THE RISING EAST
Whatever the polls say, America has friends

By Richard Halloran

As we Americans celebrate our independence on the Fourth of July, the conventional wisdom around the world holds that the United States is despised for arrogance, greed and violence, with some polls seeming to reinforce that image.

In his address to the Shangri La Dialogue, a gathering of defense ministers in Singapore last month, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld questioned China's recent military buildup. Ed Wray • Associated Press

In Hawai'i, Australians, Singaporeans and Japanese were outspoken in asserting that an alliance with the United States, whether formal or informal, is vital to their own national security and should be enhanced. Malaysians and Indonesians, citizens of predominately Islamic nations, urged the United States to pay more attention to them.

Moreover, a close look at polls such as that by the Pew Research Center 10 days ago suggests that its survey was flawed. It focused on Europe, omitted key nations in Asia such as Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam and Thailand, excluded Saudi Arabia and Israel in the Middle East and ignored Latin America.

The conference in Honolulu, arranged by the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., drew 500 people from Asia and the Pacific to dissect democracy in this region. Under conference rules intended to encourage candor, speakers could not be identified.

An Australian set an early tone: "Australia is America's oldest friend and ally in the Asia-Pacific region. We have fought alongside each other in two world wars, the Korean and Vietnam wars, the 1991 Gulf War, and most recently in Afghanistan and Iraq. The closeness of Canberra and Washington today is without precedent."

A Singaporean rolled the same drum: "Singapore is Washington's closest security partner in Southeast Asia."

Singapore does not have a defense treaty with the United States as do Australia and Japan. Nonetheless, the speaker said, Singapore "relies explicitly on the United States because it has ... a deep preference for a regional security structure guaranteed by American preponderance of power."

A Japanese, speaking 60 years after Japan was defeated by the United States in World War II, said the alliance with America that dates from 1952 had been "reaffirmed" after the end of the Cold War in 1990 and cited polls showing that support for the alliance was steady even if most Japanese opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

The evidence that a majority of Muslims hate the United States is pervasive. Even so, a Malaysian scholar said: "Malay-sia and the United States have a long history of cooperation in security and defense matters that has only intensified further after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks."

Today, the speaker said, "Cooperation is strongest against international terrorism and drug trafficking."

An Indonesian seemed to long for expanded relations with the United States.

"Indonesia's interactions with the United States," the speaker said, "may be more constructive if Indonesia is recognized ... as a country struggling to consolidate a democratic political system."

From the Philippines, the former U.S. colony that closed U.S. military bases in 1991, a speaker asserted that Filipinos and Americans shared an interest in suppressing a Muslim insurgency in the southern Philippines because insurgents often "use terrorist tactics in fighting established governments."

The speaker who really lambasted the Americans was a South Korean, whose nation has a defense treaty with the United States. The speaker reached back to a secret agreement in 1905 in which the United States agreed not to interfere with Japan's plans to annex Korea, and Japan said it would not interfere with the United States in the Philippines. Many of Korea's ills since then, the speaker said, were the fault of the United States.

In his keynote address to the Shangri-La dialogue in Singapore, named for the hotel in which senior defense officials and military officers assembled, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore urged the United States to expand its relations in Asia beyond Japan and China.

"The U.S. must engage Asian countries across a broad front," he said. "In particular, the U.S. needs to actively engage the ASEAN countries, both as a group and individually," referring to the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

The contrast with the Pew findings on global attitudes was conspicuous. The report concluded: "The United States remains broadly disliked in most countries surveyed" even though anti-Americanism had abated slightly.

In Honolulu and Singapore, however, the cry "Yankee go home" was not much heard.

Richard Halloran is a Honolulu-based journalist and former New York Times correspondent in Asia. He wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.