Harapan entering a grey area, a year before 2020

December 26, 2018

Opinion  |  by Phar Kim Beng

https://www.malaysiakini.com/columns/457606

 

 

Opinion  |  by Phar Kim Beng

COMMENT | As I write this, Malaysia, as governed by Pakatan Harapan, is entering both a festive occasion – marked by Christmas and the New Year – and a festering one too. There are five telltale signs of the latter:

• The tragic death of firefighter Muhammad Adib Mohd Kassim in the Seafield temple riots.
• The 55,000 who gathered in Kuala Lumpur for the rally against the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (Icerd).
• Authorities seemingly forgetting about M Indira Gandhi’s missing daughter, and about Teoh Beng Hock’s death nearly ten years ago.
• Close to 15 percent of Malaysia’ population will be above 60 years of age by 2023.
• About 38,000 Felda settlers getting cost of living aid  and deposits for replanting.

In any one of the above, Harapan has at best either been silent, or belatedly proactive. Meanwhile, the world continues to change in five ways:

• US President Donald Trump deciding on two simultaneous withdrawals from Syria and Afghanistan, signalling the end of American presence in two of the most conflict-prone regions in the world.
• Russia staying quiet on the pullout of American troops, although this strategic withdrawal is akin to the collapse of the Berlin Wall.
• Islamic State and the Taliban also staying quiet, suggesting a deeper motivation to push deeper into the Western world, or perhaps Asia, to wreak more havoc;
• China’s One Belt, One Road initiative, which appeared to be all but irreversible, has been challenged by the Quad (United States, Japan, Australia and India).
• Japan, one of the key powers in the Indo-Pacific region, continuing to shrink in terms of population, thus further heightening its insecurity.

These are dangerous times. There are some quaint parallels: the elan of the Vietnam War, when Communist forces pushed forward from the north to south in 1975; the fall of Kabul in 1989; the Russian incursion in Georgia in 2008; and the slow but organic militarisation of South China Sea from 2011 onwards when China, for the first time, referred to the area as its “core interest,” a term previously only reserved for Taiwan and Tibet.

But there is no telling if Harapan is aware of the whiplash effects of these world events. Political scientist Arthur Stein once warned of the importance of “relative gains” in international relations, wherein all great powers see gains and losses in zero-sum terms.

Granted, Malaysia has a foreign and defence policy that seems to be geared towards the centrality of ASEAN. But there is no telling if it wants to adjust to a post-US-Japanese world and the emerging Sino-Russian world order.

East Asia is entering this post-US-Japanese world. The US had always made it a point to keep Tokyo informed of any dramatic moves.

But now, at the speed of a tweet, Trump proceeded to announce the withdrawal of the US from the theater of the Middle East and South Asia, without notifying its staunchest East Asian allies Japan and South Korea.

Japan got its first taste of the ‘Nixon shock’ when the then-US president announced his plan to visit China in 1971, before Nixon announced his New Economic Programme, which included abandoning the gold standard.

The country would be shocked again when it received no thanks from Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah of Kuwait for its financial contribution to Operation Desert Storm led by then-president George Bush.

What Trump did in recent weeks must constitute a third shock for Japan – a major ally pulling out of two regions at the same time, even with the opposition of outgoing Secretary of Defense James Mattis.

By pulling out of Syria and Afghanistan, Japan must be reeling from the fear that its security relationship with Washington can be subject to the same forces that catapulted Trump to power – populism and the American far right.

China and Russia must also be smiling in glee, with the American admission of the impossibility of conducting simultaneous conflicts in two regions.

Malaysia is entering a world of uncertain geopolitical realities and flux.

What adds to the instability is the fact that it is ruled by a new coalition of four parties now beset by infighting – and one still due for a possibly messy transition at the top.

Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad still looks set to hands over the reins to Anwar Ibrahim, although there are signs that things are less than rosy behind the scenes – such as when the daughter of the latter quit her posts in government.

The new year seems likely to put Malaysia in a pinch as it looks ahead to 2020.

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PHAR KIM BENG is a multiple award-winning head teaching fellow on China and the Cultural Revolution at Harvard University.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.

 

 

The 5 Pluses of Japan

November 14, 2018 By Phar Kim Beng http://www.malaysiakini.com

COMMENT | There are three Japanese policies embedded into Malaysia. The Look East Policy is but one. Even then, Look East involves learning from the rapid economic developments of South Korea and China as well.

Thus, the Look East Policy alone, while necessary, is not sufficient to understand what Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad seems to want to achieve by making three trips to Japan over the last six months.

The other two policies are Malaysian Incorporated, abbreviated as Malaysian Inc, and the policy of sogososha (huge conglomerates).

Second, as a democracy, albeit an Asiatic one, Japan was in a position to explain to the rest of the G7 if the region was heading towards more democracy. To the degree the emphasis was not on democracy but business, Mahathir was hoping that the West and Japan could see Southeast Asia as a location where their foreign direct investments (FDI) could grow. Thus the ritualistic attendance at the Nikkei Asian Conference every June, which Mahathir attends without fail.

Third, Mahathir knows, from watching it intensely from the 1960s onwards, that Japan has capable acts of heroism. While the conversation threads can occasionally veer into “hara-kiri” or ritualistic suicide to atone for one’s shame, it has also headed in the direction of volitional resignation.

When Japan Inc or the government made any mistake, it was adept at either offering a contrite apology, changing its previous behaviour completely or resigning from the positions of responsibility.

Calling the Pacific War a war of necessity rather than a war of Japanese imperial aggression, for example, was enough to make any minister resign within a window of 24 hours. Japan has, and did, learn from the conflicts of the past which is why the Peace Constitution of Japan is something which Mahathir continues to admire, even suggesting as recently as August that it could help Malaysia avoid from being entrapped in any armed conflict.

Fourth, there is a high degree of congruence between the Japan of the past, especially Tokyo Olympics 1964, the first Olympics in Asia, and the impending Tokyo Olympics 2020, which is 18 months away from now. The key point is the Japanese fascination with making things, and the future, better.

Both are events to show case the future of Japanese technology within the context of what Asian technology can achieve. Invariably, this ranges from receiving the athletes at the major metropolises like Tokyo and Osaka to transferring them to other cities for various events. If in 1964 the focus was on bullet trains, in 2020 the key experiment would be driverless cars.

Not brittle nor delicate

Fifth, Japan is not often seen through the optics of strategic balance or to counter to the emergence of China or even North Korea.

When Mahathir became the Seventh Prime Minister in May 2018, he did not block Malaysia from reopening its mission in Pyongyang in North Korea. Yet North Korea, to this day, remains the arch enemy of Japan.

Nor did Mahathir try to pitch Japan against China, another strategic rival to Tokyo. The Mahathir doctrine is about clearing all warships from the South China Sea without fail.

By using Robert Kuok (on left in photo) as a conduit to get to know President Xi Jinping and Vice-President Wang QiShan of China, Mahathir knew he was using a practical “centrist” (and one who is Malaysian, too) to reach out to the top leadership in China.

He wasn’t trying to use someone who believes in transforming Japan into America’s “unsinkable aircraft carrier”, an expression used by former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone during Mahathir’s first tenure as the fourth Prime Minister of Malaysia (1981-2003).

By obviating the importance of the fifth aspect of the Japanese Malaysian relationship, Mahathir is indeed Looking East without being locked into any conflict with Japan’s nuclear and conventional arms rivals in the Northeast Pacific or the East China Sea.

In the months to come, the Japanese and Malaysian relationship can only strengthen when Anwar Ibrahim, the Prime Minister-in-Waiting, also exercises the same level of energy and pulsating pace to keep the two countries locked in a strategic embrace.

There are no signs to suggest that Anwar won’t keep up the tempo with Japan. First, Anwar is a big believer in the “Asian Renaissance,” a theme he explored in the book which he wrote in the 1990s.

He is also an ardent admirer of the Quranic scholarship and hermeneutics of the late Toshihiko Izutsu , one of the best scholars to have ever emerged from Japan.

 

 

Philosopher Toshihiko Izutsu

Anwar  is also a huge fan of Rabindranath Tagore, the Indian writer who was inspired by Japanese Pan Asianists like Ogawa Shumei and Tenshin Okakura at the start of the 20th century. The trio believed that Pan Asianism could be the ideological glue for the region.

Some of the think tanks of Anwar – such as the Institut Kajian Dasar (IKD) and the Institut Rakyat – have had good relationships with the Sasakawa Peace Foundation and the Nippon Foundation in Tokyo. Such links have been cultivated over the course of the last 25 years.

Their ties are not brittle and delicate. In fact, these organisations are keen on working with Mahathir and Anwar jointly. The future of Malaysia and Japan can only brighten when all Malaysians take Japan as seriously as the top two.

When Waseda University, the University of Tsukuba, the Toyo University, and potentially other Japanese education groups begin working closely with Malaysia, the Look East policy will then gain in ascendancy, creating room for similar entities from China and South Korea to do the same in Malaysia.

For now, the key is to send more workers, students, trainees, interns and even future leaders from Malaysia to Japan’s Graduate School of Policy Studies.

By 2020, the Japanese Prime Minister wants a total of 300,000 foreign students in Japan.

It would be an exceptional feat if one-third of them are Malaysians. That would be 100,000 Malaysians who understand contemporary Japan and how she competes with South Korea and China in a healthy manner.

These 100,000 Malaysians will help to move the country towards 2025 – the period when Mahathir believes Malaysia can be a developed country on par with Japan.

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PHAR KIM BENG is a former visiting scholar of the Japan Institute of International Relations in Tokyo.

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.