The central issue is whether it is possible to construct a concert including the new powers in Asia to engage with established power, centred on the United States, as the structure of regional power undergoes dramatic change. This is important to the future of regional political stability in the intrinsically unstable process of transition in the balance of regional political power.

Hugh White questions the chance of building an effective political security architecture in Asia and the Pacific without agreeing first on a common set of principles (read a common set of values). This is somewhat ironic given his ongoing worry about the blindness of value based diplomacy in Japan and other places.

He does not think that

[the] essential preconditions for effective security institution-building yet exist in Asia…Major powers can cooperate on individual issues like North Korea, but they cannot yet hold a sensible discussion about the future power structure in Asia, because they continue to start from fundamentally incompatible positions, and none of them is yet convinced that those differences are not worth fighting over. Until we get some movement on those fundamentals, efforts to build new forums to bring them together may only entrench and amplify competitive attitudes, not assuage them. So my message to Mr Rudd is, if he really wants to help build a peaceful Asian Century, he needs to start by talking to each of the major powers about their attitudes to the others, and leave the organisation of new forums until there is a better chance that they will agree on fundamentals. (extracted from Hugh White’s extended analysis over at Lowy’s Interpreter here)

All our experience in building regional cooperation on economic (and political) affairs in East Asia and the Pacific suggests that this is the wrong starting point.

Indeed the trick in Asia and the Pacific is not to start from trying to secure agreement on principles across a complex plurality of economic, political and security interests in our region but to engage in the process of developing rules that are acceptable to the key players – even the simplest rules for engagement in dialogue in these issues – and not to attempt to impose a comprehensive common set of principles or values. The reality is that the latter course dooms the enterprise before it starts.

So Mr Rudd, and others like him in Japan, Indonesia – and also among advisors to the presidential aspirants in Washington, from where I write this – are right to start talking about the processes which can help to define a rules-based, not principles-based, Asia Pacific community that includes discussion of not only of economic but also political and security affairs.

Some might ask what is the difference between securing agreement on common principles and establishing processes of engagement and rules of behaviour in critical areas of regional and international affairs? The difference is profound. Respect for the plurality of the Asia Pacific community and understanding its dynamic recommend emphasis on community building through functional processes that can proactively deal with practical problems of common concern, not scratching our navels about all the principles that members have to accept before they might be allowed to join the club.