Towards a community - or a cul-de-sac?
On 14 December 2005, heads of government of the ten-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) met in Kuala Lumpur with counterparts from Northeast Asia (China, Japan and South Korea) as well as Australia, India and New Zealand, in a much-trumpeted inaugural ‘East Asia Summit’ (EAS). Convened by ASEAN, the meeting’s participants represented countries with roughly one-half the world’s population and that account for one-fifth of its trade; the region is also the locus of key security problems that have global ramifications.
ASEAN sees its initiative primarily as a means of expediting economic integration in the wider region to its members’ benefit, while mitigating great power tensions in East Asia. But the summit’s formulation was enigmatic: its more precise aims, how it might differentiate itself from existing regional forums, and whether it might significantly assist the creation of a pan-regional community – all this remained unclear. Despite the anticipation that followed its announcement in November 2004 by Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi (who became ASEAN chairman during 2005), and while convening this collection of leaders was a substantial achievement for ASEAN, the summit itself was anti-climactic and lacking in substance. It has, moreover, highlighted important divergences of opinion within the region over the proper composition and role of an East Asian community, even though establishing such a community is widely seen as desirable.
Membership issues
During the year after November 2004, the question regarding the EAS that claimed most attention concerned not the summit’s agenda or objectives, but rather its membership. As far back as 1990, Malaysia’s then-prime minister, Mahathir Mohamed, proposed an East Asian Economic Grouping comprising nine Southeast Asian states together with China, Japan and South Korea. Its aim would be to provide a counterweight to European and North American trade blocs in the event of global free-trade talks collapsing. Fearing for its regional influence, the United States staunchly opposed this proposal. Although in 1993 ASEAN endorsed a diluted variant of the scheme, called the East Asian Economic Caucus, Washington and its main regional allies – Japan and South Korea – continued to oppose the idea of an ‘Asians-only’ regional grouping. Instead, they backed the more inclusive Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, which counted Australia, Canada, Chile, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Russia and Taiwan, as well as the United States, amongst its members. Since its inauguration in 1994, the US has also participated in the security-oriented ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF).
The 1997 regional financial crisis, during which some East Asian governments felt they had been abandoned by the West and US-dominated international financial institutions, helped to crystallise a sense of regional identity. At the same time, China and Japan were seeking to intensify their bilateral dialogues with ASEAN members. In consequence, the annual ASEAN Plus Three (APT) dialogues between the ASEAN states and China, Japan and South Korea were elevated to summit level. In 2001, an East Asian Vision Group established under APT auspices suggested the long-term goal of establishing an East Asian Community. Amongst other way-stations, the group suggested that APT should evolve into an East Asia Summit. Given the great diversity of East Asian states, in terms of their size and power, and the frictions between them, establishing any sort of effective pan-regional community would be a hugely ambitious task. APT’s East Asia Study Group, reporting in 2002, nevertheless endorsed the idea that APT should develop into an East Asia Summit while stressing the need not to exceed APT members’ political ‘comfort levels’ and de-emphasising the goal of a regional community.
Despite Badawi’s 2004 announcement that the first EAS would be held a year later, the absence of a regional consensus regarding the membership of the summit became clear during 2005. Beijing – anxious to entrench its influence over and even dominance of this regional forum from the outset – wished to restrict participants to Southeast and Northeast Asian states (that is, the existing APT members). But Tokyo favoured a more all-encompassing grouping in which China’s power and influence would implicitly be balanced by the presence of extra-regional stakeholders, most importantly the United States. While some Southeast Asian governments – notably Singapore – took the same line behind the scenes, in April 2005 ASEAN set three conditions for participation: as well as being full ASEAN dialogue partners and having ‘substantive’ relations with ASEAN, potential summit members were required to be signatories to ASEAN’s Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC), which is designed to promote peace and stability in Southeast Asia and to provide a procedure (which has never been activated) for peaceful dispute settlement. A similar condition was not imposed for membership of the region’s primary official security grouping, the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). Despite the fact that the TAC is a political rather than a legal document, the American and Australian administrations have apparently seen its requirement that signatories renounce the threat or use of force in Southeast Asia as potentially conflicting with their doctrinal commitment, in extremis, to pre-emptive military operations against terrorists.
Australia was nevertheless anxious to participate in the EAS, which it saw as potentially important for advancing its interests in both economic and security spheres. In July 2005, Canberra announced that it would, despite misgivings, sign the TAC (which it did on the eve of the summit in December). At the same time, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer emphasised four ‘understandings’(effectively reservations) that Canberra had agreed with its ASEAN counterparts: that signing the TAC should not affect Canberra’s existing security arrangements (notably its alliance with America), Australia’s rights and obligations under the UN charter, or Australia’s relations outside Southeast Asia, and that ASEAN could intervene in disputes involving Australia only after an invitation from Canberra.
In signing the TAC, Australia joined China, India, Japan, New Zealand and Russia as well as ASEAN’s members. Alone amongst the significant extra-regional players in Southeast Asia, the United States has continued to avoid signing the TAC and has thus failed to qualify for EAS membership. Notwithstanding US concerns over the possible constraints imposed by the TAC, this suggests that Washington may have purposely chosen to exclude itself from the summit, being unsure of its potential utility and whether it will merely duplicate the work of the Asian groupings in which the United States is already involved: APEC in the economic sphere, and the ARF for security. Until the role and standing of the EAS become clearer, it seems unlikely that Washington will agree to sign the TAC and qualify itself for summit participation. Although the Russian Federation is a TAC signatory and appears interested in joining the EAS, its role lacks substance and it had not previously been an ASEAN dialogue partner, and so was also disqualified. However, the first ASEAN–Russia summit took place immediately before the inaugural EAS, which President Vladimir Putin attended as Malaysia’s guest. It seems likely that Russia will be accepted as a full participant by the time of the second EAS meeting.
Substance lacking
In advance of the summit, Singapore’s Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, a think tank, proposed a 30-point agenda for the summit, aimed at providing a framework for substantive discussions and encouraging EAS members to engage in region-wide functional cooperation. In the short-term, cooperation on terrorism, maritime security and ‘health security’ was proposed, to be followed by medium- to long-term collaboration on economics (especially the creation of an East Asian Free Trade Area), energy, human security, transnational crime and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The key problem with this comprehensive agenda – which covered just about every issue theoretically amenable to regional cooperation, short of European-style economic integration and sovereignty-pooling – was that other multilateral bodies in the region were already dealing with many of the issues listed. Regional states are also aware that unwieldy pan-regional bodies are often not the most effective channel for economic and security cooperation; the policy output from such bodies tends to be based on lowest common denominators. This is most obvious in the area of counter-terrorism cooperation, in which effective intelligence exchange depends on a high degree of trust between collaborating states (often this can only be established bilaterally).
Even after the first EAS meeting, it remained unclear where the new summit might add value to other regional dialogues’ efforts. Abdullah Badawi, the Malaysian chairman, summed up the three hour-long first meeting on 14 December in the blandest conceivable terms, citing the participants’ ‘productive exchange of views on regional and international political and economic issues’ and their agreement that it was in their common interest that ‘peace, stability and prosperity’ should prevail in the region. Although the summit did issue a separate declaration on preventing, controlling and responding to the threat of avian influenza, the absence of substantive discussion was confirmed by the ‘motherhood-and-apple-pie’ language of the Kuala Lumpur Declaration on the East Asia Summit, which said little of importance beyond confirming that ASEAN would continue to be the summit’s driving force and membership gatekeeper, and that in future the summit would be convened ‘regularly’ (not necessarily annually). But there was no indication of when the next meeting would be held.
What sort of community?
A large part of the original rationale for bringing together leaders from across East Asia was to lay the foundations for an institutionalised, pan-regional community with both economic and security dimensions. The precise ambit of such a community, let alone its modus operandi, are still undefined. As with the EAS, greater attention has focused on the community’s potential membership. While India and Japan have continued to favour using the EAS, with its wider membership, as the basis for a community, it was clear that once the summit’s membership had diversified to include non-East Asian states, China could only accept the more exclusive APT as the basis for a regional community. This Chinese prescription, based essentially on power-political reasoning, finds some sympathy in Southeast Asia, where alienation from Western foreign and security policy, and a hubristic sense of regional identity, have strengthened in some capitals since 2001.
While the Kuala Lumpur Declaration at the end of the summit failed to indicate what part, if any, the EAS might play in establishing the regional community, informal remarks by the summit chairman indicated that he did not see Australia, India and New Zealand as future members of it. Nevertheless, in practical terms these three states are increasingly integrating with East Asia and possess in Japan a major East Asian ally. Their aim will be to join a regional community primarily concerned with facilitating trade and investment, and like Japan they will not want to be part of any grouping that China might attempt to use as a vehicle for regional domination. A larger question concerns the extent to which an East Asian community, whether its membership were inclusive or exclusive, might be able to achieve significant consensus on economic and security issues given the fundamental rivalries that exist amongst combinations of major players such as China and Japan, and China and India.
It seems unlikely that contention over the putative regional community’s extent and role will be settled easily or soon. And it is still an open question whether or not the EAS initiative will play a useful role in building this community.
