Word: asian
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Many Asian countries have not yet absorbed backward peoples in their midst. Marauding tribesmen inspire almost psychotic fear in Pakistani officers; India has been plagued with demands for self-determination by her half-civilized Nagas. Aboriginal tribes like Viet Nam's montagnards have virtually no voice in their central governments, occasionally take up arms in protest; they are now more loyal to the newly arrived American Special Forces advisers, who arm and pay them, than to the Saigon regime...
...would take a generation of Asian Ataturks to knit unified nations out of what are all too often simply shreds of geographic motley. Today's Asia, however, is short on Ataturks. Since Nehru's death, most leaders of Asia's developing countries fall into one of two categories: those too weak to overcome hatred as such and those who try to exploit it to build up their personal power...
...second, demagogic, category of Asian leaders, the worst is Indonesia's Sukarno, whose campaign to "crush Malaysia" as a "neocolonialist" plot furnishes Indonesia with a phony national purpose and distracts attention from his own disastrous misrule. Even Sandhurst-educated President Ayub Khan of Pakistan plays up "the Indian menace" to strengthen his political hand, warns darkly: "India wants to settle every dispute with force and aggression...
...Europe, for all their lingering animosities, have begun to develop more of a common loyalty to the whole region and idea of Europe. Moreover, adds Harvard Sinologist Professor Benjamin Schwartz, "The West has achieved the modern secular state, and its machinery does tend to control internal strife. But most Asian countries are not yet modern nations in this sense...
Ironically, the fading of the "imperialist" enemy, a menace that the Communists try so hard to keep alive, aggravates the crisis. Making common cause against colonial masters often gave Asian countries-and groups within countries-a solidarity they are now losing. But there are some encouraging signs. Interracial schooling, notably in Thailand and Malaysia, is binding young overseas Chinese closer to their host nations. Officers and men of different races serve happily together in units of the Indian and Malaysian armed forces, where the military-command structure replaces communal loyalties. Above all, as industrialization spreads in Asia, traditional cleavages, based...