The United States and Asia

Abstract

The United States’ experience with Asia goes back to 1784. Over the subsequent two-and-a-third centuries scholarly research grew in fits and starts, reflecting historical developments: the growth of US interests and interdependencies in the region; the wars in Asia in which the United States fought; the ascendance of the United States to international leadership; and the post–World War II resurgence of Asia led by Japan, then the four tigers, and most dramatically China. The definition of Asia evolved correspondingly. Today, due to strategic and economic interdependencies, scholars tend to view it as incorporating Northeast, Southeast, South, and Central Asia and Russian Asia as well as relevant portions of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The most recent US National Security Strategy (White House 2017, cited under Contemporary US-Asia Relations: General) reconceives the Asia-Pacific as the Indo-Pacific, stretching “from the west coast of India to the western shores of the United States” and constituting “the most populous and economically dynamic part of the world” (pp. 45–46) The first Asia scholars came to prominence in the United States during World War II, and the Cold War strengthened the impetus for interdisciplinary area and regional studies. Through the middle and late Cold War years, social scientists and historians concentrated further, but they increasingly looked inward at the development of their separate disciplines, away from interdisciplinary area studies as conceived in the 1940s and 1950s. While area studies declined, barriers between academia and the policy world emerged. Many scholars disapproved of the Vietnam War. “Revisionists” in the international relations, foreign policy, and area studies fields held that US policy and the extension of global capitalism were conjoined, suppressing both economic development and indigenous political movements in Asia and elsewhere. Simultaneously, behavioral science and postmodernist movements in policy-relevant fields developed. In the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, Theory and methodology overtook the old approach of area-specific research that tried to integrate knowledge of the history, culture, language, politics, and economics of particular nations or subregions. Theory and methodology prevailed in research, tenure, and promotion. Policy-relevant studies became viewed as “applied” science. Another factor was money. Already under pressure, area studies was dealt a major blow at the end of the Cold War with cutbacks. Research on policy issues related to the United States and Asia increasingly came from think tanks that housed scholars themselves and/or contracted with university-based specialists. In recent years due to the rapid development of China and the urgent challenges it presents, interest in policy-relevant topics has revived on campuses and in scholarly research, especially in the international relations and modern history of the Indo-Pacific and the politics, economics, environment, and foreign and military affairs of China. Interest has revived too in the subregions of Asia, much of it driven by Chinese activities abroad.