U.S. President George W. Bush has just concluded a crash course in Northeast Asian politics. In the past three weeks, he has hosted South Korean President Kim Dae Jung, Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori and Chinese Vice Premier Qian Qichen. Now Bush has to make sense of those visits, digest the various messages and develop a coherent policy.
The president has said that he wants to take a new approach to Northeast Asia. If he is sincere, he might want to start by adopting a new vocabulary when talking about the region. Participants at the annual U.S.-Japan San Francisco Security Seminar -- an informal, off-the-record gathering of current and former officials and security specialists from both countries -- provided plenty of examples that the new administration might want to consider.
For a start, Bush should steer away from talk of balances. The United States is the world's sole superpower. No other country can hope to balance it. As a global power, the U.S. brings issues and interests to the table that most of its negotiating partners -- and allies -- do not. For example, South Korea does not share the U.S. concern about North Korea's ballistic missile program. The South has lived with the threat of North Korean artillery for decades; ballistic missiles do not change Seoul's strategic calculus. Nor do South Korean leaders lose much sleep over missile proliferation.