U.S. can't afford conceptual failures in foreign policy, military decisions
By Tom Plate
American policy toward Asia, if not altogether in considerable disarray now, is necessarily under forced-march revision. Take the India-Pakistan issue. Up until exactly Sept. 11, the Bush administration had been orchestrating a major shift toward Pakistan's rival, India.
Associated Press
Bush's ambassador to India, Robert D. Blackwill, who during the campaign had been a key "Vulcan" (anti-China) Bush adviser, was to have laid out the new India policy before the elite Pacific Council on International Policy in Los Angeles last week. That address was canceled. America may need Pakistan, as well as India, for staging strikes inside neighboring Afghanistan.
In Karachi last week, Pakistanis watched their president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, go on national television to justify his government's inclination to cooperate with the United States in its anti-terrorist campaign.
All hail the new Bush administration inclusiveness.
Pakistan, in fact, responded with an understanding of the need to assist the United States in its campaign against terrorism's perpetrators and nurturers. So let us be grateful that just 18 months ago, Bill Clinton did not let himself be persuaded, by the India lobby in the United States and others who shared its view, to avoid Muslim Pakistan during his March 2000 swing through South Asia.
Snubbing Gen. Pervez Musharraf would have been a serious slight — not only to Pakistanis but also to Muslims elsewhere. Fortunately, Clinton's instinct for going the extra mile prevailed, and the visit took place. Note that the general, in last week's perfervid address to his nation justifying Pakistan's inclination to cooperate, pointedly referred to that visit.
The ongoing crisis will undoubtedly help clarify American thinking about the Islamic world. The Bush administration, from the president and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on down, has been exemplary in publicly emphasizing the distinction between terrorism and Islamism. That's a distinction lost on all too many Americans, many of whom can't spell Afghanistan or recall that Kabul, with its 3,000-years-plus history, was once a historic religious capital, even if it is under the thumb of religious fanatics. Already there have been hundreds of hate-crime incidents against Arab Americans and Muslim Americans.
Abroad, should America unleash a torrent of revenge that sweeps civilians into the killing net as indiscriminately as the terrorists did, it might win the immediate battle; but it will lose the longer-range fight on behalf of democracy. At stake is not just revenge for evil but the moral endurance of a political philosophy.
Only with the broadest possible strategic alliance can America lace together the kind of network capable of containing terrorists. The Islamic world, as much as possible, needs to be kept on our side.
Engagement, rather than unilateralism, allows you to call on friends when you need them or at least neutralize possible opponents. Beijing, which confronts terrorism problems in its northwestern province of Xinjiang, has expressed strong sympathy. While it's not likely to provide much direct help, China wields a crucial veto power at the U.N. Security Council, from which America may need additional action.
Yes, some nations' support stems from the sincere conviction that terrorism must be contained, lest they become the next targets of fire. For instance, Japan's forthright prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, pledged the help of his country's Self-Defense Forces, though he will need to find a way around the Japanese constitution's prohibition against the extraterritorial use of force.
"I have no doubt," says a ranking Japanese diplomat, "that this time we will not repeat the same mistake we committed at the time of the Gulf War. Our contribution will not only be economic." Japan's checkbook response to that conflict infuriated the American public, which saw no Japanese lives on the line in a part of the world where oil-dependent Japan has vital economic interests.
Indonesia's President Megawati Sukarnoputri, during her previously scheduled official visit to the White House last week, expressed sympathy. No wonder. She represents the broad, moderate Muslim majority in a sprawling nation that includes its own share of extremists amid the world's largest single Muslim populace.
But others' support of the United States will derive from a cold calculation that the costs of going the other way are simply too great. America should take what it can get, whatever the motive. That's why choosing the appropriate retaliation strategy is not only the most politically explosive foreign and military policy decision Bush, who delivered a blunt-spoken anti-terrorism address late last week, has had to face so far — it's the most serious one for America in a long time.
Conceptual failures, on both the policy as well as military side, could direct this operation down into the hell of a new Vietnam.
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.
