June 9th 2004
by William Choong
AS HE swooped into Singapore on Friday on a nuclear war-ready Boeing 747 dubbed the 'Doomsday plane', many observers expected United States Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to get an earful from Asian countries weary of American unilateralism.
At the end of three-day Shangri-La Dialogue, however, the 'lashing' turned out to be a lot more subtle - and subdued.
Surprisingly, the typically cantankerous Mr Rumsfeld, once a wrestler, also executed his defence diplomacy with finesse: He worked his way out of a potentially tricky situation by appealing to Asian countries to 'work together' in the US-led war on terror and pledged support for such combined efforts.
What the 200 or so delegates at the conference saw over the weekend was a more dovish Defence Secretary - an established hawk - who was bent on debunking America's go-it-alone image.
Clearly conscious of criticism from those who have regarded recent US actions in Iraq and Afghanistan as unilateral, he told delegates that Washington had sought and would continue to seek 'the advice and counsel of our friends and allies'.
In his acerbic style, he slammed critics who tagged the US as unilateralist: 'I think, frankly, it's a bum rap... a myth and a mantra that people use.'
The apparent change in style, if not substance, is indicative of the myriad problems that Washington is grappling with at the moment.
A year on, from last year's conference, the triumphant note sounded by Mr Rumsfeld's deputy, Mr Paul Wolfowitz, over the successful invasion of Iraq, sounds hollow.
There, Washington is now facing a growing insurgency as it struggles to cobble together an interim government.
Closer to home, the North Korea nuclear threat so heavily debated last year remains unresolved; the atmosphere in the Taiwan Strait also remains tense.
And overlaid on all these problems, the US is grappling with a Hydra-like terror menace which has in the past year claimed innocent lives in Spain, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
'The music you've been hearing out of Washington for some time is the emphasis on international cooperation because there's a recognition that the lone ranger approach does not work,' said Dr Gary Samore, a senior fellow at the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS).
Registering the gravity of the situation, Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong on Friday dispensed with 'diplomatic niceties' to warn the US that while it was part of the solution, it was also part of the problem in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - which he said was a 'rallying cause' for terrorism.
The day after, Mr Rumsfeld made a tacit admission that the US was hitting too hard at terrorists without rooting out the causes of terror.
The Defence Secretary even admitted that the US-led anti-terror coalition did not have a grip on the issue, saying it lacked a 'coherent approach' to weed out terror at its roots.
Despite many unanswered questions raised over the terror issue, however, there was significant traction on certain key issues.
A US-led maritime security initiative to protect the Malacca Straits saw many 'points of convergence', said delegates.
While the US seemed to back off from a proposal to send elite troops to patrol one of the world's busiest sea routes, Malaysia - which had vehemently opposed the plan initially - appeared to signal it was willing to deal.
Kuala Lumpur said it 'was open' to expanding the Five Power Defence Arrangements to include terror-fighting capabilities - a point raised earlier by Australian Defence Minister Robert Hill.
To cap it all for IISS, the conference organisers, Mr Rumsfeld also posted his first showing at the event since the Shangri-La Dialogue started in 2002.
The only letdown at the conference was the notable absence of China.
'It's hard to discuss Asian security issues when such an important country is not present,' said one delegate.
Another letdown, said others, was the dearth of Asian delegates putting forward questions compared to those from Europe and America.
Nonetheless, the good news is that the high-powered pow-wow, now into its third year, would be held in Singapore over the next three years.
If anything, it is evolving into the Asian counterpoint of the Munich Conference on Security Policy, the prestigious European security forum which is now into its 40th year.
Summed up Mr Tim Dowse, chief of the assesments staff at Britain's Cabinet Office: 'The fact is that you've got countries from North America, Northern Europe, South-east Asia and North-east Asia all talking in the same language.
'Now that's what I'd call real development.'
