Concern About Rights and Troops

Well before last week's visit to Seoul by Under Secretary of State Philip Habib and General George Brown, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Asian leaders were getting seriously worried about U.S. foreign policy in the Pacific. Time Inc. Corporate Editor Ralph Graves talked with several of them during a three-week visit to South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines. His assessment of Asian attitudes:

The real business of Asia is now unmistakably business. Every country seems to be chasing after the Japanese economic miracle. Everybody is talking about growth rate, per capita income, foreign investment, development loans. Office skyscrapers and luxury hotels are blooming in Seoul, Manila, Jakarta and Singapore. Hong Kong is wall-to-wall skyline. It is all very heady and hopeful.

But two subjects that have little to do with economic development are preoccupying the leaders of Asia. Both issues have been raised by the Carter Administration, both are unpopular, and both cause deep concern. They are the proposed withdrawal of U.S. ground troops from South Korea, and the abrupt new emphasis on human rights.

Two Pillars. South Korea's Prime Minister Choi Kyu Hah, a genial bear of a man, calls the U.S. troops in Korea and Europe "two pillars of policy" that deter Russia from any adventures either eastward or westward. In his view, as long as both pillars stand, Russia must be cautious. If one is removed, Russia may feel free to behave differently.

Seoul, South Korea's capital, does not seem beleaguered. Now a city of 7 million, it was 1.5 million in 1950. Its streets are clogged by construction work. traffic jams and other symbols of its emerging prosperity. Traffic is so bad, in fact, that the government has taxed gas up to $1.65 per gal. and has put a 33% tax on new cars. Can a city with this kind of problem really be worried about military matters? It can; North Korea's forces along the 38th parallel are only 30 miles away.

South Korea sees itself as militarily strong, but facing an extreme hazard. Every Korean leader seems to have a map in his mind and a geographic lecture on his lips: the country is the tip of a small peninsula at the edge of the Asian continent. It faces not only the intransigent opposition of North Korea on its only border, but beyond that the land mass of both China and Soviet Russia. At its back and sides, South Koreans repeatedly point out, there is only the sea.

In capital after capital, Asian leaders ask what will happen in the area when U.S. forces are gone. History bedevils them. Will the Japanese defense force become a real defense force at last? Perhaps even a nuclear force? One head of state--speaking very much off the record--suggests that by the 1980s there will be a new generation of Japanese leaders with no sense of war guilt and with none of the restraints that such guilt imposes. He does not care for this prospect one bit. Whatever happens, he predicts that the U.S. withdrawal will create "a new situation with deep implications."

The concerns about President Carter's human rights offensive are also deep but quite different in nature. Asian leaders are not afraid of Carter's insistence on human rights, but they are baffled and irritated. The national security repressions in South Korea, the martial-law regulations in the Philippines, the political imprisonments in Indonesia, are all violations of democratic rights. But since these countries consider themselves allies or friends of the U.S., they wonder if the President really understands their problems. "Carter must know who his friends are in Asia," said Imelda Marcos, wife of the Philippine President and second only to him in personal power. In the course of a passionate four-hour plea for understanding, she observed: "You will never get another friend in Asia like Marcos. We both grew up saying the Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag in school. But Marcos is a Filipino. Don't ask him to be an American."

The human rights campaign strikes many Asians much the same way it does the Russians--as interference in their private affairs and problems and an affront to their sovereignty. Even Communist Chinese in Hong Kong, huddled around a lunch table in a local restaurant, shake their heads in disbelief. "Why does Carter want to cause such trouble with his own allies?"

Over and over, Asian leaders ask if the U.S. appreciates the difference between their situation and ours. Nam Duck Woo, the mild-mannered, professorial Deputy Prime Minister of South Korea, normally speaks so softly that one must listen with close attention. But his voice rises clearly on human rights: "There is not one developing country in the world where Western democracy really works. The government in a developing country must give guidance, direction, stability. It is the only way to grow. If students are in the streets all the time, everybody is nervous, business suffers. We cannot afford it."

The students have not been in the streets of Seoul for two years, partly because the universities are under close government supervision and partly because the academic program has been stiffened so that the students have something to do besides raise hell. The Koreans set security and the avoidance of chaos as their highest priority. If that results in a bad human rights image, says Prime Minister Choi, "we will just have to accept a bad image."

The Filipinos have fewer rights and freedoms than they did before President Ferdinand Marcos imposed martial law. It is instructive to watch Marcos conduct a session of the Batasang Bayan, the hand-picked legislative council, which assists him in drafting new laws. He stands on the podium, cool and handsome in an open-necked barong tagalog (formal shirt), gavel at the ready. "Is there any objection? The Chair hears no objection." There is no discernible pause between the question and the statement. Bang goes the gavel, and the motion is carried. So much for debate and dissent. Yet there is wide agreement among Filipinos and foreign businessmen that before martial law the country was on the verge of disintegration. "It is easier to run a revolution than a government," Marcos says.

Lee Kuan Yew, Prime Minister of Singapore for the past 18 years, is probably the shrewdest, most effective leader in Asia. He sits in a comfortable easy chair, a cushion at his back. He wears a light gray windbreaker, a sort of Asian Eisenhower jacket that seems singularly informal for a man reigning from Istana, the gorgeous white palace that once belonged to the British Governor. Carter is sincere about human rights, Lee Kuan Yew believes, but he should accept the world as it is: many different societies, different cultures, different stages of development. "Now we hear that we have to be like you, or else we are not civilized. The Russians say that there are many different roads to socialism, and that sounds good to new nations. But the U.S. seems to be saying that there is only one road to democracy."

High Standard. Lee thinks the U.S. is in danger of setting such a narrow definition of democracy that only a few West European nations can possibly comply. He suggests that instead of imposing the highest common factor for human rights compliance, the U.S. should encourage the lowest common denominator for democracy. It is Lee's contention that the direction of a society, especially a developing society, is more relevant than its ability to meet some unrealistically high Western standard. He sums it up this way: "You should ask whether a country is trying to move toward a more tolerant society where the individual has value, or toward a more repressive society where the individual is subservient to the state."

American influence, investment and protection are welcome to many Asian countries. But the leaders of these countries are saying that America's latest initiatives are unwelcome. We are being asked if what we are now trying to accomplish is worth the price. Or if we even realize what the price is.

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