Advancing East Asian Regionalism

Melissa Curley, Nicholas Thomas

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781134273805
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Asiatische Geschichte

Developments in East Asia have progressed rapidly in terms of regionalism since the 1997 crisis. The end of the Asian miracle called into question not only the capacity of regional states to meet the needs of their attendant peoples, but also challenged the viability of regional organizations, such as ASEAN, to adapt and respond to the changing circumstances. Advancing East Asian Regionalism looks at the ways in which ASEAN has expanded since the crisis, and evaluates the potential of East Asia to come together in a regional formation - one capable of representing the region as a whole - akin to the European Community. It draws upon the knowledge and perspectives of academics and policy makers actively engaged in the contradictory issues of regionalism. Coupling case study material on regionalism, institutions, and sectoral cooperation, with theoretical debates on regionalization, this book is an invaluable resource that pushes our understanding of East Asian regionalism forward.

1 Advancing East Asian regionalism

An introduction

Melissa G. Curley and Nicholas Thomas

Introduction

In the post-1997 period there has been an explosion of region-building efforts across East Asia, most significantly within the grouping of Northeast and Southeast Asian countries known as ASEAN+3. As these countries have sought closer collaboration they have been presented with a singularly difficult challenge, namely how to integrate their disparate states with different needs, capacity levels and worldviews into a coherent whole. This challenge has been made more difficult by the dearth of models – outside that of the European Union – that might suggest appropriate strategies for member states to follow. Efforts to grapple with this problem have thus become a topic of intense interest for policy-makers and scholars alike.

Events surrounding the fallout from the 1997 Asian financial crisis spurred these countries into forging deeper linkages across an increasingly wide range of areas. Although these links were initially due to a desire to avoid a repetition of the 1997 Asian crisis, the lessons learnt, as well as the need to combat emergent new challenges, have seen East Asian states increasingly act in a more collective manner. Regional states now collaborate on areas as disparate as environmental concerns, public health threats, disaster relief and human resource development. The expanding ASEAN+3 dialogues in these and other areas are testimony to the commitment and resources being channelled into forging a more coherent grouping of East Asian states.

Yet, at the same time as they are working together, regional states remain divided by security concerns and historical animosities. Memories of Japanese military actions in World War II remain a major stumbling block to regional unity. China’s strategic intentions towards the region are also dogged by controversy, despite the best efforts of PRC foreign ministry officials to present a benevolent face. In Southeast Asia, intra-regional tensions are also quite visible. Singapore’s disputes with Malaysia over water supply and territory, historical and cultural stresses between Thailand and Cambodia, or the impact of illegal Indonesian migrant labourers in Malaysia, are but a few of the many issues that afflict regional diplomacy. All of this is compounded by the lack of a trusted state able to provide clear vision and leadership to mediate between different national interests and regional ambitions.

So where is the region going? How can it advance if it is also being held back? It is the aim of this book to attempt to capture and analyse the impact of these diverse pressures, particularly with respect to the efforts to build an East Asian Community (EAC). This introduction proceeds by first presenting the key themes and questions of the book. An outline of the evolution of an EAC is presented in the second section. This section reviews the process of regionalism and regional institutionalisation to date, in order to provide background and insight into the current opportunities and challenges and facing the development of an EAC. The ‘three pillars’ of a future EAC, covering security, economic and socio-cultural issues called for at the 2003 Bali Summit, are then examined in the third section. Regional cooperation and developments to date within each pillar are reviewed, before an assessment of the way forward is presented. It is intended that an understanding of these pressures will lead to an informed evaluation of the current community-building project as well as also provide directions for future scholarship.

Key Themes

The process of advancing East Asian regionalism is a complex undertaking. In 2003 the region’s leaders announced their intent to create an EAC, supported by three pillars: a security pillar, an economic pillar and a socio-cultural pillar. This undertaking raised a set of three, interrelated questions: (1) Can we talk feasibly about the emergence of an ‘East Asian Community’? (2) How sustainable are these institutional changes? (3) What will be the role of regional societies and their peoples in the process? If this process of East Asian regionalisation is to be understood then these questions need to be addressed, relative to the framework policy-makers are simultaneously attempting to construct.

Is an ‘East Asian Community’ emerging?

To begin to answer this question it is necessary to go back to 1999, when the region’s leaders agreed to establish an eminent persons group, the East Asian Vision Group (EAVG), to find a collective way forward for the region. In their final report, ‘Towards an East Asian Community’, the members of the EAVG noted that they aimed to ‘offer a common vision for East Asia that reflects the rapidly changing regional and global environment, as well as provide direction for future cooperation among East Asian nations’.¹ In other words, the report offered not only a final destination, an EAC, but recommendations as to how to get there.

Even before the EAVG had completed its work, another policy group – the East Asian Study Group (EASG) – was formed. Unlike the EAVG, this new group comprised senior officials who were tasked with making the earlier recommendations a reality. The EASG was less optimistic than its predecessor, focusing more on ‘concrete measures’ that could be implemented in the eventual build-up of regional integrative efforts, than on a grand vision of an EAC. However, within three years the ‘grand vision’ of an EAC was being called for by the region’s policy-makers in a bid ‘to consolidate and enhance the achievements of ASEAN as a dynamic, resilient cohesive regional association’.² At the conclusion of the 2003 Bali Summit, the member states of ASEAN+3 called for the establishment of an EAC. This remarkable policy shift, from the time of the EAVG report to the outcome from the Bali Summit, demonstrates the growing intent of East Asian states to develop a region-wide community.

Despite these efforts, an ongoing debate – that has largely stayed outside of the public realm – has taken place as to whether or not this new body takes the form of a community, bound together in a set of formal overlapping institutions with some pooling of sovereignty, or a community where a coalition of national interests come together to meet specific functional objectives in a regional context without a loss of sovereignty.³ Although the 2003 decision to declare the body a community may have attempted to end this debate, it still remains to be seen whether new community-building endeavours will be deeper and more institutionalised than the region has seen in the past, or simply constitute another layer of meetings.

Even if such a community were to form, what shape would it take? In the next chapter Shaun Breslin addresses this question with respect to the theoretical debates on new regionalism, in general, and the impact of the EU model, in particular. As Breslin notes, an important consideration is that the EU is but one example of regionalisation and, in terms of its adherence to a highly formalised institutional structure, is the exception rather than the rule. Hence, while integration projects in East Asia have yielded certain commonalities with the EU – such as regional policy communities, deeper forms of regional functional cooperation, as well as the emergence of a cognitive region – the cumulative effect of the region’s unique history, culture and social values will all act to mould the ‘final’ outcome.

Akihiko Tanaka continues this line of questioning in Chapter 3 through a historical narrative of the development of regional institutions in East Asia. Tanaka suggests that although the push to hold an East Asian Summit is a linear development from earlier region-building initiatives, it is an open-ended development focusing on functional cooperation rather than being driven by a singular vision. Part of the reason for this is that the process, post-1997, has been shaped by exogenous forces largely beyond the control of regional states. While the output from the EAVG and EASG reports may hold an endogenous key to taming these forces and allowing a regional vision to be articulated, Tanaka argues that the political leadership to do so still remains absent. Unless this leadership and vision emerges, the ability of the regional states to transform ASEAN+3 into something more substantive is questionable.

How sustainable are these institutional changes?

Even considering the current moves towards deeper integration, the question as to how much these changes will be able to contribute to the creation of a sustainable EAC must be considered. ASEAN has been repeatedly criticised for announcing plans that fail to be realised, while other institutions such as APEC and ASEM have invited criticism for lacking the capacity to achieve coherent, binding agreements on specific policy issues. Those who are broadly sympathetic to the view that intra-regional and trans-regional dialogue is necessary and beneficial in the long term appear to have more limited expectations of the ‘concrete’ outcomes that are achievable within their respective frameworks. The tension between the desire for concrete policy outcomes, versus recognition of the dialogues’ own intangible value, is not easily reconciled and is discussed in a number of the following chapters.

One of the reasons for the lack of capacity, in both ASEAN and ASEAN+3, is the uneven commitment of East Asian states to regional-building projects. One such example of this can be seen in Northeast Asia, where there is a comparatively low level of indigenous regionalisation especially with respect to security concerns. This issue is explored in Chapter 4 by Shin-wha Lee and Hyun Myoung Jae. As they note, Northeast Asia has suffered from a legacy of mistrust stemming from both World War II activities and Cold War divisions, which have left it without any type of institutional mechanism for intra-regional collaboration. This is despite an increase in tensions between the Northeast Asian states since the 1990s. The authors argue that the creation of such a mechanism would help stabilise the subregion, even as other institutions such as the ASEAN Regional Forum continue their work.

Another important issue in the development of a sustainable regional community is the question of membership. If a community is to be formed then it implies a membership base sufficient to meet the aims of the regional organisation. This attempt to create such a community in East Asia – as in other parts of the world – has based its membership criteria in geographical terms. Yet, East Asia is a crossroads for many extra-regional interests. Other regional institutions and a number of non-East-Asian states have a longstanding involvement in regional affairs and organisations. Any attempt to create a community will need to take into account these extra-regional actors, but how such an open-region model will mesh with a closed-member community is yet to be fully articulated.

The role of such actors is a particular concern in terms of the regionalisation of security concerns. Evelyn Goh and Amitav Acharya in Chapter 5 are sceptical about the prospects of ASEAN+3’s ability to supersede the institutional role currently being played by the ARF. They suggest that East Asian regionalism requires the central participation of the United States as it remains the key security player in the region. Given this, while the ARF may not be the only viable option for a regional security dialogue, in the absence of other alternatives, they argue that the ARF remains the reasonable choice in which to channel efforts into developing security regionalism.

Beyond the issue of capacity, the need for a community to create binding decision-making mechanisms, so as to ground its legitimacy at the regional level rather than remaining an amalgam of state interests, will challenge existing regional norms of non-interference and the maintenance of state sovereignty. The enduring commitment to these norms suggests that organisational development – from being an informal, consensus-driven ‘talk shop’ to something more institutionalised and binding – remains problematic in the prevailing political culture of East Asia.

In Chapter 6, Natasha Hamilton-Hart analyses the development of regional financial architecture and its relationship to the domestic policies of East Asian states. This chapter demonstrates how financial cooperation can bring clear benefits to regional states but that – despite these benefits – it is arguable whether such cooperation can spawn deeper integration in other areas. Hamilton-Hart notes that even though there is uneven domestic capacity to support deeper financial integration, the relative openness of many regional economies should provide the basis for common links to be forged across regional economies. However, while this cooperation should assist in the development of deeper integration in trade and monetary sectors, it is unlikely to have a significant impact on political or social regionalisation endeavours.

Nicholas Thomas explores the issue of institutional development further with respect to regional economic and financial policy in Chapter 7. Thomas reviews the development of regional economic and financial mechanisms within the ASEAN+3 zone since 1997. Particular attention is paid to the creation of regional economic trade and investment zones, such as the ASEAN Free Trade Area and the ASEAN Investment Area in the development of regional policy communities. This chapter also examines the challenges that accelerated economic regionalism will provoke, as well as its future potential to contribute to an EAC.

What will be the role of regional societies and their peoples?

If a regional community is to be forged then it has to go beyond the policy elites to include the peoples, societies and nations of East Asia. East Asian states have recognised that there can be greater efficiencies in cooperation, either in terms of resource allocation or in terms of outcomes. As such, it is reasonable to infer that there are further benefits to be derived from the inclusion of private secto...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• 1 Advancing East Asian regionalism: an introduction
• 2 Theorising East Asian regionalism(s): new regionalism and Asia’s future(s)
• 3 The development of the ASEAN+3 framework
• 4 Building a Northeast Asian community: a multilateral security approach
• 5 The ASEAN Regional Forum and security regionalism: comparing Chinese and American positions
• 6 Financial cooperation and domestic political economy in East Asia
• 7 Developing a regional economic community in East Asia
• 8 Regionalism beyond an elite project: the challenge of building responsive sub regional economic communities
• 9 The role of civil society in East Asian region building
• 10 Problems and prospects for regional environmental cooperation in East Asia
• 11 Regionalism and community building in East Asia: challenges and opportunities
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Index