Kuala Lampur, July 13 -- History has always warned us about the danger of choosing enemies and then mistaking everyone opposed to them for friends.

The Athenians learned it. The Romans learned it. Europe relearned it during the Thirty Years' War. The Cold War repeated it across Asia, Africa and Latin America. Great powers armed local actors, local actors pursued their own ambitions, and ordinary people paid for strategies designed elsewhere.

The names change. The pattern does not.

Today, much of South-east Asia looks at Gaza with horror. That response is understandable. The devastation has been immense - civilians killed, displaced and deprived on a scale that has shocked the world. No serious moral position can ignore the suffering of...