Commentary : U.S. Strategy Well-Served by APEC : Asia: The Auckland summit can stay on this path by setting a pan-Pacific agenda for the WTO’s next round of talks.

Critics charge that the Clinton administration’s foreign policy team is captive to short-term domestic interests, but in Asia the U.S. has done what a lone superpower must do: prevent other powers from uniting against it. The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, or APEC, forum has contributed to this strategic success.

When Bill Clinton journeys this weekend to Auckland, New Zealand, to the annual APEC summit, he will celebrate the 10th anniversary of that regional association. What he will not say too loudly is how APEC has served U.S. interests in helping to keep Asia safe for American diplomats, merchants and warships.

In Auckland, the U.S. can again utilize APEC to further involve Asia in global markets and institutions where the U.S. has strong influence. The U.S. can try to persuade the group to adopt a detailed blueprint for the upcoming round of World Trade Organization negotiations, and seek to advance China’s membership in that global forum.

With its 21 members (including Japan, China, South Korea, most of southeast Asia plus the United States, Canada and Mexico), APEC has impeded any tendencies toward the reemergence of a hostile Asian co-prosperity sphere. APEC has discouraged inward-looking bloc politics and has focused Asian trade negotiators on creating a free-trade area whose design includes the United States.

APEC trade policies are consciously consistent with those of the WTO, whose global rules are designed to prevent the world from fracturing into hostile blocs. When in the wake of the 1997 financial crisis, Japan floated the idea of an Asian financial fund, the APEC finance ministers instead endorsed U.S. policies to strengthen the Washington-based International Monetary Fund.

The summit is another opportunity for the U.S. and Asia to come together around an agenda for global trade reform--as APEC did in 1996 when its agreement on telecommunications quickly led to a WTO-wide accord.

In Auckland, APEC should forge a consensus agenda for the WTO trade negotiations in Seattle in December. Quite properly, the U.S. is pressing for APEC to endorse a broad WTO agenda that includes freer trade in industrial and agricultural products and in such service sectors as finance and travel.

The meeting also will refocus the attention of the U.S. and Chinese leaders on China’s WTO application, something both leaders badly want but have been denied by domestic opponents. Beyond the immediate grasp of domestic protectionists, the U.S. and Chinese leaders should buck up their courage and direct their negotiators to reach an agreement before the December WTO meeting.

Just as APEC has kept Asia engaged in the broader world, so has APEC helped keep the United States engaged in Asia. The APEC summits and associated meetings of ministers compel senior U.S. officials to focus on Asia. The crisis-driven U.S. national security team is forced to look away from southern Europe and the Middle East, to consider the broad swath of Asian nations.

At the summits, the U.S. president and other senior officials build personal ties that grease diplomacy. APEC does not directly negotiate security issues, but President Clinton will surely use his bilateral meetings to deal with the crisis in East Timor, to try to diffuse the mounting tensions between Taiwan and mainland China and to forge common approaches toward the renegade North Korea.

During its first decade, APEC has bolstered those Asians who see their future tied to the global economy, and has pulled the U.S. into a web of cooperative ventures in Asia. But APEC might have accomplished even more with more consistent leadership from Washington, Tokyo and Beijing. The Clinton administration’s failure to gain congressional authority for trade talks has sometimes undercut U.S. negotiators. Last year, Japan blocked an APEC agreement on liberalization in forestry and fish products.

Many Asians were disappointed when APEC failed to step in to stem the regional financial crisis. There was a bureaucratic explanation: Ministries of finance had stayed clear of an institution dominated by foreign affairs and trade ministries. The good news is that the crisis persuaded finance ministries to play a more active role in APEC.

If the New Zealand meeting can achieve a solid pan-Pacific agenda for the next WTO round and promote China’s entry into the world trade regime, APEC will once again have served U.S. long-term strategic interests.