By Tom Plate

It looks as if almost all the usual diplomatic suspects are planning to be there. And for once this is a good thing — there's a lot to talk about, a lot to figure out and much at stake.

If all the big shots in Cabo San Lucas play their cards right, in addition to posing sweetly for the hordes of stalking paparazzi at the annual APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) summit this week, this time held in Mexico, maybe fewer innocent people will die from terrorism in the coming months. Wouldn't that be nice?

For too many have died so far. Just ask Megawati Sukarnoputri, the president of Indonesia, tragic Ground Zero of the Bali carnage. Not her fault, of course, but her colleagues at APEC will tell her to drop that overly composed turn-the-other-cheek approach to home-grown terrorist groups, assume some Margaret Thatcher-style attitude and go after them. She could learn from nearby Singapore, which takes the old-fashioned view that it is the early bird who so often gets the worm — in this case, terrorist worms. The Goh Chok Tong government of Singapore cuffed up terror groups earlier this year before they got out of hand. Goh not only worries about his own 4.4 million people but also about the unraveling of neighbor Indonesia (231 million people), with only Allah knows how many terrorists.

From the Philippines, where terrorist groups have been feeling the heat of joint operations of government troops with so-called American "advisers," comes Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. While she may look like a magazine-cover model, her tough-as-nails anti-terror stance has been working — and somehow has spared her nation from prominence on the al-Qaida get-even hit list, an unwanted honor roll that Australia has been climbing like a rocket ever since well-meaning but blunt-calibrating Prime Minister John Howard foolishly declaimed a sort of ethnic-solidarity pact with his Anglo-Saxon allies in Washington and London. That virtually challenged the manhood of the Islamic terrorists — and, unfortunately, they were up to it, resulting in the tragic deaths of scores of young innocent Australians and British vacationers. Hey, let's deep-six the us-versus-them, white-versus-nonwhite rhetoric, OK?

From New Zealand, so close to Australia and yet so far (to date) removed from the violence, comes Prime Minister Helen Clark. The Aussies ought to be doing more with the Kiwis. It's time to bury old rivalries to face the common enemy. Clark is sharp. Figure out an important role for her.

Flying in from near one of the Big Three "Axis of Evil" centers is none other than tired but indefatigable Kim Dae-jung. What a roller-coaster story his presidency has been! Now the South Korean president has had his bell rung by North Korea's admission of an ongoing nuclear weapons program (which almost everyone privately suspected). Fortunately for his capital city of Seoul, so close to North Korea's (presumably functional) multiple artillery batteries, President Bush is too bogged down engineering international approval of an Iraq offensive to launch one pre-emptively against North Korea.

But — and this may be hard to believe — Iraq may be put quietly on the U.S. back burner by the time China's President Jiang Zemin is seen munching steerburgers with Bush at the ranch in Crawford, Texas (population 705 — none of them terrorists!). This monster photo-op (can't wait to see Jiang in a cowboy hat!) is to occur during the APEC summit and could ease Sino-U.S. tension over the Iraq issue. For the Tex-Mex consensus may be go fast on anti-terrorism but go slow on Baghdad. That would also please APEC summiteer Vladimir Putin. The Russian fox has been trying to get North Korea to pull the plug on the mass-destruction weapons programs, as per Washington's view, but like Jiang is not gung-ho about attacking Iraq.

It's almost possible to feel sorry for Bush, whose political and diplomatic axis detector is creaking under all the evil we are seeing from Bali to Pyongyang. After the Indonesian bombings, the Pyongyang confession, the diplomatic turmoil at the United Nations over Iraq and the continuing carnage in the Middle East, Bush's foreign policy would seem to be at a crisis point. Imagine if he attacks Iraq and then North Korea were to go South — he'd look like the greatest political fool of our time.

Or second-greatest: For if Congress continues to deny Indonesia's military significant aid on the ground of possible human-rights violations, and the world's fourth-most-populous country falls apart (as Singapore's authorities repeatedly warn Washington is possible), the world will have an Asian Yugoslavia on its hands — one that may make the former Yugoslavia (with a population of but 10 million) look like a geopolitical picnic.

So it's getting to be crunch time now. Everyone (even columnists) should try to support the U.S. president more than ever — but only if Bush finally starts to listen to others more than ever.

Tom Plate, a columnist with The Honolulu Advertiser and the South China Morning Post, is a professor at UCLA. Reach him at tplate@ucla.edu. He also has a spot on the Web.