Bush's choices bode well for Asia policy

By Sonya Hepinstall

WASHINGTON (Reuters): The new administration's sharpened focus on Japan and choices for its foreign policy and trade teams bode well for Asia policy under President George W. Bush, a panel of experts said on Monday.

The panel -- which presented a report titled America's Role in Asia: American Views, summing up more than a year's discussions -- agreed with Bush policymakers that Washington should reconfirm Japan as the "cornerstone" of U.S. policy in Asia.

But Harvard professor and Asia scholar Ezra Vogel, who wrote the report, cautioned that the United States should not expect too much, too soon, because resolving many of the issues in U.S.- Japanese relations could take time.

"I think we do have a real problem because we have an administration that now wants to embrace Japan and Japan is so divided" on such issues as what to do about American troops on the southern island of Okinawa, he said.

"There are wide divisions that are not going to be resolved in a short period of time ... (and so) I think it's very important to get our expectations to a lower level," he said.

"At the same time, it's my hope that the fact the administration has pushed this will push the consensus process in Japan a little further than it might have otherwise been pushed," he added.

Vogel and Michael Armacost, a former U.S. ambassador to the Philippines and Japan, praised the teams being assembled by the Bush administration for their "empathy" with Asian peoples and knowledge of the region.

They cited in particular Richard Armitage, confirmed on Monday as Secretary of State Colin Powell's second in command; Paul Wolfowitz, named deputy secretary of defense; and Robert Zoellick, the U.S. trade representative.

A fluent Vietnamese speaker, Armitage negotiated an agreement to reduce the U.S. military presence in the Philippines. Wolfowitz, an East Asia expert, was ambassador to Indonesia from 1986 to 1989 after five years as assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs.

Zoellick, who held posts in the Treasury and State departments, was among Bush's foreign policy advisers in the 2000 campaign and has broad interests and expertise that include Asia.

Vogel and Armacost, now president of the Brookings Institution think tank, were among 37 policymakers, academics, business people and nongovernmental experts brought together by the nonprofit Asia Foundation for the discussions underlying the report.

Although they met before Bush was elected president, Vogel said that "most of the members of the committee would be very pleased by the quality of the people who have been selected by the new administration."

Both Monday's report and one to be released in Seoul, South Korea, on America's Role in Asia: Asian Views, agreed that the worst thing for Asia would be if U.S. policymakers ignored the region altogether.

"The three Asian chairmen (of the companion report) say quite forthrightly that they view the possible inattention on the part of U.S. policymakers to Asia as being more dangerous than the potential domination of the region by the United States," said Catharin Dalpino, deputy director of the center for Northeast Asian policy studies at Brookings.