Can Australia becomes part of Asia? (1)

By Gred Sheridan

This is the first of two articles on Australia's position in the Pacific century.

CANBERRA: In the mid-1980s Bob Hawke called the Malaysian government's actions barbaric when it refused to stop the executions of convicted Australian drug traffickers, Barlow and Chambers.

Later, his successor, Paul Keating, in one of his more exuberant moods, declared that Australia's democratic constitution and outlook would make the country a "natural fit" in the Asian region of the future.

Bob Hawke, in reaction to the fatal clash between demonstrators and the Indonesian military in Dili, East Timor, in November 1991, declared that he was prepared to review every aspect of Australian-Indonesia relationships depending on the integrity and credibility of Jakarta's response to the massacre. Keating on the other hand, has elevated his country's relationship with Indonesia to the same level as Australia's relationships with Japan and the United States, admitting that no country is more important to Australia than Indonesia.

These two differing outlooks represent in some ways the endlessly contending impulses in Australian policy towards issues of human rights and democracy in Asia.

On the one hand, numerous human rights groups argue that Australia is too soft on human rights and democracy issues, especially within the country's own region. Such groups include: Amnesty International; some Christian denominations; ethnic groups and emigres from the countries concerned; politicians caught up in a particular issue; and even some figures from the judiciary.

The further Australia is physically distanced from a country the greater its moral outrage will be, argue these groups. Thus Australian's were free to show moral outrage out apartheid in South Africa, and to show maximum expression of that outrage. In contrast, according to this argument, we must be sotto voce about Indonesia.

A strikingly different view comes from Australian business people who seek to invest in and trade with the countries we criticize. They consider Australia's behavior to be far too extreme. In their view, Australia behaves like an unattractive, meddlesome mother-in-law, or an interfering neighbor staring over someone else's back fence, shouting abuse and gratuitous advice.

As Australia continues to integrate with Asia, personally and culturally, as well as economically, human rights and democracy are likely to be the chief factors retarding that integration.

Keating's vision, however, is continuing to grow ever closer to our neighbors. His "natural fit" expression is really a crude version of a theory of cultural convergence which has become an important template for interpreting the post-Cold War world.

If the theory of cultural convergence is correct our neighbors will become increasingly like us. They will grow to value a more representative society as well as a more liberal one. Their political practices will become closer to ours as will their broader culture.

We will find less to complain about in their behavior. On the other hand, an equally plausible post-Cold War view speaks of culture divergence, or culture clash, in which conflict between cultures will be the dominant reality in the post-Cold War environment.

In such a theory, Australia has a great deal to fear because it is so different culturally from its large and powerful neighbors. A scan of the globe suggests that Australia is perhaps the country most strikingly dissimilar culturally to its own region.

These two contradictory views were captured in two popular and influential essays -- Francis Fukuyama's End of History, which was first published in the American journal, the National Interest in 1989, and subsequently expanded into a small book at the beginning of this decade; and Sam Huntington's Clash of Civilizations, first published in the esteemed journal, Foreign Affairs in 1993.

Fukuyama sees the defeat of communism as embodying the universal, almost metaphysical triumph of liberal democratic capitalism. This means that the great struggle of history -- how man is to live and organize his society -- is over.

Communism, with its own universalist claims and philosophical pretensions, is dead. According to Fukuyama, the only line that connected attempted reforms in the late communist world was liberalism.

Apart from some squalidly backward nations which are still "trapped in history", that is, they have not yet worked out the clear and overwhelming benefits of liberal, democratic capitalism, the whole world is busily engaged in recreating itself in the image of North America and Western Europe.

There are to be no more great ideological struggles, except those in countries still trapped in history. This is convergence writ large. Not only with the entire world population turn to CNN during a global crisis like the Gulf War, but both our cultural and political habits will increasingly homogenize.

Sure there may be local differences. Such a thesis holds, but the big picture will become increasingly similar throughout the world. In Fukuyama's view, Australia can relax. Asia, as it increasingly escapes from history, will become more like Australia.

This is not the vision of Sam Huntington, however. For Huntington, the end of the Cold War means that conflict will no longer be ideological, but instead be based on more fundamental questions of identity. The dividing line of conflict no longer be which side am I on, but who am I?

The world according to Huntington is divided into eight major civilizations: the West, Confucian civilization, Islam, Japan as a separate case; and a few others. These civilizations will inevitably come into serious conflict. Huntington sees, in particular, conflict between the West and Islam as particularly inevitable, Such is divergence writ large.

-- The Nation, Bangkok