BACKGROUND

Politicians and pundits alike have described 11 September and its aftermath, as a defining moment – the dawn of a new era in international relations.[1] Yet the deeper significance of the horrific events is still unclear. Do they transform overall international relations profoundly and permanently; alternatively do they add, rather, another complex dimension to the existing complexities of modern international affairs; and will their impact be essentially transient in a world possessed of a short attention span?[2] What will be their longer-term effect on the behaviour of the US?

The scale and immediacy of the 11 September attacks grip the imagination. But terrorism with a reputation for ruthless disregard of humanity and thirst for publicity is, after all, more than two thousand years old.[3] That other scourge of modern international relations, ethnic cleansing, is equally venerable and even more gruesome in its consequences, although it does not arouse quite the same instinct for rectfication amongst from the leading countries in the international community.

Moreover outside powers have, as well, for centuries, tried to impose their version of order in the Middle East, involving cultivation and, then, abandonment of regional surrogates. Violent backlash, in the form of terrorism, punctuated British and French imperialism and, in some instances, accompanied its demise (Algeria, Aden, Cyprus, Palestine). Subsequent American engagement imitated imperial behaviour, harnessing and then discarding repressive and corrupt regimes, as well as radical Islam in support of American order in the Middle East.[4] The Shah of Iran, Saddam Hussein, the Taleban are prominent examples of expedient favourites turned villains. At the bottom line, the 11 September terrorist strikes were an attack upon the US, its foreign policy and the political order it underpins in the Middle East.

Asia Pacific

Any consideration of the implications for Asia-Pacific of 11 September cannot be divorced of course from the implications in the wider world. The pre-eminent global position of the US as well as vital economic interdependencies ensure that. But the diversity that characterises the East Asian region is reflected in the responses from the Asian rim to 11 September.. The fear of terrorism widely shared by regional governments and the collective disposition to reduce vulnerability through greater intergovernmental cooperation is fitting. But this has not extended, at least yet, to military involvement in the actual US led campaign to defeat the terrorist networks with one or two notable exceptions in east Asia. There is more than on explanation here. Similar reticence has been evident from the Latin American rim.

The initial depiction of September 11 as an irrational attack upon the West and its values and ideals did not, for obvious reasons, resonate readily in East Asia where the assertive spread of some of those very values and ideals by the US and others is considered, at times, intrusive, even destabilising. There exists because of this a durable ambivalence in several regional capitals about the US role in Asia-Pacific.[5] Moreover the Asian economic crisis of 1997-98 nourished such ambivalence since it was blamed in many places upon Western, and particularly American, actions. Speculation at the time of APEC Shanghai (October 2001) noted therefore that while few Asian governments denied the US the right to punish the 11 September perpetrators, old grudges about Western imperiousness were manifested in unease amongst East Asian governments about a global military campaign conducted on a basis of “those who are not with us, are against us” emanating from Washington.[6] The notion that the world has because of September 11 somehow entered into a new version of Cold War with its own attendant loyalties and allegiances is not acknowledged in Asia.

South East Asia

The countries of South East Asia preferred to depict September 11 collectively as a general assault on humanity, and reiterated a need as well to deliberate comprehensively about root causes. [7] The Prime Minister of Malaysia in particular asserted that even evil terrorist deeds had a purpose and that it is vital to understand the motivating force and to remove the causes of terrorism. Mahatir dismissed the view that this last was a recipe for simple appeasement, and posed the question why only Moslem terrorists were the targets for the international coalition? Israel was he averred, a source too of terror.[8]

The importance of Islam in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and the nature of their connexions therefore to the Middle East, explains the substance of South East Asia’s collective and individual responses after 11 September. In the case of Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim state, and Malaysia, the world’s most successful Muslim state, Islam has played in varying degrees a role in the development of modern nationalism.[9] In the case of the Philippines because of Muslim separatism in the South and a vital labour market link with the Middle East (valued in remittances as high as $6 billion p.a.) plus dependence on oil, there is a mix of factors. Domestic grievance in the Muslim south has been aggravated by imported extremism with Taleban connexions. To describe the Abu Sayaf terrorist group however, as an integral component of a global terrorist network may be stretching the facts.[10] In her November US visit President Arroyo solicited US military and other cooperation for the Philippines’ campaign against the separatist forces.

In the public domain however both the Philippines’ and US stopped short of the notion of direct American involvement as part of its global anti-terrorist warfare. Such a prospect would undeniably have disruptive repercussions inside ASEAN, an organisation already weakened by Indonesia’s internal strife and other factors, as well as for Manila’s bilateral relations with Indonesia and Malaysia. Moreover other countries committed to the anti-terrorist coalition in Afghanistan would surely have reservations about support for analogous actions on the Philippines – or Indonesia, or even elsewhere. The spiral of violence in Palestine-Israel relations since 11 September guarantees that any US move to widen the right of hot pursuit against terrorism in other countries will prove highly controversial.

American analysts have described South East Asian responses to the US clarion call over terrorism as ambivalent.[11] There is here evident misunderstanding of the realities coupled with presumed conviction that US foreign policy priorities must henceforward constitute the priorities for all others who repudiate bin Laden but who retain misgivings that a campaign centred upon military victory, without commensurate parallel effort to solve political/economic causes, is flawed.

North East Asia

Given the central place of North East Asia in the strategic order of Asia Pacific, it is significant that the governments – China, Japan, the US, Russia and Korea – share more or less, a concord of views over the collective response to 11 September. From the US standpoint, the Japanese naval contribution, airlift and air control support and financial assistance to refugees and to Pakistan, are profoundly pleasing and have prompted an American judgement that Japan is becoming a “more normal country” in international security affairs,[12] by setting aside constraints on the use of military force in its Constitution.

Although relations with the US are sensitive South Korea likewise offered what is described as combat support teams as well as medical, sealift and airlift, plus financial aid for Pakistan. North Korea was prompt in its condemnation of the terrorist attacks. Such a statement would earlier have been unimaginable, although there is undoubtedly deliberate political calculation behind it.

China’s response to September 11 provided a gauge of Sino-Us relationship which over the 9 months since President Bush’s inauguration had progressed fitfully.[13] Following a sequence of controversial incidents, moreover, there was uncertainty indeed about its ultimate direction.

Beijing’s decision to cooperate realistically with the US on counter terrorism and intelligence sharing was taken, clearly, with other factors in mind, including Chinese anxiety at evidence of hard-line “China-threat” views in the US administration, China’s own difficulties with Moslem minorities, its position with regard to Tibet, and US moves towards a closer relationship with India. The strategic consequences of 11 September for South and Central Asia are beyond the scope of this paper but US reliance since 11 September upon Pakistan and the political debt it has thereby incurred complicates a US strategic partnership with India, which was earlier viewed as a diplomatic enterprise to foster a counterweight to China.[14] As Pakistan’s close ally, China could moreover, have played on obstructionist role. Chinese-US relations have registered a measurable improvement in the aftermath of 11 September. How long that will endure depends upon how or whether the US picks up on the regional policy approaches in East Asia that were beginning to emerge before 11 September.

US Regional Policy

Since the Bush Administration assumed office regional policy has not been spelt out at a senior political level in any comprehensive way.[15] The nearest version that fulfils that requirement is the Quadrennial Defence Review (QDR) published in September but drafted in large part before 11 September. It confirms America’s strategic interest in Asia, its attention to the rise of China as a competitor, (although China is not named), its desire for increased access for US forces and strengthened alliances, as well as the continuing need for forward deployed military forces. Understandably, as a Pentagon document, the QDR perceives the East Asian region through the lens of threat calculation and deterrence. There is no foreign policy equivalent of QDR in existence which is itself evidence of a wider phenomenon – the decline of US State Department input into US external relations policy. The dominance of Pentagon judgements influences a steady militarisation of US foreign policy. The QDR reflects established US military scepticism about the utility of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the regions pre-eminent arena for security dialogue. It is clear 11 September will have lent added weight to the QDR focus on US alliances in the region, but concentration on terrorism may also temper a predisposition to denigrate China whose cooperation is valuable in the anti-terrorism campaign, and whose emergence to assume a significant and positive regional role should not be prejudged by containment or confrontation.

It is too early to assess whether the strategic interests identified by QDR in East Asia will be modified as a consequence of 11 September. On the Korean Peninsular President Bush’s earlier scepticism about North Korea and therefore about ROK’s sunshine policy of reconciliation and reunification was an initial setback to progress. Whether things are back on the rails after a policy review by the US is still conjectural, but it is fair to claim that whilst North-South engagement remains tentative, even erratic, it does provide unprecedented opportunity for lasting change in the prospects for peace and stability on the Peninsular. American analysts have argued, immediately prior to 11 September, that contingency study should examine force and command structures, including the extent of troop withdrawals, to anticipate a time when North Korean threat had receded significantly or disappeared.[16] For President Kim dae Jung, the official impression conveyed by Washington, that US regional security interests privileged Korean interests on the Peninsular, must have been disappointing.

In 1997 the Pentagon’s Defence Science Board investigated US deployment of forces around the world and concluded there was a strong correlation between such deployment and an increase in terrorist attacks against the US. As the only country which acts to police areas outside its own region, the US presents a lightening rod for terrorists. Although attacks on the US presence in Asia have been very few and minor, the record in the Middle East over the 1980s and 1990s[17] certainly substantiates the Science Board analysis and 11 September stands as resounding confirmation. When it comes to creating and sustaining a coalition military response, there is, however, an implicit distinction between the calculated risk of terrorist attacks against forward-deployed military forces, and direct homeland aggression on the scale of 11 September. An attack on the USS Cole is not the same as the World Trade Centre.

World attention is wholly focussed at present upon Afghanistan including the stupendous task to come of national building and economic reconstruction. Some dubious political alliances of expediency may once more be in the making. The US believes further military action in other locations is required to defeat terrorism. But to prevail finally, the international community cannot avoid addressing the political causes which unambiguously exist in the socio-political order of the Middle East. Durable peace between Israel and Palestine is central to ultimate success in the confrontation with terrorism, but the policy of containing both Iran and Iraq as well as the actual US military presence in the region are intimately connected. They must all be addressed comprehensively in any authentic resolution of the causes. It is something of an open question whether the US itself is able, however, now to be the mediator or peace broker. The strategic objective must be that the Middle Eastern states, and this includes a secure democratic Israel and Palestine, take charge themselves of regional order within a framework of international security guarantees. That is an infinitely ambitious and complex agenda but one which all members of the present coalition against terrorism, Muslim and non-Muslim, should readily advocate.

Multilateralism

Notwithstanding unilateralist instincts, the US administration has clearly appreciated the vital need for cooperative multilateral effort to defeat terrorism. But it is tenuous to conclude from this that the US will embrace multilateral diplomacy and international law with more eagerness than it has displayed hitherto.[18] Anecdotal evidence suggested that a different US approach was on display at the WTO trade negotiation launch in Qatar. But the negative US position at the Morocco climate change conference, its restated opposition to the nuclear test ban treaty, to the biological weapons convention, its rejection of the international criminal court, land mine ban, small arms trade restraint, rights of the child and other international norms, plus the stated determination to press robustly ahead with missile defence connotes that it remains “…business as before” for the US on every part of international agenda – aside from terrorism. That it why it is relevant to enquire whether “business as before” will not also become the US’s working principle in East Asia.

Missile defence is an inexpedient issue in East Asia, although were Russia and the US to hammer out a compromise in relation to the ABM Treaty, it is an open question as to how China would respond in circumstances where its common cause with the US over terrorism has placed its US relationship on a better footing, which China values. Reconciliation on the Korean Peninsular would however suffer for North Korea remains an avowed “target” of such a system. Japan which has judiciously evaded, thus far, open commitment to American-provided missile defence will face a difficult choice concerned as it is to reserve to itself judgements about how to respond to inevitable shifts in the strategic order of North East Asia.

Notwithstanding its denomination, missile defence is a system that if installed in its complete form, increases US capacity for offence. It is a venerable tradition for all countries always to describe augmentation of their military power as a measure for defence. Missile defence, however, strengthens the lethality of US power projection which already exceeds by a considerable margin that of any other state, or combination of states. As such it represents a destabilising system of questionable utility against terrorism. If terrorism is indeed the weapon of the weak, of those unable to exert grievances through conventional means (political or military), then the unceasing perfection of military power in times of peace by the powerful will endure as a lightening rod for terrorism..

For the US, the essential legitimacy of its pre-eminent global position rests upon a leadership which is bestowed by others, not robustly asserted over others. The support of multilateralism only where and when it privileges US interests, runs a grave risk to the foundations of this essential legitimacy. In a democratising world, the expanding force of global civil society perceives increasing inconsistency behind a liberal values system that argues for pluralism, but which in practice privileges the interests of the powerful by denying, in effect, equality before international law. Traditionally America has asked that it be always judged by its own estimation of itself. America’s disinterestedness, its moral purpose, its absence of territorial ambition are, in American eyes, self-evident truths that absolve the US from a charge of base motives, even though the international order America creates or supports, as in the Middle East, can be deeply conflictual. The presumptions behind American self-view at the level of Government do require to be re-examined after September 11.

East Asian Regionalism

Finally, the events of 11 September have obscured further the emerging contrast between the respective preoccupations in Asia Pacific of the East Asian rim countries which is with economic recovery from the 1997-98 economic crisis and protection from economic recession already evident before 11 September but, by broad agreement, now under way; and the preoccupation of the North Pacific rim, notably the US, with issues of security, threats from rogue states and rising powers which was encapsulated in America’s steely resolve to proceed with missile defence. The fixation now with terrorism adds substantively to that American preoccupation.

Even before 11 September East Asian economies (like Taiwan and Singapore) were confronting the collapse in demand [19]for high-tech exports of information technology especially to the US which remains a net importer. Japan’s economy was declining with a financial system on the verge of collapse. Yet there was no evidence of any disposition to resile from strategic economic policy direction of openess to the world economy.. This has been symbolised most clearly in China’s accession to WTO, an event that underlines graphically the interconnectedness of the regional and global economy.

Much comment and speculation now centres upon the opportunities for exporters provided by China’s historic step. Far less attention has been given to the influence that China will now be able to exert in the smoke-filled negotiating rooms of WTO, notably during the prospective multilateral trade negotiating round. Learning the WTO ropes will take time for China, but the traditions in GATT/WTO according to which, at the bottom line, everything ultimately depends on deals cut behind closed doors between the US and Europe[20] - and sometimes Japan – have been substantially modified by the admission to WTO of such a potentially significant global economic player. China cannot be readily relegated to the corridors when it suits the book of other large economic players.

East Asian prioritisation of economic policy is witnessed also in the decision taken since 11 September by China and the ten member states of ASEAN to negotiate, over the next ten years, a free trade agreement. This is potentially a significant strategic economic move which takes account of the prospective WTO multilateral trade round, as well as initiatives in other regions, notably the American Hemisphere, for developing regional free trade. The question of whether such regional free trade agreements are building blocks or stumbling blocs for global trade is a serious one, but is not entirely relevant to the point being made here. China’s influence is set to become important in the areas of regional and global trade policy, more especially if as in 1997-98, China itself is, through good management or happy chance, insulated from the worst effects of global recession. The levels of inward investment notably from Taiwan, suggest that some may be banking on that possibility.

The US has traditionally opposed any institutionalisation of regionalism throughout East Asia that excludes a formal role or place for America. This contrasts with the view America adopted in respect to European regionalism. East Asia remains a disparate diverse region but events are producing changes in traditional thinking, even in Japan which has hitherto set its face against regional free trade strategy. In the last analysis such matters will be decided by East Asian governments themselves. A more integrated but outward looking East Asia would be in the interests of countries like NZ. Terrorism is not the prism through which every dimension of international relations must henceforth now be viewed. Other issues will be understood, and pursued, in their own terms. We are not witnessing here a re-run of the Cold War.

Terence O’Brien

Wellington

December 2001