Can Australia becomes part of Asia? (1)

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