The Never-Ending Battle

The war on terror, with its surrogate warlord armies and American soldiers dispatched to far-flung regions of the globe, has become reminiscent, at least in Asia, of last century's cold war against communism. U.S. troops are already in combat zones in two Asian countries; American aircraft carrier battle groups regularly crisscross the region; Washington is viewing its Asian allies and conceiving Far Eastern policy through the prism of a single, overriding issueand stepping up the funding of regimes or institutions that had previously been anathema. On Aug. 2, Secretary of State Colin Powell, at the end of an eight-country tour of...