The Rising East
DEMOCRACY and security are taking hard hits these days in Indonesia and the Philippines, which is not only sad for those nations but puts American interests in jeopardy. There's not much, however, that the United States can do about it at this stage -- short of becoming engaged in another Kosovo in the Balkans of Asia. U.S. can do little as
Indonesia and Philippines
struggle with internal
problemsIndonesia is wracked with Muslim-Christian conflicts, separatist movements in Aceh and Irian Jaya at either end of the archipelago, a corrupt and brutal army, a hapless government led by President Abdurrahman Wahid (perhaps better known as Gus Dur), and often mobs rampaging through Jakarta.
As an Indonesian diplomat, Dino Patti Djalal, has written that his nation is the only one in Asia "that has to contend with political, economic, security, social and ethnic problems, all simultaneously." An American scholar, Theodore Friend, agrees: "That crouching tiger has become a spastic dragon."
Djalal sketched a stark portrait. "Indonesia's break-up would open a Pandora's box, which will unleash protracted ethnic conflicts," he said. He was anxious that his country not descend into chaos, "especially as secessionist regions (would) become a breeding ground for terrorism, anarchy and extremism."
In the Philippines, the promise of a return to democratic government, of a solution to Muslim and Marxist insurgencies, and of a new beginning toward social justice for the third of the people who live in grinding poverty has given way to another mobocracy.
Today's political strife began with the ouster of the dictatorial Ferdinand Marcos as president in 1986 by rioting Filipinos in what came to be known as People Power I. Two constructive terms under Presidents Corazon Aquino and Fidel Ramos followed but President Joseph Estrada, elected in 1998, proved to be an incompetent, corrupt playboy who was driven from office by People Power II in January.
"There is a danger now that if you mass 100,000 or 1 million people on the streets, it can topple the government," Senator Aquilino Pimentel told The New York Times. "We cannot afford to have People Power III or IV in this country."
For the U.S., the distress beyond humanitarian and democratic concerns are three: the vital shipping lanes through the South China Sea could be threatened, the utility of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, could be diminished, and the opportunity for Chinese meddling and subversion could increase.
Through the South China Sea passes 40 to 50 percent of the world's shipping, more than through the Panama and Suez canals combined. Oil from the Persian Gulf to Korea, Japan, and China flows in giant tankers through the Straits of Malacca, Sunda and Lombok in Indonesia in the south, through the Philippines in the east, and through the Luzon or Taiwan Straits in the north.
That shipping could be disrupted by terrorists scuttling tankers in the straits, by the ever-increasing threat of piracy that shattered governments cannot control, or even by hostilities in civil wars. That would drive insurance rates sky high and force shippers to sail far south around Australia. The shock to the economies of Asia and the ripple-out effect on the industrial world would be incalculable.
In Asia, where there are few international organizations, the United States had hoped that ASEAN would progress into an effective force for stability and security. Those expectations have evaporated for the foreseeable future. Theodore Friend, a former president of Swathmore College and now a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, noted that ASEAN has already been weakened by the Asian financial crisis that began in 1997.
Then, he said, ASEAN "blurred its common focus by admitting to membership communist Vietnam, autarchic Myanmar (Burma), and anarchic Cambodia and Laos." Now, he added, "Indonesia, formerly ASEAN's leader toward consensus, is itself torn by dissension."
Lastly, U.S. officials with access to intelligence reports say they suspect that China is seeking to take advantage of the turmoil in Indonesia and the Philippines to expand its influence, especially through the large Chinese communities in each country.
There is evidence, they say, that the Philippines has become a transshipment point for illicit drugs that come from the "Golden Triangle" in remote regions of northern Thailand, Burma and Laos. They are transported through Yunnan to ports in southern China, where small vessels sail to the Philippines to transfer the drugs to larger vessels bound for the Americas.
Richard Halloran is editorial director of the Star-Bulletin.
He can be reached by e-mail at rhalloran@starbulletin.com