Asian crisis could boost anti-U.S. feeling

Asian crisis could boost anti-U.S. feeling

By Stefan Kornelius

WASHINGTON (DPA): U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen prepared his Asian tour well in advance. He was planning to discuss security policy and strategic interests. But he suddenly found himself in the middle of what, at the moment, is the world's most serious crisis.

As he rushes from one scene of catastrophe to the next, shaking hands with heads of state, reassuring finance ministers, Cohen is combating one of the worst threats to the United States: the Asian economic crisis.

It is sheer coincidence that he is touring the crisis hot spots of Southeast Asia right now, but he could hardly have done so at a better moment. In these days of tumult what Secretary Cohen has to say is analyzed in detail.

Confidence, security and partnership: his choice of words is aimed at generating faith, hope and trust -- and exerting just a little diplomatic pressure.

He is leaving the slaughter to the experts of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the U.S. Treasury. His role is to take the edge off the root-and-branch remedy prescribed by the economic experts and to persuade crisis-torn governments that it has to be accepted.

There is nothing of which the U.S. government is more afraid than that the Asian financial crisis might trigger a wave of anti-American feeling, with populist governments talking in terms of dollar imperialism and attributing popular hardship to the hard line taken by Washington.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has warned that the root-and-branch financial policy remedy might trigger a wave of anti-Americanism.

Ezra Vogel, a Harvard professor and CIA East Asia specialist during Bill Clinton's first term in office, counsels a calm and level-headed approach too.

"I believe," he says, "that many Asians feel irritated by American triumphalism. They don't want to be taught that the U.S. system of open markets has proved its worth and that they would do better to behave more like we do."

Behind worries about America's image lies a realization that the Asian financial and monetary crisis may have not just economic but also political consequences for the United States.

Washington thus views the crisis in foreign policy terms too, and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has assigned a State Department undersecretary to the delegation headed by Larry Summers of the Treasury, who is in Asia with the IMF to negotiate the terms of further loans.

Washington's greatest worry is that the crisis could lead to political instability. Unrest in Indonesia could target the Chinese minority and trigger an undesirable response by Beijing. Indonesia, with a population of 202 million, is the fourth most populous country in the world. As an oil producer it influences commodity prices and energy supplies to major customers, such as Japan.

Unrest in Hong Kong could be sure to trigger intervention by the Chinese security forces.

South Korea might no longer be able to keep to the terms agreed on financing nuclear reactors for North Korea. That would jeopardize the agreement by which North Korea is to be dissuaded from making its own nuclear weapons.

The Asian crisis is gradually reaching the U.S. market, where the arms industry in particular seems set to be hard hit by Asian customers running short of cash.

Secretary Cohen is keen to negotiate new payment terms with, say, Thailand, which no longer wants to buy eight F/A-18 fighters, while South Korea has chosen to get by without AWACS planes for the time being.

The crisis will assume domestic importance by March at the latest, when the U.S. Congress will have to rule on a $18 billion loan to the IMF.

A debate is already under way among Congressmen and in op-ed columns. Ought the U.S. to continue to back the IMF or should it let market forces prevail?

Is the IMF pursuing policies that are in the U.S. interest, or are the industrialized countries throwing good money after bad in their bail-out bids?

This debate is very much in keeping with the suspicions which many Americans have of public intervention, and with their dislike of any kind of aid to foreign countries.

That is why the true political acid test has yet to come. Congress will decide whether or not fears of a fresh wave of anti-Americanism in Asia are justified.