An American Hand Can Steady Asia’s Path

The Japanese official, wise beyond his middle-aged years, shot back a two-raised-eyebrows reaction to my modest proposal that the Japanese government simply tear down that suddenly and provocatively erected lighthouse on a disputed offshore island, so that everyone throughout the world can breathe easily again.

I got the first eyebrow for my naivete: No Japanese government facing reelection this month is going to stand up to its nationalist right wing. And I got the second one for my presumption in suggesting that the Japanese claim to ownership of the island was even slightly arguable.

Suddenly last week the much-hyped “Asian way” (all smiles in public, grievances smoothed over in private) was not in abundant evidence. China, a nuclear state, and Japan, a technological superpower, bumped egos over a territorial dispute that shook the serenity of Asia. And that wasn’t all that was happening.

The first unnerving problem goes back to July. Japanese right-wingers, which a more alert Tokyo government might have cut off at the knees, sneaked onto one of those desolate, pigeon-swept islets in the East China Sea that the Japanese call the Senkakus and quietly began sawing and nailing up a makeshift lighthouse. Predictably, the charge of the lighthouse brigade--acting on behalf of nationalist fires that appear to be growing in Japan--triggered cheers back home but incited jeers from the Chinese, and not just from Chinese on the mainland, but from across much of Asia.

For the Chinese just as possessively refer to the islets, which may hover near valuable undersea oil reserves, as their Diaoyutai. Thus last week ethnic Chinese protesters from Hong Kong and Taiwan launched a private small-boat offensive and set sail for their Diaoyutai, only to be rebuffed by the Japanese coast guard protecting their Senkakus. On Thursday, after one overwrought seaborne ethnic Chinese protester jumped ship and accidentally drowned, a martyr for the Diaoyutai cause was born, as was an instant pan-Chinese, anti-Japanese cause. And the lesson was lost on no one: Nothing can so instantly unite Chinese--on the mainland or off, capitalist or communist--as perceived Japanese aggressiveness. Asians across the continent shudder at the thought of serious Sino-Japanese friction.

Then, in yet another potentially volatile Asian flashpoint, North and South Korea scuffled once again. The week before last, a North Korean submarine went aground off South Korea’s coast and its passengers, including military provocateurs, went ashore, at first undetected. What a truly stupid submarine trick it turned out to be. But that’s North Korea for you: By now, most if not all of its communist agents have been hunted down, many shot to death. And a furious Seoul now wants to resume joint military maneuvers with the United States, which has 37,000 troops there. These showcase displays had been suspended in deference to the Clinton administration’s wooing of Pyongyang.

What will happen next? Why should Americans care? Because the current world prosperity can’t continue unless Asia remains at peace with itself. And only an intelligent and muscular American presence can stabilize the region. Indeed, the long-standing U.S. security agreements with Tokyo and Seoul that keep the U.S. so involved in Asia add to the region’s security, rather than exacerbate tensions. Says a highly respected Asian diplomat with many years on the scene: “Is it in U.S. interests for China to become so powerful in the region that it issues its own [stay out of our backyard] Monroe Doctrine? I don’t think so. You must also maintain a very strong security relationship with Japan. If not, then Japan goes nuclear. That’s a big worry because Japanese missiles will be much more accurate than Russian ones, count on it. But that happens and maybe China gets out of hand unless you remain intensively engaged.”

Adds Harvard-educated George Yeo, minister for information and the arts in the regionally influential Singapore: “For most of history, the center of the world was Asia. It’s only been in the last 150 years or so that Asia really went down. China will recapture its position in the next century. Will it be an aggressive or benign China? That depends especially on whether America stays involved.”

Even the Chinese have an understated but very real preference for American attentiveness in Asia: “I think some U.S. statesmen have underestimated the importance of Sino-American relations,” prominent Beijing official Tang Shu Bei, executive vice president for the Assn. of Relations Across the Taiwan Straits, said to me recently before embarking on an unusual (for Beijing) swing through the United States to make just that point to all who would listen. But for the American public, Asia will often seem distant and irrelevant. How many Americans have the slightest idea about you-call-it- Senkakus-but-we-call-it-Diaoyutai?

Warns Yeo: “When one talks about the Pacific orientation of California, we hope that means the next century includes America. Because if it excludes, then you will see great tragedy--war and upheaval.” Of course Asians will always buttonhole the touring American journalist in hopes of attracting more attention to their problems. And they grumble plenty about us--about our genetic paucity of historical memory (true), about our excessively Eurocentric foreign policy (also true), about our foreign-policy-challenged president (true again) and about our relentless propensity for lecturing others, especially in the Third World, on how to live their lives (also all too true).

But none of the above detracts from the truth about this odd couple, Asia and America: For Asia will never achieve its ambition for transcendence over the West without the United States staying around. And America should readily allow itself to be used in this way so that Asia can achieve just that destiny, even if we are helping pave the path for our own eclipse. One is either part of history’s solutions or part of its problems, and this way is the only win-win way. Any other way is the lose-lose route, for everybody and for sure.

Times columnist and visiting UCLA professor Tom Plate has been traveling in Asia. E-mail: tplate@ucla.edu