COMMENTARY
Optimism in Asia can't hide dangers
By Charles E. Morrison
The outlook for Asia and the Pacific in 2004 seems mostly good.
Barring another outbreak of SARS or some other catastrophe, the region will enjoy its best year of economic growth since the 1997 economic crisis. China's economy is booming at an almost dangerous annual growth rate of 8 percent to 9 percent, and India and Thailand are in the 7 percent growth range. Some economic optimism has returned even in Japan.
Political relations throughout the region, including critical U.S.-China ties, are generally positive.
Yet there is an underlying fragility, inevitable in a vast region where a sense of national identity is still being built in some countries, where modern political and economic institutions are not yet solidly rooted, and where modernization and globalization are causing enormous adjustment pressures.
Several serious time bombs stand out — serious because they have implications beyond the individual countries involved.
The first is North Korea. In a sense, the whole country is a time bomb, with a dictatorial family regime in charge, a failed economy and a high level of human misery.
Internationally, Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program is the immediate problem. North Korea says it is reprocessing plutonium from spent fuel rods, and the United States says it has detected yet a second enriched uranium-based nuclear program.
The United States regards the North Korean nuclear programs as threats to the nonproliferation regime, particularly in Northeast Asia, where Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are all quite capable of becoming nuclear-weapon states.
Of even greater concern since Sept. 11, 2001, are fears that North Korean fissile material might get into the hands of terrorists.
In contrast to the beginning of last year, there is a dialogue process — the six-party talks — that China is working hard to make successful. Both the U.S. and North Korea positions appear to have new flexibility. The bad news is that if Pyongyang is reprocessing fuel, as it claims, it is continuing to build a stockpile of fissile material that will be difficult to monitor.
Some say Pyongyang believes nuclear weapons will give it security and is only stalling for time. If so, there are no good options.
A second time bomb is in Pakistan. A country of more than 150 million, Pakistan already has nuclear weapons and is believed to be the source of enriched uranium technology for Iran, Libya and North Korea. Pakistani leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who seized power in 1999, cast his lot with the United States after Sept. 11, ending Pakistani support for the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
More recently he has been engaged in a dialogue with Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee of India, making major concessions by offering to withdraw Pakistan's decades-old insistence on a referendum to decide the future of disputed Kashmir.
These decisions have added to Musharraf's already formidable list of enemies. The general-turned-president survived two assassination attempts last month, one clearly based on inside information. Since there is no clear successor or even a succession process, Pakistan's cooperation against terrorists, its dialogue with India, and the security of its nuclear weapons are highly dependent on the fate of one marked man.
A third time bomb is ticking in Indonesia and adjacent areas where Muslim radicals are active. In the past six years, Indonesia has been making a difficult transition to a democratic system. This year, for the first time, it will elect a president through direct election.
The economy is in the midst of a consumer-driven expansion, but chaotic conditions in parts of the sprawling archipelago have emboldened the loose homegrown terrorist network Jemaah Islamiyah. Said to be loosely affiliated with al-Qaida, it carried out the vicious bombings of a nightclub in Bali in October 2002 and the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta last August.
The good news is that Indonesia has the world's two largest Muslim organizations, both of which forthrightly condemn terrorism. Southeast Asian countries are cooperating in addressing terrorism.
The bad news is that many of the conditions and grievances that spawned terrorism in the region long before Sept. 11 remain.
A fourth time bomb is Taiwan, one of the many Asia-Pacific societies holding democratic elections. Falling behind in the polls, desperate incumbent President Chen Shui-bian plans a provocative referendum. Both the Beijing and Washington governments regard this as a threat to the status quo across the Taiwan Strait.
Despite warnings from President Bush and Beijing, Chen is plunging ahead, although he has softened the wording of his referendum.
The positive news is that Beijing is trying not to overreact, and that the hotly contested election will be over on March 20, after which the winner undoubtedly will refocus on repairing essential political ties with the United States and economic relations with both the United States and China.
These brief sketches hardly do justice to very complex individual situations. They also skip over time bombs such as the disjuncture between rapid socioeconomic change in China and slow political evolution, the Maoist insurgency in Nepal, continued repression in Burma, stalled peace talks in Sri Lanka and chaotic conditions in parts of the Pacific.
Myriad other issues challenge the region, including HIV/AIDs and other diseases, growing income inequalities and a highly stressed physical environment.
Despite the challenges, Asia and the Pacific stand out in the developing world as the most promising region of booming economies and new democracies. The United States should view the region as an important key in its own future. It cannot, by itself, defuse any one of the time bombs.
But the United States needs to understand the region's dynamics and significance so as not to aggravate existing dangers and to work effectively in seeking solutions.
Clearly, 2004 is a year to watch closely in a region of incalculable importance to the United States.
Charles E. Morrison is president of the East-West Center.
