America is in Asia, but not of Asia
America decided 143 years ago not to be an Asian nation and its confused presence in the region is coming to a close
Everybody was kung fu fighting
Those cats were fast as lightning
In fact, it was a little bit frightening
But they fought with expert timing
– Carl Douglas
The United States of America ruined its future as an Asian power 143 years ago when it passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first US law to prevent immigration of a specific nationality.
In the 19th century, China was turned upside down by internal chaos. The Opium Wars, the Taiping Rebellion, clan feuds, droughts and famines pushed waves of Chinese migrants out to all corners of the world – particularly Southeast Asia, Europe and America.
Starting with the California Gold Rush of 1848-1855, waves of Chinese migrants fanned out across the western United States working in mines, laundries, restaurants and on construction projects. Chinese coolies were instrumental in the arduous construction of the Central Pacific route of the first transcontinental railroad, cutting through the Sierra Nevada Mountains to connect Nevada and California.
In his 1920 book “The Rising Tide of Color: The Threat Against White World-Supremacy”, eugenicist and racial anthropologist Lothrop Stoddard of “The Great Gatsby” infamy wrote of Chinese labor:
At home, the average Chinese lives his whole life literally within a hand’s breadth of starvation. Accordingly, when removed to the easier environments of other lands, the Chinaman brings with him the working capacity which simply appalls his competitors.
F Scott Fitzgerald dismissed Stoddard by making him an obsession of the boorish Tom Buchanan (misnaming him “Goddard” to boot). On the issue of Chinese labor, however, Stoddard merely reflected the American opinion that prevailed in the 19th century and that ultimately resulted in the Chinese Exclusion Act.
By the 1870s, Chinese men accounted for a quarter of California’s workforce. White workers were hard pressed to match the industriousness of the Chinese, reflected in the fact that the Central Pacific Railroad paid Chinese workers a premium salary: $31 per week versus $30 per week for whites.
Resentments intensified after the Panic of 1873, resulting in increasing restrictions on Chinese immigration until the broad ban of the Chinese Exclusion Act was enacted in 1882.
A harrowing “driving out period” followed the immigration ban, with Chinese evicted from communities where they had long settled. The Rock Springs massacre of 1885 and the Hells Canyon Massacre of 1887 were especially gruesome episodes of anti-Chinese violence.
The Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed in 1943, but by then, the damage had been done. Today, there are 5.5 million Americans who claim full or partial Chinese ancestry, a mere 1.6% of the population.
This compares with 38.6 million (11.3% of the population) claiming Irish ancestry, 49 million (14.4%) claiming German ancestry and 16.8 million (4.9%) claiming Italian ancestry. There are 3.6 million more Scandinavian Americans than there are Chinese Americans.
There are 26 million Americans who claim full or partial Asian ancestry, 7.2% of the total population. If the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 had never been passed, there would certainly be far more.
At the time, China had a population of 400 million, Europe 330 million and the United States 54 million. In a counterfactual sans Exclusion Act history, it is not hard to imagine over 100 million Asian Americans today. Alcatraz Island could have been the West Coast’s Ellis Island, processing Asian immigrants well into the 20th century.
Of course, this alternate universe America would be very different and we could have much fun speculating on the endless counterfactual possibilities. Suffice it to say that a United States with over 100 million Asian Americans would forever cement the republic as not just a Pacific but an Asian power.
That, for better or for worse, is not the America we have today. The United States today may be a Pacific power, but it is certainly not Asian. America became a Pacific power after it, fearing being shut out of the opium trade by European powers, sent Commodore Perry and his black ships to force open Japan in 1852.
Ever since, the United States has been a military presence in Asia through subsequent kerfuffles like the Second Opium War, the Boxer Rebellion, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.
As time goes on, it is becoming ever more apparent that the United States is inAsia, but it is not of Asia. Korea is divided. So is China. Vietnam, after much carnage, was abandoned. And Japan has been kneecapped into economic stagnation and bonsaied into cultural anomie.
And now, the United States has just picked an economic war with China, which it is highly likely to lose and lose spectacularly (see here). The danger of America being in Asia but not of Asia is that it is playing on alien terrain, subject to information asymmetries, and prone to bad judgment.
There are so few Chinese Americans that they essentially have no political power. Because of that, the expertise of the Chinese Americans who do exist is distrusted and dismissed as Washington takes its cues from grifters (see here) and China “experts” who “fell in love with Mandarin” at Princeton or the like.
In the counterfactual America of 100 million Asians, Chinese Americans would surely have amassed significant political power and Washington would be able to access real experts without political suspicion. America would trust Treasury Secretary Zhang to go up against China as much as it trusted Supreme Commander Eisenhower to take on Germany.
But alas, that is the counterfactual America. The factual America chose to fight China with the ignoramuses it trusts, not the experts it needs. This is what happens when America is in Asia but not of Asia. America started a fight as though it didn’t know China is more than twice its size (see here).
To be in Asia but not of Asia when China is the size it is and still growing means to not be in Asia for long. The US military presence in Asia is an alien distortion, imposing social, economic and civilizational costs on both sides of the Pacific.
The US is not particularly reliant on Asia economically (36% of imports and 24% of exports) and is minimally integrated culturally.
English is the lingua franca in Europe and far more Americans speak Spanish than all Asian languages combined. While English is commonly spoken in Asia, it is hardly universal – not even among the highly educated. Asia, as far as most Americans are concerned, is an exotic other and vice versa.
The costs of maintaining a forward US military presence in Asia are immense. Total spending on defense is likely over US$1 trillion (including intelligence agencies and DOE nuclear weapons, etc.), or approximately 3.4% of gross domestic product (GDP).
The tyranny of distance, on top of a massive industrial base, allows China to impose highly asymmetric costs on the US. Total spending on defense by China is likely around $300 billion, or about 1.6% of GDP.
Because GDP can be squirrely given how services are accounted for in China, a more revealing comparison may be with industrial output. China’s defense spending is around 4% of its industrial output versus about 25% for the US.
One of the reasons the Soviet Union collapsed was that the US, given its technological superiority and the then USSR’s vast vulnerable landmass, was able to impose asymmetric costs on the Soviet defense budget – the Ronald Reagan strategy.
Analysts have estimated that the Soviet Union was spending 12-20% of its GDP on defense in the 1980s trying to keep up with Reagan’s Pentagon budget increases and whiz-bang Star Wars demonstrations. This time around, China is implementing the Reagan strategy with annual PLA budget increases and whiz-bang demonstrations of 6th-generation fighter planes (see here).
Can Joe Six Pack American be blamed for asking what it is all for when he is living paycheck to paycheck? America is not, after all, an Asian nation – it fatefully, for better or for worse, decided not to be 143 years ago with the Chinese Exclusion Act and confirmed that decision in WWII with Japanese American internment camps. America is not full of Zhou Six Packs with deep historical ties to Asia.
Proponents of the pivot to Asia and/or China containment policy offer up a confused litany of reasons for America’s military presence. The most visible spokesman for this position is Elbridge Colby, currently undersecretary of defense for policy at the Pentagon, who wrote the book “Strategy of Denial.”
The fear is that a hegemonic China in Asia would economically gate-keep the region from American commercial interests. Given President Donald Trump’s attempt to extort the world with his “Liberation Day” tariffs, we must concede that a hegemon may indeed behave poorly for no good reason at all.
The issue we have with Colby is once again the issue of America being in Asia but not of Asia. How good of a handle does Colby have on the costs that his strategy of denial requires? America currently suffers from a whole panoply of domestic ailments, from inadequate healthcare to lousy education to decrepit infrastructure to homelessness. Does Colby fully understand what he wants to commit America to?
Does Colby understand that China’s GDP is two to three times that of the US – something Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and team surely (dis)missed? Does Colby understand that there are 45 times as many highly capable (top 1.5%, US basis) math students in Chinese high schools as American high schools?
Does Colby understand that approximately 20-30% of Chinese high school students can score in the 99th percentile on the math section of the SAT? 99th percentile US math level is table stakes in China, nothing special, a mere B+ student in the Gaokao system.
Does Colby understand that China generates twice as much electricity, produces 13 times as much steel, 22 times as much cement, three times as many cars and has over 250 times the shipbuilding capacity as the US?
Colby’s family history perfectly illustrates being in Asia but not of Asia. He is a scion of the CIA/Carlyle Group/Yale University with a deep family history in Asia. The first Elbridge Colby (great-grandfather) was an officer in the US Army stationed in Tianjin.
Grandfather William Colby was director of the CIA and did god knows what in Asia during the Vietnam War. Father Jonathan Colby is an executive at Carlyle who spent much of his career in Japan.
The scion himself is a product of international schools in Asia (but does not speak an Asian language). At one point, young Colby tweeted that he was “not an expert on Taiwanese society and politics”, an odd admission from someone whose life’s work is the prevention of China’s reunification with Taiwan.
This is all quite illustrative of America’s confused presence in Asia. In an interview, Colby used scare tactics, saying that an Asia dominated by China would impoverish America and China would then have the world’s largest corporations and highest-ranked universities.
Last year, the US retook Fortune’s Global 500 crown away from China with 139 companies on the list versus China’s 128. The two nations have been exchanging the top spot for the past few years.
This is a far cry from 2010, when the US had 139 companies on the list versus 46 from China. Similarly, China’s universities are rocketing up the league tables, capturing 16 of the top 20 positions on the Nature Index.
While an Asia dominated by China, which then decided to gate-keep economic access, could indeed damage America, climbing the economic ladder is likely far more dependent on first-order principles like investing in education, infrastructure, public health, executing well-thought-out industrial policies, and stamping out graft and corruption.
America is falling behind not because China is modernizing its military, but precisely because America wasted trillions of dollars on unnecessary wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now threatens to militarily challenge the biggest player that ever was.
Colby calls himself a realist, though it’s not clear that he knows exactly what he is. Just like America does not know what it is. America may want to be an Asian power, but that ship sailed in 1882. America is not Asian – it chose not to be on more than one occasion – and has demonstrated a limited capacity to understand any region outside its borders, even Canada.
To devise realist policies for Asian security requires expertise on the region’s society and politics. Otherwise, one is not weighing costs and benefits but merely pointing in ideological directions.
But nowadays that passes for “realist” thinking among America’s Asia “experts.” When all is said and done, America is in Asia because it finds itself in Asia. There is no reason: Like international school students who don’t learn the local language, they are there because that’s where they are. Not everything has a reason or lasts.