In late September 1993 the administration tried to set out a framework and set of guidelines for US foreign policy, to meet growing criticism that it lacked focus. In a speech on 20 September, Secretary of State Warren Christopher rejected isolationism and called for a renewal of internationalism, arguing that the end of the Cold War had left the US with the responsibility and a ‘unique capacity’ to provide leadership. The following day the national security adviser, Anthony Lake, set out the purpose underlying that leadership as the ‘engagement and enlargement’ of the American core values of democracy and market economics. He committed the administration to giving the highest priority to strengthening the ties with the major market democracies and to preventing the ability of ‘backlash states’ in particular to threaten the ‘circle of democracy’. Among the backlash states of Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Burma, he initially included China. Even though he later backtracked from that, Lake nevertheless raised disquiet in Beijing. As noted in the previous chapter, it was this speech that was to spark off the counter-claim of the alleged superiority of Asian values by the friendly Southeast Asian governments of Malaysia and Singapore.