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What's the likelihood of war occurring in the Asia-Pacific region?
August 19, 2004 War in the Asia-Pacific region is not inconceivable but its extremely unlikely. That's according to Ambassador Kishore Mahbubani, the former Singapore Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York
He made the statement earlier today at the Forum on Regional Strategic And Political Developments, organized by the Institute of South East Asian Studies.
Valarie Tan attended the forum and filed this report.
Mr Kishore Mahbubani the newly appointed Dean of Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore, noted that defence expenditure in the Asia Pacific region has been increasing over the last decade.
But he said that this doesn't mean the region has been preparing to go to war.
He argued that there is no correlation between rising defence expenditures and rising likelihood of war.
"Even though war is a sunset industry, defence expenditure is a sunrise industry. And people assume that if you spend more on defence, it means that there's greater likelihood of war. My point is that, frankly, when countries spend more on defence, it leads to less likelihood of war, because the costs of war become clearer and clearer."
Using the recent example of the Iraq war, Mr Mahbubani said, even though forces from the United States took less than a month to bring down the Saddam Hussein regime, the fighting still continues,
This proves that war is never the easy solution to a problem.
"We all know that the ground situation there is extremely difficult. It seems to be getting more difficult. And the lesson learnt here is that maybe war is never the easy option even for a country like United States. Even with its military power and might, when you go and invade a third world country is actually very painful and very difficult. And that lesson is big enough to be absorbed all around the world. And this makes it less likely for wars to happen."
Mr Mahbubani also argues that threatening moves carried out by some countries are scripted actions designed to send signals to other nations.
"These signals in a sense are part of the game. These signals do not imply that something's going to happen right away."
And the best example to illustrate this, according to Mr Mahbubani, is North Korea.
"The North Koreans have a way of making everybody very scared. They can do it with a few moves here and there, and everyone starts jumping around. Why are they doing it? To bring attention to their issues. And they've learnt very clever ways of doing it. But if you look over at North Korean behaviour over a longer period, it is actually quite consistent, quite rational, with a view to defending their interests."
Another reason why war is less likely now can be found in the nature of inter-nation dialogues.
Mr Mahbubani observed that these have become thicker in levels of context.
One example was America and China.
"When I observed the US diplomats talking to the Chinese counterparts in the 70s and 80s, they were speaking in different languages and they couldn't really understand what each other was saying. Today, the Chinese diplomats have been to Harvard, Stanford, they speak the same language, understand the same issues, the connectiveness of their dialogue is much greater. And that means less misunderstanding and that's the new trend in the region."
The threat of terrorism has also brought Asia-Pacific nations together in areas of cooperation.
"Whatever the differences between US and China, whatever the differences between China and Japan for example, they have a common understanding they have to fight against terrorism which everyone knows is the threat of the day. The new threat of terrorism has brought the region together and given it reason to cooperate with each other."
However, levels of misunderstanding between certain nations are still higher than necessary.
And the former ambassador used the example of America and China over the issue of Taiwan.
He argues that the two countries have no desire to clash over Taiwan.
"In a curious way, you have situation where you have the tail wagging the dog. You have a situation where the 2 major powers do not want the power but the little province, you may call it Taiwan is creating an agenda. And here if I want to make another controversial point, it is basically Taiwanese electoral politics that is driving Chen Shui Bian to take the position that he's taking."
Mr Mahbubani also said that the reduction of 70 thousand US troops from the region doesn't demonstrate America's withdrawl from global affairs.
Rather, globalization has prompted America's continued interest in the Asia-Pacific region.
"The US has the capacity to react to any situation happening in the world today. Even if it doesn't have a standing army present down there. For example, the United States has withdrawn its forces from Saudi Arabia, but does that mean the US presence has gone down? No. Its still very strong and very forceful and there're many ways of being so."
Kishore Mahbubani, the Dean of Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore, ending that report by Valarie Tan. |
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