October 20, 2003

ASIA 101: THE PRESIDENT'S JOURNEY

By Tom Plate

A time for listening to friends, allies and true well-wishers

LOS ANGELES -- There is a time to lurch and a time to pause. The time of the American lurch was seven months ago -- into Iraq. Now is the time for pause -- America needs to do less and think things out more. There is no better place to develop a thoughtful long view than in Asia, where time is often measured not in ticks and tocks but in epochs and millenniums.

U.S. President George W. Bush's 10-day trip to Asia couldn't have come at a better juncture for the United States and his administration. The Iraq war went well but the peace did not. The "road map" to Middle East peace is pockmarked with land mines. The Islamic world clashes not only with the West but also within itself -- between moderates and extremists. Even so, U.S. reactions seem marked by mistakes and missteps rather than superpower steadiness.

Asia offers America a lot more value than just electronic exports, exotic cuisines and -- now -- manned space flight. That the Chinese completed their first one just prior to Bush's departure may have been an accident of timing, but the message was intentional. China is beginning to fill the geopolitical void, without (as yet, anyway) the global menace of the former Soviet Union. China's economy may be but a tenth of the size of America's, but no one doubts that the gap is narrowing and, as it does, so mushrooms China.

Similarly, Asia's clout on the global stage is reassuming historic dimensions. Even now, by most measurements, Asia, if united, would be the world's largest economic bloc. The totality of its gross domestic product exceeds that of the United States by 50 percent.

With economic clout comes political stature. Beijing and Tokyo -- minor foreign-affairs players even in their own Asian backyard -- are now burnishing their diplomatic image. The most obvious example is the North Korean problem, where both are publicly involved. China, for its part, is taking an increasingly regional view of its diplomatic aims. It is working overtime to increase trade ties, especially with Southeast Asia, with two goals in mind: One is to lower neighbors' fears about China's future economic hegemony. Two is to increase the region's economic dependency on China.

Japan, under dynamic Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, looks to be developing a more global perspective. It is seeking to use its military forces in a peaceful way while at the same time reminding the world that its so-called Self-Defense Forces are the world's second most technologically advanced army. As Japan gets its economy back on track, the Koizumi government may well launch a big-time effort to secure a U.N. Security Council seat as a permanent, veto-wielding power.

As it should, after the president's tete-a-tete in Tokyo with Koizumi, Southeast Asia looms big on Bush's itinerary. It's a good thing that the president approved his schedulers' recommendations to include Manila, Bangkok, Singapore and Bali on the fly-through.

Take the Philippines' Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, announcing her ambition to remain president after earlier indications she had none. With her country's internal-security problems, she fully supports the Bush anti-terror effort. Thailand's strong-man Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra is, like the American president, a conservative CEO-type
leader, and his words of counsel likely will be easy for Bush to swallow. Singapore's Goh Chok Tong government, with Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew hovering in the background, is a tough-minded group that lives on the edge of a political volcano and has lots to say to America.

All of the above encounters will work to educate the relatively young American president without threatening his Texan testosterone.

But Bush may come to shove in Bali when he meets Megawati Sukarnoputri, the elected president of Indonesia, the thousand-island archipelago with a million problems that's home to the globe's largest population of Muslims. Bush's anti-terror foreign policy works best on simple cases (Saddam Hussein, bad) but falters in more complex applications, for example, in Indonesia. How do you attack the problem without cracking open this fragmented nation of 230 million and driving waves of refugees into neighboring Singapore and Australia, two of Bush's most sympathetic allies in Asia?

There's no easy answer except, perhaps, patience and persistence.

After the difficult Megawati meet, Bush will get some intellectual rest and reassurance from John Howard, prime minister of Australia. His country backed up his tough talk with the dispatch of substantial fighting troops to Iraq. Knocked by his own countrymen -- and even more soundly throughout Asia -- for being Bush's Asia-Pacific poodle, Howard offers a streamlined definition of national-security interest that will appeal personally to Bush more than any other message he'll receive in a region destined to rise to the forefront of the 21st century.

But if only Americans will take the time, there are a lot of Asia-Pacific leaders who make for pretty good listening.

The above weekly column has just appeared in the Honolulu Advertiser, The South China Morning Post and The Straits Times of Singapore. The author, Tom Plate, is a regular columnist at these three papers. The column also appears in other world newspapers, including The San Francisco Chronicle, The Seattle Times, The Japan Times and The Korea Times. Email him at: tplate@ucla.edu.

For publication and reprint rights, contact the author directly or John Simpson (john.simpson@latsi.com) of the Los Angeles Times Syndicate International.


Bio Remarks: Tom Plate is a professor of Policy and Communication Studies at UCLA where he founded the AsiaMedia. He is a regular columnist for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate International, the South China Morning Post, The Straits Times and the Honolulu Advertiser. He is a member of the World Economic Forum, the Pacific Council on International policy and the author of five books. He has worked at TIME, the Los Angeles Times and the Daily Mail of London.

Previous Columns:

Get A Grip on Yourself! (October 16, 2003)

A Growing Peace Dividend: Unity in Prosperity? (October 9, 2003)

Asian Images of America and Australia (October 6, 2003)

From Axis of Evil to Twin Dominoes (October 2, 2003)