Jim Hoagland

This selection was originally published in the Washington Post on 17 May 1998. Jim Hoagland is a columnist at the Post.

Indonesia's peaceful student revolt against President Suharto has ignited bloody repression by the government and then a wave of rioting and looting. The smoke rising from burning buildings in Djakarta should not obscure the roots of a crisis that is draining Suharto's government of control and credibility.

This is a struggle over power and the true nature of Asia's political values. The spasm of violence was a disastrous side effect of that struggle, which must now be quickly brought to a head.

This explosive conflict drives a final nail into the coffin of the "Asian values" theories advanced by some Asian politicians to justify authoritarian rule and the denial of the concept of universal human rights and freedoms.

Indonesia confirms the obvious: No one set of values controls the region or even individual countries within it. There is not a single, all-embracing paternalistic social code that will determine Asia's destiny, despite theories to that effect elaborated by Singapore's Lee Kwan Yu, China's communist gerontocracy, and other regional chauvinists.

The democratic values of the students who took to the streets three months ago [February 1998]--Asians all--are in collision with the self-centered values of their rulers. That is a divide seen before, on a much more massive scale in the Philippines in 1986, in China in the spring of 1989, and in a different form in South Korea in the late 1980s.

Once again, the Asians in the streets are demanding that the Asians in power treat them with respect and decency, rather than order them to fulfill their duties to the central authority in the name of collective discipline and social conformity.

The student demonstrators' display of courage, the quest for individual freedoms, the desire for less conformity in society and more honesty in government that surfaced in Djakarta's streets, as they did in Tiananmen Square and in Cory Aquino's People Power movement--these are Asian values too.

This is not to be naive. The looting, ethnic violence, and wanton destruction in Djakarta last week rode on the coattails of the calls for political change. But Asian democrats want change precisely to be able to preserve order. The longer the conflict around Suharto's reign lasts, the more violent the conflict is likely to become and the more radical its outcome is likely to be.

Suharto, seventy-six years old and thirty-two years in power, allocated himself a new five-year term in March [1998]. His callous handling of the economic hardships caused by the collapse of Indonesia's currency and stock markets the previous summer sparked the first protests. The revolt has become more political, and more subversive, as he has stubbornly refused to consider any political reform. Indonesia is in flames; he must now choose to step aside or hang on by brute force.

And the Clinton administration must now choose to continue to support ill-advised financial bailouts for Suharto's regime or side with the values of a new Asian generation that challenges the aging autocrat. You would think the choice would be automatic; you would be wrong.

A few months ago I listened to Henry Kissinger scold those who had the arrogance to try to impose so-called Western political values on the ancient societies of Asia, and particularly on China. In a speech at the University of Oklahoma, the former secretary of state, who is often brilliant when it comes to balance of power politics and diplomatic analysis, explained that China needed no lessons from outsiders about organizing its society.

As I listened, I realized that for Kissinger, "China" seemed to be China's rulers. The values of the million people who took to the streets of Beijing night after night to support the students in Tiananmen Square in May 1989 and to call for democracy and an end to corruption did not seem to count as Asian, or authentic, in this kind of calculus.

President Clinton's decision to visit Tiananmen Square on his China trip in June [1998] reflects that same ruler-centered sensibility. Visiting the blood-stained square to honor the Chinese leadership places Clinton on the wrong side of the Asian values conflict. Tiananmen is Clinton's Bitburg, except that Ronald Reagan and his handlers did not know of the Waffen SS connection to that small German town when they put it on a presidential tour of Europe.

Visiting Tiananmen Square seems now to be the price of admission for a state visit to China. Without apparent hesitation, Clinton agreed to offer visible support for Jiang Zemin's version of Asian values. And it is important to remember that there was no rioting or looting in the extended Chinese protests.

Clinton should not repeat the same error in Indonesia, where Suharto seems tempted to follow the Chinese model of repression. The United States and the International Monetary Fund should halt financial support for a regime that is digging its own grave.