The next cold war: under the shadow of North Korea, our clashes with Singapore and China point up the thesis that traditional nation-state rivalries are giving way to an East-West clash

National Review, August 1, 1994 by Owen Harries

Under the shadow of North Korea, our clashes with Singapore and China point up the thesis that traditional nation-state rivalries are giving way to an East-West clash. Can we adapt in time?

|SAM Huntington's ghost lurked in every shadowy corner." Thus the American ambassador to Indonesia reported on the Asia-Pacific regional conference in Jakarta in August 1993. He was referring to the initial impact of Professor Huntington's thesis that we are entering an era that will be dominated by the "clash of civilizations"--conflicts caused by and reflecting cultural differences. Ten months later, I return from another such conference in Kuala Lumpur to report that the impact has not diminished. As we talked difficult dealings with North Korea over nuclear weapons served as a grim warning of the potential costs of cultural incomprehension and antagonism.

It is the spectacular rise of Asia--first Japan, then a duster of small Confucian "tigers," now China itself, and tomorrow probably India--that gives Huntington's thesis most of its plausibility and relevance. For the first time in several centuries, the primacy of Western civilization is under serious challenge.

Several recent episodes in Western-Asian relations have given dramatic evidence of how cultural differences can lead to conflict. Although most Asian countries welcome an American strategic presence in the region and although a vast and mutually beneficial economic relationship now exists, questions of "values" and behavior have soured relationships significantly. In the MFN dispute with China, different views of human rights and their relationship to public order and economic progress precipitated a serious controversy. In the case of the Singapore caning, different views as to how heinous certain forms of misbehavior are, and how acceptable or repugnant certain kinds of punishment, led to bitter exchanges.

These disputes have occurred because the government of the United States, and sections of its media and public, have taken strong exception to certain aspects of the behavior of an Asian government and demanded change. In doing so, they have behaved as the West has regularly behaved toward non-Western governments for the last two or three centuries--i.e., they have laid down the law from a presumed position of superior enlightenment, making their demands not in terms of merely Western values but of universal ones; or, more accurately, acknowledging no differences between the two: Western values are universal.

Bearing in mind the civilizational solidarity postulated by Huntington, it is worth noting that the initiator in these instances has not in fact been "the West" but the United States. To the best of my knowledge, the European countries have mostly kept their distance. (Indeed, in Britain the main interest in caning recently has taken the form of largely sentimental recollections in the correspondence columns of The Times concerning the prowess of an ex-headmaster of Eton.)

On the other side, however, there has been an impressive closing of ranks. Instead of submitting to Western pressure, or resisting passively and silently, or merely blustering--all common responses in the past-Asian spokesmen have taken the offensive and launched a sustained intellectual campaign.

If Huntington is right, these episodes are worth looking at closely, both as a foretaste of what is to come and as lessons in how best to respond when it does come.

What Policy? What Doctrine?

WHAT CAN be said about American behavior in these episodes? Well, let's begin with some things that should not be said. First, it is not true that the American action in these cases represents a new American "doctrine." I say this because the American ambassador quoted the Malaysian deputy prime minister, Anwar Ibrahim, as telling a regional conference that the Huntington "doctrine" (his term) represented the predominant view of Western intellectuals and the central core of U.S. policy--and getting a spontaneous round of applause for doing so. The minister was wrong in every particular.

--Huntington does not proclaim a policy "doctrine" but offers a hypothesis as to what is likely to happen.

--That hypothesis does not represent the predominant view of Western intellectuals, who are currently deeply divided both about the state of the world and about the proper direction of American foreign policy. It would be difficult to name a handful of prominent politicians, academics, or intellectuals who would accept Huntington's thesis without major reservations.

--Again, the most common criticism in America today of the Clinton Administration's foreign policy is that it has no central core, that it is fundamentally incoherent, vacillating, and unserious--in the sense of not relating ends to means, and of not relating purpose to posture. To identify anything--let alone something as sophisticated as Huntington's thesis--as its central core would be to flatter it outrageously.

Second, I believe that it is a mistake to interpret American behavior as representing a patronizing and contemptuous sense of superiority toward China, or toward Confucian countries in general. Western attitudes have historically been, and are, much more complicated than that, inclined as often as not to see Confucian societies as paragons rather than inferiors.