Ancient civilizations-2

Defining new states and societies

The first two decades of independence constituted a period of trial and error for states and societies attempting to redefine themselves in contemporary form. During this time, religious and ethnic challenges to the states essentially failed to split them, and (except in the states of former Indochina) both communism and Western parliamentary democracy were rejected. Indonesia, the largest and potentially most powerful nation in the region, provided the most spectacular examples of such developments, ending in the tragic events of 1965–66, when between 500,000 and 1,000,000 lives may have been lost in a conflict between the Indonesian Communist Party and its opponents. Even Malaysia, long the darling of Western observers for its apparent success as a showcase of democracy and capitalist growth, was badly shaken by violence between Malays and Chinese in 1969. The turmoil often led Southeast Asia to be viewed as inherently unstable politically, but from a longer perspective—and taking into account both the region’s great diversity and the arbitrary fashion in which boundaries had been set by colonial powers—this perhaps has been a shortsighted conclusion.

The new era that began in the mid-1960s had three main characteristics. First, the military rose as a force in government, not only in Vietnam, Burma, and Indonesia but also in the Philippines and—quietly—in Malaysia. The military establishments viewed themselves as actual or potential saviours of national unity and also as disciplined, effective champions of modernization; at least initially, they frequently had considerable support from the populace. Second, during this period renewed attention was given by all Southeast Asian nations to the question of unifying (secular and national) values and ideology. Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam had been first in this area in the 1940s and ’50s, but the others followed. Even Singapore and Brunei developed ideologies, with the express purpose of defining a national character for their people. Finally, virtually all Southeast Asian states abandoned the effort of utilizing foreign models of government and society—capitalist or communist—and turned to the task of working out a synthesis better suited to their needs and values. Each country arrived at its own solution, with varying degrees of success. By the 1980s what generally had emerged were quasi-military bourgeois regimes willing to live along modified democratic lines—i.e., with what in Western eyes appeared to be comparatively high levels of restriction of personal, political, and intellectual freedom. Whatever their precise political character, these were conservative governments. Even Vietnam, the most revolutionary-minded among them, could not stomach the far-reaching and murderous revolution of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia in the mid-1970s and by the end of the decade had moved to crush it.

Tempting as it may be to conclude that greater doses of authoritarian rule (some of it seemingly harking back directly to colonial times) merely stabilized Southeast Asia and permitted the region to get on with the business of economic development, this approach was not successful everywhere. In Burma (called Myanmar since 1989) the military’s semi-isolationist, crypto-socialist development schemes came to disaster in the 1980s, revealing the repressive nature of the regime and bringing the country to the brink of civil war by the end of the decade. In the Philippines the assault by Pres. Ferdinand Marcos and his associates on the old ruling elite class brought a similar result, in addition to a spectacular level of corruption and the looting of the national treasury. In Vietnam, where the final achievement of independence in 1975 brought bitter disappointment to many and left the country decades behind the rest of the region in economic development, public and internal Communist Party unrest forced an aging generation of leaders to resign and left the course for the future in doubt as never before.

The states generally thought to be most successful—Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and especially Singapore—followed policies generally regarded as moderate and pragmatic. All were regarded as fundamentally stable and for that reason attracted foreign aid and investment; all achieved high rates of growth since the mid-1970s and enjoyed the highest standards of living in the region. Their very success, however, created unexpected social and cultural changes. Prosperity, education, and increasing access to world media and popular culture all gave rise, for example, to various degrees of dissatisfaction with government-imposed limitations on freedom and to social and environmental criticism. Particularly in Indonesia and Malaysia, there was a noticeable trend toward introspection and discussion of national character, as well as a religious revival in the form of renewed interest in Islam. It appeared that the comparatively small and unified middle class, including a generally bureaucratized military, was becoming larger, more complex, and less easily satisfied. That was undoubtedly not the intent of those who framed governmental policy, but it was a reality with which they had to deal.