East-West Center’s mission changes from peace to nationalistic militarism

The recent death of former East-West Center President Everett Kleinjans, who spent his life working for peace and multicultural understanding, seems to be the appropriate time to review how his vision for the center has panned out. In a phrase: It has not. In fact, the center has become virtually the opposite of Kleinjan’s vision: A venue for right-wing and militaristic dictatorships around the world to get together to discuss military and defense objectives.

Fueled largely by money obtained by Hawaii senior U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye — who never encountered an aspect of U.S. militarism he didn’t like or wasn’t willing to fund — the center has become a hypocritical caricature of peace and multicultural endeavors. This parody has been hidden from the public by a variety of pronouncements emanating from the office of recent center presidents that say precisely the opposite of what the center’s most basic purposes and endeavors are.

Surprisingly, given Inouye’s support and the lip service paid by the center to its largely lost mission, last summer the center almost ran out of money amid discussion that it might close. Almost immediately, center apologists rose to its defense.

It was very instructive to read the serial propaganda published in just five days in local newspapers last summer regarding why the center should be saved. The first was by EWC President Charles Morrison (“East-West Center is valuable asset to Hawaii and the United States,” Star-Advertiser, July 31); the second, by Jay Fidell (“East-West Center is bridge to global potential in Asia,” Think Tech, Star-Advertiser, Aug. 2); and the third, in the Honolulu Weekly on Aug. 3.

All three articles pay lip service to the center as a wonderful cross-cultural institution with noble goals and mission — but the real mission of the EWC is far from that. The center is, in fact, a mechanism for bringing right-wing and militaristic regimes from Asia to meet with the same groups in the U.S. For proof, look no further than the three articles cited above. Fidell talks about the importance of the EWC alongside the Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies and the Pacific Forum for Strategic and International Studies, both militaristic organizations whose goal is to enhance the influence of the U.S. military in Asia. These are the real partners of the East-West Center.

And Morrison’s article is even more telling: “promoting U.S. values” is the absolute opposite of what a true multicultural center should be doing. Instead, a real multicultural center would be promoting the understanding of values from multiple perspectives and multiple nations, not simply promoting its own nation’s values.

The Honolulu Weekly article praises the EWC, but then, probably unknowingly, acknowledges the real but covert mission of the center by quoting our two representatives in Congress, Colleen Hanabusa and Mazie Hirono, who note that “the loss of the EWC would negatively affect U.S. foreign policy and national security interests in the Asian-Pacific region.”

Sadly, the center is a remnant of the Cold War; it is a right-wing dinosaur that is obsolete and irrelevant.

The East-West Center should be closed. Take away the politics and militarism and merge what is left, the educational component, with the University of Hawaii. That is the only way to keep what is good about the place and remove the bad and irrelevant.

If former President Kleinjans knew the truth about EWC policies and politics of today, he would roll over in his grave. If the public actually understood how deceitful the EWC is in promoting the opposite of what its actual mission statement reads, the EWC would be immediately shuttered in the storm of public protests to shut it down.