Washington's Emphasis On Human Rights Issues Could Hurt Relations : Value Clash Looms for U.S. and Asia  
International Herald Tribune
May 3, 1993
Michael Richardson

The United States and East Asian nations appear headed toward a clash of values that could poison relations between them.

Tommy B. Koh, a former Singapore ambassador to the United States and the United Nations who heads his country's Institute of Policy Studies, said recently that he was worried that an "ideological battle" would develop between Asia and America over Washington's assertiveness in exporting democracy and human rights.

Such a conflict could raise trans-Pacific trade tensions, weaken security ties between the United States and its East Asian allies and friends, strengthen calls for the region to form its own economic bloc and place Japan in the position of having to choose between Asia and the United States.

Western pressure, particularly from the United States and the European Community, to use aid and trade as levers to promote political pluralism and individual liberties in countries that put greater emphasis on stability and social control has helped to form a common front of opposition in East Asia.

This is despite the area's political, ethnic and religious diversity, which normally makes a region-wide consensus impossible to reach.

Earlier this month, at a regional conference on human rights in Bangkok organized by the United Nations, all East Asian governments signed a declaration saying that the West should not use human rights as a condition for extending aid and that countries did not have the right to interfere in the internal affairs of others.

Japan, the world's largest aid donor, signed the declaration, although it formally registered some reservations.

The U.S. secretary of state, Warren M. Christopher, said in March that respect for human rights would be "a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy." Not long afterward, Winston Lord, U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said that the end of the Cold War "reduces the pressure to muffle concerns about unsavory governments for the sake of security."

Mr. Lord said that the spread of liberty affirmed America's values and served its interests.

"Open societies do not attack one another," he asserted. "They make better trading partners. They press for environmental reform. They do not practice terrorism. They do not produce refugees."

The end of Cold War constraints and the more active pursuit of human rights policy by the United States coincides with rapidly rising East Asian pride and self-confidence as the region continues an economic surge while Western economies falter.

"The stage is set for a major increase in Western exports of democracy and human rights just as East Asian nations are in a mood to resist," said George Hicks, an economist and writer on Asian affairs.

Malaysia's prime minister, Mahathir bin Mohamad, said that East Asia had shown the world it could compete economically. As a result, he said, "East Asians are no longer shackled by an inferiority complex."

Mr. Lord, a former U.S. ambassador to Beijing who has said that China has an "outdated authoritarian system," praised Mongolia for being the first Asian country to "throw off the Communist yoke."

He said there had been "encouraging strides toward more democratic and humane societies" in South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and the Philippines.

But Mr. Lord noted that other areas of Asia "lag behind the march of history." In a reference to China, North Korea, Vietnam and Laos, he said that first-generation Communist leaders "still hold together repressive regimes."

However, Mr. Mahathir said that democratic change in the region should not be imposed from outside because it might create turmoil. Instead, he said, free-market growth should be promoted to bring about "a natural evolution" of democracy.

A number of nations in East Asia, including China and Indonesia, have been angered by the Clinton administration's evident determination to apply what are seen by many Asian officials as alien Western principles that ride roughshod over national sovereignty and threaten the integrity of the state.

Indonesian authorities were caught by surprise last month when Washington changed from a policy of abstention and backed a UN resolution expressing "deep concern" over alleged Indonesian repression in East Timor.

Analysts said China and virtually every other East Asian nation opposed the recent reintroduction in the U.S. Congress of a bill making China's future trade access to the U.S. market at the lowest possible tariff rates conditional on meeting human rights, trade practice and military exports standards.

Yukio Satoh, head of the North American department in the Japanese Foreign Ministry, said that while Japan and the United States had a shared concern to promote democracy and protect human rights in China, Tokyo's approach was different from Washington's.

Japan, he said, believed that "promotion of reform and openness in the economic field is conducive not only to expansion of the market economy in China but also to the advancement of political reform in a way befitting Chinese conditions."

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