I get that. But a lot of the time the drive to enforce Western values does way more harm than good. The obvious example is the Vietnam war (and the US treatment of Cambodia that lead directly to the horrors of the Khmer Rouge). But less obviously, championing a "reformist" in Myanmar lead to a complete mess (and arguably genocide).
Maybe if we started with the point of view that SE Asians have the right to determine their own government, and that may not look like our western ideas of "acceptable" government, instead of starting with the assumption that these people need saving from tyrants and monsters?
Right now the status quo in most of SE Asia is rapidly accelerating wealth. In Europe that brought the kind of social changes that demanded democracy. Maybe leaving them "undisturbed" is exactly the right thing to do...
I try to avoid calling them "Western" values to disentangle things which are empirical from things which are less so.
For instance, "Western" medicine is undeniably better than "traditional X" medicine. Because what people actually mean by "Western" medicine is modern medicine leaving behind all the historical western folk remedies that didn't work and keeping the folk remedies that worked. A lot of modern medicine comes from countries which would not be considered Western. You can of course split hairs in this discussion as well.
Censorship? Protectionism? These are less obvious concerns. That someone does not see the tragedy in holding a wife accountable for the democratic leanings and agitations of the husband and seeks to punish the husband by imposing punishments on the wife is so obviously unjust to me. The possibility that maybe society can be better when punishments are imposed in this way (the empirical question that would justify it under a utilitarian analysis) is just unconvincing to me (because I doubt it is true, I devalue utilitarian justice over individual justice and I don't even think the husband committed a crime). I could be wrong, though.
Maybe if we started with the point of view that SE Asians have the right to determine their own government, and that may not look like our western ideas of "acceptable" government, instead of starting with the assumption that these people need saving from tyrants and monsters?
Right now the status quo in most of SE Asia is rapidly accelerating wealth. In Europe that brought the kind of social changes that demanded democracy. Maybe leaving them "undisturbed" is exactly the right thing to do...