In his address to the Asia Society AustralAsia Centre on 4 June, It’s Time to Build an Asia Pacific Community, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd proposed a regional architecture for the wider Asia Pacific region. He argued that there is a need for strong and effective regional institutions to “underpin an open, peaceful, stable, prosperous and sustainable region.” He stressed the importance of regional institutions in addressing collective challenges that no country can address alone.

Rudd’s vision for an Asia Pacific Community embraces “a regional institution which spans the entire Asia Pacific region – including the United States, Japan, China, India, Indonesia and the other states of the region” and “a regional institution which is able to engage in the full spectrum of dialogue, cooperation and action on economic and political matters and future challenges related to security.”

Critics in Australia, not only from the Opposition but also former Prime Ministers Hawke and Keating, have been quick in pointing out that Rudd’s vision has not been well thought out. But such criticisms may be misplaced. Kevin Rudd’s initiative should be seen as an invitation to other leaders, policy makers, and thinkers in the region to join him in a serious discussion about how best the Asia Pacific region could be organized. If Rudd had come up with a fully baked proposal, the exercise could be self-defeating. The evolving regionalism in Asia Pacific requires that all parties concerned should have an active part in the process, especially in the shaping of a new vision for the region. Rudd’s proposal is also not the first one. Since 2006 the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC) has embarked on a study on the Regional Institutional Architecture (RIA) for the Asia Pacific and has begun discussing this in a number of regional forums. It is significant that Rudd’s initiative will help elevate the discussion to the highest level of policy making in the region.

It is also significant that Rudd is prepared to organize a process towards a new consensus in the region, to further advance the one that was reached in 1989 with the creation of APEC. He has appointed an accomplished diplomat, Richard Woolcott, former Ambassador to Indonesia and the Philippines, to visit the capitals of the wider region to discuss his proposal. This, he said, might lead to a high-level conference of government and non-government representatives to advance the proposal. Woolcott was instrumental in crafting the 1989 consensus. In Rudd’s words, Woolcott is to continue and hopefully complete the work he began on Prime Minister Hawke’s behalf 20 years ago. Rudd himself is likely to begin with the high level exchanges on his proposal when he visits Indonesia and Japan in the next few days.

Let us examine the main ideas in Rudd’s proposal. His first premise is that global economic and strategic weight is shifting to Asia. With this, the changes and challenges for Asia will also be great. The challenges as he described them include: enhancing a sense of security community; developing a capacity to deal with terrorism, natural disasters and disease; enhancing non-discriminatory and open trading regimes across the region in support of global institutions; and providing long-term energy, resource and food security. The second premise is that none of the existing regional mechanisms (APEC, the ASEAN Regional Forum, the ASEAN Plus Three, and the East Asia Summit) “as currently configured are capable of achieving these purposes.” Hence, there is a need for new regional architecture.

Rudd believes that the existing regional mechanisms may continue in their own right or embody the building blocks of an Asia Pacific Community. However, he has identified two additional building blocks. First is the Six Party Talks, which could be transformed into a wider regional body to discuss confidence and security building measures in North East Asia and beyond. Second is the development of a Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP). Here is where Rudd could stumble. The Six Party Talks are tailor-made for resolving the problem on the Korean Peninsula, and as the name indicates they only involve six countries. Expanding the members would duplicate the existing multilateral ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). What could be done is to strengthen this multilateral forum and to turn it into a full-fledged regional forum that is no longer ASEAN driven. The FTAAP could be the kiss of death for the Asia Pacific Community albeit having strong proponents in certain quarters. This discriminatory arrangement is a totally misguided proposal as it goes against the grain of regionalism in Asia Pacific, which Rudd himself proclaimed “must be an open region.”

It is hard to imagine that all these potential building blocks could become elements of a new single “regional institution” for the Asia Pacific. An EU-type process may be attractive, but cannot be created in the Asia Pacific. Instead, we may continue to have an Asia Pacific regional architecture that consists of several institutions. What needs to be attempted is to reform and restructure the existing mechanisms so that they become key elements of a more coherent and consolidated regional process. It needs a high-level understanding, readiness and decision to be able to reform and restructure those mechanisms.

Indonesia should support Rudd’s initiative and the process of deliberations that will follow from it. The new architecture could be built two main pillars. The one pillar is that of a revitalized APEC with a strong ASEAN Plus Three (APT) as its core in East Asia. This forms the economic pillar of the regional architecture. The immediate question is how to involve India in this process. The other, political security, pillar is that of a transformed East Asia Summit (EAS) that is supported by the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) at the working level. As a member of ASEAN, Indonesia should be prepared to take the lead in reforming and restructuring the ARF that indeed has become a “tired process.” The EAS is already proclaimed as a leaders-led forum to discuss strategic issues. Indonesia needs to make sure that the EAS functions as such. The immediate question is how to involve the United States and also Russia in this process.

To be sure, the shaping of the new architecture for the Asia Pacific region is not simply by adding India to the APEC process and by adding the United States to the EAS process. It will take much more than that, and should begin with the restructuring of the existing processes. APEC has begun with this but undertaken it only half-heartedly. It is worth to save APEC as it has the main ingredients as a strong pillar of the regional architecture. The EAS continues to be groping with how best it could serve the region, and as it is still in its formative stage it can easily be redirected. The region already has some of the ingredients for creating a meaningful regional architecture, but it needs progressive thinking and purposeful actions to capitalize on them.