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KOTA KINABALU (Malaysia): Asian countries have shied away from presenting a clear stand on a war on Iraq. They have much to lose by opposing their largest trading partner and stand to gain if the United States emerges as a swift victor.
Yet if the war is long, the consequences offer a different, and possibly disturbing, scenario for relationships among countries with the largest concentration of Muslim peoples in the world, and for those nations and their strategic partners around the globe.
“The main question is how the war is going to be perceived in southeast Asia, especially in Indonesia,” said Ralf Emmers of the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies in Singapore.
“If war becomes long and difficult, that will weaken the government of President Megawati (Sukarnoputri),” he said of the leader of Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country.
Demonstrations could multiply, bringing with them concerns that inflamed passions will offer a fertile breeding ground for the plotting of extremist violence.
Indonesia, which has opposed the war, is one of several countries in Asia facing such a threat.
Mainly Malaysia has urged peace, but in recent days appears to be showing signs of backing away from direct tirades against Washington.
Singapore, the chosen target of an extremist attack averted by its intelligence services, has firmly supported US action.
Japan and South Korea have stood by their ally across the Pacific, India has been unusually silent and China, Asia’s only permanent member of the UN Security Council, has hidden deep in the shadow of France and Russia, giving little away.
At the heart of those relationships will be the United States, the ties and trade it has with Asian nations after an Iraq war, and the help it can offer in the “war on terror”.
ATTRACTING ATTENTION: Analysts see Asia, with its huge Muslim population and hidden Al Qaeda cells, as certain to continue to attract US attention — and to want to attract that attention.
“I think Asia prefers the United States as the balancing act rather than Japan or China,” said Michael McKinley of the department of political science at the Australian National University in Canberra.
“People have memories of Japan and if there is a power vacuum they don’t want a resurgent Japan or China as the principal hegemon,” he said. “They prefer a triangular relationship dominated by the United States.”
However, a long war may stir such turbulence among not only Muslim populations but those opposed to war that the United States may have to work hard to keep the region on its side.
“If the war goes wrong, opinion in Indonesia could turn out more strongly against America,” wrote Angel Rabasa, a senior policy analyst and Indonesia specialist at the Rand Corporation, in the International Herald Tribune.
“The extremists’ message that the war in Iraq is part of a religious conflict between Islam and the West will fall on more receptive ears.”
“How America goes about establishing a democratic foundation in Iraq will have a profound impact on public opinion in Indonesia and throughout the Muslim world. Workable steps to establish democracy in Iraq will strengthen the US credibility.
”If the United States can make a credible case that it is on the side of Muslim democrats, it will have gone a long way toward putting ties with the Muslim world on a more enduring basis.”
Indeed, whatever the rhetoric from Malaysia and Indonesia, which are playing to huge Muslim domestic audiences and whose support the United States had never expected, they may change their tune once the fighting ends.— Reuters
