FEB 15 — For those of us who have grown jaded and disillusioned by the empty rhetoric of the great powers, Frank Furedi’s work “The New Ideology of Imperialism” (1994) is a sobering read. Furedi notes that since the end of the Second World War, and especially after the end of the Cold War, the great powers of the world have been trying to maintain their once-powerful and visible hegemonic sway over much of the developing world. He argues that the process of decolonisation has made imperialism a dirty word, but as a result of that power has simply mutated itself into other forms of soft power, often couched in the appeasing rhetoric of ‘helping’ the Third World help itself. The realities of geopolitics, however, ensure that in the end these apparently benevolent powers are simply helping themselves.

Witness the startling developments that we see in our own region today, the most notable being the sudden ‘liberation’ and opening up of Myanmar/Burma that was so long under military-backed rule. Myanmar provides us with an interesting test-case where two paradigms have been at work.

For the past few years, China has been playing an increasingly visible role in Myanmar, being one of the strongest supporters of the regime there. China’s approach when dealing with countries like Myanmar has been dubbed by some as the ‘Beijing consensus’, and this refers to a quietist policy of slow and sustained economic co-operation without meddling in the internal affairs of the recipient country. China’s own motives are clear for all to see: It has been investing heavily in communications and logistics infrastructure in mainland Southeast Asia for years now, building an integrated road, rail and canal communications system across Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Myanmar which now gives China something that it has never ever had in its history: a land route to the Indian ocean and access to Myanmarese port facilities.

Needless to say these developments have not gone unnoticed and many Western countries (along with India) have balked at the prospects of China having direct access to the Indian ocean for both economic and geostrategic reasons.

Then witness the sudden shift in American policy towards Myanmar, underscoring the ‘Washington consensus’: Focusing its attention to Myanmar and promising a revision of its earlier policy of exclusion, Washington has promised to revise its appraisal of Myanmar, re-open diplomatic channels and re-open trading links on the promise of reforms on the part of the government of Myanmar. Myanmar’s elites — for so long isolated internationally — have reciprocated and with the release of hundreds of political prisoners we will likely see elections soon that will bring Aung San Suu Kyi to power.

Suu Kyi is no doubt the most well-known Burmese leader today, and her Nobel prize is proof, if any was needed, of her own subject-position in the constellation of international politics. I confess that I have always been cynical about the gifting of the Nobel Prize to politicians (though not for scientists, doctors etc.) for invariably there was and is always some political agenda lurking close by.

But what is troublesome about the developments in Myanmar is the timing: Why now, why not earlier when the Myanmarese government was regarded as a casual abuser of human rights? Surely a country as powerful as the United States could have intervened in Myanmar if it found it necessary to intervene in other places like Afghanistan and Iraq. If America could intervene in Iraq and Afghanistan ostensibly ‘for the sake of the people’ there, then why not Myanmar, where a brutal counter-insurgency war has been going on for decades, and where minority groups have been systematically eliminated all the while?

This leads one to suspect that Washington’s recent moves there were designed to check and halt the advances that were being made by China, whose years of quiet investment was nulled by a few simple moves by Washington.

This is a case of ‘soft diplomacy’ at its most aggressive, and what we are seeing in Myanmar at the moment can only be — literally — described as regime change, albeit without a single shot being fired.

What then will be the fate of the other nation-states of ASEAN, as our region gets drawn into this clash between two paradigms, and squeezed between the Washington consensus and the Beijing consensus? As some of the region’s leaders have begun to complain, it seems as if ASEAN is now being forced to choose between Washington and Beijing, but what of the sovereignty and integrity of these countries? Are Southeast Asian states deemed so small and weak that they are not allowed to have a voice, or minds of their own? Don’t the countries of ASEAN have the right to choose not to choose sides?

One thing is certain though, and it is that the stage is set for another clash soon enough. The props have been put up, and the actors bankrolled. And if you don’t believe me, then watch this space: In time those politicians deemed the darlings of Wall Street will be getting their Nobel Prizes too, just you wait.

* Dr Farish A. Noor is a senior fellow at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication. The Malaysian Insider does not endorse the view unless specified.