Asian Reservations About the War on Terrorism
 
Philip Bowring International Herald Tribune
Tuesday, October 16, 2001
HONG KONG There is unease in East Asia at events in Afghanistan and the evolution of the "global war on terrorism." There is no sympathy for Osama bin Laden, but unease reflects worry that the response to Sept. 11 will do more harm than good. It also taps into old wells of anti-Western sentiment.
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Despite Asia's infatuation with Western popular and technological culture, and continued reliance on the U.S. strategic umbrella, Western political agendas are under scrutiny.
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Do not expect this to come out into the open at this week's Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit conference in Shanghai. But beyond tokens of noncombat support for the coalition against terror there are concerns about its motives and wisdom. Sympathy for the United States is starting to erode as the images of Sept. 11 are replaced by those of air strikes.
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Few doubt that America has every right to punish the perpetrators and disrupt the networks of those plotting further outrages. All would be happy to see the back of the Taliban, and hope that this crisis may permanently alleviate other problems such as Palestine and Chinese-U.S. relations. However, when Asians look at the coalition many note that its active members are principally the white, Western Christian nations that not long ago were lording it over Asia. Top of the list is Britain, which to many in Asia seems to be hankering for a replay in miniature of Pax Britannica. Sections of Tony Blair's recent speech about bringing justice to the world could have been composed by Lord Palmerston, his Victorian predecessor.
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Next in line is France, whose ill-tempered and bloody decolonization is still remembered.
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Also on the coalition's active list is Australia, which wants to be part of Asia but in some Asian eyes prefers to play little brother to America. All this may be unfair, but it is as well to recognize that the war is bringing to the surface old grudges, whether Chinese over the opium wars or Indian and Malay over European rule. Many still smart from the battering they received from Western financial institutions during the Asian economic crisis. The suggestion that "those who are not with us are against us" grates in countries that have been suffering from terrorism for years. It is resented in India and Indonesia, which were pilloried for Cold War nonalignment. They now recall that it was the West (and China) which helped Khmer Rouge terror continue for a decade after 1979. Widespread if muted high-level concern over a Western-led war in Asia could in time be more of a problem for the United States than the theatrical opposition of some Muslims. Almost anyone can organize 500 demonstrators to burn flags in front of CNN in Jakarta, where antipathy to U.S. policies is more than offset by appreciation of most other American things.
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Asian concerns about Western goals are for now overridden in public by self-interest. All offer token support for the United States in return for whatever they need - money, trade, arms or using anti-terrorism as cover for suppressing local dissidents. But the war already has a political cost for the West in Asia that will grow if the Afghan campaign drags on or involves other Asian theaters.
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Southeast Asians are concerned that too much is being made of links between their Muslims and bin Laden. Muslim separatist struggles in the southern Philippines are three decades old. The Abu Sayyaf group now being linked to bin Laden has been successful at extortion, but to present this local kidnap band as part of a global movement is absurd. Indonesia's nasty Laskar Jihad did not need bin Laden's money. There was plenty from associates of ousted President Suharto anxious to make life difficult for his successors by slaughtering Christians in the Maluku.
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Each of Southeast Asia's Islamic trouble spots is sui generis. Fitting them into an international conspiracy masterminded by "the evil one" is giving them undeserved credit and complicates responses to legitimate Muslim political movements in Malaysia and Thailand.
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While willing for now to allow America a free hand against bin Laden, East Asian countries appear nervous about a wider war on a terrorism. Were the Viet Cong or the Indonesian independence fighters or the French maquis terrorists? Sympathy for the Palestinians as victims of Western imperialism is found in most Asian countries previously under Western yoke.
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Those most sympathetic to the United States worry about overreaction. South Koreans recall the restraint that they were required to exercise after Pyongyang's terror attacks, such as the one in Rangoon that killed several cabinet ministers.
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Some ask why so much emphasis is on Asia when the terrorists came from the Arab world and operate as much from the cities of Europe as from Afghan caves. Others ask why the British bomb Afghanistan but take no action against those in Dublin and Boston who shelter IRA terrorists.
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In sum, acceptance of America's right to respond and to defend itself is beginning to be shadowed by concerns that the West is getting into an Asian campaign without clear aims or exit strategy but with a savior self-image reminiscent of an earlier age.

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