.
Forty years ago, Darwin Judge, 19, and Charles McMahon, 21, were killed in a rocket attack in Saigon, Vietnam. They were the last two Americans killed in action in the Vietnam War. Only four decades have passed since the U.S. Government last considered Southeast Asia such a critical region that nearly 60,000 American troops died endeavoring to stop communism from spreading to this part of the world. Yet today, the U.S. Government hardly recognizes the latent threats—and potential—that Southeast Asia possesses.
For the last couple decades, a sclerotic and reactive U.S. foreign policy has been attempting to extinguish the flames of radical Islam, primarily throughout the Middle East, all the while remaining insouciant to the fact that more than one in four of the world’s Muslim population lives in Southeast Asia. In fact, more Muslims live in Indonesia alone than in the entire Middle East. The time has come for the United States to engage in a more proactive approach consisting of a surfeit of various forms of soft power in order to combat radical Islam throughout Southeast Asia.
In 2009, Senator Christopher Bond and Lewis Simons published an extremely important and timely book entitled, “The Next Front: Southeast Asia and the Road to Global Peace with Islam”. The authors correctly noted in their book that although Southeast Asia’s Muslims have stood apart from their Arab coreligionists for centuries, the differences are beginning to shrink. In the six years that have passed since the book went to print, radical Islam has proliferated throughout Southeast Asia at an alarming rate.
In 2013, PEW Research Center released a report entitled, “The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society” that yielded some very interesting findings about Muslims in Southeast Asia; a region often celebrated for practicing a moderate form of Islam. The report found that 72% of Indonesian Muslims and 86% of Malaysian Muslims wanted sharia law to be the law of the land. Even more distressing, 18% of Malaysian Muslims (≈ 3 million) and 7% of Indonesian Muslims (≈ 15 million) said they believed suicide bombings against civilians in defense of Islam are often—or at times—justified.
Since PEW’s report was released, Brunei decided to implement sharia law last year where those convicted of rape, adultery, sodomy, or apostasy will be put to death and just last month, a northern state in Malaysia passed amendments to implement the Islamic penal code.Moreover, the rise of the Islamic State has attracted more than 60 Malaysians to Syria and Iraq in order to wage jihad while countless more continue to be arrested in transit. Six Malaysians have already died fighting for the Islamic State with one such story being highlighted in a mystifying eight minute video by the New York Times entitled, “The Jihadist in Our Family: Malaysian Muslims Travel to Syria to Fight Assad”.
In Indonesia, a country that is often hailed as the “social media capital of the world”, the Islamic State has been able to recruit hundreds of Muslims thanks to the group’s savviness with social media. Last month, the Jakarta Globe reported that 1 in 14 high school students in Indonesia support the Islamic State while Indonesia banned small retailers from selling beer last week; a move that has concerned many considering Islamic parties have proposed a nation-wide ban on alcohol.
The U.S. must recognize the immutable truth; radical Islam is propagating throughout Southeast Asia. Considering the Muslims in this region are still comparatively moderate and labile, the right quantitative and qualitative investments in Southeast Asia would be exceptionally inexpensive considering the potential return on investment. The U.S. needs to implement more policies and initiatives in Southeast Asia that focus on steering susceptible youths away from such radical and violent ideologies. The US must also assist these governments in dealing with extremism while pressuring these countries to do more about it on their own.
Either way, whether radical Islam continues to thrive or begins to desiccate in Southeast Asia, the region's fate will have colossal implications on the rest of the world. The US must do all it can to ensure the latter occurs by putting together a comprehensive strategy to combat radical Islam in this important part of the world. Without such action, Southeast Asia could very well be drifting toward incomparable, yet evitable, conflict. Southeast Asia could very well become, “The Next Front”.
Bill Ozanick is a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (class of 2017) in Washington, DC, focused on International Relations and Southeast Asia Studies. He lived in Southeast Asia for nearly four years (2010-2014) where he consulted for various companies and governments in the region. He has written opinion pieces for The Malaysian Insider and can be followed on Twitter @BillOzanick.
The views presented in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of any other organization.
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Forty Years After the Vietnam War: Why the US Needs to Pay More Attention to Southeast Asia
Aerial view of New Delhi, india, Asia
April 27, 2015
Forty years ago, Darwin Judge, 19, and Charles McMahon, 21, were killed in a rocket attack in Saigon, Vietnam. They were the last two Americans killed in action in the Vietnam War. Only four decades have passed since the U.S. Government last considered Southeast Asia such a critical region that nearly 60,000 American troops died endeavoring to stop communism from spreading to this part of the world. Yet today, the U.S. Government hardly recognizes the latent threats—and potential—that Southeast Asia possesses.
For the last couple decades, a sclerotic and reactive U.S. foreign policy has been attempting to extinguish the flames of radical Islam, primarily throughout the Middle East, all the while remaining insouciant to the fact that more than one in four of the world’s Muslim population lives in Southeast Asia. In fact, more Muslims live in Indonesia alone than in the entire Middle East. The time has come for the United States to engage in a more proactive approach consisting of a surfeit of various forms of soft power in order to combat radical Islam throughout Southeast Asia.
In 2009, Senator Christopher Bond and Lewis Simons published an extremely important and timely book entitled, “The Next Front: Southeast Asia and the Road to Global Peace with Islam”. The authors correctly noted in their book that although Southeast Asia’s Muslims have stood apart from their Arab coreligionists for centuries, the differences are beginning to shrink. In the six years that have passed since the book went to print, radical Islam has proliferated throughout Southeast Asia at an alarming rate.
In 2013, PEW Research Center released a report entitled, “The World’s Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society” that yielded some very interesting findings about Muslims in Southeast Asia; a region often celebrated for practicing a moderate form of Islam. The report found that 72% of Indonesian Muslims and 86% of Malaysian Muslims wanted sharia law to be the law of the land. Even more distressing, 18% of Malaysian Muslims (≈ 3 million) and 7% of Indonesian Muslims (≈ 15 million) said they believed suicide bombings against civilians in defense of Islam are often—or at times—justified.
Since PEW’s report was released, Brunei decided to implement sharia law last year where those convicted of rape, adultery, sodomy, or apostasy will be put to death and just last month, a northern state in Malaysia passed amendments to implement the Islamic penal code.Moreover, the rise of the Islamic State has attracted more than 60 Malaysians to Syria and Iraq in order to wage jihad while countless more continue to be arrested in transit. Six Malaysians have already died fighting for the Islamic State with one such story being highlighted in a mystifying eight minute video by the New York Times entitled, “The Jihadist in Our Family: Malaysian Muslims Travel to Syria to Fight Assad”.
In Indonesia, a country that is often hailed as the “social media capital of the world”, the Islamic State has been able to recruit hundreds of Muslims thanks to the group’s savviness with social media. Last month, the Jakarta Globe reported that 1 in 14 high school students in Indonesia support the Islamic State while Indonesia banned small retailers from selling beer last week; a move that has concerned many considering Islamic parties have proposed a nation-wide ban on alcohol.
The U.S. must recognize the immutable truth; radical Islam is propagating throughout Southeast Asia. Considering the Muslims in this region are still comparatively moderate and labile, the right quantitative and qualitative investments in Southeast Asia would be exceptionally inexpensive considering the potential return on investment. The U.S. needs to implement more policies and initiatives in Southeast Asia that focus on steering susceptible youths away from such radical and violent ideologies. The US must also assist these governments in dealing with extremism while pressuring these countries to do more about it on their own.
Either way, whether radical Islam continues to thrive or begins to desiccate in Southeast Asia, the region's fate will have colossal implications on the rest of the world. The US must do all it can to ensure the latter occurs by putting together a comprehensive strategy to combat radical Islam in this important part of the world. Without such action, Southeast Asia could very well be drifting toward incomparable, yet evitable, conflict. Southeast Asia could very well become, “The Next Front”.
Bill Ozanick is a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (class of 2017) in Washington, DC, focused on International Relations and Southeast Asia Studies. He lived in Southeast Asia for nearly four years (2010-2014) where he consulted for various companies and governments in the region. He has written opinion pieces for The Malaysian Insider and can be followed on Twitter @BillOzanick.
The views presented in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of any other organization.
