Hearts and minds : Influence can be squandered
International Herald Tribune
December 16, 2002
Philip Bowring

It was learned too late that winning hearts and minds might be the key to the Vietnam War. They were lost first among Vietnamese, then among America's allies and finally back at home. Is the same thing now to happen with the War on Terror? Was Saturday's massive anti-U.S. demonstration in Seoul a foretaste of the future?

America would do well to look at the damage that Australia's prime minister has done to Asians' assessment of his country by claiming rights of preemptive strikes.

After the Bali bombing, when about half the 200 victims were Australian, there was sympathy in Asia for the nation's loss. Then up stepped John Howard with hairy-chested remarks which appealed to old isolationist local sentiments and could only be interpreted by the neighbors as meaning that Australia had a right to use force within their territories if it believed that attacks on Australians were being planned from there.

Not only did Indonesia and Malaysia react strongly. Thailand and the Philippines were almost as vehement.

The crux here is not a legalistic one. There may be circumstances when preemption is justified, whether by international law or by common sense, in self-defense. Howard may be technically correct. But that is not the point.

Southeast Asian (and Chinese) suspicions of Australia's white, Christian and Western identity and its close alliance with the West, as evidenced by its zeal to play a role in Afghanistan and Iraq, have been revived. Twenty-five years of Australian diplomacy, liberal immigration policy and multicultural policies has been set back.

That may be unfair. The neighbors' ire may be exaggerated. But the fact is that Australia has to live in this region. It cannot pretend that it is moored off the coast of California.

Howard's statement ignores how these countries deal with each other. The region has plenty of disputes which cross national boundaries. Muslim secessionists in the southern Philippines get help from some Malaysians, minority rebels in Burma from Thais, Acehnese separatists from several sources. Irian rebels get verbal support in Australia. Nations recognize that these problems are not to be resolved by preemptive cross-border action. State-to-state cooperation must go on in the broader national interests.

Australia is economically and militarily more powerful than its neighbors, and has influential Western friends. But ultimately its security and peace of mind rest on its regional relationships as much as on a faraway power which might view it as dispensable.

Likewise for the United States. Maintaining its overall influence, its reputation, its leadership is far more important and far more nuanced than fighting Al Qaeda. That group can kill a lot of people but it has no way of inflicting potentially mortal damage on the United States the wayJapan did in 1941.

Nor does Al Qaeda itself stand any chance of gaining significant numbers of converts to its cause other than at the fringe of Islamic society. The vastly bigger danger remains that the U.S. response, like that of Howard after Bali, might alienate the very friends or neutrals on whose support or acquiescence broader influence depends.

Do not imagine that the surge of anti-Americanism in South Korea is simply an atavistic reaction to an accident in which two girls were killed by a U.S. military vehicle. Do not imagine that just because Malaysia's Mahathir bin Mohamad is an opinionated authoritarian, the United States can afford to regard his views on the threatened war against Iraq as irrelevant.

If the United States cannot keep on-side the leader of a modern, moderate, capitalist and even reasonably democratic Muslim nation, there is scant chance of its global influence surviving intact, whatever the outcome of a war.

Sadly, the U.S. propaganda machine seems devoted to making claims about Iraq that are regarded with skepticism by allies. There have been bogus interviews with "senior Al Qaeda operatives" threatening nuclear attacks. These are presumably supposed to strengthen solidarity in the War on Terror. But they may end up giving bin Laden's people more credit than they are due, or angering allies who remember how the concocted Gulf of Tonkin "incident" widened the Vietnam War.

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