America's electorate, like Caesar's Rome, is divided into three factions just as the country could be entering its own imperial age. Well aware of the split Clinton is making moves in all three directions. PNS editor Franz Schurmann, professor emeritus of history and sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, has authored numerous books on world politics.

Like Caesar's Rome as it entered its imperial age, America's electorate is divided into three parts as it enters what could be the most fateful period yet of its world leadership. One faction looks to Asia for economic growth; a second faction, harkening back to historic ties, looks to Europe; the third favors an isolationist America.

The three political divisions first became evident in the 1992 presidential campaign with the candidacies of Bush, Clinton and Perot. The Republican Bush, representing a party traditionally close to big business, wanted to move to where the money was -- the vast stretch of booming East Asia. Led by Japan and China that region is experiencing economic growth that in the coming century will dwarf even that of the United States in its heyday.

This Republican tilt to Asia may just give them the presidency come November. The U.S. is now experiencing the stock market's dizzying upward spiral. Much of that momentum is provided by industries -- mainly high-tech, defense and food -- that are getting ever more deeply involved in the East Asia mega-boom.

A lot of Americans may not like to admit it but their life-styles are now inextricably enmeshed with East Asian economies -- from cheap Chinese consumer imports to sophisticated Japanese technology on which both America's military and its civilian industries now depend.

Clinton well understands this new reality in the American economy, as he demonstrated when he uncoupled China's human rights record from trade issues, stopped trade negotiator Mickey Kantor's Japan-bashing and announced his upcoming trip to Japan to dramatize his new backing of close relations between the world's two economic giants.

But many liberals do not like the growing closeness with East Asia. It smacks of corporate greed. It also rankles the large America-first constituencies that at various times have supported Perot and Buchanan. There is also a lot of opposition to the new Asia connection from within the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party today is in good part the creation of descendants of earlier European immigrants. Their cultural ties to Europe remain strong and a lot of them have become old-style American nationalists. When the Soviet Union collapsed, many of them joined Russian liberals in the hopes that a Western bloc would arise stretching from Vladivostok to San Francisco.

U.S. relations with Russia are worsening but as NATO expands rapidly into much of Eastern Europe and the Balkans, something of a Euro-American bloc is emerging. Clinton made the biggest move yet to bring about this bloc by sending troops to Bosnia. U.S. power and influence are now dominant not just in the Balkans but in the Middle East where more and more secular regimes are seeking American protection.

The overseas dilemma America now faces is that it needs economic involvement with East Asia but cannot dominate it. On the other hand it can dominate Europe and the Middle East but stands to reap trouble that might even endanger America's one great economic interest in the region, oil.

The domestic dilemma is even greater. America's nationalists want unity through isolationism. Yet cutting off America from East Asia will ruin its economy. And pulling out of Europe and the Middle East could ignite conflagrations as dangerous as those Hitler unleashed in the 1930's.

The Republican move to East Asia could keep fueling American prosperity but American unity will be threatened by ever greater gaps between rich and poor. And in Europe the Republican willingness to take a more hostile stance towards Russia than Clinton has could mean a new cold war.

The Democrats' tilt towards Europe and the Middle East might please a lot of white middle class Americans but others worry that in Bosnia Clinton has created a Vietnam redux. If the stock market boom ends and a financial crisis erupts like the March 1980 "bloodbath in the bond market," then they will surely lose the presidency as well as Congress this coming November.

Clinton, aware of this triple split among American voters, has made moves in all three directions, no matter how contradictory they are. His hope for November is that he can win by simple addition of brownie points from his moves in all three directions.

The Roman elites tried to resolve their own triple divisions by creating a coalition elite of three strongmen, their "triumvirate." That triumvirate broke open, civil war erupted but in the end what appeared was in history's cards all along -- the Roman Empire and its Antonine golden age from 27 B.C. to 180 A.D.

As the century ends, an American electorate divided into three parts may also signal the emergence of an American Empire, though with no certainty that it will last for 200 years.