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To Our Readers
HONOLULU is a great stopping-off place. We may not be a final destination for global movers and shakers, but we're ideally situated to refresh businessmen and policy makers who flit between Singapore, Shanghai and Seoul on the one hand and New York, Washington and Los Angeles on the other. Security? Make it so
Or between Tokyo and Cambridge, Mass. -- which was the circumstance that brought Joseph S. Nye Jr., dean of the Kennedy School of Government, to ground here last week. This provided an opportunity to hear U.S. policy in Eastern Asia interpreted in complete, succinct sentences and paragraphs by a Harvard professor and renew one's respect for Ivy League education.
Conducting foreign policy is like playing three-dimensional chess, Nye asserts. The analogy is apt, coming from a man who bears an uncanny resemblance to actor Patrick Stewart -- known to many as Capt. Jean-Luc Piccard of the Starship Enterprise -- albeit in a Brooks Brothers suit.
Nye's point is that simple solutions are an unaffordable luxury even for the world's single remaining super power. We can't resort to an old-fashioned two-dimensional military game when there are economic and political dimensions to consider, too.
Asia lacks the institutions that evolved in Europe after World War II. There's no NATO or European Union to knit together former adversaries. Therefore, America's military presence plays a central role in the region. It provides the security and stability that allows trade, investment and economic opportunity to flourish.
"Security is like oxygen," Nye says. "You don't notice it until you miss it, and then you can think of nothing else."
As a former assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs and holder of other major policy-making and advisory posts, Nye speaks with authority as well as clarity.
The U.S. must maintain its formal alliance with Japan and preserve normal relations with China, including approving permanent trade status. Ours must continue to be the stabilizing hand in the region, willing to cooperate and stay engaged. It's a good place for us to be.
John Flanagan is editor and publisher of the Star-Bulletin.
To reach him call 525-8612, fax to 523-8509, send
e-mail to publisher@starbulletin.com or write to
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, Hawaii 96802.