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East Asia Summit buffeted by great power rivalry

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An officer adjusts China's national flag before an ASEAN meeting (Photo: REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha).

In Brief

Asia’s summit season is upon us once again. Over the next few weeks leaders from across the region will gather to discuss a vast array of issues from North Korea’s nuclear program to education harmonisation. At the centre, purportedly at least, of the many gatherings is the East Asia Summit (EAS). It brings together the leaders of the ten ASEAN members as well as from Russia, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, the United States and India to drive cooperation to make the region more peaceful, stable and prosperous.

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Asia badly needs the EAS to fulfil that mission as great power rivalry continues apace and as trade tensions across the Pacific slow economic growth. The 2019 EAS will provide a good opportunity to get a sense of both the state of regional multilateral institutions and the temperature of great power competition. There are a few things to watch out for as leaders meet in Thailand.

The EAS is a leaders-led forum but not all send their top political player to the gathering. China has always been represented by the premier. Putin has, so far, only attended once in Russia’s seven-year membership and US presidents have attended only sporadically. US President Donald Trump has not attended, although in 2017, after a change of heart, was supposed to attend but at the last minute reneged and decided not to.

For all the talk of US strategists about the importance of Asia, most regional states have doubts about US power and purpose in the region. Who comes and how important they are tells us a bit more about Washington’s attitude – Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross is bound to disappoint as US presidential substitute in Bangkok. In recent years, Putin has placed a much greater strategic emphasis on East Asia, driving closer ties with China and his participation in the 2018 EAS. Russia’s participation in the 2019 EAS will provide some insight into Russia’s thinking not just about regional engagement but about the part to be played by regional mechanisms in its Asia policy.

Language and rhetoric are a key front in Asia’s great power rivalry.

China has been consistent, if somewhat disingenuous, in presenting itself as a benign force both economically and strategically. This is in contrast to the United States which China frames as unsettling the military status quo and destabilising an open economic order.

The US message has been less consistent. The Trump administration has at times used openly competitive and combative language such as Vice President Mike Pence’s speech to the Hudson Institute in 2018 and Wilson Center in 2019 and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s speech to the Heritage Foundation in 2019. But at other times it has been much more cautious and moderate in both tone and temperament such as then Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan’s remarks at the 2019 Shangri-La Dialogue.

The EAS and speaking opportunities around it will provide an opportunity to hear how players are positioning themselves in the contest for the region.

Multilateral institutions provide opportunities for participants to hold ‘sideline’ meetings. The EAS is rich with opportunity given the scale and importance of the membership. The nature of these meetings in terms of participants and optics will provide a useful gauge of how regional rivalry is travelling.

Russia and India — individually or indeed even jointly — have the opportunity to drive diplomatic momentum from recent bilateral summits and send signals to the United States and others. The United States intends take the opportunity to reinforce an Indo-Pacific message.  Recently the Quad countries met at a foreign-minister level at the UN which Pompeo has said will help put China back in its ‘proper place’?

While the optics and choreography of multilateralism are important the actual outcomes should not be overlooked.

Over time, the EAS has developed a broad ranging work program with nine areas of cooperation in play ranging from the environment to food security. As this has expanded, so has the length of the concluding statement reflecting the range and scope of cooperation. The concluding statement will be keenly watched to gauge the levels of progress as well as the extent to which specific issues such as the North Korean nuclear crisis or the South China Sea appear and how they are described as this provides insight into the capacity of the EAS to broker common ground and drive greater regional stability.

The ASEAN-led Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership trade agreement appears to be on the cusp of conclusion. This EAS could see announcement that the deal will be done this year. Given the state of global trade policy, such an outcome would be seen as a major signal that mutually beneficial collaboration can still win through, even in these more contested times.

Since the EAS first convened in Kuala Lumpur in 2005, Asia has been transformed. The spirit of cooperation, never especially strong at the outset, has been surrounded by uncertainty and open hostility amongst the great powers. In Thailand this year, EAS is the convening place for trying to conclude what will be one of the world’s biggest free trade agreements and, more importantly, economic cooperation arrangements. This will test whether it is able to assert the potential inherent in its structure, function and membership to improve Asia’s increasingly contested regional order.

Nick Bisley is Head of Humanities and Social Sciences and Professor of International Relations at La Trobe University.

One response to “East Asia Summit buffeted by great power rivalry”

  1. A very insightful pre-analysis of the EAS. Indeed the rhetoric should be very telling in terms of how the rivalry is standing now. To my understanding, the degree of uncertainty has always been in place and in a way is natural to the security environment of the region. So far, rhetorical diplomacy not only of the ‘big ones’ but also of the ‘small and medium’ (ASEAN) seemed to be effective in managing this environment, in order not to let it over the dangerous threshold. Let’s see if they can still surf the wave with it.

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