Even with the end of the Vietnam War, forced upon the US by a home public traumatised by the body bags of some 50,000 Americans, not to mention the deaths of some two million Vietnamese, the US continued to maintain a strong presence in non-communist Southeast Asia. This was possible, thanks to the formation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1967, which was a regional organisation with a decidedly pro-western and pro-capitalist tilt.

However, much changed after the end of the Cold War in 1989. Communism was no more a force to be reckoned with and before long all of Southeast Asia, including Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, turned to the panacea of capitalist development and to establishing good relations with the West. As such, the US deemed it fit in the post-Cold War era to pull out its military presence from Southeast, dismantling its bases and allowing its treaties to lapse by the early nineties. To be sure, social forces within Southeast Asian countries, such as the anti-bases movement in the Philippines and pro-democracy developments in Thailand and the general rapprochement of the Indochinese states with non-communist Southeast Asia contributed greatly to this process. And thus, US patronage of the overt sort became a thing of the past and became by and large unnecessary. In the post-Cold War era, it was more important, for the most part, to seek Japanese patronage and investments.

Indeed, after a tumultuous and destructive period of regional conflict, Southeast Asia was now keen to get on with the business of development. “Develomen-talism” also conveniently provided for many Southeast Asian governments a respite from fully implementing democratic reforms, since economic performance could act as a substitute for political legitimacy, or so it was thought. A sort of implicit motto of the ASEAN states seemed to have been, ‘seek ye first development and all else shall be brought under control.’ However, the economic crisis of 1997-98 showed how fragile was a political legitimacy based entirely on developmentalism.

Back In The US Orbit

But let me now return to the US policy towards the region. After the Cold War and with the broad stability created by developmen-talism, the US had no real reason to have a strong military or political presence as I have argued. However much has changed since September 11,2002, and the US seems to be returning with a vengeance to Southeast Asia in its so-called “war against terrorism”. Some 1,000 US troops located themselves on the island of Basilan in the Southern Philippines to ‘assist’ the Filipino Armed Forces to hunt down Abu Sayyaf militants. The operations conducted over six months, ending this August, supposedly eliminated an important Abu Sayyaf leader (Abu Sabaya) and also saved an American hostage. While these operations have ended for now, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has openly called for the maintenance of strong military links with the US amidst the protest of many civil forces who see the episode as a virtual return to the old US-Philippine relations of the past.

A group of 14 parliamentarians, academics and activists from nine countries visited Basilan to examine the consequences of the US presence on the island. University of the Philippines Professor Roland Simbulan, a member of the International Peace Mission, questioned the necessity for US training, arguing that the Philippine army, which has been fighting counterinsurgency wars almost continuously for the last 50 years, has probably more to teach the United States. The mission suggested that the US operations were merely an excuse to enable Washington to maintain its military presence in the region.

Never mind the US presence in the Philippines, ASEAN as a whole seems to have welcomed the newly refurbished US role in the region. The suave and smooth-talking Secretary of State, Colin Powell, made a swing through eight Asian countries in August before attending the ASEAN Post Ministerial Conference (PMC) in Bandar Seri Begawan. There he was presented with the prize of ASEAN member-country decisions to freeze the assets of alleged terrorists and their associates in their respective countries.

But more was to come. ASEAN went on to sign an anti-terrorism pact with the US to “prevent, disrupt and combat” terrorism. The pact would supposedly only focus on exchanging information and intelligence and building ASEAN’s capability to combat terrorism. Indonesia and Vietnam were thought to have played a role in watering down the pact. The Secretary of State was quick to assure questioners that the US had no intention of setting up military bases in the region but he didn’t rule out bilateral military arrangements. This notwithstanding, it is clear that, willy nilly, ASEAN has been steadily and surely brought back into the US orbit.

The hawkish US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, has been quite unabashed about the kind of foreign policy he would like to see pursued. For him, deposing the Taliban in Afghanistan has been the finest hour of US foreign policy post-911. ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful’ he averred recently, ‘if we could do an Afghanistan on Iraq’ or some words to that effect. In short, the global war on terrorism is supposed to arrogate to the US the mandate to upend all ‘rogue’ and ‘pariah’ regimes in the US book. Even the unfulfilled state of Palestine under the PLO, more or less qualifies for that sort of policy.

The double standard of US policy is lost to Rumsfeld, who is blind to the fact that the support of undemocratic and militant client states has peppered US history up till today. The CIA was particularly famous in the days of the Cold War for plotting overthrows and coups against unfriendly regimes, but as we said before, the war then was against global communism. Now, it’s against global terrorism — or is it global political Islam?

Paying Homage To Bush

Under the Bush Administration, the war against terrorism is not much different from the war against communism of the past. And for Bush, the logic is the same, “if you’re not with us, you’re against us.” Thus it was no surprise that Megawati, Gloria and even Mahathir went in quick succession to pay homage to Bush in Washington, D.C.

The Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore also seemed to waste little time in responding to Bush by putting alleged terrorists and potential terrorists behind bars. We have already mentioned the Abu Sayyaf operations in the Philippines. The Philippine government also obliged with many arrests of alleged Islamic militants, particularly after bombing incidents in the South.

In January, Singapore arrested 13 persons supposedly linked to the Al-Qaeda. The Singapore government has also been pressing Indonesia to arrest members of the Jemaah Islamiah, especially its leader Abu Bakar Bashir, in Indonesia.

In the case of Malaysia, one of the first acts of the government post-911 was to arrest 14 members of the Malaysian Mujahidin Group under the repugnant Internal Security Act (ISA) in April 2002. No evidence was given for the existence of such an organisation nor had it ever been mentioned in the past by government or police spokespersons. Malaysia, however, has been at great pains to deny that Al-Qaeda cells operate here even though Zacarias Mousaoui, an alleged 911conspirator, had been seen in Kuala Lumpur.

The Challenge Of Political Islam

Paradoxically the American-led war against terrorism has unleashed a renewed response by political Islam, which despite all the denials on the US side, sees itself as the target of this new phase of US foreign policy. This said, one should recognise that there are all sorts of shades of political Islam, and common wisdom accepts that there is a continuum between ‘moderate’ and ‘radical’ Islam. But when one surveys recent events in Southeast Asia, now thought to be America’s “second front”, one cannot escape the conclusion that like communism before, the more one demonises the enemy, the more likely it will turn out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Add to this, the unresolved problems of Southern Thailand, the quest for independence in Aceh, the perennial struggle of the Moros (and not just militant ‘social bandits’ such as Abu Sayyaf), the political challenges of the multifarious Islamic parties and groups in Indonesia and Malaysia, and we have a future scenario of more not less conflict with ‘radical’ Islam. This is a challenge which the US is ultimately powerless to meet. Indeed, its very actions to stem political Islam may produce just the opposite effect of strengthening Islamic forces within Muslim countries. It is the countries and the societies in which political Islam has emerged that must find the means and wisdom to meet the challenge of political Islam.

The post-911 world, all would agree, has again brought to the fore the military and political might of the foremost hegemon with the prospect of US unilateralism or dominance in world politics for many years to come. However, whether we have arrived at a unipolar era remains highly moot. I believe there are enough significant global actors and forces, including a global civil society, that can check the excesses of US unilateralism.

More immediately important is that the post-911 world witnesses the challenge of political Islam in various regional and national contexts. We have seen that national states that are unreflexive, unresponsive and insensitive to minorities of Muslim populations do this at their peril and face the perpetual prospect of instability. Conversely, Muslim majority states which are insensitive to the presence of non-Muslim minorities are also doomed to step into an untenable political future, given the presence of non-Muslims in their midst.

The post-911 world cries out for the recognition of certain global realities and for people to place enough faith in human agents to institute appropriate anti-hegemonic programmes on various fronts of multicultural struggles.

Imagine No Hegemon — It’s Easy If You Try…

Let me end this essay with three broad conclusions:

The so-called war against terrorism, which essentially targets political Islam, rides roughshod over the injustices perpetrated by the current globalised world order in which a hegemonic ‘West’, led by the US, still dictates the terms of social, political and economic engagement in most societies. But if truth be told, the underlying problems of economic, social and political injustice across the globe cannot be ‘fixed’ by a new imperialism of the West.

Virtually all territorial states (or so-called nation-states) are multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multicultural in composition and differ on these dimensions only by degrees and thus the imperative for multicultural political practices is self-evident. Models of multicultural practices in liberal states, while addressing the problem, are usually flawed on ethnocentric grounds as are the models of democracy emanating from Asia based on so-called ‘Asian’ values.

The imperative for majority and minority ethnic, religious and cultural communities to negotiate democratic and inter-communal political frameworks of co-existence is ever more urgent. Such negotiations have to be accomplished without the intervention and imposition or via the political manipulation of hegemonic global forces and powers.