Asia heading rightward: Embarking on a new era.

• Author: Makram, Mohammad
• Position: COMMENTARY - Essay

ABSTRACT For decades, support for Palestine was one of the most important causes taken up by many Asian countries. The Soviet Union's collapse ushered the continent into a more realist era. Consequently, most Asian states either shifted to the right or were replaced by rightists. This shift represented a major setback for the Palestinian freedom struggle; where its major traditional supporters; leftists and Muslims, were marginalized either by realist politicians or by the engagement of people with their domestic problems. The paper tries to understand the major characteristics and motives of this approach.

Over fifty years have passed since the last colonial power left the Third World and the (new) states or societies have had to deal with many challenging issues, like the Zionist occupation of Palestine. In the 1960s and 1970s, several revolutionary groups, were engaged in combating direct as well as indirect occupations, such as the American presence in Vietnam. These groups were supported by the Soviet Union and its allies like China, Eastern Germany and Czechoslovakia.

Once the revolutionaries achieved independence, they found themselves face to face with the challenge of modern state and the power that it wields. This challenge required different skills, strategies and tools from those of revolution and internal revolt. Many experiments in creating a state failed because of corruption, cronyism and impoverishment of their own people, making it a must for these regimes to review their policies and try to answer some 'existential' questions in a different way. This was more plausible after the retirement of 'revolutionary men' or the old guard, during the dissolution of the Eastern Block, and the emergence of the 'statesmen' who had a different understanding about the role of governments. Changes in the leading states like China motivated the more marginal states to move in the same direction. During the term of President Deng Xiao Ping China started moving slowly away from its Marxist ideology and inched towards a free market and an open economy.

With the Eastern Block dissolved, many Asian countries found themselves in an open confrontation with the West led by the U.S. This time it was without the backing they once had of the former Soviet Union. They had two choices: to go on confronting the sole world hegemon and pay a heavy price in terms of a weak economy and international isolation or to reconcile with the West and believe in the loud promises of development and prosperity dependent of course on committing to IMF and WB loans.

After the ruling elites of those states realized the scale of destruction that colonization had unleashed and left behind, along with the legacy of mismanagement of the previous revolutionaries, people started moving towards reforming the economy and giving attention to social prosperity by imitating the successful examples of their western counterparts. They adopted the free-market system. They started enacting new laws facilitating foreign and local investments. Moreover, they worked on attracting foreign direct investment especially in infrastructure like seaports, airports, oil refineries, highways, telecommunications and subway lines. They built industrial cities attracting the major multi-national companies that were keen to invest in countries where they can produce high quality products using cheap labor, and pay low costs for raw materials. The growth of the some of the Asian economies skyrocketed as it reached more than 7 percent annually. Unemployment became negligible.

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