The Trouble With Tigers: The Rise and Fall of South-East Asia. Victor Mallet
a member of parliament for Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD was to be jailed in a ten foot by ten foot cell with several others – eloquently expressed the bitterness felt by Burmese democrats towards the junta’s regional allies after his release from prison. Asking to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals, he spoke of his party’s regret about the rapprochement between Burma and such countries as Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia. ‘Constructive engagement is not constructive,’ he said. ‘It’s destructive opportunism. We are in a time of trouble. When the government is oppressing its own people, they shouldn’t do it.’39 Another Burmese intellectual declared: ‘There’s no Asian way. There’s totalitarian ways and democratic ways.’40 Singapore, as a big investor in Burma, a supplier of weapons and above all a public defender of authoritarianism, is particularly loathed by Burmese liberals. ‘Singaporeans are all set to make money,’ says Kyi Maung, an elderly and shrewd NLD leader and confidant of Suu Kyi. ‘They have no moral conscience at all.’41
Singapore’s defence against these accusations is twofold. It repeats that Singapore and Asean are in fact trying to introduce reforms in Burma, albeit through gentle persuasion rather than confrontation with the regime. Second, it deploys the ‘Asian values’ argument in favour of strong government: this means that the army is an appropriate institution to run the country because Burma is ethnically diverse and would be in danger of disaster under any other system. ‘Imagine what happens in Burma if you dismantle the tatmadaw [Burmese army],’ says George Yeo of the Singapore government. ‘What you have left will be like Cambodia in “year zero” [when the Khmers Rouges took over] because there is no institution in Burma which can hold the whole country together.’42 There is no question that Burma has problems with ethnic divisions – two dozen different ethnic guerrilla armies have fought against the central government since independence in 1948 – but there are doubts about the long-term effectiveness of the junta’s political strategy. The guerrilla armies fighting the regime have been either defeated by military force or persuaded to sign peace deals in exchange for the right to continue operating as drug barons in their own territories. Reconciliation and real national unity still seem a long way off. So the ideal solution for Singapore and Asean would be for Burma to combine political reform with continued military control. Under this so-called ‘Indonesian’ method (discussed in more detail in chapter 2), democratic-looking institutions are introduced and the army withdraws into the background while still retaining much of its influence.
Unfortunately for the supporters of ‘Asian values’, there have been few signs that the Burmese junta has any inclination to embark on even the mildest of reforms. Instead, they have turned Asean’s support for authoritarian governments to their own advantage, using it to justify the continuation of their regime. Major Hla Min of the Burmese defence ministry explained that the countries of south-east Asia understood Burma well because they had had military governments in the past and in some cases still had them. ‘Even Singapore – it’s a police state,’ he said. ‘Everybody admits it’s a police state.’43 This is hardly a ringing endorsement of the ethics of the ‘Asian Way’. But until now Asean, and Asian governments as a whole, have been surprisingly successful in promoting ‘Asian’ versions of human rights in international forums – or at least in stopping western countries imposing their versions on Asia. The reasons for the West’s diffidence are all too obvious. As Asian economies continued to grow, western governments and companies became ever more reluctant to jeopardize their commercial interests for the sake of their liberal principles. This often obliged them to adopt postures in favour of human rights at home for domestic political purposes, while appeasing Asian governments overseas. Confusion and hypocrisy were the inevitable result. ‘When they come here they [western politicians] talk about the environment, human rights and democracy in public,’ says Sarwono Kusumaatmadja, the former Indonesian minister responsible for the environment. ‘But in private they talk business … so we listen politely to their exhortations and then we do our own thing. Some of them are very insincere.’44 In the case of Burma, Asean governments rightly point out that it is hypocritical of the US to impose economic sanctions on Burma, which has a small and relatively unimportant economy, because of its human rights abuses, while simultaneously turning a blind eye to similar abuses in China because it has a very large economy. To which the honest, if unedifying, response from a senior US diplomat is: ‘Being a superpower means we don’t have to be consistent.’45
So successful were Asian authoritarians in promoting their own version of human rights that they almost turned the tables on the western countries they had accused of bullying them. Chris Patten, the last colonial governor of Hong Kong, said shortly before the territory was handed over to China in July 1997 that he believed the West should pursue both its commercial and political objectives energetically, but as separately as possible: trade, in other words, should not be a political lever. He added a warning: ‘If we are not to mix them up, then we should not permit Asian countries to play the same game in reverse, threatening that access to their markets can be allowed only to the politically correct, to those prepared to be muzzled over human rights. We should not allow ourselves to be demeaned in this way – with Europe played off against America and one European country played off against another, and with all of us treading gingerly around the sensitivities of one or two countries, deferring to the proposition that open and vigorous discussion should be avoided at all costs.’46 It is not only westerners who feel uncomfortable about the use of ‘Asian values’ in foreign policy. Asean defends its members’ human-rights policies – or lack of them – on the basis of supposedly distinctive Asian cultural traditions, but Thai and Filipino diplomats have complained that they do not share in these purported traditions: on the contrary, they regard their own democratic values to be at least as valid as the authoritarian ones of Singapore or Indonesia.
In 1993, at the height of the ‘Asian values’ debate, it was pointed out that one reason for doubting the widely-held view that the twenty-first century would be a ‘Pacific Century’ was the lack of a genuine Asian value system with international appeal. ‘A strong economy is a precondition for domestic health, military strength, and global influence,’ wrote Morton Abramowitz, President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in a perceptive analysis of Asian hubris. ‘But in an interdependent world, those that aspire to lend their name to centuries must also have political strengths and value-systems that enable them to project influence persuasively. Economic power without acceptance of the responsibilities and burdens of leadership ultimately engenders divisiveness and hostility.’47 For all the speeches and articles extolling ‘Asian values’, there is little sign of an emerging Asian ethic that appeals to the peoples of Asia, let alone the outside world. However, the search for a stronger value system, whether it is labelled ‘The Asian Way’ or something else, will doubtless continue. Singapore’s Kishore Mahbubani says the debate has only just begun, and will continue for another hundred years or more. Anand Panyarachun, who was twice prime minister of Thailand in the 1990s, bemoans the greed and consumerism of present-day south-east Asia but has not given up the search for something better. ‘Asian values today appear to be glorifying personal interest,’ he said. ‘Yet the essential objective of any ethical society must be the realization of public aspirations. In that quest, ethics cannot be divorced from good governance.’48
When governments pursue immoral or foolish policies cloaked in specious ethics, it is not just nasty. It may be dangerous for the countries concerned. Take the environment debate in south-east Asia. In 1994, Christopher Lingle, an American professor at the National University of Singapore, responded to a rather triumphalist article by Mahbubani that extolled the virtues of Asia and belittled Europe for its inability to extinguish the ‘ring of fire’ on its borders caused by political upheavals. Lingle thought this image more appropriate for south-east