Congressman Peter DeFazio is missing the big picture in the Pacific.

For most Americans, the United States’ brutal struggle with Japan in WWII has become an afterthought after decades of blossoming trade, diplomatic cooperation and military aid. Now, sharing the world stage as equals, they’ll be playing each other for the World Cup instead of waging war. Troublingly, though, as memories of the conflict’s geopolitical origins retreat further into history, our leaders and citizens alike are forgetting an important political legacy these once bitter rivals left in the Pacific.

In his opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a hotly contested free-trade agreement whose terms are currently under negotiation, U.S. Representative Peter DeFazio has overlooked a crucial one. Eighty years ago, American economic policy in Asia set the foundations for war in the Pacific by ignoring the importance of free trade to the region’s political stability. As Japan became increasingly isolated from the American economic sphere in the years before Pearl Harbor, it turned to militarism and expansion for relief. The TPP is important because it would create a different scenario – one in which the United States and Asia can build lasting diplomatic ties that might contain the region’s newest ascendant power, China.

The TPP would remove trade barriers between its signatories, including key regional actors like Japan, Australia, Singapore and Vietnam. These countries are already vital to the American economy – four million U.S. jobs were supported by exports to TPP countries in 2012, for example – and the Obama administration expects the agreement to add tens of billions of dollars to American exports by 2025. And crucially, for the time being, the list excludes China – meaning that the TPP would put economic pressure on its government to curtail aggressive behavior.

However, because the president has requested fast-track negotiating authority from Congress, the threat of executive overreach and opaque diplomacy have sparked uproar on both the right and left. DeFazio is one of the most outspoken members of this bipartisan opposition and has even called for an alliance between Democrats and the Tea Party to block the TPP in Congress.

In DeFazio’s view – one shared by many Democrats in Congress – President Obama has created an agreement that excludes Congress from its Constitutional duty to negotiate deals like the TPP. Fast-track authority, he’s argued, would allow the executive to push a bad deal through Congress. In addition, DeFazio charges that the results of TPP negotiations will be bad for the United States: foreign companies would be able to sue the United States for trade infractions, Wall Street would unduly benefit from access to the negotiating table and American trade deficits would grow.

These criticisms miss the point. Regardless of how a deal is reached or if Congress – setting aside the danger of its systemic incompetence and bias – is eventually given proper influence over its specifics, the existence of a deal itself should be celebrated because of its diplomatic significance. Essentially, the United States is buying the political influence in Asia needed to make the Obama administration’s “pivot” to Asia possible. As history shows us, this is a worthwhile goal.

In the run-up to WWII, Japan’s leaders felt it had two choices: succumb to American tariffs and collapse in isolationism, or build a new economic system that could support an emergent Japan. Because the United States feared Japanese militarism, it kept applying economic pressure. One of the results was the Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere: an aggressive Japanese program of colonial expansion across Asia in search of greater access to resources masked as a rejection of Western imperialism.

At heart, the TPP is an effort to prevent this circumstance from arriving again, giving Asian countries a chance to integrate into the American economy before they’re forced into conflict. As China continues to build its military and political presence in Asia, the United States must create an alternative economic system for Asian states to engage in even if it’s harmful to some American businesses. If tensions build, and states are forced to either trade with China or fall into disrepair because of prohibitive American trade regulations, then the only remaining option is war.

Following in the footsteps of one of Oregon’s greatest Congressmen, Wayne Morse, DeFazio is taking a bold stand against the dangers of executive power. But in doing so, he’s setting the stage for future conflict in Asia that could erupt into something far more dangerous than the President’s trade negotiators. With the TPP, the threat of Chinese regional hegemony is held at bay while America explores new opportunities to build meaningful relationships in the region. Without it, the United States sends a message to Asia that it still sees trade as a weapon, not an olive branch. Distrust of President Obama and the prioritization of domestic interests over essential foreign policy isn’t worth that risk.