Versus Constructivism:A SkepticalView. Unpublishedmanuscript, Stanford University and University of Chicago. Finnemore,Martha. 1996. Constructing Norms ofHumanitarianIntervention. In TheCulture of National Security:Norms andIdentity in World Politics, editedby Peter J.Katzenstein, 153 –85.New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press. Folly,Martin H. 1988.Breaking the Vicious Circle: Britain,The United States, and the Genesis ofthe NorthAtlantic Treaty. DiplomaticHistory 12 (1):59–77. Fordham,Benjamin O. 1998.Economic Interests, Party, and Ideology in Early Cold War Era U.S. ForeignPolicy. InternationalOrganization 52 (2):359–96. Gheciu,Alexandra. 2001. NATO ’sHistory:The Politics of “Securingthe West ” Since1949. Ph.D. diss. draft,Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. Gienow-Hecht,Jessica C.E.2000.Shame onUS? Academics, CulturalTransfer, andthe Cold War —A Critical Review. DiplomaticHistory 24 (3):465–94. Grieco,Joseph M. 1993.Understanding the Problem of Cooperation: The Limits of Neoliberal Institutionalismand the Future of Realist Theory.In Neorealismand Neoliberalism: The Contempo- rary Debate, editedby DavidA. Baldwin,310 –38.New York:Columbia University Press. Haftendorn,Helga, Robert O. Keohane,and Celeste A.Wallander,eds. 1999. Imperfect Unions:Security Institutionsover Time andSpace. Oxford:Oxford University Press. Hampton,Mary. 1995. NATO at theCreation: U.S. Foreign Policy, West Germany,and the Wilsonian Impulse. SecurityStudies 4 (3):610–56. ———.1998/99.NATO, Germany,and the United States: CreatingPositive Identity in Trans-Atlantia. SecurityStudies 8 (2-3):235–69. Henrikson,Alan K. 1975.The Map as anIdea: TheRole of CartographicImagery Duringthe Second World War. TheAmerican Cartographer 2 (1):19–53. ———.1980.The Creation of the North Atlantic Alliance, 1948 –1952. NavalWar College Review 33 (3):4–39. Hess, Gary R.1990.The American Search forStability in Southeast Asia: TheSEATO Structure of Containment.In TheGreat Powers inEast Asia 1953 –1960, editedby Warren I.Cohenand Akira Iriye, 272–95.New York:Columbia University Press. Horne,Gerald. 1999. Race fromPower: U.S. Foreign Policy and the General Crisis of “White Supremacy.” DiplomaticHistory 23 (3):437– 61. Hunt,Michael. 1987. Ideologyand U.S. Foreign Policy. New Haven,Conn.: Yale UniversityPress. Ikenberry,G. John.2001. After Victory:Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order afterMajor Wars. Princeton,N.J.: Princeton University Press. Isaacson, Walter,and Evan Thomas. 1986 .TheWise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made. New York:Touchstone. Jackson,Henry M., ed.1967. TheAtlantic Alliance: Jackson Subcommittee Hearings and Findings. New York:Praeger. NoNATO inAsia 605

Jackson,Patrick Thaddeus. 2001. Occidentalism: Rhetoric,Process, and Postwar German Reconstruc- tion.Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, New York. Jervis,Robert. 1997. System Effects: Complexityin Political and Social Life. Princeton,N.J.: Princeton UniversityPress. Johnston,Alastair Iain.1995 .CulturalRealism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History. Princeton,N.J.: Princeton University Press. Kaplan,Lawrence S.1984. TheUnited States and NATO: The Formative Years. Lexington:University Press ofKentucky. Katzenstein,Peter J.1996a.Introduction: Alternative Perspectives onNationalSecurity. In The Culture ofNationalSecurity: Norms andIdentity in World Politics, editedby Peter J.Katzenstein, 1 –32. New York:Columbia University Press. Katzenstein,Peter J.,ed.1996b. TheCulture of National Security: Norms andIdentity in WorldPolitics. New York:Columbia University Press. Kennan,George F. 1967. Memoirs,1925 –1950. Boston:Little, Brown and Company. Kim, B.SangJoon. 1965. The United States andSEATO. Ph.D. diss., Yale University,New Haven, Conn. Kimball,Warren F.1984. Churchilland Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence. 3vols.Princeton, N.J.:Princeton University Press. Kohno,Masaru. 1996. Limits of Neoliberal Institutionalism: Learning from the Failure of Multilateral Institutionsin East Asian Security.Paper presented at theconference organizedjointly by the Japan Associationof International Studies and the International Studies Association, Makuhari, Japan. Koremenos,Barbara, Charles Lipson,and Duncan Snidal. 2001. Rational Design: Looking Back toMove Forward. InternationalOrganization 55 (4): 1051–1082. Kurth,James. 2001.The Next NATO: Buildingan American Commonwealthof Nations. TheNational Interest 65:5–16. Laffey,Mark, and Jutta Weldes. 1997. Beyond Belief: Ideas andSymbolic Technologies in the Study of InternationalRelations. EuropeanJournal of InternationalRelations 3 (2):193–237. Lake,David A. 1999. EntanglingRelations: American Foreign Policy in Its Century. Princeton,N.J.: PrincetonUniversity Press. Lauren,Paul Gordon. 1988. Powerand Prejudice: The Politics of Diplomacy and Racial Discrimination. Boulder,Colo.: Westview Press. Legro,Jeffrey W.2000.Whence American Internationalism. InternationalOrganization 54 (2):253–90. Lewis, MartinW., andKa ¨renWigen. 1997. TheMyth of Continents: A Critiqueof Metageography. Berkeley:University of California Press. Lundestad,Geir. 1980. America,Scandinavia, and the Cold War, 1945 –1949. New York:Columbia UniversityPress. ———. 1999. “Empireby Invitation ” intheAmerican Century. DiplomaticHistory 23 (2):189–217. Maier,Charles S.1978.The Politics of Productivity:Foundations of American InternationalEconomic PolicyAfter WorldWar II.In Between Powerand Plenty: Foreign Economic Policies of Advanced IndustrialStates, editedby Peter J.Katzenstein, 23 – 49.Madison: University of WisconsinPress. Makhijani,Arjun. 1995. “Always” the Target? Bulletinof the Atomic Scientists 51 (3):23–27. Marks,Frederick W., III. 1993. Powerand Peace: TheDiplomacy of John Foster Dulles. Westport, Conn.:Praeger. McMahon,Robert J. 1999. TheLimits of Empire: The UnitedStates and SoutheastAsia Since World War II. New York:Columbia University Press. Mercer, Jonathan.1995. Anarchy and Identity. InternationalOrganization 49 (2):229–52. Modelski,George. 1962. SEATO: Its Functionsand Organization. In SEATO:Six Studies, edited by GeorgeModelski, 1 –45.Melbourne: F. W.Chesire. Murphy,Robert D. 1954.Japan ’sProgressand Prospects: Address Made Before theJapan Society at New York. Departmentof State Bulletin 30(771):513 –17. Nau,Henry. 2002. Identityand Power in American Foreign Policy. Ithaca, N.Y.:Cornell University Press. 606 InternationalOrganization

Neumann,Iver B. 1999. Uses ofthe Other: ‘The East’ inEuropean Identity Formation. Minneapolis: Universityof MinnesotaPress. Nolt,James H.1999.Liberalizing Asia. WorldPolicy Journal. 16 (2):94–118. Oba,Mie, and Susumu Yamakage. 1998.In Search forRegional Identity: A Tale ofTwoLiminal Nations inAsia andthe Paci Ž c. Unpublishedmanuscript, University of Tokyo, Komaba campus. Paasi, Anssi.1986. The Institutionalization of Regions:A TheoreticalFramework for Understanding the Emergence ofRegionsand the Constitution of Regional Identity. Fennia 164 (1):105–46. Polelle,Mark. 1999. RaisingCartographic Consciousness: The Social and Foreign Policy Vision of Geopoliticsin the Twentieth Century. Lanham,Md.: Lexington Books. Prentice,Deborah A., and Dale T.Miller,eds. 1999. CulturalDivides: Understandingand Overcoming Group Con ict. New York:Russell Sage Foundation. Purifoy,Lewis McCarroll.1976. Harry Truman ’sChinaPolicy: McCarthyism and the Diplomacy of Hysteria 1947 –1951. New York:Franklin Watts. Reid,Escott. 1977. Time ofFear and Hope: The Making of the North Atlantic Treaty, 1947 –1949. Ontario:McClelland and Stewart. Reiter, Dan.1996. Crucibleof Beliefs: Learning,Alliances, and World Wars. Ithaca, N.Y.:Cornell UniversityPress. Rotter,Andrew J. 1987. ThePath to Vietnam: Origins of theAmerican Commitment to Southeast Asia. Ithaca, N.Y.:Cornell University Press. Ruggie,John Gerard. 1993.Multilateralism: The Anatomy of anInstitution. In MultilateralismMatters: TheTheory and Praxis of an Institutional Form, editedby John Gerard Ruggie,3 – 47.New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press. ———.1994.Third Try at WorldOrder? America andMultilateralism After theCold War. Political Science Quarterly 109 (4):553–70. ———.1997.The Past as Prologue:Interests, Identity, and American ForeignPolicy. International Security 21 (4):89–125. ———. 1998. Constructingthe World Polity: Essays onInternational Institutionalization. London: Routledge. Rusk,Dean, andKhomen Thanat. 1962. Joint Statement, Washington, 6 March1962. TheDepartment ofStateBulletin 46(1187):498 –99. Sar Desai, D.R.1997. SoutheastAsia: Past and Present, 4thed. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press. Schimmelfennig,Frank. 2001. The Community Trap: Liberal Norms, Rhetorical Action, and the Eastern Enlargementof the European Union. InternationalOrganization 55 (1):47–80. Simon,Sheldon W. 1993.The Clinton Administration and Asian Security:Toward Multilateralism. AustralianJournal of InternationalAffairs 47 (2):250– 62. Skrentny,John D. n.d.The Minority Rights Revolution. Unpublished manuscript, University of California,San Diego. Smith,Tony. 2000. ForeignAttachments: The Power of Ethnic Groups in the Making of American ForeignPolicy. Cambridge,Mass.: Harvard University Press. Spiro,David E. 1999. TheHidden Hand of American Hegemony: Petrodollar Recycling and Interna- tionalMarkets. Ithaca, N.Y.:Cornell University Press. Tajfel,Henri, ed. 1978. DifferentiationBetween SocialGroups: Studies in the Social Psychology of IntergroupRelations. London:Academic Press. Tajfel,Henri, and John C. Turner.1986. The Social Identity Theory of Intergroup Behavior. In Psychologyof IntergroupRelations, 2ded.,edited by Stephen Worchel and William G. Austin,7 –24. Chicago:Nelson Hall. Trachtenberg,Marc. 1999. AConstructedPeace: TheMaking of theEuropean Settlement, 1945 –1963. Princeton,N.J.: Princeton University Press. Truman,Harry S.1956. Memoirs. Vol. 2, Yearsof Trial and Hope. GardenCity, N.J.: Doubleday and Company. Ullman,Richard. 1999. The U.S. and the World: An Interview with George Kennan. New YorkReview of Books 46 (13):4–6. NoNATO inAsia 607

U.S.Department ofState.1984. ForeignRelations of TheUnited States: 1952 –1954. Vol. 12, East Asia and the PaciŽ c, PartI. Washington,D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Of Ž ce. U.S.Senate. 1949. North Atlantic Treaty: Hearings Before theCommittee onForeign Relations, 81st Cong.,1st sess. Washington,D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Of Ž ce. ———.1954.The Southeast Asia CollectiveDefense Treaty:Hearing Before theCommittee onForeign Relations,83d Cong., 2d sess. Washington,D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Of Ž ce. ———.1973.The Vandenberg Resolution and the North Atlantic Treaty: Hearings Held in Executive SessionBefore theCommittee onForeign Relations, 80th Cong., 2d sess. WashingtonD.C.: U.S. GovernmentPrinting Of Ž ce. Urwin,Derek W.1995. TheCommunityof Europe:A History ofEuropeanIntegration Since 1945. New York:Longman. Wallander,Celeste A.1999 .MortalFriends, Best Enemies: German-RussianCooperation After theCold War. Ithaca, N.Y.:Cornell University Press. ———.2000.Institutional Assets andAdaptability: NATO After theCold War. InternationalOrgani- zation 54 (4):705–35. Walt,Stephen M. 1987. TheOrigins of Alliances. Ithaca, N.Y.:Cornell University Press. Warshaw, Steven.1975. SoutheastAsia Emerges: AConciseHistory ofSoutheastAsia from Its Origins tothePresent. Berkeley,Calif.: The Diablo Press. Watanabe,Paul Y. 2001.Global Forces, Foreign Policy, and Asian Paci Ž cAmericans. PoliticalScience andPolitics 34 (3):639– 44. Webb,Leicester C.1962.Australia andSEATO. In SEATO:Six Studies, editedby George Modelski, 49–82.Melbourne: F. W.Chesire. Weber,Steve. 1991. Multilateralismin NATO: Shaping the Postwar Balance of Power, 1945 –1961. Berkeley:University of CaliforniaPress. ———.1993.Shaping the Postwar Balance ofPower: Multilateralism in NATO. In Multilateralism Matters:The Theory and Praxisof anInstitutionalForm, editedby John Gerard Ruggie,233 –92. New York:Columbia University Press. Wendt,Alexander. 1999. SocialTheory of International Politics. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press. WesterŽ eld,H. Bradford.1955. ForeignPolicy and Party Politics: Pearl Harbor to Korea. New Haven, Conn.:Yale UniversityPress. Williams,Lee E.1976. SoutheastAsia: A ShortHistory. New York:Oxford University Press.