Asia first.

• Author: Merry, Robert W.
• Position: The Realist - Territorial expansion in the Asia Pacific

On February 7, 1845, Congressman John D. Cummins rose in the House of Representatives to add his voice to those clamoring for U.S. possession of the Oregon Territory, then occupied jointly by the United States and Britain. He declared that these opulent Northwest lands were "the master key of the commerce of the universe." Put that territory under U.S. jurisdiction, he argued, and soon the country would witness "an industrious, thriving, American population" and "flourishing towns and embryo cities" facing west upon the Pacific within four thousand miles of vast Asian markets. Contemplate, he added, ribbons of railroad track across America, connecting New York, Boston and Philadelphia to those burgeoning West Coast cities and ports.

Furthermore, he said, the "inevitable eternal laws of trade" would make America the necessary passageway for "the whole eastern commerce of Europe." European goods, traversing the American continent, could get to Asia in little more than seven weeks, whereas the traditional sea routes generally required seven months. "The commerce of the world would thus be revolutionized," said Cummins. "Great Britain must lose her commercial supremacy in the Pacific; and the portion of its commerce which forced its destination there must pay tribute to us."

Cummins's speech reflected a fundamental reality about America: its quest for expansion and national grandeur was pretty much irrepressible. There were, as always, the naysayers and critics. Henry Clay argued for confining American settlement to lands east of the Rocky Mountains and postponing occupation of Oregon for some forty years. But most Americans recoiled at such a cramped view, and Clay's similarly blinkered opposition to the annexation of Texas probably cost him the presidency in 1844. If America was a country of vast designs, as Emerson said, then its westward push, known then and now as Manifest Destiny, was never destined to stop at the Pacific.

This history is worth pondering in the aftermath of China's declaration last November that its so-called air defense identification zone now encompassed most of the East China Sea. U.S. secretary of defense Chuck Hagel promptly called the action "a destabilizing attempt to alter the [region's] status quo." And Paul Haenle, director of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy at Beijing's Tsinghua University, warned that the move could set China on a collision course with Japan over disputed islands in the area...