Where will history place Lee Kuan Yew? Tom Plate  ;  The author of Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew in the Giants of Asia book series; His next book is The Fine Art of the Interview; He is the distinguished scholar of Asian and Pacific Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles

JAKARTA POST, 24 Maret 2015

                                                                                                                                     

                                                                                                                                                           

My differences of opinion with Lee Kuan Yew (which included views about the future role of China’s Communist Party and other matters, but no matter here) included one about the character of his political genius. For that, as any fair-minded observer of the founding father of bustling modern Singapore knew, was what he was. But what was its nature? Lee and his followers, which much of the time included most of the people of Singapore, showed the world that economic self-improvement had to have public policies grounded in best-practice pragmatisms rather than in ideological schematics. It also required hard-working citizens sharing the vision to get off the ground. Whether your political system was argumentative-parliamentarian, messy-democracy or shut-up authoritarian, the people had to be brought along and had to believe in the leader’s way of moving forward if they were to give it their best. LKY, as he used to sign his private notes, convinced people that his way — hard work, scientific public policy, political-party monopoly, clean government and media as ally, not as smarty-pants second-guesser — would work if given a chance. And it did. In his own phraseology, Singapore went from Third World to First in almost a generation’s time, never stopping for a rest, much less to entertain a second guess or tolerate second-guessers. I once offered him the formulation of the late Isaiah Berlin, the great Oxford don who imagined political genius in the manner of Tolstoy. The great ones were either “hedgehogs” (one giant idea brainiacs) or “foxes” (a million clever approaches). Their political sense was either multifaceted (the ultra-alert fox who knew a thousand ways to survive) or the one-big-idea porcupine (with but a single survival move — yet it was a prickly doozey!). The wartime Winston Churchill with all his many tricks was a fox; Albert Einstein, who could barely cross a street without help, was nonetheless the hedgehog with his one world-changing idea. LKY, only grudgingly accepting my Berlin-Tolstoy dichotomy, insisted he was a fox, not a hedgehog: “You may call me a ‘utilitarian’ or whatever. I am interested in what works.” He had a strong argument. Really good and sophisticated governance requires a map of multiple routes to the future, not to mention mature management of the present. Critics belittled the result as a “nanny state”, but not every nanny was as competent and diligent as this one. Little Singapore’s journey also needed a team of like-minded colleagues and a talented people, with a Confucian culture that could tolerate exceptionally strong and singular leadership. So I accepted his demurrer and had to face facts; Einstein, after all, had worked more or less alone, not with a Cabinet full of ministers and dozens of problems pressing daily. Besides, who would know him better than himself? Perhaps only his late wife Choo understood what was behind that iconic public face that at one hour could be so gruff and cold and intimidating — and two hours later so charming and gracious and reasonable. I told him I marveled at how well Singaporeans understood him, but he shook his head and snapped back: “They think they know me, but they only know the public me.” My sense is that, for all his writings and interviews, and for all the media on him, he was right about that. So we await the some future longish biography that gets to the real bones-and-flesh human man behind the larger-than-life public figure. For the interim version, I tried — probing him with annoying questions about his sons, including the current well-performing prime minister; his daughter, the brilliant medical professional; and of course his late wife. And that did let in some light. But when once asked whether there was anyone alive who was like him, he answered without apology: “I do not know of any person who is most like me.” About that — again — he may very well have been right, but if so, that helps make my case for awarding him hedgehog honors despite everything. Sure, I’m stubborn about this, but let us note that in one conversation he summoned up the notable figure Jean Monnet (1888-1979), whom history reveres for his prophetic vision of European unity, by way of a Common Market and European Union. For this one singular contribution, Monnet gets marked as a political hedgehog. So how is the Lee Kuan Yew a modern Monnet, as I suspect history will say? We will require more time to helicopter upward for the illuminating panoramic view. But in my mind with each year in power he grew into a composite figure, a dual icon of sorts where a modern-day Plato (glowing with the vision of an ideal city-state run solely by the virtuous) fused with a modern-day Machiavelli (calculating strategies to keep the “soft-headed” utopian vision from getting its head chopped off).  To govern in these fraught times, I am afraid to say it but you need to be both. The political hedgehog in effect must have two sides to his political being. As Machiavelli insisted, it was best if the leader was both feared and loved. Because Lee Kuan Yew had it all, he became a political giant of his time. Personally, over the decades, I met no one most like him. I wish his surviving family and relatives the very best, and thank him for all the time he offered me — and for all the wisdom and insights he gave me that I hope will never leave me. ●

Why cartoonists are the ‘mad men’ of journalism Tom Plate  ;   The writer was an editorial page editor at the Los Angeles Times, New York Newsday, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and Long Island Newsday. His published memoir on these experiences is titled Confessions of an American Media Man

JAKARTA POST,  11 Januari 2015

                                                                                                                       

As the editor in charge of the opinion pages of newspapers in New York and Los Angeles, what was the hardest part of my job? Dealing with annoying, demanding bosses? Calming down angry readers? Smoothing the enormous egos of neurotic writers? No, that was the easy part. The hard part was supervising the truly creative artist — the crazy mind that could twist a lance into your brain to make a point that you knew in your heart was true but mere writers somehow found impossible to capture quite so deftly. Yes, I am talking about newspaper and magazine editorial cartoonists — truly the “mad men” of journalism. In various positions at different US newspapers, my job was to “supervise” them, an almost impossible task. Make no mistake about it: at their lampooning best, which is when they are at their meanest, they hardly ever show any mercy — only respect for the truth… even if it is the truth as they see it. They don’t care how you see it. There are no soft edges to their work. And they know how to hurt. Sorry to say, but most of them enjoy it, at least the good ones with whom I worked. Not everyone sees the issues of the world as they do, of course. And the number of angry phone calls I took from readers who were outraged by an editorial cartoon in the newspaper is testament to that. The list includes mayors, governors, university presidents, religious leaders — sometimes it would never stop. And I also got many angry, worried calls from my bosses, especially newspaper publishers. American publishers like to make all their readers happy. But the editorial cartoonist views his work not as happy-making or newspaper marketing, but as newspaper truth-finding. Their view is that if everyone’s happy, they are doing something wrong. As a “supervisor”, there’s really not much you can do. On very rare occasions, it’s possible to simply not publish their cartoon — I remember once spiking a tasteless drawing of Saddam Hussein “mooning” to the world. But if you do that too often, you’ll break the spirit of the artist (and of largely admiring employees) and hate yourself later for not having had more editorial courage. You would thus risk defeating the whole purpose of the newspaper: to fervently engage readers in the news, issues and controversies of the day, whether through the relatively civilized rationalities of expression through prose or through the relatively barbaric “emotional drone attacks” of the editorial cartoonist. A few of the esteemed cartoonists with whom I worked have been awarded Pulitzer Prizes — and many other top awards. But, in recent years, in US newspapers at least, the edgiest of them have retired, or been quietly retired. The new crop seems, to me at least, tamer, even worryingly polite — more like genteel illustrators than the noisy but brilliant drunk at the family dinner table. The passion somehow seems to have diminished. But not in Paris: tame was not a word to describe the caustic cartoons of Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical magazine that was the target of an attack by armed gunmen that killed 12 people, including journalists, cartoonists and police officers. We should understand that the range of its cartooning was hardly confined to Islamic targets; skewered by the staff was just about every imaginable sacred cow under the sun. Charlie Hebdo was, in effect, an equal-opportunity insulter. But what is more of a sacred a cow than religion of any kind? Note that in this horrific attack, the authorities indentified the assassins as French citizens of Islamic persuasion. French television footage showed armed men wearing balaclavas leaving the offices of the magazine shouting in French: “We have avenged Prophet Muhammad. We have killed Charlie Hebdo.” The problem here is that speaking the truth — or drawing attention to it, if not shouting at the top of your artistic lungs — can be a risky business. Some people (as we see) just can’t handle the truth. There will be more bloodshed of this kind. This little magazine is now more famous than ever, and its slain employees have become martyrs. In fact, the grisly event is a museum-quality statue to the power of the artist. The gunmen may have killed the magazine’s staff, but they have only rekindled the spirit and reason of the satirical magazine in general. They did not realize it, but these Islamist assassins met an enemy that, over time, will defeat them. They met the truth. ●

Listening to what Asia might have to say Tom Plate  ;  The author of many books about Asia, from “Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew” to the current “In the Middle of China’s Future: Tom Plate on Asia”

JAKARTA POST, 11 November 2014

                                                

                                                                                                                       

If our future is not to be dulled by the dead weight of the past, then a clear-headed prioritization of the issues of the 21st century needs to be undertaken. This means keeping Asia — and thus China — in the top spot of the global conversation. President Barack Obama’s diplomatic trip this week to Asia is welcome indeed. President Barack Obama has only two years of his eight-year presidency left but that’s enough time for a more original, deeper contribution to the Sino-US history book than he has made so far. An eventual hot war between the two would not only be unaffordable but would be injurious to everyone’s health. A brilliant US-China policy could prove a kind of global affordable care act. Up to now the much-hyped US “pivot” to Asia has been almost a self-deception, with Washington’s mental energies glued to Syria far more than, for example, strategically situated Singapore. For understandable reasons of all-consuming domestic political pressures — more than any lack of international common sense — Washington is still ensnared in the miseries and poisons of the past. This has led to missed opportunities for carefully thought out, if inherently complex, China initiatives. Instead of continuing to be absorbed by the likes of Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu or Syria’s Assad, Obama and his team over the next two years should spend more of their foreign-policy energy on Asia. There should be no reverse pivot back. It is utterly foolish to assume that China’s President Xi and Premier Li Keqiang don’t have much to offer; in fact they impress almost everyone as being very capable indeed. And it is absolutely stupid to believe that simply because they are of the Communist persuasion they shouldn’t be consulted and listened to by the US president and his team as often as their attention can be engaged. Only the moral infant — or the intellectually insecure — is attentive only to those with whom basic agreement is foretold, or easy to achieve. Our diplomacy needs to get out from underneath the intellectual sloth of its bureaucracies and mix it up more with people who can bring something new to the table. In fact, there are a number of Asian leaders, especially Singapore’s Lee Hsien Loong, Indonesia’s Joko Widowo and the Philippines’ Benigno Aquino, who can offer America different and invaluable perspectives. The world, as we all know, is now all but a universal global entity. We really all are in this together. Let us listen more to others. After all, with unprecedented rapidity and scale, China ought to win some sort of global prize for so dramatically improving the economic lot of its 1.36 billion people. What the sprawling nation has accomplished in the last three decades is almost unbelievable — and probably unprecedented. On the tiny population end of the scale, of course, there is Singapore, which deserves some sort of global award for the best overall selection and implementation of national public policy over many decades. It has been some show there. The Philippines doesn’t get much positive publicity, of course, but it has been making healthy strides, and resolutely deserves Washington’s notice for remaining a democracy — unlike Myanmar, which has never been one, and Thailand, which apparently doesn’t again want to be one. Even shamefully backward and scary North Korea, which has now dramatically released two captive Americans, finally looks to be considering joining the Asian parade. Indonesia is home to more Muslims than any other country — might not its new president be worth America’s rapt attention on certain issues? Huge obstacles threaten to derail the through-train to the future. The list — from the troubling unsettlement in Hong Kong (a situation which Beijing needs to negotiate further along careful lines) to the ever-present potential of religious extremism throughout the region — is long. But only one issue consistently merits top ranking. That is the relationship between China and America. Sure, the governing elites of both countries should be able to maintain it at a minimum level — say, at least above the boiling point. But is that the best that we can do? Inspired statesmanship on both sides of the Pacific needs to raise the relationship to new heights. That’s the real test for the governments in Beijing and Washington — taking it to the next level when many others seems pessimistic and tired and stuck in the past. This is the challenge of our epoch. As far as I am concerned, the presidents of America and China cannot meet often enough. What’s more important? Crossing into the frontiers of the 21st century means taking on the challenges of the new. The new now is the rise of Asia — led by China. It’s rather obvious if you stop to think. ●

How to complicate an already-complicated relationship

How to complicate an already-complicated relationship Tom Plate  ;  Journalist and professor Tom Plate’s new book is “In the Middle of the Future: Tom Plate on Asia”, due out in Oct; He is Loyola Marymount’s distinguished scholar of Asian and Pacific Studies and the author of the award-winning and best-selling Giants of Asia series

JAKARTA POST, 22 Juli 2013

  

On the whole, a recent trip to China left me more hopeful than ever about the all-important US-China relationship. Media officials, journalists and journalism students alike (my basic happy audience in three mainland cities) clearly want the relationship to improve. 

They want Americans to understand China better. For our part, every authoritative poll shows Americans wanting to think the best of China. 

Which is why I left China so worried — I worry about the way we sometimes tend to talk about each other. We need to be more careful. 

Maybe I do worry too much but it does seem to me that our actual relationship is actually better than the words we sometimes use to describe it. 

Recently I have noticed two horrible phrases in particular befouling the Sino-US vocabulary, like unwanted bats buzzing in on bad radar. They add stress to the relationship by emphasizing an unpleasant past instead of moving forward. 

On the US side, I call your attention to the phrase “containment of China”. On the Chinese side, the phrase they sometimes use is “peaceful coexistence”. I hate both of them. Let me explain that in international diplomacy, which traffics in issues of war and peace, loose language can cause problems. It is better to use careful language than risky stuff.

The “containment” concept famously emerged from the tense and extended Cold War with the former Soviet Union. It was the core operational idea behind the Western alliance’s strategy to push back on the Soviet Union’s fearsome propensity to annex contiguous provinces, such as all of Eastern Europe, by force or threat of force. 

But that’s not the situation today. China is not the same as the former Soviet Union, and it never has been. Millennia of history inform us that China ticks to a different clock, aiming to be viewed (and in fact to become) the undisputed geopolitical and honorific center of East Asia. It’s not more territory for which it lusts but belated respect and, in some modern sense, economic tribute: Beijing, after all, is looking at 1.3 or 1.4 billion mouths to feed. 

So let us make sure we know what we are talking about. A policy of pulling “containment” out of the Cold War fridge to defrost it for new recycled usage strikes me as intellectually lazy and dangerously misconceived. 

It might lead the West to slip and slide on a basic misconceptions and thus misunderstand motives and misinterpret methods.

For example, China’s quarrels with neighbors over neighborhood islands may seem silly and indeed foolishly provocative to us, and at our level of analysis they are just that. But on their level the effort represents not expansion but restoration. In his perceptive book “On China,” Henry A. Kissinger cites as an illustrative example China’s military brushes with Vietnam as a strategy of trying to avoid being ganged up on again. 

It feared Hanoi’s control of all of Southeast Asia (note: not unlike the domino-theorists of the West). His view is that Beijing uses the tactic of “preemptive deterrence” early on in a dispute to prevent a serious blowup later on.  Whether this tactic is wise or even fair is a good question. But if we want to understand why the Chinese are doing what they are doing, we had better read our Kissinger — in other words, do our homework. But have we?

Here’s another phrase I hear these days that’s adding to my anxiety. No one in my experience in the States now uses the two words “peaceful coexistence” any more, as they are so unpleasantly redolent of the Cold War. And in fact I thought the phrase had been buried long ago in Stalin’s tomb. But a recent trip to China proved me wrong. And so again — I worry.

Americans, you see, have a faint and extremely negative recollection about the phase. We recall how Soviet officials often used it – and used it with enormous insincerity. How can we ever forget, right? Then Mao’s China picked up on it. The legendary Zhou Enlai, China’s most famous premier, had it inserted it in the concluding 1953 agreement with India over Tibet. So when I heard it used by high-level Chinese figures I met earlier this month in China, I almost fell over.

To my mind “peaceful coexistence” gives you little more than the mere jungle minimum in a bilateral relationship. And that is far from ideal in this new world of extensive economic interdependence and minute-by-minute inter-
connectedness.

If relations between China and the US have no more lofty a goal than “peaceful coexistence” — if that is the best we are going to be able to do — then, my friends, the world is in very serious trouble.

My dear friends in China: If you throw the term “peaceful coexistence” at the average American, they will think of the Cold War.  But what China understandably wants is for the US to abandon Cold War thinking. It will help, then, if they will cease using phrases that remind Americans of what the Chinese want them to forget. ● 

Thatcher and the Asian Century

Thatcher and the Asian Century Tom Plate  ;  Loyola Marymount University’s designated distinguished scholar of Asian and Pacific Studies, The Author of the Giants of Asia book series, and The Founder of Asia Media

JAKARTA POST, 14 April 2013

  

Margaret Thatcher, who died earlier this week, may not have been one “for turning”, as she dubbed her putative inability to not ever alter basic principled direction. But when the first woman ever to become British prime minister first met the maximum leader of China — Deng Xiaoping in 1982, over the Hong Kong sovereignty issue — she wasn’t keen on losing, either. That’s because the diminutive, chain-smoking, astute successor to Mao Zedong wasn’t “for turning”, either. Just as the Iron Lady had not been intimidated out of the Falklands, Deng wasn’t “for turning” on the issue of China’s takeover of Hong Kong. The return of the territory to Mother China was going to happen whether the Iron Lady and the British people liked it or not — and in the manner that Beijing, not London. wished.  “He was obdurate. […] He was not to be persuaded,” recalled Thatcher of the exchange with Deng in September 1982.  “At one point he said that the Chinese could walk in and take Hong Kong later today if they wanted to.” In 1993 over lunch, when her memoirs were published, I was to press her on this point, playing dumb and saying something like: But Baroness Thatcher, you were steadfast on Argentina, so principled.  Therefore, if the Chinese army poured across the border in 1982, you would have sent the British navy sailing to uphold British sovereign honor, right? Thatcher peered at me over her copy of “The Downing Street Years” on the luncheon dining table and almost scoffed at my silly joust: “My Dear Sir,” I can recall her memorably responding, “when the prime minister of Great Britain orders her armed forces into war, it needs to be a war she can win, not one she will lose. The Chinese would have creamed us!” Principle, you see, works best when it is plausible.  Thatcher knew Britain’s hold over the Hong Kong territories acquired so dishonorably in the prior century was, as it were, history. China’s time on the world stage had come. Even the coldest of the Cold Warriors of the West could see that. Indeed, in the 1993 memoirs Thatcher notes that she had very few cards to play and so responded to Deng’s threat of invasion in the only way she could: “I retorted that they could indeed do so. I could not stop them.  But this would bring about Hong Kong’s collapse. The world would then see what followed a change from British to Chinese rule. Deng, whom the prime minister described as a highly intelligent realist, then looked off as if accepting that a fair point had been made.  “For the first time he seemed taken aback,“ her memoirs revealed. “His mood became more accommodating.” In fact, as history played the Hong Kong handover game out, Britain and Beijing both had to become more accommodating of each other. China got its Hong Kong back but England did not have to give up its dignity.   For its part, London had to learn quickly that the new leaders of China were no dogmatic dolts. And they did learn — but they needed special guidance.  “I received further advice from someone whose experience in dealing with the Chinese I knew to be unequalled…. I discussed our problems … with Lee Kuan Yew, the Prime Minister of Singapore.”  As it happened, Thatcher got some good, levelheaded input: “It was crucial, he said, that we should adopt the right attitude — neither defiant nor submissive, but calm and friendly. We should say clearly that the fact was that if China did not wish Hong Kong to survive, nothing would allow it to do so […]  I now had to accept that China’s concern for its international good name would allow us only so much latitude.  Mr. Lee’s advice therefore confirmed me in the course upon which I had decided.”  And so it was that on July 1, 1997 Hong Kong was formally and unequivocally returned to the sovereignty of Beijing.  For all the possibly sincere tears of Prince Charles and the tactical shenanigans of the last British governor Christopher Patten, history’s march took its planned course. It was then, in my view, that the “Asian Century” was born — if technically three years prematurely. What lesson do we take away from this dramatic story? Certainly in hindsight we can see that the instruction on how to handle China from the then Singapore prime minister — Be calm and friendly, not defiant or submissive — was very good advice then and remains very good advice for dealing with China now.  The West needs to bear in mind that the end of history did not occur with the fall of the Berlin Wall. The rise of China and Asia shows history still churning and turning. And the Hong Kong Handover of 1997 was one of the 20th century’s pivotal turns. What an irony for the Iron Lady herself to have been present at that! Yet, so darn proud when the Soviet Empire fell, the lady had to fold her hand in the face of China’s rise.  But at least give the lady credit. She was a realist. And so should we who survive her in the West be today about China and its continuing rise. ●

No way out of the North Korean imbroglio

No way out of the North Korean imbroglio Tom Plate  ;   The writer is An American Journalist and is the Distinguished Scholar of Asian and Pacific Studies

JAKARTA POST, 07 April 2013

It is probably a good idea to regard the latest bombast of threats from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea as one usually does: As if the antics of the angry child hurling the rattle out of the crib in hopes of getting parents to pay more attention […] and right now! This explanation is satisfactory in part because of our recognition that the child’s room for maneuver is limited by the confines of the crib. So we throw the rattle back in, add in a warm bottle of milk (humanitarian aid), and hope to get a measure of peace and quiet before the next infant outburst. But what if this latest series of tantrums is different? What if the baby is getting bigger and more athletic and increasingly capable of crawling over the top (the notorious DMZ, near the 38th parallel) and into our lives to mess it up forever? As we agree, the first explanation is more comforting. The second one is horrifying. So let us stick with the first and work with that one. There’s enough bad stuff going on in the world to not have to worry about a full-scale war there. In this first scenario, though, the rest of the world just cannot go back to bed and hope for uninterrupted sleep. The new kid on the North Korean block clearly is not going to allow that. Kim Jong-un intends to keep us up at night as often as he can, until we do something about it. And so here we have before us the third consecutive Kim trying to manage North Korea almost as if the rest of the world did not exist. What are we going to do? Well, we do know that he presumably does not want us to fold up the crib and throw it in the dumpster (being what happens if we bomb Pyongyang). We can assume that what he wants — more rationally — is the undivided attention of Mom and Dad. So, here would be my “Handle With Care” policy for Baby Kim: For South Korea’s (new) President Park Geun-hye: Pipe down and stop talking about North Korea. Even the most sensible statement can be twisted into a propaganda pretzel by the North. And your less sensible ones will only prompt the baby to scream louder. You won the election earlier this year.  Unlike in the US, Republic of Korea presidents get but one (five-year) term. What are you running for? Whom are you trying to impress? Play it cool, stay low and do not be baited by the opposition. We all know you are the toughest Margaret Thatcher in Asia ever. For President Barack Obama: Your turn to execute Nixon-to-China. You don’t have to run for re-election, either, and you can afford a foreign policy flutter even if it fails. (And it probably will: You are dealing with a baby, after all.) So how about it? First let Jumpin’ Joe Biden visit Asia and then make believe he is ill and has to go to hospital — when in fact the personable vice president is executing a clandestine play date with Kim in Pyongyang. The aim of the game is to get North Korea to agree to multi-year bilateral negotiations with its cousins in the South. The goal of that is to create a very vague peninsula federalism (one country, two systems — China, Hong Kong style). It’d be a start. Dear Mr. American President and Vice President: Stand not on ceremony. You have nothing to lose. Everyone will admire your courage in even trying. Forget about the inevitable firestorm of criticism from the Republican right. Besides, what have they done for peace lately? Iraq? For UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon: The North Koreans try to demean you with the crude allegation that you are too pro-American. In fact you have done a balletic job in trying to maintain credibility with all members of the UN Security Council (your board of directors being the permanent veto-carrying five).  Besides, North Korea is being silly and disingenuous: After all, everyone knows that it is American love (and recognition […] and aid) that is wanted. So we try this approach then: Let good old Uncle Ki-moon bring along a gift bag of goodies as if one of the wise man deputized to do just that […] totally with Uncle Sam’s blessing.  Final note: The SG will of course want to stop in Beijing first and go over the master plan with the new president there, Xi Jinping. The Chinese trust the former South Korean foreign minister but he will want to take no chances. They have to be on board. This whole trip is such a long shot: so cut the Chinese in — don’t cut them out. Uncle Ban understands this well. Maybe everyone else finally does, too? Okay, young Jong-un up perched precariously there in beautiful downtown Pyongyang: This is what might happen. So you had better try to be on your best behavior, at least if you want to be treated as an adult. Sure, keep throwing that rattle out of the cage. But one day you will wake up and find you are an old man […] with a very tired arm […] and still confined (by your own policies) to the little crib that is called (hilariously) the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea.  Is that really what is best for your people? Or even, in the long run, for yourself? ●

Rodman takes his best shot –but was there a net gain

Rodman takes his best shot –but was there a net gain Tom Plate  ;   American Journalist, A University Professor, Author of the “Giants of Asia” book series

JAKARTA POST, 10 Maret 2013

  

In his recent sprint up to North Korea, former pro basketball star Dennis Rodman may have come across to the world as totally ridiculous in the role of self-appointed emissary for peninsular peace. But somehow his effort did make sense. After all, by accepted standards of nation-state behavior, that country itself comes across as absurd. Doesn’t a Rodman just sort of fit in there? One never knows: When the ridiculous meets the absurd, something unexpected might come out. What might that be? Perhaps the young leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), Kim Jong-un, will seize his current moment in the Rodman-engineered world media spotlight and agree to revive his tragically impoverished poor and awfully governed country.  The DPRK simply is not working. Now might just be the time for a big change of direction. Not only is Kim in the first phase of his leadership, succeeding his late father, but so too is his counterpart in South Korea. That’s Park Geun-hye, the first woman president of the Republic of Korea. Perhaps she can bring the magic of a woman’s touch to the roughhouse macho politics of the Korean Peninsula. What’s more, by dramatic contrast to the south, she heads a tremendously successful country, a rough but practicing democracy, and an ally of the US. It is true that the thirty-something Kim up north can claim none of her advantages, nor could his father or his father’s father claim remotely comparable achievements in developing their nation state. But he is new to the job — and in political terms, the world is still according him his “honeymoon” period. The same is true for Japan’s new leader Shinzo Abe; so too for China’s new leader Xi Jinping, who technically has yet to formally assume the office of president. And then you have the important “old hands”, very key players including US President Barack Obama, in the early months of his second term, and — perhaps as significantly — UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. The latter has but three years to go as only the second Asian SG in the world’s organization’s history (and its first Korean). If Asia, the world’s largest continent, could use anything more helpful than an end to the technical state of war on the Korean Peninsula, it’s hard to see right away what it would be. North Korea may be a mess of discredited ideology, mis-governance and clandestine prison camps, but it is heavily armed, with rockets and nukes and a notoriously bad temper.  The late Warren Christopher, Bill Clinton’s first secretary of state, once told me that the tense peninsula invariably hit the top five on any president’s foreign policy worry list.  After Rodman departed North Korea, in fact, the country’s Army Supreme Command made some new threats. What a dramatic lift a new deal for Korea would give not just Asia but the entire world as well.  The UN’s Ban, an accomplished former foreign minister of South Korea, is eager to want to help erode in any way possible the tension between North and South. Indeed, he probably would give almost anything to see major improvement in peninsular relations before he leaves high office in 2016. To this end, the cautious but whip-smart UN leader will always select negotiations rather than threats as the way forward. Maybe it’s time for a high-level visit from one of the above. Of course none of this makes any sense if deal-seeking VIPs are going to be permitted to do no more than to shoot baskets and fire off jokes. Rodman has already done that. Something else — new and dramatic — has to happen. What’s needed is for the supreme leader of North Korea to wake up and smell the opportunity to change the course of history — by changing the governance course of North Korea. The young Kim needs to seize the moment and receive some VIP delegation to hammer out terms to end, formally, the Korean War; to offer a denuclearization plan; and to propose the outlines of an economic-development master plan that is plausible and credible. Clown-job or not, Rodman’s fast break to North Korea did have the merit of drawing the world’s attention anew to this monster of a geopolitical and humanitarian problem on the Korean Peninsula. Because of his celebrity as a famous athlete — and usually this counts for more in America than the celebrity of a true artist — he is able to turn on the brightest lights on any court on which he chooses to play. Maybe we should keep sending our wacky celebrities up to Pyongyang. What’s the harm — especially if it somehow helps pave the way for serious people to try to do the right thing? ●

Now is the time – but China is not the crime

Now is the time – but China is not the crime Tom Plate ;  the author of Conversations with Ban Ki-moon, the latest in the Giants of Asia book series published by Marshall Cavendish, and is the distinguished scholar of Asian and Pacific Studies at Loyola Marymount University

JAKARTA POST, 25 Januari 2013

For the US and Asia, now is the time, if ever there was a time.  As President Barack Hussein Obama moved officially into his second term, presumably the historic “pivot” to Asia in US foreign policy will proceed briskly apace. That would be good. There is no time to dawdle.  If Asia is not rising, as virtually every expert says, then the rest of us must be sinking. The statistics out of Asia are daunting. Here are a few. Before too long China will have the world’s largest economy. Perhaps even before that, India will have the largest population. Indonesia, oft neglected by the West, has a higher per-capital income than India and — along with Turkey — far more clout in the Islamic world.  Pakistan, a nuclear power as well as an Islamic nation, may be coming apart — as Obama well knows. Japan is still the world’s third-largest economy and may have the second most modernized military (people forget this). And the Japanese are getting weary of playing nice with Beijing.  From a mutually profitable commercial, trading and business relationship, the two East Asian powers seem to be on the verge converting their business into nothing more than pure geopolitical trouble. Then there is the US — sitting across the Pacific and trying to get its mind off Europe and the Middle East, at least a little. We start at the headquarters of Camp Smith at Pearl Harbor (housing some of this country’s most cerebral military leaders) and continue onto the White House 3,000 miles away (hosting a wise president eager to avoid unnecessary wars). Across this span of geography, regional politics and time zones, the new American foreign policy is being recalibrated.  If the recalibration is to be based almost entirely on an attempted isolation of China, this policy will flop. A resurgent (if, like us, problem-plagued) China is already out and about almost everywhere with commercial, diplomatic and — to some extent — military impact. The opportunity for isolation is past. What’s more, should the US prioritize cornering China every step of the way, China will fight back every step of the way. The downside cost to both will be enormous, unnecessary and tragic. It is true that a case can be made for an uptick in US and allied wariness and military readiness.  In fact, that case has already been amply made by Beijing itself.  All but abandoning its former charm offensive of “peaceful rising”, the government has embarked on muscle flexing in the region that is disturbing to neighbors.  The far cleverer Deng Xiaoping must be rolling over in his grave. But if the military and civilian command of the People’s Republic of China is so determined to assist the American Pentagon in its effort to avoid further budget cuts, what can I conceivably say to convince it otherwise? Perhaps the just-installed administration of Xi Jinping, the new Chinese number one, will snap China out of its current in-your-face mode.  One does understand that after centuries of exploitation and oppression, China finally feels it has amazing muscles to flex.  Having had sand kicked in its face for so long, it is time to kick back. But President Xi needs to recalibrate his rising country’s “pivot against Asia”. Whatever its domestic benefits, the ploy isn’t working internationally; it only plays into the hands of those here in America who wish to portray the rising China as the second coming of the old Soviet Union.  And it will permit Japan to re-militarize as a rational act of national security. China’s interests are broad and complex and no one interest group (such as the People’s Liberation Army) should be allowed to dominate its policy direction. For the US’s part, Obama must engage China with respect and nuance. He is said to worry that the prior Bush and Clinton administrations were too easy on China — whatever that might mean. In fact, apart from a few lapses, both administrations got the China relationship more right than wrong and will be so credited by history. What would be remarkably ironic is if the President, who is known to regard any war as the least acceptable option, fashions a policy that leads to conflict with China. That mistake would more than blemish his watch. It would be a blunder worse than president George W. Bush’s unnecessary invasion and occupation of Iraq. In this respect, US foreign-policy officials deserve immense credit for the alacrity with which they have recognized the tinderbox of the Senkaku (Diaoyu) tension. Tokyo is obviously a dangerous fuse just waiting to blow. The visit of Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister, to Vietnam and Indonesia is not just about trade but about China’s apparent ambition to dominate in the region more or less overnight.  China could reduce a lot of tension by reverting to the wise old China that is cunningly cautious, while understanding that no one is going to trample on it any more.  And Obama could help by encouraging and respecting that change of course. He doesn’t have to run for reelection; no one is going to bother calling him weak when in fact the real danger is that the US will adopt too strong-armed an Asia “pivot” and inadvertently risk undermining Asian stability. ●

Government versus the media – but there is a third way?

Government versus the media – but there is a third way? Tom Plate ;  A Career Journalist and University Professor who has worked at Time magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday and other media institutions. He is the author of the Giants Of Asia book series, including Conversations With Lee Kuan Yew, as well as Confessions Of An American Media Man

JAKARTA POST, 20 Desember 2012

Is there more than one rational and reasonable way to construct a news-media system that maximizes overall benefit for citizens (if not just for the journalists)? One provocative answer — courtesy of we-do-it-our-way Singapore — is “yes”. It comes in the course of a rich retrospective on issues of the Singapore media in an implicitly provocative book by the former editor of The Straits Times and former editor-in-chief of its parent media corporation Singapore Press Holdings’ English and Malay newspapers division .  This is oh-so easily stereotyped Singapore — that place that has said “yes” to caning and “no” to chewing gum and almost always “yes sir” to leaders. Well, while the Western media was overdosing on its Asian stereotypes, the former British colony quietly went about its business.  Today, it sports one of the world’s highest per capita incomes, strong public health and educational systems, internationally recognized track records for astonishingly low levels of corruption and high levels of governance efficiency.  How this happened with hardly anyone in the Western media taking notice — until recently — is a telltale story that should be included in every US journalism school curriculum (but of course won’t).  After all, it’s rather embarrassing. The even-keeled voice of retired editor Cheong Yip-seng is nicely pitched to tell the Singapore media story convincingly.  Reflecting as it does on the life of a successful career journalist at The Straits Times, the daily with roots dating back to the 19th century, OB Markers: My Straits Times Story recounts the sometimes rough-house relationship between Singapore’s central government and the news media — but with extreme tact and understatement. It turns out that as prime minister (1959-1990), the hard-wired Lee Kuan-yew showed the same hands-on “tough love” (to put it diplomatically) toward his own media as toward international media intruders. It wasn’t always pretty.  The prudent journalist was careful not to stray outside the “out of bounds” (OB) markers on what the central government permitted as public discourse. How Cheong and his colleagues endured the constant threat of government crackdowns — sometimes under the uncertain threat — is a testament to their makeup. I know I could not have handled the pressure. But then again, I am a cosseted US journalist, raised in the rosy notion of the press as a check on the power of government, happily protected from being unduly messed with by nothing less than the US Constitution.  Cheong never had those advantages, and yet his team produced journalism of sustained quality, despite the obvious limitation by US standards. And so the book airs out a third way of configuring a responsible relationship between the news media and the government — and is thus a challenge to the independent “fourth estate” ideology of Western journalism. The Singapore model of what university media professors call “developmental journalism” arose out of a combination of factors. One was tiny Singapore’s need to present a united polity in a neighborhood that featured giant Indonesia lurking across the waters and antagonistic Malaysia hovering directly to the north. And so the news media needed to be a team player.  Another was the need to globalize its economy rapidly in view of the paucity of natural resources and the relatively small size of the labor force and the local market. Within decades, it became the shining global city that it remains today. The team-player approach appears to have worked. To be sure, the country had on its side a leader often acknowledged as a political genius.  But Lee was a very hard man — and he was especially hard on the news media, which needed to be pounded into partnership with the government, even as it was permitted to retain a measure of credibility with its readers as an honest news source. And so being the top editor at the leading newspaper was a trying job indeed. I cannot think of one top-drawer American newspaper editor who could have navigated those political waters as skillfully. The end result is a possible “third way” for media and government that, in all intellectual honesty, should be studied with an open mind by others. It suggests that media that are primitively hard on their governments may be missing the more important story; and that governments that regulate their media too severely may be losing an essential tool for communicating credible messages to the public. Under proposal by Cheong is the notion that getting the balance right will require a different calibration by every society — and that one media-model size definitely does not fit all. ●