Author: Anthony Milner, ANU and University of Melbourne
Speaking at the Asialink/Asia Society National Forum last week, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd welcomed ASEAN’s desire to encourage deeper United States and Russian engagement in the evolving regional architecture. Mr. Rudd also noted the suggestion that these states meet with the current members of the East Asia Summit (ASEAN, China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand). ‘This is what we are seeking’, he said, ‘engagement in a cooperative institution of all of the key players in the region.’
Does this suggest that Australia will now be giving less attention to advocating their Asia-Pacific vision for the region, and will work more closely with East Asian or Asian regionalism? The distinction matters. Read more…
Author: K Kesavapany, ISEAS
As the international centre of economic gravity moves towards East Asia, the challenge for the region is to develop a new architecture commensurate with its growing role in world affairs.
Consider East Asia. There is no doubt that East Asian countries are well-represented in the Group of 20, which is turning into a genuine platform for international economic cooperation. China and India, the two rising Asian giants, are prominent members of the G20. Read more…
Author: Daryl Morini, University of Queensland
Within Australia, Prime Minister Rudd’s call for an Asia-Pacific Community (APC) has recently been muted by a number of setbacks. Indonesia and Singapore have reacted in a highly qualified way to the proposal, and, at times, have veered close to outright rejection. The initiative also seems imperilled by recent tensions between Beijing and Canberra over the Stern Hu trial. Finally, the APC has been placed in jeopardy by increasing US-China tensions concerning the Copenhagen climate negotiations, Chinese trade policies and the Obama administration’s continued arms sales to Taiwan. In this context, how urgent is the implementation of the APC?
There are three main challenges that risk delaying the fulfilment of the APC: regional sceptics, the counter-challenge of the East Asian Community, and the ambivalent role of China. Read more…
Author: Mohamed Ariff, MIER
Having been in the thick of the global economic crisis, Asia can now play a pivotal role in the post-crisis rebalancing exercise.
Although regional cooperation efforts in Asia after the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis were largely reactive and inward-looking, it is important to note that individual economies in the region maintained their outward-looking posture. Read more…
Author: Simon Tay, SIIA
The ASEAN summit ended Friday 9 April in Hanoi not only with further plans for its ten members but also ways to widen Asian dialogues. Most agree to now include the USA and also Russia. There are however differences over how best to do so.
The differences are not well understood. One suggestion is to expand the existing East Asian Summit (EAS), in which ASEAN annually hosts the six leaders of China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand. Read more…
Author: Donald Emmerson, Stanford University
Former US Secretary of State Dean Acheson entitled his 1969 memoir Present at the Creation — the creation of a global order from the rubble of World War II. Joining or ignoring the East Asia Summit (EAS), some might say, is a comparably weighty choice — between being present or absent at the creation of an East Asian regional order in the wake of the Cold War.
The choice is conditioned by time and space. The East Asia Summit has been meeting without the United States since 2005. The Obama administration, unable to travel back in time to the Summit’s creation, can only be present or absent at its maturation. Read more…
Author: Amitendu Palit, NUS
The aftermath of the financial crisis has opened a new can of worms for Asia. The region has to decide its degree of dependence on the non-Asian world. The decision is anything but easy.
Just about a decade ago, the Asian financial crisis had hit the region. The crisis saw the region responding in a collective manner; to figure out Asian solutions to Asian problems. Circumstantial imperatives led to a revival of Asian regionalism. A key driver of such regionalism was the disappointment with the quality of response from the West. Read more…
Author: T J Pempel, Berkeley
East Asia encompasses vastly different political and economic systems. Religious and cultural cleavages are often deep and divisive, unresolved territorial conflicts are numerous, and several of the world’s most powerful nation-states have competing interests in the region. Virtually all national weapons systems deployed across the region are directed at other Asian states. With so much combustible tinder spread across the region, reducing mutual mistrust is imperative.
Intraregional cooperation and collective action take advantage of opportunities that transcend national boundaries, such as pandemics, piracy and natural disasters. Read more…
Author: Tommy Koh, University of Singapore
In his address in Singapore on November 15 last year, Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama explained that his vision of an East Asian Community was inspired by the concept of yu-ai, a legacy from his grandfather. Yu-ai means ‘fraternity’. Mr Hatoyama would like to bring about a historic reconciliation between Japan and the countries it occupied during World War II. He was inspired by the post-war experience of Europe, where, following two world wars, historic enemies reconciled and a union of 27 countries was established.
I share Mr Hatoyama’s vision. The quest for an East Asian Community will be realised sooner if we can get rid of our historical baggage and begin to treat one another with fraternity, mutual trust and confidence. Read more…
Author: Ezra Vogel, Harvard University
The past half century has been a period of largely fruitful regional cooperation in the East Asia region. Some believe that a new grouping of states would further facilitate regional cooperation. I disagree, and believe that existing forums offer the best opportunity for leaders in the Asia-Pacific to work together in solving regional and global problems.
An important key to successful regional organisation is making good use of what some of the individual countries have to contribute. The strong points of some of the leading countries that can promote the region are thus detailed below. Read more…
Author: Kyung-Tae Lee, KITA
In 2000, the East Asian Vision Group (EAVG) recommended to both the leaders of the 10 ASEAN member states, and the leaders of China, Japan, and South Korea that an East Asian Community (EAC) be established. Since then, intra-regional trade and investment has expanded rapidly. But this deeper economic integration, which is a key component for building an East Asian Community, has been driven not by the leaders of the countries concerned, but rather by market players.
Where does this leave the vision of an EAC, and what have regional leaders done about it? Put bluntly, the actions of East Asian leaders have been disappointing.
Read more…
Author: Joel Rathus, Meiji and Adelaide Universities
Last Wednesday at the Grand Prince Hotel, the Japan Institute for International Affairs convened a symposium on the East Asian Community. With the opening speech delivered by Hatoyama himself, and a promise to broadcast the entire proceedings both domestically within Japan and overseas, the event was quite high profile.
The presenters themselves represented the cream of Asia’s Track II diplomacy. This was underlined by the fact that, in addition to handshakes with Prime Minister Hatoyama, Foreign Minister Okada met with the international guests over dinner at the Foreign Ministry’s official guest house that evening. Read more…
Author: Claude Barfield and Philip I. Levy, AEI
After prolonged ambivalence about trade, President Obama finally found an agreement he could embrace – the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). But what is the object of the President’s new found passion? Why has the South Pacific caught his fancy when pending agreements in Latin America and Northeast Asia could not? And will this amount to anything more than the Administration’s rather empty promises to wrap up the Doha Round of WTO global trade talks?
In fact, the TPP is potentially a significant addition to U.S. trade policy. It could be a model for trade liberalisation and a means to address long-standing U.S. interests in Asia. Read more…
Author: William Tow, ANU & ASI
The newly elected government of Japan has already released its vision of how a regional community-building process could be pursued.
Yet Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has been vigorously promoting his own vision of a regional architecture for the past eighteen months. The Australian leader could caution the Hatoyama government on the dangers of going too far, too fast in promoting any one grand vision for regional order-building. Read more…
Author: Jia Qingguo, Peking University
Since the end of the Cold War, many have considered what should be done institutionally to secure peace and prosperity in Asia. Some argue that the existing bilateral military alliances offer the best chance for sustaining peace and prosperity in the region. Others argue that multilateral cooperation mechanisms are a better alternative. Many believe the existing matrix of various bilateral and multilateral arrangements presents the best we can hope for in the region. But some argue that none of these is good enough. Instead, they propose the idea of an alliance of democracies, meaning the US, Japan, India and Australia—an alliance which Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso described euphorically as an ‘Arc of Freedom and Prosperity‘. So far, the third argument appears to have prevailed.
Read more…
