Green, Michael

Abstract
T. J. Pempel’s core argument is that under the Bush administration, ‘domestic political drivers’ led to a ‘militarization and unilateralization’ of American foreign policy that ‘deviated sharply’ from previous administrations and led to a ‘devastating decline in America’s standing among most Asian publics’. This argument is wrong on both causality and outcome, but along the way Pempel does highlight some of the unresolved challenges that the next US administration will face. After briefly resetting the stage to accurately reflect the state of US–Asian relations, I intend to pick up some of Pempel’s specific insights on China and US alliances, North Korea and regional integration, in order to illustrate the difficult choices for US Asia policy and to demonstrate why the next administration will likely stay on the course set by George W. Bush.
Read the article online here.