|
 |
 |
|
There is always temptation — for journalists and even historians — after an event as dramatic and as portentous as Sept. 11th to talk about “a whole new world”. It doesn’t happen. Trends and movements are speeded up, modified significantly, or slowed. If we look around Asia, we see:
Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi was trying to make Japan a more “normal country” by bringing reality and its constitution into alignment. The anti-terrorist campaign — after all, Tokyo has had its own vivid experiences with the phenomena — provides that opportunity. Koizumi shattered post-WorldWar II tradition with its military joining the U.S. overseas — if only for logistics — another step beyond its $12 billion contribution to the Gulf War. And it takes the spotlight temporarily off Koizumi’s still unfilled promises to take painful measures for restructuring an economy already going into recession.
China, while reluctant to see Japanese rearmament, given the worldwide crisis, Beijing’s need to patch things up with Washington after the spy-plane incident, and more domestic problems on its plate than it can handle, has accepted Tokyo’s role, grudgingly. If Koizumi went to Beijing to plead again for forgiveness for World War II sins, it was a one-day stopover from where he sent additional pledges of support to Washington.
China, worried about its own Moslem dissidents and its halting efforts to bring oil from its western fields, Central Asia and Russia now that it is in deficit, reinforced borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan. There was the additional rationalization for increased suppression of the Sinkiang Uighurs’ smoldering revolt, encouraged but not initiated by the lunatics in Afghanistan. The Communist chieftains — plagued with faltering exports, a quiet if intense behind the scenes succession struggle, and a stymied economic reform program — will play “low posture” host to President Bush and other government chiefs for the APEC meeting in Shanghai later this month.
The Koreas with President Kim Dae Jung in Seoul a lame duck and the North’s Kim Il Jong’s recent trips to China and Russia producing little beyond rhetoric, were quiescent.
India, its long awaited economic liberalization imperiled by its “East India Company” mentality fights with ENRON and Coca Cola, saw the anti-terrorist coalition as a golden opportunity. It pushed a new role as the U.S.’ No. 1 friend — and for recognition as the hegemonic power — in South Asia. It seemed an opportunity for a leg up on the 50-year-old Kashmir dispute. But New Delhi quickly found Pakistan, no matter how much its intelligence community had sinned in working with the Taleban, more important to Washington in the near term. Pakistan — with its own 20- million Pushtuns — perhaps could help Washington ferret out this segment of the international terrorist network. Washington’s lifting of antiproliferation sanctions on both countries canceled each other out. And bankrupt Pakistan, by rejoining the Western world, hoped for extensive economic aid. But New Delhi and Islamabad, even during the U.S. bombardment snapping at each other’s heels, continued to foster world concern about an accidental nuclear exchange.
President Putin’s topspinning policies continued. He hoped the anti-terrorist coalition which Russia, too, was nominally joining, might provide bonanzas, even a halt to NATO’s eastward expansion. At first, he tried to palm off Moscow’s Chechnya war as just another antiterror campaign. But his own human rights activists call it different; a war his own generals said was far from won. Putin hoped the U.S.’s need for Central Asia bases might be a handle to reassert Moscow’s authority there. But its secular, ex-Communist leadership, were willing to help the Americans without Moscow’s permission or intermediation. In fact, it seemed a round for Washington’s efforts to establish a presence in what could be the second most important oil-producing region. Nor, given the conspicuous lack of enthusiasm for the U.S. campaign in areas like Tatarstan with large Moslem populations, does Moscow appear closer to dealing with its huge minorities inside the Russian Federation alongside a disastrously diminishing Slav population.
In Southeast Asia, President Arroyo of the Philippines was unable — as Manila earlier was unable with Beijing’s march on contested South China Sea islands — to get ASEAN to take a stand on Moslem terrorism. Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia was using the terrorist label to finally finish his former deputy Anwar, having seen the issue of Moslem law split his Chinese-Moslem opposition. And in Indonesia, the new President Megawatti was waffling on local Islamicist extremist threats to the U.S. embassy and investments as she had been expected to do on other issues.
The world had changed. But most of the old patterns were still there. If they were to change more radically, it would only come about with a clear-cut American victory in its war against terrorism. And that, even optimistically, seemed a long way off.
Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@abac.com), is an Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former correspondent for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press International.
He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.