Asia’s Politically Tone Deaf Leaders

The world’s top leaders almost never ask me for advice. But it’s clear, to me at least, that a few of them could use it. So here’s some, whether they want it or not:

* Malaysia’s prime minister needs to idle that motor mouth of his. True, in his 16 years as the nation’s leader, Mahathir Mohamad has done much for his country. Not that much lately, though. Every time he opens his mouth, out comes some silly anti-Western bluster and down goes the stock market and the value of his country’s currency. He’s not the only reason, of course, but Malaysians are beginning to wonder how much more of his crankiness the country can afford. “There are foreigners, and foreigners,” he declaimed recently, saying that Malaysia preferred to deal with only nice foreigners (i.e., not “evil” currency speculators like George Soros, who unkindly termed Mahathir “a menace to his own country”). Mahathir put the choice thusly: “Some [foreigners] are lovely and beautiful. Others are horribly ugly. Some are rogues, some are geniuses, some are really friendly people. I am not against foreigners, but I am against rogues.”

That’s an amazingly bush-league statement from a serious politician. One can only hope, for Malaysia’s sake, that all those foreign “rogues” who currently have money socked in Malaysia don’t take the prime minister’s slash-and-burn rhetoric personally and hustle their dough out of there. Up-and-coming Malaysia is much better off when Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who doubles as the finance minister, does the talking on economics. His proposal that the International Monetary Fund monitor and somehow buffer unusual foreign exchange trading so that the currencies of developing countries are not exposed to unreasonable short-term whirlwinds is a better pitch to foreigners than Mahathir’s ravings.

* Japan’s prime minister is starting to disappoint people. Imagine: Ryutaro Hashimoto recently tried to install a convicted bribe-taker in his cabinet. Even his own Liberal Democratic Party couldn’t stomach the idea of Koko Sato, one of many Japanese politicians once caught with his hand in the Lockheed-scandal cookie jar, so close to the cookie jar again. Public opinion has forced Sato to resign. The Japanese, like everyone else in Asia, are fed up with political corruption and many had believed that Hashimoto was much, much better than this.

* The leaders of the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations need a lesson in how to lead. They failed all of Southeast Asia when they let those land-clearing fires in Indonesia get out of hand and waft all over the region. Ordinarily I can see the wisdom of ASEAN’s penchant for noninterference in one another’s affairs. This time the organization should have been shouting at Indonesia early and often. If only ASEAN had spoken up when the timber companies began setting their environmentally brutal brush-clearing fires, which now burn out of control, Southeast Asia might not be suffocating in smog that affects the vast expanse of Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Thailand and the Philippines. Now Southeast Asia can only hope for the miracle of early monsoon rains before many thousands develop serious respiratory ailments, before commercial flights are more seriously disrupted and economic activity further impaired.

This man-made calamity is precisely the kind of regionwide problem that ASEAN needs to get on top of. Indonesia has formally apologized for the plague of pollution. Thanks for nothing. This whole mess is a bad omen for Asian regionalization.

* U.S. secretaries of state spend too much time in the Middle East, and I think Madeleine Albright is starting to understand that. She appears to be getting frustrated with endlessly quarreling Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians. I don’t blame her. The Middle East has been seducing top American officials since the shuttle-diplomacy heyday of Henry Kissinger. Maybe Albright will avoid matching her predecessors’ yen for Middle East masochism. Warren Christopher, undoubtedly a gifted negotiator, somehow believed that American wisdom could make Middle Eastern political seas part. For four years, he prostrated himself no less than 28 times in Damascus and wound up with little to show for it. Last week, Albright returned from another trip there, publicly furious over the intransigence on all sides. Wonderful. So I have a suggestion, Madame Secretary: Don’t even think of returning to that ungrateful place unless all sides get down on their hands and knees and beg for your intervention. Instead, use your time and talents on equally important issues in other parts of the world. Maybe Albright can even convince Americans of the importance of China. A recent poll says that we Americans regard Canada, Britain, Australia, Mexico and France as our true friends (how in the world did France crack the top of this list?). China is last on the “good” list and first on the “bad” list. This is not good; a quarter of the world’s people live there. Albright should leverage the podium of her office to teach America why the relationship with China is of surpassing importance. There’s no reason why U.S. relations with the Chinese can’t be just as warm as those with, say, the French.

As I said, nobody ever asks for my advice; but there you have it anyway.