The September 11th attack
Threat of a common enemy may strengthen U.S. alliances in Asia
By Thomas Plate
It is inconceivable that last week's brutal attacks on New York and Washington won't change America — just as the attack by Japanese imperial forces on Pearl Harbor did. But will it change us for the better?
Associated Press
America is now doing a quiet but deep national boil that could surface in a bad way. Recall that shortly after the 1941 calamity, Japanese Americans were shuffled off en masse to internment camps as suspected Tokyo agents. We now realize the stupidity of tarring so many Americans with the same brush.
As Muslim residents of Anchorage, Alaska, prayed last week, Imam Walis Ahmed condemned the attacks in New York and Washington, and joined millions of others worldwide in mourning those who died.
Yet stereotyping of all sorts still lingers, even blooms. Witness the hysteria in 1999 over ''Chinese spies,'' so extreme that the patriotism of those involved in sensitive research was questioned even if they happened to be Chinese-Americans. Will America now exhibit latent prejudice against all people of Arab ethnicity or of Islam abroad or at home? After all, who are our true enemies? Not, certainly, Japanese or Chinese or ''Asians'' or ''Arabs'' or ''Muslims,'' as we have so painfully learned.
On the contrary, one thing that may just take a turn for the better in the wake of this terrorist cloud is Sino-U.S. relations. Last week's heinous attack should prove a clarifying moment. The so-called China threat, often overestimated (for lack of much else for the sole superpower to get worked up about), will probably subside as the United States sheds its post-war adolescence via the agonizing growth experience of true national tragedy.
Though this new understanding has come at a horrifying cost, the relentlessly purveyed image of China as a giant menace, in comparison to the threat demonstrated devastatingly last week, deserves a thorough re-think. Subterranean enemies with extremist agendas armed with kamikaze terrorist weapons who then slither away into the night rather than remain in one place for easy U.S. retaliation are the new reality.
Last week's horror should also bring closer together governments, especially in Asia, that have been growing uneasy with each other. Beijing, in particular, should enter into new cooperation with Washington, for the Chinese must also defend against terrorists. Surely, China and America now realize that new-age terrorism presents a greater, more immediate threat than the two nations present to each other. Last week's cordial trans-Pacific phone call between Presidents Jiang Zemin and George W. Bush was a hopeful portent.
To this end, the United States could signal its acceptance of the new-world reality by backing off from costly high-tech weapons such as Bush's large-scale ballistic missile system as it moves briskly toward programs more focused on mass-destruction terrorism and sabotage. Such a re-prioritization would have the collateral benefit of easing concerns, especially in Asia but also in Europe, that America has lost all common sense and launched itself into a retrograde back-to-the-future orbit.
If the Bush administration were quietly to accept a stand-down in its plans, which Congress would mainly welcome, China might even possess the wisdom to cool its ardor for missile buildups, which in truth it cannot afford, politically or economically.
A pronounced U.S. defense re-positioning would also assuage the tension growing between Washington and Seoul, our longtime Asian ally stuck in the rough neighborhood of Russia and China, two nations that have been frowning on Bush's national missile defense scheme. Finally, a prudent pause could alleviate Japan's deep-seated (and deeply wise) skepticism about getting involved in missile defense.
From this daunting tragedy, the Bush administration, still learning on the job, can take away this solemn truth: No nation can be an island. To replace internationalism with unilateralism, as recently evidenced by the administration's rejection of too many international treaties and accords, is folly. More than ever, we need all the friends we can get in order to cope with the enemies we have made. As the proverb goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
With many nations facing terrorism, those that unite against the common enemy can, combined, create a new world order that confronts grim realities sensibly, not just with puffy rhetoric. Its reactions to the current terrorist trauma — a new-world-order Pearl Harbor — will certainly determine whether America is to remain the kind of superpower of which its friends and allies can remain proud.
Tom Plate, a columnist with The Honolulu Advertiser and the South China Morning Post, is a professor at UCLA. His also has a spot on the Web.
