A Historical Perspective Of The American Elements In East Asia Regional Cooperation

Domestic and foreign scholars has made a lot of in-depth and insightful research about East Asian regional cooperation and its relations with the United States from a range of different angles.Based on the predecessors’ articles, this paper tries to analyze American action motive for the East Asian regional cooperation, the challenges of the East Asian regional cooperation to the USA, and American coping strategy, from a historical perspective.American interests net in East Asia are not just reflected in the geographical dimension, and this paper also tries to find the power source of the US involvement in East Asia from the depth of history. From a historical perspective, this paper tries to analyze America’s East Asia policy reflected its domestic prosperity of market economy, political system and dynamic values (the driving forces of these three aspects---economy, politics and values which behind American regional policy). Therefore, on the basis of historical analysis, the paper explores how the internal structure of the United States gives America its regional diplomatic power support and pressure and how the externality results of the internal social structure reflects in the process of regional cooperation in East Asia.East Asia regional cooperation has got rapid development in the recent years, which shows a strong trend of regional integration. Due to the challenges of the East Asian regional cooperation, America intends to end its global counter terrorism strategy and transfers to the Asia-Pacific as a new strategic center of gravity. Thus America can promote its influence in this area and guide East Asia regional cooperation towards to the road favored by America.Specifically, the whole dissertation is divided into five parts:The first part is the introduction, and it mainly puts forward the research topic on the East Asia regional cooperation and its American factor, and expounds on the theoretical and practical significances of the study, the research situations on this theme in the current academic circles. the research methods and the framework of the thesis. The second part deals with the U.S. national interests and strategy in East Asia. First, this part defines "East Asia" on the geographic dimension and its social construction meaning.Then the paper explores how the domestic prosperity of market economy, political system and dynamic values to give American regional diplomatic power support and pressure to the regional foreign policy. According to this, the "externality results of the internal social structure" becomes the main logic pillar of this paper.The third part is the challenges of East Asia regional cooperation to the USA. First, the paper expounds East Asia regional cooperation in theory including sovereignty, regional environment and two historical examples in East Asia. Then it describes ASEAN development process and China as a participant in the regional cooperation in East Asia which combine each other to produce a kind of power challenges American national interests in East Asia.The fourth part is about American coping strategy to the challenges of East Asia regional cooperation. This section first emphasizes three assumed factors, which are "States have collaboration preferences","States are bounded rationality and limited capacity" and "States are self-interested actors". According to this three assumed factors and three elements of American domestic prosperity of market economy, political system and dynamic values, the Unite States makes different coping strategy to the challenges of East Asia regional cooperation.The fifth part is the conclusion.