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Oleh/By : DATO SERI DR MAHATHIR BIN MOHAMAD
Tempat/Venue : NEW DELHI, INDIA
Tarikh/Date : 17/10/2002
Tajuk/Title : THE ASEAN-INDIA BUSINESS LUNCHEON
-"ASIA IN 2020: CHALLENGES
AND PROSPECTS"
Versi : ENGLISH
Penyampai : PM
I have been asked to speak on "Asia in 2020:
Challenges and Prospects". If I were in a mood to
jest, I should say before you here and now that I
have immense difficulty in seeing the future .
because I left my crystal ball in Kuala Lumpur. But
I suspect that the subject is too serious to be taken
too lightly.
2. At the best of times, I think anyone who speaks
with any degree of certainty about the future,
especially about a future so distant as 2020, should
be regarded as a charlatan. This is true at most
times. If, even at the most stable of times,
certainty is almost always a sure sign of an error in
thinking, today it is the very height of naivety - or
utter ignorance.
3. It is especially true today, at a time of
possible fundamental change, when history could take
the world up a reasonable road to human progress or
down the steep ravine to disaster.
4. We have today, because of the act of a small
group of crazy extremists and the rage of an
unfettered giant, the prospect of a radically new
world; a new world unimaginable even a year and two
months ago.
5. These preliminary remarks should suggest to you
that whilst a positive mindset is essential for human
achievement of any note - whether it is the running
of a state or a corporation - our optimism must
always be tampered by realism and the deliberate
calculation not only of opportunity but also risk.
6. We should have no illusion about the possibility
of the bleakest of futures for Asia. Our future
could be as black as in the reasonably recent past.
7. I am sure I do not need to remind anyone in this
room that the last few hundred years have been a
period of shame for Asia. Our heads were bowed. For
much of the time, we stood on our knees. Our people
were impoverished. Our technological prowess was
pathetic; our claim to civilisation completely
tenuous.
8. Without a single exception, every nation in
Asia, India included, has at one time or another over
the last 50 years been given up as lost. We have
been dismissed as basket cases, societies which can
have no future. We have for some time now started to
show the world what we can do. We have clearly
turned the corner. We could be at the start of a
peace and prosperity run that could take us to where
we were, when we were the centre of human
civilisation. We now have a historic opportunity to
banish our period of shame and to put in its place,
an era of pride.
9. Whilst I do not know what exactly the future may
bring, I have some very clear ideas about the
objectives we must aggressively and relentlessly
fight for in the years to come. I have some very
clear ideas about some of the things we need to do,
to make our future an era of pride. Let me begin
with the objectives.
10. In the years ahead, it is obvious that there are
a thousand and one things that we must keep our eye
on. There are a hundred and one things that we must
work at. But I believe that we must aggressively and
relentlessly concentrate on two fundamental
objectives.
11. First, we must in the years ahead build
communities of durable peace and friendship. Second,
we must ensure rapid and sustainable economic growth.
12. Let me begin with peace. This is where human
progress begins. This is the first pre-requisite.
Let us never under-estimate the central importance of
peace, true peace, which goes way beyond the mere
absence of war. If in the years ahead we cannot
secure true peace and sustain and strengthen it, I
believe we do not have much of a future. If we are
able to achieve this true and sustainable peace, we
have a good chance of fulfilling the hopes and dreams
of our people.
13. How is a warm and durable peace to be achieved?
The first option is hegemony. The second is reliance
on a military balance of power. The third is the
option of community, of building regional
relationships of reasonable mutual trust and
reasonable mutual friendship, where no-one is driven
to rage, where cordiality takes the place of hate.
14. It wasn't so long ago that a "Pax Americana"
over East Asia was spoken of in the fondest of ways
in Washington and in some parts of East Asia under
American intellectual tutelage. Some of its advocates
in Asia and further afield could not even understand
why anyone in East Asia should have the slightest
objection to American hegemony; although for some
reason, when others in the region spoke of the
virtues of a "Pax Nipponica", their blood pressure
went up - and when others talked of a "Pax Sinica",
their hair stood on end. Somehow, an East Asia peace
under the diktat of the United States was excellent
but an East Asian peace under Japanese hegemony was
choking and an East Asian peace under Chinese
dominance was obscene.
15. Let us be clear about the imperial or hegemonic
approach to peace. It is true that nothing is as
powerful as an idea whose time has come. But it is
also true that nothing is as powerless as an idea
whose time has gone. Hegemony and imperialism, like
the doctrine of "the divine right of kings" and "the
mandate of heaven" are neither productive nor
possible in today's world. The world today is too
complicated and too democratic a place for
imperialism to be a viable approach to true peace.
It generates too much resentment and too much hate in
too many hearts. 190 states with 6 billion people can
be controlled. But million or two of them who can
learn the rudiments of bomb-making over a week-end,
cannot be easily controlled.
16. Those who fail to read the writings on the wall
will pay the price for their political illiteracy.
If hegemony is not tenable, why not that trusty old
blunderbuss: the balance of power, and its small
variant, the balance of terror?
17. An extreme form was well articulated by the
ancient Romans who coined that famous adage: if you
want peace, prepare for war. Less extreme models
call for a counter-balancing of the enemy's military
and other power. In many parts of East Asia, this
was the dominant approach to the prevention of war in
the 1940s, 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s. In East Asia
today, it remains the dominant approach to peace and
stability only in the Korean Peninsula and perhaps
across the Taiwan Straits. In the rest of Asia, it
is no more prevalent.
18. Sometimes, of course, nations may face no other
alternative but to rely on deterrence. But a balance
of power approach is often a very costly approach
because when you prepare for war, war all too often
is what you get.
19. Modern armaments are getting ever more
expensive. In the classic balance of power, arms
races cannot be stopped; military budgets get too big
(to the detriment of other national priorities);
entrenched psychologies cannot change but get only
further entrenched; nations and their people cannot
relax; always, it is we versus "the enemy". The
risks are of course heightened when nuclear weapons
enter the balance of terror.
20. Rigid military balances of check and counter-
check divert attention and energies from more
important agendas and tend to freeze the status quo,
when some accommodation, flexibility and progress may
be in the longer term good for all. They are also a
very low-aspiration approach because when balance of
power systems work, at such substantial cost, all
that you achieve is a cold and adversarial peace.
Never a warm and cooperative peace.
21. Many will say that even in the period before
September 11, it was already clearly a shoddy option.
In the period after September 11, it is shoddier
still because warfare has ceased to be the monopoly
of the state and has become a tool of individuals and
small groups too difficult to identify, still less to
discipline. A cold and adversarial peace cannot
secure the minimum level of security.
22. Many will of course say that the third option -
achieving peace through building trust, relaxing
tensions, building friendship and goodwill, a sense
of community and a community of interest in peace -
is idealistic. It is said to be difficult. It is
said to be laborious. It is so demanding of patience
and endless effort. They are right. But in the
right conditions, peace through community is much
more realistic than hegemony and the balance of power
system - which can never achieve true peace. I
believe that, despite all the obvious difficulties,
it is still the most productive method for the
creation of a warm and productive peace that is
subservient to the welfare of the peoples of our
nations.
23. Those who say that the community of friends
approach to true peace is not possible have to
explain the success of Western Europe, which twice in
the last century brought a world war upon the entire
world. Those who say that the community of friends
approach is not possible must explain the success of
ASEAN. And they should watch very closely the
efforts at relaxing tensions and making friends in
East Asia, the most turbulent, most war-prone region
in the world in the generation after the Second World
War.
24. After hundreds of years of enmity and fighting,
who in Western Europe in 1945 could have imagined
that this warring continent would be able to create a
community of peace within just a generation?
Whatever the success or failure of the economic
community-building movement in Europe, no-one can
deny that the process of banishing war and building a
true peace in that continent has been one of the
wonders of the 20th century.
25. There are today many cynics who find flaws in
the entire ASEAN endeavour. God knows there are many
flaws in ASEAN. Yet no-one has ever said that ASEAN
has not been a tremendous success in building a
community of peace in what was once so often called
"a region in turmoil". Strangers have been turned
into acquaintances. Acquaintances have been turned
into comrades. Enemies have been turned into
friends, not overnight; but still quite surprisingly
fast.
26. To be sure, the new ASEAN members are not so
chummy among themselves or with the older members.
But there is no doubt that despite centuries of
disdain, prejudice, animosity and pure hatred , no-
one in the entire region of Southeast Asia is
preparing or even thinking of going to war against
another. A community of cooperative peace has been
established.
27. As for East Asia to the east of Bangladesh, let
me remind the sceptics that 20 years ago China's new
path was still uncertain and tenuous. Vietnam had
just invaded Cambodia. Southeast Asia was divided
into two camps. We were at daggers drawn. The East
Asia of today is a very much different place.
28. History is a good teacher. It is good at
teaching lessons. But history, especially our
various conflicting interpretations of our past
history, is not a good master. We must not be
history's prisoners. And there is much to be said
for breaking out of the deep dungeon of history.
There is much to be said for burying the past and
building the future together.
29. This is what Eastern Asia has done. And today,
our highest priority is on generating economic
dynamism and ensuring the welfare of our people by
ensuring rapid and sustainable growth.
30. Because of our ability to secure peace and to
concentrate on prosperity, over the last twenty and
thirty years, the economies of East Asia have grown
at rates unprecedented in human history. In Western
Europe, the greatest age of economic dynamism was
their Industrial Revolution. We in East Asia over
the last generation have been able to grow at roughly
twice the speed of Western Europe during its great
Industrial Revolution.
31. It is very important for the rest of Asia that
in the future India is part of our prosperity run;
and it is very important that we run together. How
do we do this? Many economists talk of the "East
Asian model" of economic development. There are of
course similarities that can be found in East Asia.
We all have high levels of domestic savings, even
though Malaysian and Chinese levels of domestic
savings have been so historically high as to make the
high-saving Japanese look like a nation of
spendthrifts. We all have an obsession with
education, although the incredible obsession that
South Koreans and Taiwanese have with regard to
education make the rest of us look like education-
averse delinquents.
32. The truth is that there are many models of
economic development in East Asia ranging from those
economies which are very reliant on foreign direct
investment to those like Japan and South Korea which
are very reliant on domestic enterprises. Japan is
much, much less dependent on exports than Malaysia or
Singapore. South Korea developed on the basis of
huge conglomerates called chaebols whilst Taiwan was
built on small and medium scale enterprises.
33. What we all have in common is an awful lot of
national pragmatism. We all did it according to the
Sinatra Principle. We all did it our way. And the
most important element was not the international
system, or the regional system but the national
pragmatism sans ideology.
34. In the days ahead, it seems clear enough that
the most important helping hand that we all need is
at the end of our own right arm. Our destinies are
very much in our own hands. Almost always, no-one
can do to you worse than what you can do to yourself.
Fortunately the obverse is also true. No one can do
anything for you better than what you can do for
yourself.
35. Having said this, let me stress one national
policy that goes beyond the nation state that has
proven to be productive of our individual national
interests, one area where a concert of Asia is very
much needed and one area where a partnership between
India and Asean will be mutually beneficial.
36. In many parts of the world, beggar thy neighbour
is a powerful reality, a natural policy response. If
I can mention it, we in East Asia have found much
value in "prosper thy neighbour" policies.
37. So many nations in East Asia have willy nilly
adopted this policy not because of altruism or
idealism but because it has served their own
enlightened national interest.
38. We all can choose our friends but we cannot
choose our neighbours. A basic question we face is
this: is it better to have neighbours which are
impoverished, which cannot provide for their people,
which are a hotbed of instability and turmoil; or is
it better to have neighbours which are growing in
prosperity, which can therefore buy more from you,
which do not generate hordes of refugees and trouble
makers who are likely to seek a haven in your country
or cause havoc in your region?
39. It is of course not easy to sustain "prosper thy
neighbour" policies when your neighbours are strange
or different, when they might cause you so much
trouble and inconvenience or say the wrong things
about you and so often show no gratitude whatsoever.
But I assure you that the returns are worth all the
difficulty.
40. Secondly, let me stress the need for Asia to
work together to shape the international economic
system within which we have to work, which determine
so much of our possibilities, over which presently we
have so little influence, still less, control.
41. I have in the past been impressed so often by
the posture taken by India in, for example, the WTO.
India must continue to provide leadership on global
economic issues and on the course and development of
globalisation - which promised so much to all of
humanity but which has been so selfishly hijacked by
the greedy and the few in recent years.
42. Thirdly, let me suggest that it is high time for
ASEAN and India to work on a comprehensive economic
partnership that will be mutually beneficial to us
and to the rest of Asia and the world.
43. There is today the ASEAN Plus Three process
involving the 10 Asean states, China, Japan and South
Korea. This will develop because of its profound
logic.
44. At the ASEAN summit in Brunei in November last
year, President Jiang proposed and Asean leaders
agreed to form an Asean-China Free Trade Area within
10 years. Last month in Brunei, China and ASEAN
agreed on an early harvest of tariff reduction in
hundreds of items in eight agricultural areas to be
implemented in the 2004-2006 period. A framework
agreement is due to be signed by the leaders of ASEAN
and China at the Summit Meeting to be held in Phnom
Penh next month. China and the ASEAN 5 (Indonesia,
Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand) are
already a remarkably integrated trading area today.
In the years ahead, we cannot but move closer
together.
45. In Brunei last month, the economic ministers of
ASEAN and Japan agreed to conclude an Economic
Partnership Agreement, including a Free Trade Area,
within ten years and to start its negotiation next
year.
46. Also in Brunei, Korea's economic minister
suggested the idea of an ASEAN-South Korea Free Trade
Area. For ASEAN, this should complete the logic of
ASEAN free trade agreements in East Asia.
47. It would be interesting to see here, in India,
how strong is the interest in an ASEAN-India Economic
Partnership Agreement. In this case too, there is a
profound economic logic.
48. I have mentioned already about history, about
the past, and about the various versions of history
that we all possess. Let me end by re-iterating that
history is a good teacher but a bad master. It must
not be the jailor that keeps us confined within our
damp dungeons. We must proceed from the present.
And we should vigorously proceed from today to build
the future together.
Sumber : Pejabat Perdana Menteri
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