Posted on: Sunday, February 17, 2002

FOCUS
Asia trip will help us assess Bush a bit better

By John Griffin

President Bush's visit to Asia this week will be a test of how much he understands and will articulate the complexities beyond the war against terrorism.

On one level, this trip — replacing one put off after Sept. 11 — needs to produce vital but unsurprising diplomacy in an East Asia region that needs more American attention.

Bush will push his anti-terror campaign in Japan, South Korea and China. That remains his primary focus, and Afghanistan is just a beginning.

In Tokyo, he will also stress our longtime security ties and perhaps help shore up weakened Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi while encouraging the badly needed economic reforms.

In Seoul, he needs to mend some of the collateral damage his "axis of evil" remarks did to already-tattered chances for more progress toward North-South agreement.

In Beijing, it will be the usual broad range of issues (Taiwan, trade, human rights, etc.) with new emphasis on counterterrorist cooperation.

That makes for a full six days. But many will be watching for signs, in his speeches and in symbolic steps, how much Bush also acknowledges divisions in the world that can't be countered with arms.

For, awful as it is, terrorism is most often a symptom of desperation, poverty and resentments in a world where the United States personifies, or at least symbolizes, the haves against the have-nots. At this time, military action and tough police action may be a necessary deterrent, but it is not the ultimate solution.

In his speech before the recent World Economic Forum in New York City, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan noted how the 9/11 terrorist attacks exposed the huge gap between rich and poor.

"The problem," he said, was "one of reality multiplied by perception. The reality is that power and wealth in the world are very, very unequally shared and that far too many people are condemned to lives of extreme poverty and degradation.

"The perception, among many, is that this is the fault of globalization, and that globalization is driven by a global elite, composed of, at least represented by, the people who attend this meeting."

The gap and perception were a major subtheme in the New York meeting of moguls and other world leaders.

India-born, Muslim-raised author Salman Rushdie in a New York Times article described another part of our deeper problem. Noting that anti-Americanism in the world may turn out to be a harder ideological adversary to defeat than militant Islam, he wrote:

"America did, in Afghanistan, what had to be done, and did it well. The bad news, however, is that these successes have not won new friends for the United States outside Afghanistan. In fact, the effectiveness of the American campaign may have made some parts of the world hate America more than they did before...."

Some would argue that America needs hard action and tough talk. It may be simplistic to claim there is a real "axis" that joins Iraq, Iran and North Korea as allies, but there are forms of evil to be countered.

At the same time, the world needs to know that Americans realize the real war we face must be fought with sophistication and compassion. And in this, like him or not, George W. Bush is a symbol of our nation.

He has come a long way in the last year, from a treaty-smashing Lone Ranger to leader of a very mixed posse against world terrorism. He has moved from scary unilateralism to what some call "Nation-Building Lite."

But that is not enough if we are to go beyond the war against terror to leading the world in cooperative ways toward the more democratic development it needs.

That's why many will be watching this Asia trip for signs the "new" president sees the deeper dimensions of America's role in a world that won't let us alone.

John Griffin is the former editorial page editor of The Honolulu Advertiser. He writes frequently for these pages.