Regional architecture: from monuments to open source
Professor Gary Hawke of the Centre for Strategic Studies at Victoria University Wellington analyses the outcomes of the fifth East Asia Summit in Hanoi in October 2010.
Recent meetings in Hanoi clarified some aspects of how the governments of the Asia-Pacific Region will interact.
The earlier decision by ASEAN to invite the US and Russia to “participate” in the East Asia Summit (EAS) from 2011 was widely interpreted by many commentators as a positive response to a US desire to “join” EAS as part of its strategy to re-engage with Asia. However, the nature of the “participation” was not clear.
It could have meant America and Russia becoming part of EAS along with its present 16 members, or it could have meant a meeting of ASEAN + 8 following an EAS in its present ASEAN + 6 format (which itself normally follows meetings of ASEAN leaders and meetings of ASEAN with China, Japan and Korea). More important, it was quite unclear whether the US and Russia would participate in all the activities which lead up to an EAS summit.
The EAS meetings in Hanoi in October 2010 clarified that the US and Russia are invited to join all activities, and that the existing agenda of EAS remains unchanged. Reaching this decision was not simple. Implementing it will be even more difficult.
The first difficulty is revealed in the precise wording of various statements from Hanoi. The ASEAN leaders used both “participation” and “admission”, the latter in the context of a decision to focus on consolidation (paras 38-40). The Chairman’s Statement from the EAS remained opaque: “formally decided to invite the Leaders of Russia and the US to participate in the EAS starting from 2011.” (para 3) To find a clear statement, we have to turn to the Ha Noi Declaration on the commemoration of the fifth anniversary of the EAST ASIA summit, Ha Noi, Vietnam, 30 October 2010, (para 6): “To invite the Russian Federation and the United States of America, given their expressed interest in and commitment to the EAS process, to join the EAS in 2011, which would promote the principles, objectives and priorities of the EAS..”
Even that shows concern about maintaining the EAS process. In part, this reflects the politics of East Asia. The documents all express concern to maintain “ASEAN centrality”. ASEAN has been a remarkably successful region and institution, both politically and economically, but like New Zealand, it is continually concerned to ensure that it maintains a voice in international affairs.
Unlike New Zealand, its regional affairs attract the interest of several major powers –China, India, Japan, Korea and the US, with Russia being significant in a few specific areas. The image of “ASEAN in the driver’s seat” provokes thoughts of a driver whose employment will last precisely as long as three diverse passengers are content, but the more important point is that while East Asian economic integration would be greatly facilitated by readier agreement among China, Japan and Korea, that agreement also carries for ASEAN the possibility of marginalisation in regional affairs.
Understandably, extending participation to the US and Russia was accompanied by insistence on maintaining current processes which have been led by ASEAN. ASEAN leaders and officials may also have found reason for caution in the observation of how some US officials treat the current Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) negotiations as their creation of a new entity rather than the admission of the US to an existing one.
The range of the current agenda of Asian economic integration is not widely appreciated, and it is certainly different from standard Washington views of trade liberalisation. The Chairman’s statement from EAS included:
“We welcomed the progress made by the four ASEAN Plus Working Groups that were tasked to look into the recommendations of the studies on the East Asia Free Trade Area (EAFTA) and the Comprehensive Economic Partnership in East Asia (CEPEA) in parallel. We tasked relevant officials to recommend specific targets and timelines within which to complete consolidation work, relevant to their respective Terms of Reference.”
While progress has been slow in the four areas of tariff nomenclature, customs procedures, rules of origin and economic cooperation, it will be hard for US officials who are wedded to the templates of current US trade agreements to join in the intended progression.
Furthermore, ASEAN and its partners have established pathways which link trade liberalisation and facilitation with regulatory reform, and which link economic integration to narrowing development gaps, most clearly in the Comprehensive Asian Development Plan and the ASEAN Connectivity Master Plan, in the preparation of both of which the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA) was instrumental and which were endorsed by Asian leaders in Hanoi. The various words about maintaining current agendas were far from ceremonial, and the challenge posed to the US and Russia was a major one. The EAS leaders themselves observed that Russia and the US were invited to join
“an important component of the evolving regional architecture, which includes other existing and mutually-reinforcing processes such as the ASEAN+1, ASEAN+3, ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting Plus (ADMM+), and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), and promotes community building efforts in East Asia.”
The messages were not all unified, and not all were welcome to New Zealand. In the case of the East Asia Summit, there were various references to “five priority areas, namely education, finance, energy, disaster management and avian flu prevention”. The Closer Economic Partnership of East Asia (CEPEA) which is the principal vehicle for New Zealand participation in Asian integration does not figure in that list (which dates back to the early days of EAS).
There were also specific commendations for initiatives by China, Japan and Korea with ASEAN: the ASEAN Plus Three alternative to EAS is strongest in the area of monetary integration through the Expanded Chiang Mai Initiative, but CEPEA and EAS are far from unchallenged. However, as China is often thought to prefer ASEAN Plus Three to EAS, it is significant that Premier Wen Jiabao explicitly endorsed EAS in Hanoi.
The range of overlapping institutions and processes is unlikely to diminish in even the medium-term future, and two major conclusions can be drawn.
First, while the US is indispensable in traditional security discussions in Asia, it is not indispensable to East Asian integration. Of course, regional economic developments will proceed in a context of global interdependence, US markets will remain significant, and US officials and institutions will be important parts of the international financial system. Asian economic integration will be a component of global economic developments. Furthermore, the same political leaders deal with economic and security issues and their minds are not compartmentalised.
There are both economic and security elements to human security issues such as disaster prevention and management, and pandemics. So there will never be a clear separation of regional economic and strategic debates. But even numbers are a subset of the natural number system and it remains useful to distinguish even and odd numbers.
The important point is that Asian economic integration can proceed without US participation in many of its core processes. Asian leaders at Hanoi showed no interest in simplifying the architecture of regional institutions and processes for its own sake. America and Russia will participate in some but not necessarily all.
Secondly, the economic agenda is regional integration, not trade. “Community building” is more than a rhetoric; it signals an intention to take account of regional interests as decisions are made in individual economies. It is concerned with establishing regional rules and processes which give assurance that cross-border business generates regional economic welfare. This is very likely to proceed at different paces across different dimensions – tariffs, customs procedures, monetary co-operation and so on.
While the World Trade Organisation (WTO) will remain the focus for creating and implementing international trade law, it is unlikely to be as important as it has been in its role as a venue for multilateral negotiations. The “free trade agreements” of recent decades will soon resemble ancient monuments in a world of plurilateral agreements with variable memberships and variable coverage. The prospect is frightening for those who manage resources of negotiating expertise, but they have to adapt to a world of open source technology.
- by Professor Gary Hawke, Senior Fellow of the Centre for Strategic Studies, Victoria University Wellington