EAI Issue Briefing No. MASI 2010-03 ssue riefing From “Primordial” to “Pragmatic” Identity: I B A Search for Regional Identity in East Asia July 7, 2010 Jun-seok Kim New Initiatives for an East Asian Community own “basic sphere of being.” Prime Minister Hatoyama tried his best not to give the impression that he favored In 2009, two interesting proposals for community East Asia over the United States (or over the West as a building in East Asia were put forward: Kevin Rudd, whole). But, it seemed quite obvious that he wanted to then serving as Australia’s prime minister, proposed see Japan more consciously autonomous from the the creation of an Asia Pacific Community (APC) and United States than had been the case under the pro- then-Japanese prime minister Yukio Hatoyama pro- longed rule of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) posed an East Asian Community (EAC). governments. Claiming that Australia should get more deeply What prompted Rudd of Australia and Hatoyama involved in Asia, Rudd described his vision of what an of Japan to propose the creation of Asia Pacific and APC should look like. Of the most importance, it East Asian communities upon taking office? A proba- should be all-embracing. All the major powers in the ble cause can be found in the shift in relative power, Asia-Pacific region should take part, including the especially between China, Japan, and the United States, United States, Australia, Japan, China, South Korea, that has long been in progress over the last decade. India, and Indonesia. The APC should also focus on Both Rudd and Hatoyama were aware of this change. both security and economic issues. Rudd, for instance, explained that global economic In the meantime, Hatoyama, in a New York Times and strategic weight was now shifting to Asia. Ha- op-ed, came up with the idea of an East Asian Com- toyama has also conceded that China would surpass munity as the cornerstone of his administration’s Asia Japan in economic size “in the not-too-distant-future.” policy. While the idea of the EAC was not totally One might suspect, therefore, that their initiatives fleshed out, he indicated that the group would include were nothing more than temporary expedients de- China, Japan, and South Korea as its core members. As an Asia Security Initiative core institution, the East Asia Insti- Hatoyama did not make it clear whether the United tute acknowledges the grant support from the MacArthur Foundation that made this research possible. States would be invited, although he made no secret of The East Asia Institute his perception that the era of U.S.-led unilateralism 909 Sampoong B/D, 310-68 Euljiro4-ga, Jung-gu, and globalism was coming to an end. In this new pe- Seoul 100-786, South Korea Phone 82 2 2277 1683 Fax 82 2 2277 1697 riod of growing multipolarity, he seemed to believe, it Email [email protected] Website www.eai.or.kr was imperative for Japan to reconceptualize East Asia, The East Asia Institute takes no institutional position on policy issues and has no affiliation with the Korean government. All the world’s fastest-growing region which now accounts statements of fact and expressions of opinion contained in its for one quarter of the total GDP of the world, as its publications are the sole responsibility of the author or authors. © 2010 by the East Asia Institute 1 EAI Issue Briefing signed to cope with the recently changed international Union (EU), which has achieved, in Rudd’s words, “an environment. That might be the case—or not. But unparalleled degree of transnational cooperation,” is a whatever the two leaders’ underlying intent, their initi- temptingly attractive model for East Asia. Hatoyama’s atives no doubt constituted significant contributions to initiative was especially emphatic in this regard. He a series of efforts to bring about community-type re- explicitly argued for the need to create an Asian equiv- gional organizations in East Asia. From 1989 on, when alent of the euro, the European single currency. He APEC was first created, and especially in the aftermath also revealed his hope that currency integration might of the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98, a succession of help to facilitate political integration, albeit with a pro- regional organizations came into being in East Asia, viso that it would take a very long time for this to take with the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in 1993, place. ASEAN+3 in 1997, and the East Asian Summit (EAS) Rudd’s and Hatoyama’s initiatives show that it is in 2005 being the most representative. Since the first now commonplace, not just in academic and policy meeting of the EAS was held in Kuala Lumpur, Malay- circles but even on an official, political level, to point sia in 2005, in particular, interest in the possibility of to the EU in discussing regional integration in East building an East Asian Community has become wide- Asia. Looking for an EU moment in East Asia is now spread. Although controversies over the proper geo- something of a standard step that almost all politicians graphical scope of such a community remain far from and scholars having an interest in East Asian commu- settled, with some countries favoring extensive, elastic nity building go through once in a while. This search, membership and others favoring a limited, restrictive of course, does not mean that these scholars and poli- one, community-building in East Asia is now looked ticians are so naïve as to expect an exact replication of upon as a goal that is worthy of being pursued for its the European Union in East Asia. All they want is to own sake. Australia’s and Japan’s initiatives, probably take European integration as a reference point in their spurred by geostrategic considerations and not imme- efforts to envision a prospective East Asian community. diately realizable, will surely strengthen the case for an There are some difficulties even in doing so, since East Asian Community. At the very least, two initia- people have very different conceptions of the signific- tives have demonstrated the continued interest in an ance of the EU model for East Asia. Any clear consen- East Asian Community among politicians and deci- sus is not yet in sight on what kind of lessons we could sion-makers of East Asian countries. and should draw from the European experience. More than two decades have passed since APEC held its first meeting, partly in response to the sudden progress of Looking for an EU Moment in East Asia European integration. In the midst of an enormous number of proposals, initiatives, and reports on the What needs to be pointed out here, especially in rela- goals and methods of East Asian regionalism, most tion to the future prospects for an East Asian Commu- people are still at sea on the question of how to under- nity, is that both Rudd’s and Hatoyama’s initiatives in- stand and appropriate the experiences of integration voked the success story of European integration as a on the other side of the Eurasian Continent. model for an East Asian Community. To be sure, both This problem is all the more serious with respect of the Asian leaders admitted that a European Union– to the question of identity. With the end of the Cold type community still remains a distant possibility in War in Europe and with the conclusion of a series of East Asia—at least for the foreseeable future. At the important treaties for more integration, the European same time, however, they agreed that the European Union ceased to be merely an economic union and © 2010 by the East Asia Institute 2 EAI Issue Briefing started to evolve into an all-embracing supranational might be of great help in encouraging and facilitating institution pushing for the economic, political, social, regional integration. and cultural integration of member states. In accor- Many of these supporters of East Asian regional- dance with such a development, interest in the ques- ism have believed that what might be called a “pri- tion of European identity has substantially increased mordial identity” is the most desirable and necessary during the past decade. Today’s European Union is form of identity from the perspective of community- faced with the need to elicit the cooperation not only building. This identity is usually said to emanate from of the governments of member states but also of their common historical and cultural traditions and heritag- citizens. This need to rely on European citizens’ volun- es and to consist in the feelings of intimacy they gen- tary cooperation became all the more salient after the erate. Growing interest in the Confucian tradition French and Dutch citizens said “No” to the further shared by East Asian countries and in so-called Asian integration in the referenda held to ask whether to values as its modern transformation reflects the belief pass the draft European Constitution. Many scholars that only primordial identity can provide the ties that and politicians of Europe interpreted the French and bind different East Asian nations. And this belief, in Dutch no vote as evidence that the EU was in a deep turn, is implicitly based on the view that this has also “legitimacy crisis” and turned their attention to Euro- been the case in Europe—that European identity, as a pean identity as an alternative to cure the disease of primordial identity, is the product of common Euro- European citizens’ long-held indifference and antipa- pean heritages such as Greco-Roman civilization or thy toward the Union.