So now that the United States has openly backed Australian Prime Minister John Howard and his talk of pre-emptive strikes against potential terrorist attacks on Australian interests, the region's leaders will take this as Canberra's latest foreign and defence policy doctrine. And it'll add more weight to the theory that Australia is indeed the US's ''deputy sheriff'' in the region.

Once it was thought Howard had volunteered Australia to the role after agreeing to the United Nations mandated East Timor political transition task. So now the opposition Australian Labour Party struggling to be heard or seen by voters, and lacking a policy position that would differentiate it from the governing Conservative coalition wants Howard to apologise to Southeast Asia, on whose nose he reeks.

The scorn heaped by the region's leaders and the media on Australia has been relentless. There have been accusations of Australia's imperialistic attitude and as the US's lapdog. They've threatened to review their comprehensive relationship with Australia, including co-operation and intelligence on the 'war on terror'.

Then there's the predictable Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad, warning Australia that pre-emptive strikes would be "an act of war". Howard's refusal to retract his remarks, and his refusal to apologise, only reveals his belligerence and recalcitrance, and his anti-Asian hide.

Suspicious friends

With his popularity at a seven-year high, after manipulating terrorist threats immediately after Sept 11, the vicious labelling of asylum seekers as suspect terrorists and criminals, and the Bali massacre last October, Howard doesn't feel the need to apologise to anyone.

To his critics in Asia and Australia, his message has been simple but effective: lest they forget the evil of Sept 11 and Oct 12. But Australian voters have swallowed whole Howard's constant jawboning.

Paul Kelly of the Australian newspaper says this is no way for Australia to win friends in Asia, who have long been suspicious of Australia's place in the region. Singapore's former prime minister (now senior minister), Lee Kuan Yew, once called Australia the "poor white trash in Asia".

Mahathir has repeatedly said that unless Australia's population reflects 70 percent Asian, or shows it is "truly Asian", it would never be accepted in the region. Michelle Grattan of The Age reminds Howard that "words are bullets" and that he should have been more careful before mouthing off.

But Howard says his remarks were "low-key", "accurate" and "not directed at any of our [Asian] friends. [And] I don't resile from them in any way". Nor should he.

While the usual suspects Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines wasted little time in hurling abuse at Australia over Howard's remarks and refusal to apologise, notably Singapore and Thailand had barely uttered a word. Thailand joined the chorus last week.

Sheer hypocrisy

On Dec 11, Singapore joined the fray, under duress from the usual suspects, and only in the spurious name of Asean solidarity: interestingly, Singapore's criticism of Australia's pre-emptive strike theory was significantly toned down.

But so much of the vitriol flung at Australia by Southeast Asia's leaders is sheer hypocrisy.

Immediately after Sept 11, these same leaders were queuing for an audience with US President George W Bush, not only to show solidarity with Washington in its war on terror but also to win US material and moral support for their own struggles against armed secessionists, political opponents, and religious fundamentalists and extremists.

The mostly Christian Philippines invited US Special Forces to help it eliminate the Muslim Moros and Abu Sayyaf in Mindanao. Singapore wants to host US warships at a specially built naval facility a move not criticised by Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand or the Philippines.

Thai premier Thaksin Shinawatra's spiel last week was laced with strong denial that terrorists could be hiding in the thick forests, small towns and villages in southern Thailand, whose porous border with Malaysia is so dense with jungle that even joint Thai-Malaysian military operations had struggled to weed out armed Communist insurgents during the Malayan Emergency (1948-60).

Today, bandits, narcotics and contraband traders, and arms smugglers flout slack and corrupt security patrols and Customs officers to ply their trade.

Napping intelligence

Last week, after the ruckus by Kuala Lumpur, Malaysian authorities failed to detect a boatload of weapons destined for independence fighters in Aceh in northern Sumatra. That's not all. From the evidence so far, it seems Al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiah operatives, including Abu Bakar Bashir, had easily moved in and out of Malaysia and Indonesia, undetected and unsuspected. Bashir had even been to Australia several times.

Clearly, intelligence services in these countries were caught napping, as they were also in Europe and the US. Only Singapore's security agencies have been vigilant enough, albeit after Sept 11, in nabbing suspect terrorists. Elsewhere, similar moves have been after-the-fact attempts.

Still, the region's leaders strongly deny terrorists could be hiding in Southeast Asia, possibly planning their next attacks. Hadn't Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri sat on her hands on flushing out terrorists until after the Bali carnage? But Howard says no more: strike at them before they strike at us. And what's wrong with that? Why wait if you can stop it from happening? Prevention better than cure: remember that?

Besides, when the US announced its pre-emptive strike doctrine, some leaders grumbled, warning national sovereignty was at risk. But overall, they knew the US was angry and nothing would stop it from seeking revenge. And these same critics have enjoyed and continue to enjoy material and other benefits from the world's sole superpower, especially when economic markets are entwined with militarisation and security. But to be sure, their criticisms were made mostly for domestic consumption reasons.

With many Asian economies still struggling to emerge from the economic crisis of the late 90s, after all the rorts heaped on the capitalist classes through cronyism, nepotism and corruption by the political elite, regime legitimacy still largely rests with domestic political constituencies, which remain cowed by authoritarian state power, such as Mahathir wielding the Stalinist-like Internal Security Act.

Moreover, when Senator Robert Hill, Australia's defence minister, first raised the prospect of pre-emptive strikes some months ago on ABC's Lateline programme, nobody in Australia or Asia had raised a heckle then, as they have of Howard, despite neither Howard nor Foreign Minister Alexander Downer being forewarned of Hill's plan.

Blown up

Reappearing just a week ago on Lateline, Hill reiterated his original score, this time adding that in the war on terror, "this new environment requires a more liberal definition of self-defence". Again, no major protests from Southeast Asian leaders, especially when anything Australia says about Asia, directly or indirectly, gets so blown up in the region and often invites sharp and or caustic reactions. So why did Howard do it at all? But why not?

A major accusation against Howard is that he shouldn't have responded to a hypothetical question posed by ABC's 7:30 Report host, Kerry O'Brien. That's nonsense, even though Howard had previously said he wouldn't respond to hypotheticals. And The Age's Grattan says: "Speculation, however, hypothetical, about the doctrine of pre-emptive strikes is unhelpful." Baloney.

To be sure, during Roman Empire days, battle strategies were thought out on hypotheticals. The same during the American Civil War, World Wars One and Two, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Iraq-Iran decade-long war, the Gulf War, and so on.

In just about any major military conflict, degrees of hypothesising threats and responses are an accepted, conventional part of defence planning even during peacetime. What's more, Article 51 of the UN Charter has consistently allowed its interpretation of self-defence to include measures involving pre-emption and even unilateral action. And each time during acts or threats of war, the notion of sovereignty becomes watery. Welcome to realpolitiks.

But Howard did say, if critics had chosen to listen carefully, that Australia would first seek consultations with and agreement from other governments for pre-emptive strikes, probably as a joint action.

Should not kow-tow

Howard shouldn't ignore the criticisms from Asia, even if he has strong support from the US and tacit support from Singapore and Japan, and only measured caution from China, which should be read as considerable support from it, given China's thorny relations with Taiwan. But he needn't apologise to Southeast Asia. He shouldn't kow-tow to their bullying antics.

The hypocrisy of Southeast Asian leaders who chose to condemn Australia, including shamelessly using racist undertones, merely shows they are in denial about the real threats posed by barbaric terrorists and about the fundamentally changed world order since the Sept 11 attacks. Just as they were also in denial about the Asian crisis.

The only sane voice to emerge from the region was Indonesia Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda who said Howard's remarks were "just an ideanot a plan of action. That is why we do not need to overreact in our interpretation." Besides, Southeast Asian leaders' hubbub finds its morality and sanctity in the hubris propagated by the apparent philosophical underpinnings of that bogus concept, Asian values.

For they use Asian values merely to protect the region's ruling classes from facing ugly realities and unaccountability for their actions, as a brutal state-backed force against the rise of civil society, and as defence against outside (Western) criticisms. It's the old story all over again.

MANJIT BHATIA is with the School of International Business and Asian & International Studies at Griffith University, Australia