_{Terence O’Brien is a Senior Fellow of the New Zealand Centre for Strategic Studies.
This article was first published in the Dominion Post of 25 July 2008, under the title Differing Visions for Asia.}

In the months since it took office the new Australian government has gradually revealed  the contours of  its foreign policy, promising active, creative, middle-power diplomacy. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd seems disposed to put new wine into some old Labour government bottles . On Asia-Pacific he has advanced ideas that are, effectively,  a grand  extension to APEC, first launched by Australian energy in 1989. New Zealand has a vested interest in successful Australian foreign policy. We are not, however, a middle power. Our discernment about interests and attainable objectives can  differ. 

 Mr Rudd suggests that existing Asian regional institutions are not capable of achieving vital needs that he identifies — comprehensive membership involving countries of the Asian and Pacific rim, a genuine sense of community, full spectrum dialogue and cooperation including in the area of regional security. Europe demonstrates the sort of vision which the region should emulate. A veteran Australian diplomat has been selected as point man to engage with regional capitals over six months on “this important matter of unfinished regional business”.

It must be said that over the past 35 years, no region, particularly one as successful as East Asia, has been the object of such persistent advice from outsiders, government and non-government, about the inadequacy of its institutions for regional cooperation. There is an imperious quality to the criticism.  The shortcomings of ASEAN, of the ASEAN Regional Forum, of APEC itself have been endlessly  amplified in terms of perceived weaknesses in commitments, structures and capacities.. Mr Rudd is joining an interminable chorus. Certain regional initiatives — Malaysian ideas for  more exclusive regionalism or Japanese ideas for a regional monetary fund — have, moreover, been squashed  by outsiders’ opposition.  

The abiding irony here, of course, is that over this same  period East Asian economic integration — persistently driven by market forces, by autonomous economic policy decisions of  regional governments and by the re-emergence of China as a pre-eminent influence — has been striking. Progress is not uniform, disparities remain, rivalries persist, and global recession can undercut the accomplishment. But the fact is that East Asia does not owe its unparallelled advance to outsiders or their preferences for regional organisation.

The 1997 Asian economic crisis provoked region-wide disappointment over the international response, especially by the IMF and the US. It stimulated interest in a more exclusive Asian management of regional affairs. The present prime mortgage crisis created by inadequate US financial governance could have similar effect. What we are now gradually witnessing is confirmation of a more ‘normal’ approach by East Asia  to the possibilities for regional cooperation — as has occurred in Europe, in North and Latin America — where the pace and substance of integration is driven by the those inside the region.

The  ASEAN Plus Three grouping (North and Southeast Asia) and its achievements in supporting regional finance, economics, technology, and the later emergence of the East Asia Summit (EAS), have provided tangible proof of more exclusive instincts. The EAS is, however, an exception to the rule in that New Zealand, Australia and India have been incorporated, providing reassurance that the new process is an open one — which is of particular concern to Japan and others.

New Zealand trailed its coat for EAS inclusion pulling an ambivalent Australia in its wake. Just how prudent it is now for either country to persist with volunteering criticism about shortcomings in the architecture of East Asian regionalism is debatable. Inside EAS, New Zealand should concentrate rather upon policy issues confronting the region (and the world) — climate change, energy security, food supply, investment availability, health pandemics, migration etc.

Australia’s position is understandably influenced by its American alliance, and the fact that the US is not included in evolving Asian regional arrangements. American interests and power are respected in the region, but the era when Asian governments placed more emphasis on individual ties with the US — rather than ties with one another — is ending. Asian governments do not conceive of the US as a leader of Asian regionalism. The balance of influence is shifting because of China’s accomplishments and the responses in the region to that reality. The traditional view of the US as guarantor of last resort for peace and stability in the region is tempered, moreover, by aversion to any military strategy to contain China, and by misgivings in several quarters about US unilateralism. This does not mean that Asian governments are not suitably prudent about any potentially undesirable consequences of China’s re-emergence.

Foreign policy observers in the US admit that Washington cannot force its way into Asian regional institutions, and that its interests are indeed served by permitting Asia to determine its own arrangements. The imminent visit of US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice will allow the New Zealand government to obtain her take on the matter. She will come here directly from her meeting with ASEAN. The Six Party Talks framework devised to deal with Korean Peninsula issues, which involves the US, could be transformed into permanent regional security machinery (if so, Australia has asserted interest in inclusion). The prospect that the high politics of Asian regionalism might thereby become the preserve of an inner core group might not appeal to those excluded, like ASEAN countries — or indeed New Zealand.