Sol Sanders Archive

In the West, Turkey is in the throes of a constitutional crisis which could decide whether it can become a modern state with an Islamist ethic enshrined in its politics, much as Christian Democracy has been in Western Europe for generations. At stake is not only Turkey’s civil society but its relationship to the European Union which it has wanted to join.

Next door in Lebanon, the confessional state created by French colonialism is again trying to balance its religious-ethnic factions – with its Arab neighbors, not least Syria which has never given up its claims, and Iran, backing factions that could again turn the country to bloody civil war.

Lebanon’s recent wartime neighboring enemy, Israel, as always faces an existential crisis: bled on its northern and southern borders by the growing military capacity of its enemies, Hezbollah and Hamas, who demand its liquidation, Israel has an increasingly enemy in their dangerous sponsor and supplier, Iran.

Tehran, apparently moving inexorably toward nuclear weapons despite dire warnings from the U.S., Israel, and the West Europeans, is torn with internal economic, political and social conflict which could bring on its implosion, but its leadership for the moment remains in the hands of fanatics and international terrorists.

Iraq, still torn by bitter conflict, shows signs of stability with the liquidation of its internal terrorism, but is still wholly dependent on American military support, now jeopardized by the possibility of a new American president who would press for early withdrawal whatever the cost.

Pakistan, hinterland for so much of the world’s terror networks, after acceding to Washington and Lodon’s pressures for political liberalization, is trying, again, to horse-trade away the terrorists’ sanctuaries on its northern frontier.

Afghanistan faces increasing terrorism, not a small part based in those very border tribal areas, with no end in sight for the test of U.S. and NATO forces – the latter engaged in a major conflict far from home bases in what could be the ultimate test for the alliance.

India, stymied in its ambitions for a world role as a rapidly developing economic power, cannot decide whether it wants to clinch a strategic economic, political and military alliance with the Americans or remain wedded to its recent past. There is, too, a growing sense that faltering rural development and its always volatile relationship with Pakistan and its own huge Moslem and other fractious minorities may not sabotage its recent remarkable economic progress.

On India’s northern exposed flank, Nepal, the former Hindu mountain kingdom is in the throes of a revolutionary transition with brutal self-proclaimed Maoists having seized the country — so driven they reject their namesakes in Beijing as revisionists, with frightening tentacles for outlaw movements in neighboring Indian states.

Burma, with backing from China, has a primitive, barbarous regime which not only denies foreign aid for millions afflicted by a recent natural disaster, but is driving its refugees back into devastated areas in an effort to get rice production at any cost, blessed by Burma’s northern neighbor, China, which covets access to Burmese raw materials and the Indian Ocean.

To the east, Thailand, so blessed by nature with abundant resources, is struggling between runaway populism and government accountability with a delicate domestic balance which could come unhinged at any moment with the death of the aging King, the only final arbiter in the situation.

Neighboring Malaysia is moving into a new fraught political era ending its post-independence history when a government party provided stability and economic progress for five decades, morphing into contested government with an Islamicist right and minority Chinese and Indians rebelling against longtime discrimination flowing out of affirmative action for the less aggressive Malay plurality.

Vietnam, through a welter of corruption and repression has finally got its version of the Chinese model off the ground, but suddenly is facing inflation as a result of its minor successes after decades of stagnation under inept and corrupt Communist apparatchiks.

The Philippines, with its heavy dependence on remittances [an estimated $15 billion this year] from eight million [more than 10 percent of its population] overseas in search of livelihood, is facing a crisis brought on by the worldwide economic downturn and rising imported energy and food prices.

Indonesia, a founding member, has withdrawn from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting, and its attempts to bring order to managing its potentital vast hydrocarbon resources, cutting huge subsidies to internal petroleum consumption, bringing on a crisis of the regime.

In northeast Asia, China, for the first time in Communist history, has acknowledged the effects of a disastrous earthquake, welcomed foreign aid and permitted voluntary self-help, always a threat to authoritarian governments, but also instigating a new fierce nationalism and xenophobia as it prepares to meet the test of the Olympic Games in August.

Meanwhile, China’s help – either insufficient or lagging – to its four partners has failed to defuse the threat of nuclear weapons in North Korea, where famine again threatens, and where after eight years of failed appeasement policies, South Korea has taken a new and firmer line toward its countrymen in the North with still uncertain results.

Japan is nursing an all but lame duck administration of Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda facing a demographic catastrophe as it tries to maintain its place as the world’s second economy while playing out an economic bieralization toward a new model after a decade of stagnation in the 90s.

A recent election in Taiwan has returned the Chiang Kai-shek’s old Nationalist Party [KMT] to power, but, ironically, with a party line favoring more conciliatory attitudes toward the Mainland – however those may play out against Beijing’s continuing threat of military takeover against the background of the deteriorating “one country, two systems” policy it promised Hong Kong.

If this sounds like ferment, it certainly is. But since we are speaking of a region with almost half the world’s population that kind of movement might be said to be a commonplace, always a “normal” part of its contemporary history.

Yet, there is a sense that we are entering a new era when the relative stability of the last quarter of a century, since the American retreat from Vietnam, is over.

Add to this picture new evidences of incipient worldwide inflation including rapidly rising energy and food prices on an international level, and one can only anticipate further erratic movement, political and economic, throughout the region.

One of the most important elements in any new configuration would be American policy with a new U.S. administration taking office in January 2009. In fact, any number of American policies affecting the situations very briefly outlined here are, in effect, on hold, either because they are blocked or need additional bureaucratic or Congressional muscle awaiting that new American president.

Despite the soaring rhetoric of Barack Obama for change and the reputation of John McCain for his maverick attitudes in his own party still represented by the lame duck George W. Bush in office for another six months, like the aircraft carrier metaphor so often noted, none of the current U.S. policies would be turned around quickly.

Yet there will be new attitudes and eventually new strategies and policies coming out of the White House which will act and react to many of the changes underway listed here. That combination could well introduce one of the most revolutionary periods Asia has seen since the end of World War II and the 1950-60s decolonization of the region.