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Reagan Presidency. But its Republican component, the International Republican Institute, had a toosmall force on the ground in Jakarta though it did a lot with what it had. There is more to Republican near-invisibility than the ceding of bragging rights to liberals about who deserves the credit for the great turn toward us in the world. It is more than symbolic, for it confirms a serious deterioration in political understanding, especially in comprehending the relationship between what happens to the United States and what happens in the world. For example, we ought to pay close attention when the world's most populous Muslim country shows itself capable of democratic decision making. Similarly, though we are properly focused on East Asia, the British-derived democracies of South Asia the enduring one in India and the intermittently exasperating ones in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka include more than a billion people. We congratulate ourselves because we think we have detected some world-historic strategic trend after carefully counting China's two dozen missiles. The military balance matters a great deal, but it is not the only balance that matters, and certainly not only one that should matter to the party of Reagan.Charles Horner is Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute. He was Associate Director of the United States Information Agency during the Reagan Administration.