COMMENTARY Good cop, bad
neighbor By John Gershman
Kicking off his trip to Asia in the
Japanese city of Kyoto on November 16, President
George W Bush gave what was supposed to be a major
address outlining US policy toward Asia. The Bush
administration has come under fire both at home
and in the region for relative neglect of Asia, as
well as for failing to promote a vision for how to
deal with the power of a rising China.
For example, from 2001 to May, the president has
spent more than three times as many days in Europe
than he has in Asia. Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice has skipped two important regional
meetings on security and economic issues in the past
several months.
The
Kyoto speech and his trip were supposed to
reassure leaders in the region that the Bush
administration is engaged and that Asia is high on
the president's agenda. But the speech failed to
do that, and was notable for the lack of fresh
thinking, or even fresh language (with a couple of
exceptions).
Key parts of the speech
targeted domestic constituencies rather than
leaders or citizens of the region. So far, the
speech and the trip have done little to counteract
a growing sense that with the partial exception of
North Korea, the Bush administration has yet to
demonstrate that it has good ideas for effectively
engaging the world's fastest-growing region.
Second inaugural revisited In
many ways, the speech recalled Bush's second
inaugural address, which outlined the Bush
administration's agenda for exporting freedom. In
Kyoto, the president referred to "freedom" or
"freedoms" 56 times in the speech, "liberty" six
times and "democracy" or "democracies" 21 times.
(By comparison, the president referred to
"freedom" or "freedoms" 27 times in his shorter
second inaugural, so the ratio was about the
same).
While Bush urged the Chinese
government to grant more freedom to its citizens,
and referred to Taiwan as an example for how China
should evolve, the rhetoric was not linked to any
new policy agenda. Furthermore, the president
reaffirmed the "One China" policy, which is of
primary concern to China's leadership.
The
remainder of his explicit policy agenda toward
China - praising China's role in the six-party
negotiations with North Korea, cracking down on
violations of intellectual property rights and
more flexibility in China's exchange rate regime,
were all straightforward and unsurprising. Bush's
choice of what rights to mention specifically - "I
have pointed out that the people of China want
more freedom to express themselves, to worship
without state control and to print bibles and
other sacred texts without fear of punishment" -
reflected a clear message designed for
conservative Christians at home, a rhetorical
stance he intends to reinforce by visiting a
Protestant church during his visit to China this
weekend.
Historical
revisionism The speech also contained no
small amount of historical revisionism, and
characterized by either arrogance or willful
ignorance for how the United States is perceived
in the region and elsewhere as a self-anointed
beacon of democracy and freedom. To his credit,
the president did criticize the junta in Myanmar
and North Korea's repressive regime (although in
the latter case in a much less vitriolic and
personalized tone than previous speeches, which
was positive).
The historical revisionism
was crafted to suit the overarching narrative of
free markets - growth and industrialization - free
societies and that the United States has been an
indisputable partner in that process. In a region
where the history of Japan's imperialism frames
concerns about a more assertive role for Japan in
the region, the failure to at least acknowledge
that US policy has not always matched its rhetoric
would have been appropriate for the president, to
evade the easy charge of hypocrisy, if not for
adherence to the basic tenets of historical
accuracy. When combined with the current torture
scandals, such a step was essential. The president
failed in this effort.
Economic
freedom For example, the president lauded
South Korea: "By embracing freedom in the economic
realm, South Korea transformed itself into an
industrial power at home and a trading power
abroad."
This conveniently ignores the
fact that while South Korea did not pursue an
autarkic, command economy strategy of
industrialization, its development policies were
decidedly interventionist and were much more
reliant upon states "governing the markets" in
analyst Robert Wade's felicitous phrase, than a
laissez-faire, Washington consensus strategy of
"getting the prices right".
These policies
included everything from a confiscatory land
reform, an active industrial policy that combined
protectionism at home and incentives for exports,
requirements placed on foreign investors and state
regulation of access to finance. Indeed, many of
the policies pursued by South Korea in its earlier
years of industrialization are now considered
illegal under the World Trade Organization's
global trade rules.
While there is much to
learn from South Korea's experience (as well as
the experiences of Taiwan, Japan, Singapore and
indeed China), it's far from clear that those
lessons were primarily about "embracing freedom in
the economic realm", especially since economic
freedom in no way translated into the rights of
workers to organize independent trade unions in
the early years of industrialization.
Misreading history The president
also argued that "freedom ... is the bedrock of
our engagement with Asia". This rings hollow in a
region where the United States supported
authoritarian regimes throughout the Cold War (and
in the case of key countries such as Indonesia,
beyond it).
This president has an
apparently congenital inability to understand the
significance of the use and abuse of
pro-democratic rhetoric. In the early 1980s, his
father and then vice president, George H W Bush,
toasted former Philippine dictator Ferdinand
Marcos' "adherence to democratic principles". Just
two years ago, the current president gave an
equally disingenuous recitation of US-Philippine
relations, claiming credit for the US in bringing
democracy to the Philippines and describing how
"together our soldiers liberated the Philippines
from colonial rule. Together we rescued the
islands from invasion and occupation." He went on
to make an analogy between the democracy promotion
experience in the Philippines and the contemporary
effort to promote democracy in Iraq.
This
enraged pro-democratic forces in the Philippines,
let alone devotees of historical accuracy, as it
erased the reality that while US troops helped
Filipinos to end Spanish colonial rule, they
subsequently crushed that democratic
pro-independence movement in a brutal war (and
ensuing colonial occupation) that cost the lives
of 4,000 US soldiers and more than 200,000
Filipino civilians and soldiers.
If the
Philippines is the past and Iraq the present of US
democracy promotion efforts, this offers little
solace to democratic activists in the region.
Indeed, with the exception of the North Korean
case, the only concrete mentions of current
pro-democracy efforts on the part of countries in
the region had to do with support for the US-led
occupation in Iraq or support for military
alliances with the US.
China's
role With the Bush administration occupied
with the quagmire in Iraq, China has expanded its
presence in the region, negotiating trade
agreements with the Association of Southeast Asian
(ASEAN) nations, actively participated in regional
security dialogues and played by most accounts a
positive role in facilitating negotiations with
North Korea.
Part of China's success has
been achieved by what some analysts describe as
China's "good neighbor" policy - it expands
bilateral and regional cooperation without
hectoring on issues such as the "war on
terrorism", human rights or economic
liberalization.
While this policy has been
received with cautious acclaim by the region's
leaders (especially in Southeast Asia), it offers
some guidance to how the US could pursue a
different strategy. Along with colleagues at the
International Relations Center and elsewhere, we
argue that there would be some important guidance
to crafting a US policy that is grounded in our
own "good neighbor" tradition. Such principles
reject self-proclaimed missions to expanding
freedom, especially at the point of a gun, and
instead aim at advancing US interests in ways that
recognize the core interdependencies that shape US
relations with Asia. A different approach would
include a range of steps, including:
First, bring civilians into the picture,
expanding diplomatic engagement in the region in a
more substantive fashion, both bilaterally and
regionally. As long as the Pacific Command remains
the most visible presence of US policy in the
region, there will be little sense by the region's
leaders and citizens that the US views the region
as anything other than stationary aircraft
carriers serving US power projection needs.
Second, acknowledge that countries in the
region have concerns that the US can work on.
Cooperation on achieving our goals will be more
likely when there's a sense of reciprocity.
Third, support efforts at creating and
strengthening the capabilities of national
governments and regional organizations to prevent
crises or respond to them. Such crises, be they
economic, natural disasters or avian flu, have
severe negative impacts on peoples' livelihoods.
If the humanitarian imperative is not enough, the
US relief effort for the tsunami in Aceh and
elsewhere increased positive sentiment towards the
US. This would argue for a broader strategic
engagement with issues that threaten people's
livelihoods.
Finally, adopting its own
approach to being a "good neighbor" in the region
does not demand that the US sacrifice core
interests, such as non-proliferation or the
respect for human rights. China's willingness to
build close relationships with authoritarian
regimes such as Myanmar's repressive junta has led
to criticism in the region by pro-democratic
forces, for example. But a US policy that supports
democracy (such as in Myanmar) will be stronger
when it is supported by a broad multilateral
consensus rather than unilateral heckling, as well
as when it pays attention to the role that US
corporations play in facilitating authoritarian
rule. Such a model allows one to marry principles
with pragmatism in ways that may be more
effective, if not as prone to flights of rhetoric
fancy.
Ironical warnings Bush
ended his criticism of China's authoritarian
rulers by quoting a Chinese poet: "The people
should be cherished, the people are the root of a
country; the root firm, the country is tranquil."
That selection is from The Songs of the
Five Sons. Whatever the virtues of its message
to the Chinese leadership, a deeper irony emerges.
The poem relates the lamentations of the brothers
of a king who has lost the support of the people.
Its closing stanza may offer the epitaph of the
Bush administration's foreign policy:
All
the people are hostile to us; On whom can we
rely? Anxieties crowd together in our
hearts; Thick as are our faces, they are
covered with blushes. We have not been careful
of our virtue; And though we repent, we cannot
overtake the past.
All material on this
website is copyright and may not be republished in any form without written
permission.
0„8 Copyright 1999 - 2005 Asia Times
Online Ltd.
Head
Office: Rm 202, Hau Fook Mansion, No. 8 Hau Fook St., Kowloon, Hong
Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
