Beyond the Mea Culpas

TIME OUT OF HAND: REVOLUTION AND REACTION IN SOUTHEAST ASIA by Robert Shaplen. 465 pages. Harper & Row. $8.95.

For most Americans, depressed and confused by what is already the longest, most complicated war in the nation's history, the words Southeast Asia have come to mean just one thing: Viet Nam. Yet in the long run, the political and economic development of the area's other nations, with their 250 million people, may prove more important to the stability of all Asia--and the world--than the bloody ground where the fighting now rages. Asserting this point, Robert Shaplen, The New Yorker's veteran correspondent in Asia, ventures beyond Viet Nam to invoke the longer perspectives of history and examine the problems and prospects of surrounding lands.

Outside Powers. What Shaplen finds, not surprisingly, is trepidation, partly a reflection of local uncertainty over the U.S. role in Southeast Asia after a Viet Nam settlement. But he also discovers encouraging developments that look to the inevitable day when, he feels, both the U.S. and China will play a smaller role in Southeast Asia. Born partly from that realization is a growing awareness among Asian nations of the need to look to their own resources and cultivate independence. Strongly non-Communist countries show symptoms of being able to adjust to Communism without becoming politically subverted or emotionally unstrung. Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines, for example, have extended welcome to trade, cultural and tourist delegations from the Soviet Union and other Communist lands in Europe.

Shaplen also sees a "varied and sometimes contradictory" groping toward new alliances based on regional cooperation. Groups like the ten-country Asian and Pacific Council (ASPAC) and the five-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), though still involved in "more discussion than action." aim to improve economic and cultural relations. They may also drift into some sort of role in regional security.

Shaplen's tour d'horizon includes essays on Malaysia, Laos, Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, Viet Nam and Cambodia. Its most compelling section explores Indonesia. In a fascinating flashback that offers a good deal of new material, Shaplen re-examines the abortive Communist coup of 1965, emphasizing the probability that President Sukarno himself was involved in the takeover attempt. Despite the bloodbath that followed and the interior problems left by the Sukarno era, Shaplen sees Indonesia, the world's fifth-largest nation (pop. 113 million), as holding the "key to the region's future."

Shaplen's literary style, which rambles over many a back road, is occasionally illuminated by bright, incisive flashes. Describing Cambodia's Prince Sihanouk, Shaplen writes that ''his innate sense of showmanship and his graciousness as a host make his sporadic unveilings of the country seem like Happenings." Generally, as befits a man who has studied a depressing scene for more than 20 years, he is cautious, measured in his judgments, rarely hortatory. He does make hard and clear, however, what he regards as a notable danger. Rudely stated, it is that the U.S., which will probably fail to gain the exact ends it seeks in Viet Nam, may pull out of Asia entirely after the end of the war.

The urge to do so is great, and will grow greater still. Such a policy is encouraged by fatigue and political recrimination at home after a war half lost. While urging that America's future role in Southeast Asia be reduced, Shaplen suggests that it will nonetheless be necessary. "If we become too preoccupied with our mea culpas, as we have shown an alarming tendency to do," he concludes, "we will do further injury to ourselves and probably to others."

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