Emerging Asian Nations Want a Security Shield of Their Own
International Herald Tribune
February 8, 1995
Michael Richardson 

Asian and Pacific countries, concerned about the impact on regional stability of America's assertive trade policy and deep cuts in defense spending, are shaping a new security order that reflects the growing economic and military power of nations in the region.

While the United States will continue to play an important security role - especially in Northeast Asia, where the bulk of America's frontline forces in the Pacific are stationed, in South Korea and Japan - recent developments in Southeast Asia show a clear trend toward greater self-reliance in defense.

"It is too early to talk of a Pax Asiana replacing the Pax Americana that has been a dominant feature of East Asian security since the end of World War II," an Asian official said Tuesday. "But the winds of change are starting to blow strongly in that direction."

The United States "will remain strategically engaged in Asia for as far ahead as we can see, but the nature of its engagement will change," said Robert Ray, Australia's defense minister. "Trade and economic issues will be more significant factors in its interests, and it will neither seek nor accept primary responsibility for maintaining peace and stability in the region."

Mr. Ray added that, as a result, "the strategic affairs of our region will be determined increasingly by the countries of Asia themselves."

In recent months, several Southeast Asian nations decided to expand bilateral military exercises and cooperation programs, and agreed in principle to form a peacekeeping force intended mainly for use in the Asia-Pacific region, to operate under United Nations auspices.

Australia, Britain, New Zealand, Singapore and Malaysia - members of the Five Power Defense Arrangements, the only formal multilateral security organization in Southeast Asia - agreed to extend the scale of joint maneuvers, particularly for their naval and air forces operating in the region.

Later this year, Indonesian troops will, for the first time, take part in war games in northern Australia with forces from the United States, Britain, Malaysia, Singapore and Papua New Guinea.

Regional officials said that such activities were not a precursor to a new region-wide military pact. Instead, the officials said, they were part of a major effort, supported by the United States, to build trust at a time when the armed forces of almost all East Asian countries were being modernized with more-potent weapons.

Enhanced security cooperation is helping to overcome old feuds and suspicions between such countries as Australia and Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, and Malaysia and the Philippines.

General Benny Moerdani, a former Indonesian defense minister, said he expected that military ties between Australia and Indonesia would gradually broaden and deepen.

"As our strategic outlooks are converging, we may soon realize that our capabilities also have become more complementary to each other," he said. "It is interesting to note that on many regional economic, political and security issues and assessments, the views from Jakarta and Canberra are often closer than between Jakarta and Tokyo or between Canberra and Washington."

Many Asian officials worry that continuing disputes between the United States and China over trade and human rights, as well as internal maneuvering to succeed China's aging leader, Deng Xiaoping, could strengthen the hand of nationalists in Beijing at the expense of pragmatists who have generally pursued a policy of regional cooperation.

The Association of South East Asian Nations, which includes Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Brunei, played a key role in forming a regional forum that will meet for the second time at the ministerial level in Brunei in July to discuss Asian security problems.

The forum has 18 members, including the United States, Japan, China and Vietnam. It was established partly to draw both Beijing and Hanoi into cooperative security talks.

In another move to strengthen cooperation in Southeast Asia, Vietnam is expected expected to join ASEAN in July.

Reflecting concerns about isolating or provoking China, Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad of Malaysia said that building a security order based on the notion of China as a military or political threat to the region "would not only be wrong policy, it would also be a bad and dangerous one."

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