Thirty years ago, two new nations achieved independence from Brit- ain.One was prosperous Ghana in West Africa; it has since become a textbook case of Third World economic folly, official corruption, and chronic repression. The other, in Southeast Asia, was Malaysia (born as Malaya), which had just weathered a bitter communist guerrilla war. Largely ignored American headline writers, Malaysia's politi- cians quietly found ways to overcome deep-seated antipathies among its Malay, Chinese, and Indian...