A Comeback in the Pacific


By PHILIP BOWRING

HONG KONG — It makes few headlines and wins no votes but the Obama administration is tallying up significant gains in its relationships in East Asia.

Long diverted by imbroglios in Iraq and Afghanistan, the summit meeting on Friday in New York between President Obama and leaders of the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) reflects a reawakening of U.S. interest in the southern neighbors of a rising China.

Asean itself may be little more than a talk-shop on to which trade and cultural agreements have been bolted. But Washington now recognizes that engaging it as a group enables the United States to compete at least in part with a China, which has a trade agreement with Asean.

It also serves as a reminder to China, as well as to the Asean countries themselves, that most member states have military cooperation deals with the United States that provide immensely valuable logistical support for U.S. forces in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell have been regular visitors to the region. Indeed, Mrs. Clinton acted as a catalyst at the July meeting of Asean foreign ministers in Hanoi, helping Vietnam get the issue of South China Sea disputes back on to the international agenda — to the great discomfort of China.

The Obama administration’s attempt to engage with the oppressive regime in Myanmar is also viewed positively by other Asean members, and India. Although the United States has called the approaching elections unfair and undemocratic, Washington acknowledges both the ineffectiveness of sanctions and the possibility of positive change in Myanmar. In turn that could lead to Myanmar reducing its reliance on China, currently its closest ally.

The new U.S. focus on Southeast Asia is also part of the broader strategy to shore up relations in East Asia.

China sees this as an unwarranted outside interference in regional affairs and an attempt at containment. However, a more common view in the region is that expressed by Australia’s foreign minister, Kevin Rudd, at a recent press conference in Washington, that the “stability of East Asia and the Pacific remains anchored in the strategic presence of the United States.”

Such sentiments are likely to surface at the East Asian summit meeting, to be held in late October in Hanoi, which groups 16 Asia-Pacific countries and includes the United States and Russia as observers. With Mrs. Clinton and the major U.S. regional allies of Japan, South Korea and Australia in attendance, plus an India that is also smarting from China’s border claims, the summit could prove a little uncomfortable for China.

American concerns that Japan was loosening ties with the U.S. following the ouster of the Liberal Democratic Party last year have proved unwarranted. A firm stance by the United States over its Okinawa bases coincided with rising worries in Japan about China’s naval ambitions, further underlined this week by a fierce diplomatic spat over several uninhabited islands controlled by Japan but claimed by China.

Japan has been shifting its defense focus to its southern waters and the international waterway between Okinawa and the southernmost Japanese islands that provides China’s navy with an outlet to the Pacific. South Korean sentiment, too, has been edging back closer to the United States following the sinking of one of its ships and strong Chinese opposition to Korea-U.S. naval exercises.

None of this adds up to an alliance against China. Few nations, even Vietnam and Japan, want to antagonize a rising power and major market. But they are pushing back against China’s assertiveness. Thus, the revival of U.S. strategic interest in East Asia is being driven by the Asians themselves as well as by the Obama administration.

For the longer term, the United States and its allies will be wondering whether it can afford the cost of its still overwhelming naval and air presence in the region. If cutbacks in U.S. military capability are needed, where will priorities lie?

This century is supposed to be the Pacific century. So far the United States has focused its military might on the Middle East but the approaching summit meetings with Asia’s powers will show that Washington is reawakening to this region’s importance.

 

 

May 21, 2010

Breaking the Cycle

By PHILIP BOWRING

HONG KONG — The goals of president-elect Benigno S. Aquino III of the Philippines are obvious: better governance and faster, more equal economic growth. The big issue is how to achieve them.

This will revolve around two questions. Is he tough enough? And, can the system be changed?

Mr. Aquino, known by his nickname Noynoy, inherits the mantle of honesty from his mother, the late Corazon Aquino, but also memories of her failure to bring lasting improvements in governance, even in the promising conditions for change that followed the fall of Marcos.

The issue of clean government leads to so much else. Mr. Aquino’s large mandate owes a lot to the expectation that the Aquino reputation can deliver a much more honest administration than that of his predecessors: the outgoing president, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, and Joseph Estrada, who came before Ms. Arroyo. So should he start by showing that corruption will not be forgiven by pursuing all reasonable allegations against the Arroyo administration?

There are many Filipinos who expect retribution. But as the record of failure to prosecute successfully the Marcos family and others who prospered inordinately during the Marcos years showed, an often politicized legal system makes that very difficult.

As Joel Rocamora of the Institute for Popular Democracy in Manila put it: “Exposés of corruption form a vital part of our system of political competition. Political ‘outs’ are always looking to expose corruption by the political ‘ins’ but nothing systematic is done about corruption because the ‘outs’ do not wish to poison the well for the time when they manage to become the ‘ins.”’

It seems unlikely that Mr. Aquino, elected as an honest nice guy from a famous family rather than a reforming zealot, can quickly change the outlook of much of the political class of which he is a part.

What he can do is leave his predecessors alone and set a new example by avoiding political appointments to top offices. He should fill not only his cabinet but the many lesser positions with professionals from outside the circle of elite names and regional political families — and be merciless if they misbehave. Somehow he must try break the cycle of “ins” and “outs.”

That will also mean abjuring alliances with local power holders that sap central authority. This is essential for Mr. Aquino’s next task: Suppress the private militias, gambling rackets and other illegal activities that have been allowed to flourish in many provinces in return for political support. The massacre of political opponents of the governing family in Maguindanao last year was an extreme case but highlighted the wider problem of Manila’s feeble grip.

Mr. Aquino might remember that Marcos was (and remains) popular in many quarters because of his suppression of the gun culture and local warlordism.

Strengthening of central authority is also important to the economy. At present, scarce public funds are frittered away on local pork-barrel projects to buy congressional loyalties. Mr. Aquino might do better to keep new legislation to a minimum than have to buy votes.

Next on the agenda of strengthening the state and the economy is to make the elite pay taxes, without which the improvements in infrastructure and education the nation needs to attract private investment will not happen.

Ms. Arroyo had some success in improving government finances, but as much by keeping spending in check as raising revenue collection.

Private investment, local or foreign, also needs an environment that provides more certainty as well as being less influenced by the size of kickbacks to power holders.

For the past decade, the economy has been kept afloat by the remittances — now $16 billion a year — of overseas Filipinos. Foreign capital inflow has been negligible and local capital has flowed out.

Without a huge improvement in governance and a shift away from the reliance on remittances to locally generated growth, the Philippines will remain marginalized in Southeast Asia. Many observers view the country as irrelevant despite its strategic importance and its need for common cause with Vietnam, Malaysia and others in resisting China’s claims over the South China Sea.

Mr. Aquino cannot change a political system designed to minimize central power in a nation already splintered by geography. But if he can combine toughness with honesty, Noynoy may yet be able to raise standards and set in motion a cycle of improvement.