The role of the United States in Asia
The role of the United States in Asia
SINGAPORE: Both Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong and Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew were overseas in the past week, the former visiting the United States and the latter, China. While abroad, both reiterated Singapore's support for a U.S. presence in East Asia, with Lee making in Beijing the same point that the Prime Minister was conveying in Washington.
"We are going to train in Taiwan, we are going to have the United States given access to our bases. That position is unchanged. That is in our interest," he said, when asked by the media how Singapore would balance its ties to China and the United States. And in Washington, Goh stated simply: "In the strategic sense, the United States is very much a part of East Asia. It has been, and still is, a positive force for stability and prosperity."
In a wide-ranging speech to the U.S.-ASEAN Business Council, he went on to describe how the United States might play a useful role in helping to manage the on-going changes in East Asia. To well-informed observers, the positions he took will not come as a surprise, for they are consistent with Singapore's long-held policies. Still, they bear reiteration.
Firstly, on the all-important U.S.-China relationship, Goh observed that the recent EP-3 incident, involving the collision of a Chinese fighter and a U.S. surveillance plane, "will not be, and should not be, the defining factor in U.S.-China relations during the Bush administration".
That relationship should be focused on the long view -- the incorporation of China as a constructive player on the world stage -- and ensuring that East Asia remains in balance even as China grows. Balance, however, did not mean confrontation, he stressed. It does not mean conscribing China's growth or containing its power.
"It means that as China grows and becomes stronger, other countries in Asia too should grow and become stronger, buttressed by a strong U.S. presence. It means mutually beneficial growth." One would hope that the various forces in Washington that are now debating U.S. policy towards China will bear in mind this crucial distinction between balance and containment.
As former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has noted, the fact that the previous administration's policy of a "strategic partnership" with China has failed, does not mean that the only alternative is strategic rivalry or outright enmity.
On another issue, of more immediate concern to Singapore, Goh urged the U.S. not to neglect Southeast Asia. "Given the strategic weight that America deploys, if the United States regards ASEAN less seriously, it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy," he warned.
Neglect may compromise ASEAN's economic recovery; and that, in turn, will compromise Japan's recovery, for its economy is closely integrated with Southeast Asia's. On Indonesia, he urged that once the political situation there stabilized, the U.S. should help it regain international confidence.
Goh did not say this, but many in the region are conscious that Washington was more engaged with Indonesia during the height of the global financial crisis of 1997-1998 than it has been since. The fear of contagion, the feeling that financial upheaval there may ricochet through the region and possibly affect the United States, prompted that concern. But now that fear has subsided, so too has the concern.
But as Goh reminded his audience, the facts of geography have not changed: Indonesia, a vast archipelago, still sits astride vital sea lanes. An unstable Indonesia will not be just an East Asian but a global problem. Contagion did not really end in 1998, it merely changed form.
-- The Straits Times/Asia News Network