Rising Asian nationalism / No Filipino suicides

The phenomenon of terrorism has been so pitched to high heavens, obliterating almost everything else, that another phenomenon, even more important, has been relegated to the sidelines. This is the phenomenon of Asian nationalism. So exuberant was Francis Fukuyama with the end of the Cold War 1989-91 that he envisioned a world – bereft of ideological disturbances – lapsing into peace and tranquility. And so for Fukuyama, it would be "the end of history". For him, history was a world of ideological upheaval between the titans of communism and capitalism, Karl Marx and Adam Smith. Everything was defined in those apocalyptic terms.

It so happened that with the end of the Cold War, Asian nationalism moved from the shadows to the open arena of geopolitics. Very few noticed.

No longer was the world bipolar between the United States and the Soviet Union. Only one superpower remained, America. With Europe economically prosperous but politically quiescent, America finally laid eyes on Asia. And there, the US spotted the flashpoints that could explode in the near future and challenge the supremacy of Pax Americana. There was China first of all – huge, bulging, menacing. Asia and the Middle East alone harbored the "rogue states" (Axis of Evil) of Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Asia alone also harbored the nations outside of the West possessing the nuclear bomb – China, India, Pakistan, now North Korea, possibly Iran.

But what was more, Asia, consciously or unconsciously, was stoking or being stoked by the fires of a new nationalism, resembling the French Revolution of 1789. Asia sought equality, freedom from Western domination. As Paul Bracken wrote in his best-selling Fire in the East, the "common thread of Asian nationalism…is an underlying anti-Western sentiment that goes back to the origin of these states."

The economic dragon countries of Asia have wolfed in and continue to do so the best of US science and technology. Now the "military modernization" in Asia – nuclear and other missiles, bombs, satellite spy techniques, submarine espionage, plus the huge populations of the continent – begins to scare many strategic thinkers in the US. Asian Nationalism, combined with advanced military technology, has replaced the Cold War as a major concern of America and the West.

Says Bracken: "If these (nationalistic) energies become harnessed to its firepower, then the world could be in for a very dangerous era that the West is ill-prepared to understand." Bracken didn’t know how right he was when he wrote that book in 1999.

This seems to be evident in the international uproar against America’s impending invasion of Iraq. It is also evident in the emerging upchuck about North Korea building up a nuclear arsenal kited towards the US. It is evident in the Philippines where US combat forces are beginning to pile in, and a new Filipino nationalism is raising a clenched fist at the earlier beloved, pampered, lionized GI. It is evident in Indonesia where almost a million in Surabaya stormed the streets in anti-American fury. And even in friendly South Korea, the citizenry seethes with anti-American sentiment, something that never happened before.

Is the world in a second nuclear age or, as Bracken asks, "an Asian nuclear age"?

Bracken’s analytical knife goes deep: "The first nuclear age was an outgrowth of the two great European wars of the twentieth century. Deep psychoses of violence within European civilization were at work, bringing forth the ‘isms’ – communisn, nazism, fascism. These thoroughly European ideologies produced poison gas. Dresden, Auschwitz and the doctrine of "total war". Hiroshima and the Cold War did not come from a historical vacuum but from identifiable European origins. The great civilizations of China, India and the Middle East understand this and accordingly reject the idea that the European states are the only ones that can be trusted with the awesome responsibility of the A-bomb."

And so came the Second Nuclear Age.

Asia’s first atomic weapon was fired by China at Lop Nor in 1964. America and the West’s first atomic weapon was fired 19 years earlier on July 6, 1945 in the New Mexican desert. No one ever expected or predicted that atomic weapons would remain a Western monopoly. But still there was the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and this bought precious time. But as Albert Einstein said: "There are atoms in all countries." And so there were atoms in the hermetically-sealed country of North Korea. And a "mad man" Kim Jong-il (is he really mad?) set out to violate the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Now North Korea could have six to eight bombs in a relatively short time and fire them (in a fit of madness?) at the nearest targets on the West Coast of America.

We repeat that the Cold War was a confrontation of ideologies more than anything else. Not so the post-Cold War.

Nationalism in Asia defines the latter, whatever the globalists say. The globalists claim that the nation-state, as defined by the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, is currently in the process of disintegration as science, technology, the market and the hustling, bustling world of trade, investments and finance break down national walls. And we have a globe no longer defined by narrow national interests, but bonded together by the market, an ocean flow of cash and technology. And the ubiquitous Internet.

The nations of Asia do not think and behave that way. They are nation-states par excellence. The nuclear bomb is their passport to international acceptance. It is their main weapon to frighten off America from claiming full sovereignty in the Pacific, from installing itself as the only hegemon in the region. For Bracken, China’s possessing the bomb "is a natural way to reclaim their past". The bomb "rights past Chinese humiliations since it was treated badly by the West".

It is possible that extreme Asian nationalisms engender terrorism, particularly in impoverished Muslim countries. But terrorism, like the Cold War, could be a passing historic phenomenon.

This is a changing world. And America must see, must realize the inevitability of this changing world. The Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire and all other great empires faltered and fell because they could not accept the world was changing. The Western model of economic development was heralded by its architects as the only way to wealth, abundance, political progress. After Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes was held up as the supreme guru.

The Asian dragons insisted more than 30 years ago there is another way – the Asian way. But for the Asian way to succeed, it needed massive doses of nationalism, the will, the energy, the fire to succeed. Most of all, it needed the haunting, painful memory that Asia and the Middle East were once bent and bleeding on the rack of brutal Western colonialism.

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There is today a rash of suicides in Japan. More than 600 Japanese kill themselves each week and it’s largely because the economy remains on crutches and refuses to heal. As the suicides increase, Japanese blame the failed economic policies of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. The suicides jump in front of trains and buildings and hang themselves. The International Herald Tribune reports that last year was the fifth in which more than 30,000 Japanese killed themselves, "the highest suicide rate in the developed world". The paper explains further:

"The surge in Japan’s suicide rate closely tracks the decline of the world’s second biggest economy. In the last decade, suicides have increased nearly 70 percent among men, the country’s traditional breadwinners. It is also significant that largest increases in self-inflicted death have been among middle-aged men."

Ah, so desu ka!

If the track suicide record of Japan should be replicated in the Philippines because of a battered economy, tens of thousands of Filipino males would have taken their lives by now. But Filipinos, no matter if the economy is flat on its back, do not commit suicide. Life in the Philippines is harder now than ever before. But not to worry. Filipinos smile even when so many wolves howl at their door.

Why is this so? There is of course a difference of culture. Japanese take life seriously, work very hard to earn a living, take great pride in being heads of the family. When the economy deprives them of jobs, or when a mincing livelihood keeps them in great debt (bad loans have been the bane of Japan’s economy) – they lose face. It is amazing that under Japanese culture, the Tribune reports, "responsibility for all corporate debt lies with the individual." Stricken consciences.

One would sometimes wish there were such suicides in our country.