Entering an Uncertain Age

EVEN as skirmishes sputtered on in Viet Nam last week, other Asian nations were already beginning to contemplate the uncertain political future of the postwar Far East. Having dealt in the harsh, simplistic vocabulary of hot and cold war for the better part of a generation, Asian leaders initially had nothing better to offer than uncomfortable cliches.

Japan's Premier Kakuei Tanaka, for instance, opened a new session of the Diet just before the cease-fire with enthusiastic incantations of a "new age," a "turning point" and a "new chapter." Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew recently visited Thailand, where he and his aides discussed plans for Asia's future with Prime Minister Thanom Kittikachorn. Lee foresees "a period of intermission--a waiting for the end of one phase of history and the start of another, which we hope will be a more promising era."

It promises to be a busy intermission, filled with diplomatic talk and travel. Australia's outward-looking new Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, for instance, is due in Djakarta the end of this month to discuss expansion of a bilateral defense agreement with Indonesia. Doubtless he will also lobby for his own dream of a new nonmilitary alliance of Asian and Pacific nations, including China.

Feelers. The Foreign Ministers of the five members of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN)* will meet in a special session in Kuala Lumpur next week. Among other matters on their agenda is whether and how the organization should expand to include Burma, Cambodia, Laos and the two Viet Nams. South Korean diplomats hint that they will not only accelerate their plodding discussions with Pyongyang on reunification but also put out diplomatic feelers to Moscow and Peking.

Tokyo last week announced that Japan would soon send a delegation to Hanoi to discuss reconstruction and possibly the establishment of diplomatic contacts. On White House instructions, U.S. Ambassador Robert Ingersoll promptly showed up at the Japanese Foreign Ministry to caution Japanese officials not to sidle up to North Viet Nam before the cease-fire had proved effective--and before Henry Kissinger had made his appearance in Hanoi. Result: the Japanese mission will almost certainly be postponed.

What the activity adds up to, so far, is that many Asian leaders take seriously the prospect of a multipolar diplomacy emerging in the postwar Pacific. "Before, all of us were living under the umbrella of the great powers," Singapore's Foreign Minister S. Rajaratnam told TIME's Peter Simms, reflecting the uneasiness of many of his colleagues. "Thailand had America. We had Britain. Now they have taken away the umbrellas--and we are really beginning to feel the heat."

In fact, the umbrellas are not quite ready to be furled and put away. The five-power mutual security agreement set up by Malaysia, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia and Britain is dissolving, but only gradually. Although Britain will keep its 2,500 troops in Singapore for as long as they are needed, Australia will withdraw part of its small force; New Zealand may follow suit by pulling its lone battalion out of Singapore and Malaysia. As Vice President Agnew was at pains to point out to his Asian hosts on his current trip, the U.S. does not plan a significant post-Viet Nam cutback in American forces in Asia and the Pacific. A scheduled withdrawal of some of the 43,000 G.I.s remaining in South Korea was postponed so that Seoul could deal from strength in its delicate negotiations with North Korea. Despite the Nixon Doctrine, in short, the Administration does not want to reduce its forces in Asia at a time when it might unbalance negotiations that are now in progress, such as those involving the two Koreas.

That is comforting to many Asians, not the least the Chinese. China's Premier Chou En-lai has been telling foreign visitors lately that he worries that "a certain country"--meaning, obviously the Soviet Union--will use the post-Viet Nam period to seize a dominant role in Asia. Soviet Party Boss Leonid Brezhnev sounded very much the man of peace in his address last week at a reception for North Vietnamese Negotiator Le Due Tho in Moscow, but it would not be surprising if the Soviets renewed their periodic effort to recruit some Asian partners to join their so-called mutual security system.

For that reason, Chinese diplomats, who used to flay "American imperialism" regularly, now hint that Peking would be pleased to see the U.S. keep its bombers in Thailand and the Seventh Fleet in Asian waters for the time being. Peking, apparently, is not yet convinced that a stable new Asia will emerge as the old, explosive years of bipolar confrontation give way to a new four-power equilibrium maintained by the U.S., Japan, China and the Soviet Union.

The smaller powers are looking --perhaps fancifully--to regional solutions to some post-Viet Nam uncertainties. One of the "many lessons" of Viet Nam, Malaysia's Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak said last week, is that "we must scrupulously avoid any entanglement with big-power conflicts." At his country's initiative, ASEAN is championing a somewhat vague plan for "neutralization" of the ten Southeast Asian states under big-power guarantees--a proposal that has already received the support of Australia's Whitlam. The Thais, who would like to see Burma, Cambodia and Laos turned into neutral buffer states, regard the ASEAN plan as implausible. Even if neutralization could somehow be instituted, says Thailand's Deputy Foreign Minister, General Chartichai Choonhawan, "it would probably not mean much."

Passed Over. Not every Asian nation was pleased with the particulars of the nine-point Paris settlement, even though no one wanted the war to continue. India, for instance, was privately unhappy at being dealt out of the supervisory force and then excluded from the 13-member Viet Nam "guarantee conference" that is to convene within the next few weeks. Japan was also brusquely passed over for the guarantee conference in October when the first cease-fire draft was revealed--leading to another Washington-Tokyo crisis of confidence, which was eventually smoothed over by U.S. assurances that the conference would not get into the broader problems of peace in Asia.

But unlike India, which may never have the economic strength to command a pivotal voice in Asian affairs, Japan has a nearly $300 billion G.N.P. that is larger than all the other Asian economies combined. Clearly, Japan must play a major role. But what will it be? In his Diet speech, Tanaka suggested rather half-heartedly that Tokyo might "positively participate" in the shaping of the post-VietNam era by hosting a grand conference of Asian and Pacific nations. It was a half-hearted suggestion because the Japanese Foreign Ministry insisted on watering down what was supposed to have been a major Japanese initiative. The diplomats fretted that a serious effort might flounder humiliatingly with a rebuff from China or some other key nation.

If Tokyo has not developed the international stature it craves, it has also not learned to deal with its image as a coarse "economic animal." Reflecting the thoughts of many concerned Japanese, Tokyo's daily Mainichi Shimbun recently spoke of "a moral obligation to cough up some of the profits [Japan] has made out of this war" to aid the reconstruction effort. So far, the reaction of Japan's industrial establishment seems to be simply that there's gold in them thar nine points. By the reckoning of the Nomura Economic Research Institute, the cost of rebuilding and economic development in the two Viet Nams over the next ten years will reach $12 billion to $15 billion--of which at least 10% to 20% would flow into Japan for trucks, steel, machinery and other materials needed in the reconstruction effort. In short, Japan stands to reap a substantial return for the $1 billion in aid that it has so far pledged to help close the wounds of war.

*Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.