Asia a casualty of the Iraq
war By Haseenah Koyakutty
When the "surge" is fully debated, the US
troops go home, the war is ended and the losses
counted, an unexpected casualty of the Iraq war
could end up being Asia. America's long-standing
relations with Asia are steadily going up in
smoke.
The administration of US President
George W Bush upset the 10 leaders of the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) by
recently calling off plans to attend the
commemorative US-ASEAN summit planned for
September. The reason: that's a
decisive month in the war in
Iraq.
No one in the administration foresaw
that the September 5 summit in Singapore was going
to conflict with General David Petraeus' report
card on the "surge" of US troops in Iraq. The
congressional calendar is predictable, even if
politics is not, and the 10 heads of government in
Southeast Asia are being stood up over what is
apparently a scheduling glitch.
The
diplomatic bungling would not have been so
disappointing if the meeting were routine. But
this is no mere dress rehearsal. The inaugural
summit was meant to celebrate and cement 30 years
of US-ASEAN ties.
Bush still plans to
attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation
(APEC) meeting in Sydney in September. But the
decision to snub ASEAN fits a larger pattern.
Although the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) brings
together an A-list of 26 regional leaders to talk
real business, US Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice decided not to attend in 2005. She was the
first US secretary of state to send her deputy to
a meeting in which China, Japan, India, Myanmar
and even North Korea participate.
Washington had never treated the ARF this
way since its inception in 1994, and the faux
pas made for flashy headlines. The Bush
administration scrambled to make amends and argue
that it was still a player in the region.
Skeptics, however, doubted the administration's
seriousness of purpose. Their misgivings turned
out to be prescient. Rice has again sent a deputy
to the ARF that is taking place in Manila this
week.
Rice's passing over of yet another
Asian jamboree may seem minor in the scheme of
foreign-policy issues confronting the United
States and its beleaguered administration. But
consider this: ASEAN is a bigger export market for
US products than China. Yet the US chose to be
absent from the 2005 ASEAN economic ministers'
meeting held in the Laotian capital, Vientiane.
The US is also not part of the ASEAN + 3 annual
gatherings that connect ASEAN with its three
Northeast Asian partners, China, Japan and South
Korea.
Finally, the United States has been
excluded from several recent multilateral
initiatives. The new continentwide East Asia
Summit, which has welcomed Australia and New
Zealand but not the US, may lack substance for
now, but it represents half of the world's
population. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization
is another rising bloc in Central Asia that
briefly got Washington's attention in 2005 when it
issued a timeline for US forces to pull out of
Uzbekistan.
Taken together, a discernable
pattern is emerging - of no-shows and US
invisibility - no matter what the Bush
administration says about engaging Asia.
Yes, the United States has fought three
wars in Asia. It has built a vast network of
multiple alliances over time. But habitual
absences and lower-level representation at
critical forums dilute the message, even if the
messenger is Deputy Secretary of State John
Negroponte, who is attending the ARF in Rice's
place. Culturally, the substitution will go down
as contempt. In short, missteps, missed
opportunities, and miscalculations have slowly
come to shape America's Asia policy.
The
implications are far-reaching. The United States
has few friends, and it should keep the ones who
wish it well. Rather than a "second front" in the
"war on terror", Southeast Asia has become a
back-burner issue for the Bush administration.
Rice once labeled Myanmar an "outpost of tyranny".
If difficult diplomacy is yielding progress in
North Korea, the same patience and care can be
pursued elsewhere.
In real terms, these
high-level meetings in faraway places make a
difference when the US wants Asia to buy its
products. Should Harley-Davidsons or Japanese
motorcycles flood the consumption-crazy Asian
market? What about pushing against compulsory
licenses in the pharmaceutical sector? America's
voice on weighty global issues will not likely
carry weight. As it is, only the political elite
in a dwindling number of Asian countries cares to
listen to what the US has to say.
Strategically speaking, no one yet knows
what kind of political and security architecture
is going to emerge in the Asia-Pacific region. It
will, however, coalesce with or without the US.
For all of ASEAN's bureaucratic shortcomings and
penchant for ceremony, Vietnamese President Nguyen
Minh Triet rightly observed during his recent
visit to Washington that ASEAN is today more
cohesive, and its institutional partnerships with
China, Japan, the European Union, and a host of
middle powers are growing.
In a major
milestone, ASEAN will soon unveil a new
rules-based ASEAN Charter at its annual November
summit that it hopes will make it as grounded in
legal certainty as the European Union.
The
United States can help strengthen reform-minded
institutions and, together with its allies, tackle
problems where interests converge, such as
Myanmar. Or the United States can go it alone. If
a power vacuum arises in Asia, other countries at
ASEAN's doorstep are certainly willing to step in.
The US State Department acknowledges that
relations with ASEAN are "rough right now", but it
is "something we can recover from".
Maybe.
In another era.
Haseenah
Koyakutty is a freelance journalist, a former
Indonesia bureau chief for Channel NewsAsia, and a
contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus.
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