LOOKING TO EUROPE? AN ASIA-PACIFIC UNION - June 29, 2008

Imagine this: a seamless political and economic area in the Asia-Pacific region, where military and trade interests are bound by a deep compact far beyond any existing arrangement. In short, something akin to the European Union, a replication in part of its institutional arrangements. The features: a common market, shared principles and modified sovereignty; where freedom of movement in people, capital, goods and services is guaranteed.
 

Australia's new Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, is happy to consider a rough model along such lines. His target year for establishing it is 2020, the point when the region will account for 45 percent of global GDP and one-third of global trade. On June 4, a keen Rudd sketched a few ideas for the Asia Society Australasia Centre in Sydney. First, the necessary doffing of the hat to an old ally. 'Our alliance with the United States is the first pillar of our foreign policy and the strategic bedrock of our foreign and security policy.' Second, the need to bolster the United Nations, a body mauled and scorned by the governments of the Coalition of the Willing in their invasion of Iraq. Third (that clumsy term), the importance of providing some directions on 'the regional architecture of the wider region.'
 

So, what do we have on the cards? An Asia-Pacific union, of sorts. Rudd's speech to the Asia Society Australasia Centre provides a few clues. 'The European Union does not represent an identikit model of what we should seek to develop in the Asia-Pacific, but what we can learn from Europe is this – it is necessary to take the first step.' Rudd envisages a body that facilitates trade and responds rapidly to crises – threats of terrorism and natural disasters, a multilateral body designed to maintain regional security. There is the added issue of assuring the provision of 'long-term energy, resource and food security.'
 

Whether this remains fluff, the meditations of an Asian-centric enthusiast, is an open question. The political visionaries are churning out material at speed from the planning rooms in Canberra, but the detail is threadbare, even hollow. Nonetheless, Rudd and his advisors are facing a reality pointed out by international relations theorist Barry Buzan in an issue of the Pacific Review in 2003. According to Buzan, there is 'a distinct and longstanding regional structure in East Asia that is of at least equal importance to the global level shaping of region's security dynamics.'
 

There is little doubt that Rudd has identified a movement busily at work, though his articulation of it gives an impress of originality that is undeserved. A new regional 'architecture' is being discussed by regional policymakers with some interest. But this has been going on for some time. Ideas of this sort are not new – indeed, the United States considered various initiatives in the early post-Cold War period involving, for instance, a possible Asian version of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. An Asian NATO was also something that crossed the minds of Washington's policymakers.
 

As a report by Dick K. Nanto (4 January 2008) of the Foreign Affairs, Defense and Trade Division of the Congressional Research service in Washington claims, 'dramatic shifts' in regional relationships in the East Asian and Southeast Asian region have taken place. Trade, political and financial aspects are involved. The economic leg is kicking with vigour: an East Asian Economic Community; an East Asian FTA (Free Trade Agreement), and an Asia-Pacific FTA, are all on the cards.
 

It is obvious that many Asian countries are seeking a community of sorts – the creation of the EAS (East Asian Summit) in 2005 being an obvious affirmation of this spirit. Rudd provides his own summary, adding APEC, the ASEAN Regional Forum, and ASEAN Plus Three to the building blocks of this 'regional architecture.'
 

There are other trends as well. The China-India relationship, as articulated in the Joint Declaration between the countries of November 2006, suggested exploring 'a new architecture for closer regional cooperation in Asia.' And most recently, again with Washington's keen interest in keeping itself in the picture of Asian security, a strategy called the 'Big Four' initiative, involving the US, India, Australia and Japan was implemented. This arrangement, as pointed out in a sharp analysis by Siddharth Varadarajan (Hindu, 1 December 2006), was a 'post-tsunami' naval agreement. The second is the 'Five plus Five' formula, where existing military alliances with Japan, South Korea, Australia, Thailand and the Philippines are supplemented by 'hedging' powers – India, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam and New Zealand.
  

What of membership issues? Rudd, for instance, is ever keen to keep Washington in the picture, but this is not something that may sit comfortably with other countries in the region. Planners would do well to appreciate the tensions behind the foundation of APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation), an arrangement which initially excluded the United States. Only at Seattle, the site of the first leaders' meeting in 1992, did Washington get a look-in, an outcome which led to a spat between then Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad and Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating. Mahathir, having sought to keep it an all-Asian club, was labeled 'recalcitrant' by a Keating bristling with frustration.
 

The problem within any new economic and security model is whether the US plays a balancing role (moderating the growing power of China) or exists on equal footing with its partners. In terms of dialogue and cooperation, APEC already enables member states to air problems without a deeper commitment. A 'community' that reduces sovereignty in the name of security is quite a different proposition.
 

The reception of Rudd's ideas has been lukewarm, if not openly negative. The Asia Times (11 June) called his plan a 'hastily cobbled one' by a star-struck Sinophile, and unlikely to go far. 'His proposal is at best premature and at worst presumptuous.' Nor was it entirely original – there was indeed very little to distinguish it from current processes. The Malaysian New Straits Times (22 June) was scornful – the proposal reflected the enthusiasm, according to one of its columnists K.C. Boey, 'of musing from an idea-a-minute new kid on the block big on imagination, poorly thought through.'
 

Rudd had also managed to sour relations, if only briefly, with a host of regional partners in pushing his schemes of union. The Japanese, initially perplexed by the Australian preference to visit Beijing over Tokyo, retaliated by outlining a vision of the Asia-Pacific titled 'Five Pledges to a Future Asia that "Acts Together."' Australia none too mysteriously vanished from the considerations of Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda. Rudd had to make a rapid trip in response to placate Tokyo. Regional commentators were also wondering why he hadn't tended to the important relationship between Jakarta and Canberra, allowing it to wither before his well-known Sinophilia.
 

Rudd has a host of influential critics within Australia itself. Professor John Ravenhill working on APEC issues at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies in Canberra was not enthused by the announcement, calling the comparison with the EU a 'tactical mistake.'
 

Two other critics have been vocal – former Australian leaders, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. What was good for the Europeans, argued Hawke, was not necessarily good for the Asian region. Goals, both economic and political, could still be achieved in the region without the 'full degree of integration that has occurred within the European Union' (SBS, 7 June).
 

Keating was even more concise, quick to pounce on the fetters of sovereignty implied in an Asian EU model. I took the Chinese '350 years of the modern age to truly recover their sovereignty; I do not see them sharing much of it with anybody else.' Dismissive of such replication, he reminds those who might believe in the stirrings of an Asianist identity, or even a Nehru-like Pan-Asianism, that they are barking up the wrong tree. 'Problem sharing and dialogue is one thing, the surrender or partial surrender of sovereignty is an altogether different thing.' APEC serves its purposes for the region, remarkable, claims Keating (Sydney Morning Herald, 6 June), in having both a US President, the President of China and the Japanese prime minister, sit 'in common cause'.
 

A mountain of work is needed on Rudd's ideas, however original, before they have much meaning, but the Asia-Pacific community proposal, however unclear and amorphous, is not bound to go away. The skeptics will not merely be vocal, but influential. Comparisons with the EU may have to be abandoned altogether, however much of an 'identikit' that model provides for policy makers of the Asia-Pacific.
 

Binoy Kampmark

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Author of the article holds L.L.B., B.A and M. Phil. from the University of Queensland in Australia and Ph.D. degree from the University of Cambridge. Mr. Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge. He is a member of the Australian Institute for International Affairs and the Royal Institute of International Affairs. He presently teaches history at the University of Queensland.

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