In recent months the Clinton Administration has launched a full-scale effort to isolate Burma as a "rogue" state. But the campaign has won few supporters in Asia, where the influential members of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) are preparing to admit Burma to full membership in 1998. PNS commentator Thi Lam looks at the lessons to be gleaned about waning U.S. political clout. Lam, a former general in the Republic of South Vietnam, is the author of "Autopsy: The Death of South Vietnam" (1985).

SAN JOSE -- Washington's campaign to isolate Burma as a human rights violator isn't cutting it in Asia. Like European leaders unhappy over the recent U.S. law targeting foreign investors in Libya, Cuba and Iran, Asian leaders -- notably the heads of the influential ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) -- have so far resisted appeals from the Clinton Administration to join forces in punishing the Burmese military regime.

The more the Clinton Administration has upped the pressure, the more ASEAN is digging in its heels. This summer, following Burma's detention of 250 Burmese dissidents, the U.S. government sent two emissaries on an Asian tour in an effort to seek a common response. President Clinton himself wrote to Asian leaders to express "my deep concern" with "the potential violence and loss of life that might accompany a renewed government crackdown against its citizens."

At ASEAN's Regional Forum in Jakarta in late July, U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher warned against Burma's destabilizing role in the region. While ASEAN ministers made preparations to admit Burma as an ASEAN member by 1998, Christopher called Burma's "booming heroin market" a threat to the well-being of people from Bangkok to Berlin, from Hong Kong to San Francisco.

Not to be outdone, the U.S. Congress is considering an amendment to the Foreign Aid Bill which would ban any American investment in Burma. Despite complaints from some South East Asian governments and business people that the U.S. wants to turn Burma into "the South Africa of the 1990s," Washington is lobbying to ban loans from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Following the mysterious death in prison of James Leander Nichols, a honorary consul for several European countries, the European Community agreed to consider economic sanctions against Burma -- a rare show of unity with the United States. In July the Danish beer maker Carlsberg, fearing a consumer boycott, canceled plans to build a brewery in Burma (thereby following in the footsteps of Pepsi Cola, which sold its stakes in April).

But as Western companies have departed, Southeast Asian firms have eagerly stepped in to fill their place, with the backing of their governments. Singaporean firms, in particular, encouraged by the ever pragmatic Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew, have been investing heavily in hotel, manufacturing and airport facilities construction.

That Asia and the West are at odds over Burma is not surprising. In the view of ASEAN leaders, detaining a few hundred dissidents (all have now been released, according to the government) is nothing compared to the massacre of innocent civilians that occurred during China's Tiananmen protests, let alone the recent execution of 1000 hastily tried and convicted Chinese criminals which Amnesty International called "state killing on a massive scale." Burma may have exported heroin to neighboring countries, but that drug trade is considered far less lethal than the missiles and weapons-grade nuclear materials China has transferred to Iran and Pakistan.

Moreover, some ASEAN countries like Vietnam and Indonesia fall far short of being models of democracy and human rights, even by Asian standards. If there is a hypothetical scale of generally accepted Asian "values," social order and discipline rank higher on it than do democracy and human rights. "At the end of the day, the opposition in Burma has to face the realities of life," Lee Kuan Yew recently declared. "The one instrument of effective government there is the army."

If there is one thing ASEAN has learned from the United States, it is that China is an expansionist state that must be contained. While the U.S. is improving relations with Vietnam and North Korea for that objective, ASEAN views granting membership to Burma (and Vietnam) as a way to present a united front against the emerging superpower to the north.

But Washington's failure to enlist Asian support for its crusade against Burma makes one thing clear: The United States may be allergic to military dictatorships and sympathetic to the causes of democratic figures in developing nations, but in the post-Cold War era marked by new global political realignments, the emergence of new economic powers, and the formation of competitive regional trading blocks, America has gradually lost its political clout. This is especially true in Asia where leaders, proud of the region's prosperity, and ever conscious of their distinct cultures, aren't about to heed U.S. calls for boycotting a potential ally with an untapped market, under the trivial pretext of an unsatisfactory human rights record.