East Asian Regionalism: from Stagnation to Re-Invention?

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EAST ASIAN REGIONALISM: FROM STAGNATION TO RE-INVENTION?

Jürgen Rüland

Abstract. The article provides a thematic and theoretically informed introduction into this EJEAS issue on East Asian regionalism. Its point of departure is the obvious paralysis of East Asian regionalism during and after the Asian financial crisis. It examines as to what extent the subsequent efforts towards damage control and revitalization have lead to a re-invention of East Asian regional institutions as frequently urged in the region. By review- ing the more recent literature and the contributions assembled in the issue, the article notes that despite the crisis the trend towards institutionalist and constructivist theoretical approaches continues. These approaches however often tend to exhibit a certain cooperative bias which may blur the procliv- ity of foreign policy-makers in the region for political realism. Subsequent sections examine the cohesion of regional institutions and horizontal institutional differentiation. The article concludes that despite a proliferation of regional institutions, there has been no marked deepening of regional group- ings and that regime building, as a approach to the management of interdependence, has not made noteworthy progress in a broad array of policy areas contending with border-crossing policy problems.

Introduction

More than anything else, the Asian ﬁnancial crisis of 1997–1998 was a litmus test for East Asian regionalism. Today even ardent advocates admit that East Asia’s regional institutions were unable to prevent or alleviate the crisis.1 The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), for instance, habitually hailed as a model for South–South

1 Amitav Acharya, ‘Realism, institutionalism, and the Asian economic crisis’, Contemporary Southeast Asia,Vol.21,No.1 (April 1999), pp. 1–29; John Funston, ‘Challenges facing ASEAN in a modern complex age’, Contemporary Southeast Asia, Vol. 21,No.2 (August 1999), pp. 205–219; Michael Wesley, ‘The ASEAN crisis and the adequacy of regional institutions’, Contemporary Southeast Asia,Vol.21,No.1 (1999), pp. 54–73; Jürgen Rüland, ‘ASEAN and the Asian crisis: theoretical implications and practical consequences for Southeast Asian regionalism’, Paciﬁc Review,Vol.13,No.3 (2000), pp. 421–451.

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cooperation,2 was at the brink of collapse. A ‘sense of doom and gloom prevailed,’ Tay and Estanislao recall.3 The crisis found ASEAN institutionally unprepared and, despite early gestures of solidarity,4 re-ignited bilateral animosities seemingly overcome after 30 years of cooperation. In the East Timor crisis of 1999 ASEAN was virtually paralysed, making it lose much of its nimbus as a ‘manager of regional affairs’.5 Still more worrisome for ASEAN’s cohesion were disputes over the ASEAN Way, the embodiment of the grouping’s collective identity. At the core of the ASEAN Way are norms such as sovereignty, equality, peaceful conflict settlement, non-interference and non-intervention in the internal affairs of member states, quiet diplomacy, consensual decision-making and mutual respect and toler- ance.6 The financial crisis painfully reminded ASEAN leaders of the growing interdependencies of a globalising world. While interdependence may create interlocking interests and, hence, promote cooperation and peaceful dispute settlement, it also deepens sensitivities and vulnerability.7 Critical developments in one country may thus have serious repercussions elsewhere and an ailing economy may drag other economies, even sound ones, into the abyss of depres- sion. The border-crossing nature of the pathologies of globalisation was further underscored by a concomitant environmental crisis, when forest fires in Indonesia wrapped major parts of Southeast Asia in thick haze.8 Not surprisingly, non-interference became the ASEAN norm most vigorously questioned in the aftermath of the financial cri-

2 Linda Martin, The ASEAN Success Story: Social, Economic and Political Dimensions (Honolulu: East–West–Center, 1987); Jörn Dosch, Die ASEAN. Bilanz eines Erfolges. Akteure, Interessenlagen, Kooperationsbeziehungen (ASEAN: Balance Sheet of a Success: Actors, Interests and Cooperation) (Hamburg: Abera, 1997). 3 Simon Tay and Jesus Estanislao, ‘The relevance of ASEAN: crisis and change’, in Simon Tay, Jesus Estanislao and Hadi Soesastro (eds), Reinventing ASEAN (Singa- pore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2001), pp. 3–24,seep.3. 4 John Funston, ‘ASEAN: out of its depth?’ Contemporary Southeast Asia,Vol.20,No. 1 (April 1998), pp. 22–37; Jürgen Rüland, ‘ASEAN and the Asian crisis’, pp. 421–451. 5 Jürgen Haacke, ASEAN’s Diplomatic and Security Culture. Origins, Development and Prospects (London and New York: RoutledgeCurzon 2003). 6 Amitav Acharya, Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia: ASEAN and the Problem of Regional Order (London: Routledge, 2001); Shaun Narine, Explaining ASEAN (Boulder: Lynne Rienner 2002); Jürgen Haacke, ASEAN’s Diplomatic and Security Culture; Markus Hund, ASEAN and ASEAN Plus Three. Manifestations of Collective Identities in Southeast and East Asia? (Münster: Verlagshaus Monsenstein und Vannerdat, 2003). 7 Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition (Boston: Little, Brown, second edition, 1989). 8 James Cotton, ‘The “Haze” over Southeast Asia: challenging the ASEAN mode of regional engagement’, Paciﬁc Aﬀairs,Vol.72,No.3 (1999), pp. 331–352.

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sis. However, proposals to replace ‘non-interference’ with ‘construc- tive intervention’, a critical reference to ASEAN’s policy of ‘construc- tive engagement’ towards the Burmese military junta,9 and ‘flexible engagement’10 were rejected by the majority of ASEAN’s (soft) authoritarian governments. They feared that the proposal would erode the intergovernmental nature of the grouping and open a Pandora’s Box of intervention by external powers. The formula on which ASEAN foreign ministers finally settled, ‘enhanced interaction’, was a weak compromise which left ASEAN’s cooperation norms unchanged. Trans-regional institutions adopting the ASEAN Way such as the Asia–Europe Meeting (ASEM) and the Asia-Pacific Economic Coop- eration (APEC) also contributed little in terms of crisis management. Their support was marginal and mainly declaratory. They acquiesced in Washington’s approach of handing over crisis management to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), although the latter’s austerity medicine was vehemently criticised by many economists and the governments of the crisis-ridden countries. IMF remedies were seen as deepening the crisis through credit-tightening policies, thereby stran- gulating even viable companies and economic sectors. Criticism of the IMF coincided with conspiracy theories which portrayed the crisis as a Western ploy to spoil ‘Asia’s time in the sun’11 and to impose on Asia the West’s neo-liberal model of capitalism. While there is unanimity over the failure of regional responses to the Asian crisis, much less agreement exists over post-crisis developments. ASEAN, for instance, starting with its Hanoi Summit in 1998, embarked on a strategy of damage control. The summit passed the ‘Statement on Bold Measures’ and the ‘Hanoi Plan of Action’ which, while affirming the ASEAN Way, were designed to foster the coherence of the grouping and to spur economic liberalisation.12 This ‘reinventing of ASEAN’13 marked an attempt to bring the grouping back on track towards its ambitious ‘Vision 2020’, which leaders had agreed in December 1997, only a few months after the outbreak of

9 The proposal was made by then Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim in 1997. See Shaun Narine, Explaining ASEAN,p.168. 10 ‘Flexible engagement’ was proposed by Thai Foreign Minister Surin Pitsuwan at the thirty-first ASEAN Ministerial Meeting held in Manila in July 1998. 11 Kishore Mahbubani, ‘The Pacific way’, Foreign Affairs,Vol.74,No.4 (1995), pp. 100–11,p.102. 12 To be named are the acceleration of AFTA, ASEAN Investment Area (AIA), the Initiative for ASEAN Integration (IAI) and the ASEAN Industrial Cooperation (AICO). 13 SimonTay,JesusEstanislaoandHadiSoesastro(eds),Reinventing ASEAN (Singa- pore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2001), p. 5.

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the crisis. The Bali Concord II of 2003 may, as Freistein maintains in her contribution to this issue, even be regarded ‘as the most comprehensive, visionary declaration of intent that ASEAN has drawn up as yet’. While ASEAN struggled to restore its cohesion and credibility, post-crisis years have seen a flurry of new regional initiatives. Among them are the Asian Cooperation Initiative of Thai Prime Minis- ter Thaksin Shinawatra, former Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid’s Western Pacific Forum and Big Asia Five proposals, the Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand Economic Coop- eration (BIMSTEC), the Pacific Five proposal and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). Another new regional institution is ASEAN Plus Three (APT) which links ASEAN with China, Japan and South Korea. The formation of APT can be traced back to ASEAN’s 1997 Kuala Lumpur Summit and has since—as Yoshi- matsu’s article shows—substantially gained in institutional stature. At present there are initiatives to enlarge APT to an East Asian Summit (including Australia and New Zealand) with the objective of creating an East Asian Free Trade Area. These initiatives have been taken by many observers as a new era in East Asia’s regionalism.14 In their view East Asian regionalism has re-emerged strengthened after the Asian financial crisis. Dieter and Higgott, for instance, predicted the rise of an Asian monetary regionalism leap-frogging earlier stages of regional integration.15 Although in 1997 attempts to form an Asian Monetary Fund (AMF) failed due to American opposition, the financial and economic surveillance mechanism agreed in Manila in November 1997 and the subsequent Chiang Mai Initiative of May 2000, which created a network of bilateral financial swaps in times of liquidity crises, are seen by Dieter and Higgott as an important step in the direction of monetary cooperation.16

14 Among many see, inter alia, Richard Stubbs, ‘ASEAN Plus Three: emerging East Asian regionalism?’ Asian Survey,Vol.XLII,No.3 (2002), pp. 440–55; Alfredo C. Robles, ‘East Asian regionalism at the crossroads’, paper prepared for the Inter- national Workshop on Latin America and Pacific Asia, University of Mainz, 7–9 November 2002. 15 Heribert Dieter and Richard Higgott, ‘Beyond transregionalism: monetary regionalism in East Asia’, in Heiner Hänggi, Ralf Roloff and Jürgen Rüland (eds), Interregionalism and International Relations (London RoutledgeCurzon, forthcoming 2005). 16 After some silence, a meeting of financial experts organised by the Asian Devel- opment Bank (ADB) on the South Korean island of Jeju in May 2004 reanimated and again promoted the idea of a common East Asian currency. At the 2005 annual meeting of the ADB in Istanbul, finance ministers from thirteen Asian nations agreed

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The fact that Asia-Pacific is now ‘host to the world’s fastest growing concentration of new FTA projects’17 is also taken as evidence for a revitalised East Asian regionalism. Unlike Dent, who is more cir- cumspect in his assessment, Desker18 is confident that bilateral free trade areas will boost economic cooperation in East Asia. Others are not so certain. They view ASEAN’s recovery with reser- vation. Möller, for instance, dismissed East Asian regional group- ings as ‘sunset’ institutions.19 Sceptics also regard the recent proliferation of regional institutions as a symptom more of crisis than of a healthy trend. For them the mushrooming of new cooperation initiatives is expression of a deep distrust in the efficacy of existing regional organisations. ‘Multiple regionalism’,20 i.e. the membership of many Asian countries in several overlapping regional institutions, is seen by policy-makers as a low-cost institutional alternative should membership in the more established regional organisations not pay off.For- mation of new regional institutions is also a manifestation of institutional competition and jockeying for regional leadership, which as a thinly veiled populist ploy is also addressed to a domestic audience. The shallow institutionalisation of these new regional forums does not bode well for effective cooperation and enhances the danger of defection. The current issue of EJEAS joins this debate about East Asia’s changing regionalism. It traces new trends in East Asian regionalism: the revitalisation of ASEAN, the increasing differentiation of East Asian regionalism and the emergence of new institutions such as APT and the bilateral free trade agreements. It seeks to provide answers to the question whether these new developments strengthen or weaken East Asian regionalism. Readers may miss an article on security regionalism. Two reasons guided the editor’s decision to omit such a contribution. First, even though 11 September 2001 has markedly changed the security dis-

to enhance the Chiang Mai swap mechanisms. The idea is to extend the bilateral arrangements to a single multilateral process. To this end it is planned to increase the size of the swaps and to develop a surveillance mechanism similar to that cur- rently applied by the IMF. See Financial Times Deutschland, 27 May 2004,p.16 and International Herald Tribune, 13 May 2005,p.7. 17 See Christopher M. Dent’s contribution in this issue. 18 Barry Desker, ‘In defence of FTAs: from purity to pragmatism in East Asia’, Pacific Review,Vol.17,No.1 (March 2004), pp. 3–26. 19 Kay Möller, Pacific Sunset. Vom vorzeitigen Ende des ostasiatischen Jahrhunderts (Pacific Sunset: The Premature End of the East Asian Century) (Berlin: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, 2002). 20 Paul Bowles, ‘ASEAN, AFTA and the new regionalism’, Pacific Affairs,Vol.70, No. 2 (1997), pp. 219–34.

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course in the region, except for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisa- tion (SCO) no new regional security institutions have been formed. However, SCO is much more geared towards security in Central Asia than in East Asia.21 Second, although international terrorism now undeniably tops the region’s security agenda, security cooperation has evolved either along bilateral lines through intensified cooperation with the US or by adding a security dimension to existing regional organisations. However, this diversification of functions of regional institutions from economics to security and the intertwined nature of the two domains is addressed in all contributions. A final word on the geographic terms used in this issue on regionalism: East Asia is a generic term for the whole of Pacific Asia. It is subdivided into the eleven countries of Southeast Asia22 and the six countries of Northeast Asia.23 The remainder of this introduction is devoted to the main themes of the articles assembled in this issue. It takes a closer look at theoretical positions, the cohesion and identity of East Asian regionalism and the differentiation and division of labour among East Asia’s regional institutions.

Theoretical issues

East Asia was long utterly neglected as an object of theoretical debate in international relations research. Mainly chronological and descrip- tive, the overwhelming majority of studies were implicitly informed by realist assumptions.24 The formation of ASEAN in 1967 did not change this state of the art, as until the end of the Cold War the grouping remained the only East Asian regional organisation. The bloc confrontation, a long history of domination by external powers, inter-state and intra-state wars and the pivotal role of the military in foreign policy-making shaped a security outlook of the region’s political elites couched primarily in terms of military power.

21 For an assessment of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, see Gudrun Wacker, Die Shanghaier Organisation für Zusammenarbeit: Eurasische Gemeinschaft oder Papier- tiger? (The Shanghai Cooperation Organization; Eurasian Community or Paper Tiger?) (Berlin: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, 2001). 22 Burma, Brunei, Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philip- pines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. 23 People’s Republic of China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, North Korea and Mongolia. 24 Tim Huxley, ‘Southeast Asia in the study of international relations: the rise and decline of a region’, Paciﬁc Review,Vol.9,No.2 (1996), pp. 199–288.

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Realist orthodoxy was first challenged in the 1990s when East Asia responded to globalisation pressures by ‘defensive regionalism’.25 The intensifying global competition over markets, capital and technologies spurred an overhaul of its institutional set-up and encouraged processes of deepening and enlargement. By the early 1990s, ASEAN felt increasingly imperilled by the stalemated Uruguay Round of multilateral trade liberalisation, the impending completion of the European Single Market and the launching of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The spectre of protectionist regional trading blocks was seen as jeopardising Southeast Asia’s outward-looking development strategy, which strongly relied on Europe and North America for export markets and as sources of foreign direct investment (FDI). In the process, East Asia became increasingly ‘nested’26 in an emerging multi-layered system of global governance through inter- and trans-regional forums such as ASEM, APEC, the Forum for East Asia–Latin America Cooperation (FEALAC), the Indian Ocean Rim Association of Regional Cooperation (IOR-ARC) and sub-regional trans-border cooperation schemes such as the various economic growth triangles and the Greater Mekong Scheme (GMS).27 However, regionalism, i.e. a conscious government policy of creating or strengthening regional institutions, was not only a defensive response with the objective of balancing economic initiatives in other core regions of the Triad. It was also spurred by regionalisation, i.e. a trade-driven, bottom-up process of intensifying interactions and transactions of private economic and other non-state actors.28 Growing economic cooperation, mainly driven by invest- ments of Japanese multinationals and overseas Chinese firms, created unprecedented economic interdependencies in the East Asian region. Although ASEAN’s share of intra-regional trade did not change markedly,29 the launching of an ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) at ASEAN’s fourth summit in Singapore in 1992 nevertheless inaugu- rated a new era for the organisation as AFTA marked a spill-over of cooperation from security to economics. It was the first time that ASEAN—apart from the inconsequential Preferential Trade Area

25 Julie Gilson, Asia Meets Europe. Inter-Regionalism and the Asia-Europe Meeting (Chel- tenham: Edward Elgar 2002), p. 6. 26 Vinod Aggarwal, ‘Analyzing institutional transformation in the Asia-Paciﬁc’, in V.K. Aggarwal and C.E. Morrison (eds), Asia-Paciﬁc Cross-Roads. Regime Creation and the Future of APEC (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1998). 27 For a compilation of East Asian sub-regional cooperation schemes, see the article of Dosch and Hensengerth in this issue. 28 Julie Gilson, Asia Meets Europe,p.3. 29 Hovering around 20 per cent since the formation of ASEAN in the 1960s.

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(PTA) initiated in the mid-1970s and modestly successful industrial cooperation schemes in the 1980s30—had embarked on a tangible economic cooperation. In the aftermath of the Singapore Summit ASEAN also professionalised its secretariat in Jakarta and began experimenting with more eﬀective and ﬂexible mechanisms for internal decision-making. The six-minus-x formula, which created an opt- ing out mechanism for member countries disagreeing with a proposal without blocking the initiative, was seen by some scholars as a creep- ing departure from the consensual decision-making of the ASEAN Way. 31 With these changes realism seemed to become obsolete. It was increasingly replaced by neo-functionalist and neo-institutionalist approaches which were regarded as providing more ade- quate explanations for international relations in East Asia. Dosch, for instance, in his insightful stocktaking of ASEAN at the end of its third decade of existence, fruitfully applied Deutsch’s transaction theory,32 while security analysts debated whether ASEAN is still a security complex33 or already in the process of becoming a security community in the Deutschian sense.34

30 Hans-Christoph Rieger, ‘Die wirtschaftliche Zusammenarbeit der ASEAN-Staaten’(The economic cooperation of ASEAN countries), in Bernhard Dahm and Wolfgang Harbrecht (eds), ASEAN und die Europäische Gemeinschaft. Partner, Probleme, Perspektiven (ASEAN and the European Community: Partners, Problems, Perspectives) (Ham- burg: Deutsches Übersee Institut, 1988), pp. 43–60; Jörn Dosch, Die ASEAN. Bilanz eines Erfolges. 31 Jörn Dosch, ‘Die ASEAN-Kooperations- und Integrationsleistungen, Perspektiven’(The cooperation and integration performance of ASEAN and perspectives), in Guido Eilenberger, Manfred Mols and Jürgen Rüland (eds), Kooperation, Regionalismus und Integration im asiatisch-pazifischen Raum (Cooperation, Regionalism and Integration in the Asia-Pacific) (Hamburg: Mitteilungen des Instituts für Asienkunde, No. 266, 1996), p. 105. 32 Jörn Dosch, ‘Die Relevanz des integrationstheoretischen Ansatzes von Karl W. Deutsch für die Assoziation südostasiatischer Nationen (ASEAN)’(TherelevanceofKarlW.Deutsch’s integration theory for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations), WeltTrends (World Trends), No. 7 (1995), pp. 66–95; Jörn Dosch, Die ASEAN. Bilanz eines Erfolges. 33 Barry Buzan, ‘Security architecture in Asia: the interplay of regional and global levels’, Pacific Review,Vol.16,No.2 (2003), pp. 143–73; Susanne Feske, ASEAN: ein Modell für regionale Sicherheit (ASEAN: A Model for Regional Security) (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1991). 34 Amitav Acharya, ‘A regional security community in Southeast Asia?’ in Des- mond Ball (ed.), The Transformation of Security in the Asia-Pacific Region (London: Frank Cass, 1996), pp. 175–200; Narayanan Ganesan, ‘Rethinking ASEAN as a security community in Southeast Asia’, Asian Affairs,Vol.25,No.1 (Spring 1998), pp. 21– 36; John Garofano, ‘Power, institutions, and the ASEAN regional forum. A security community for Asia?’ Asian Survey,Vol.XLII,No.3 (May/June 2002), pp. 502–21.

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Others, like Aggarwal,35 Crone36 and Yeo,37 sought to capture cooperative processes in the region by regime theory.38 Until the mid-1990s explanations of the fledgling East Asian regionalism remained in the orbit of rationalist theories. However, by the end of the decade, regional cooperation also became an object of the intensifying debate between rationalists and reflexivists. While reflexivism covers a broad range of cognitive and critical international relations theories, Alexander Wendt’s social constructivism has become the most influential, albeit ‘thin’, version of reflexivism in studies on East Asia.39 In a nutshell, social constructivism posits a mutually influencing relationship between structure and agency and views international relations as a cognitive process determined by previous experiences and interactions. Actor interests are thus not givens—as are ‘national survival’ in realism or ‘economic welfare’ in liberal theories. For constructivists, interests do not exist exogenously: they are endogenously and intersubjectively constituted. They are the result of the actors’ construction of their own identity, the identity ascribed by them to others and their identity as perceived by others. Identity ‘describes a process of self-recognition of sharing and adjusting lines or borders between self and others’.40 Four major factors have contributed to the increasing popular- ity of constructivist approaches. First, neo-functionalist anthropological optimism portrayed cooperation as a project of political learning. The underlying argument that actor behaviour may change as a result of positive experiences with cooperation is close to the constructivist idea of endogenous interest formation. Second, the neo-

35 Vinod Aggarwal, ‘Building international institutions in Asia-Pacific’, Asian Sur- vey, Vol. XXXIII, No. 11 (November 1993), pp. 1029–1042. 36 Donald Crone, ‘Does hegemony matter? The reorganization of the Pacific political economy’, World Politics,Vol.45,No.4 (1993), pp. 501–25. 37 Yeo Lai Hwee, Asia and Europe. The Development and Different Dimensions of ASEM (London: Routledge, 2003); Sebastian Bersick, Zur Politik der interregionalen Beziehungen: Das Beispiel des ASEM-Prozesses (The Politics of Interregional Relations: The Example of ASEM) (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2003). 38 For a critical assessment of regime theory as an explanation of East Asian regional and trans-regional institutions, see Carsten Otto, ‘“International regimes” in the Asia-Pacific? The case of APEC’, in Jörn Dosch and Manfred Mols (eds), International Relations in the Asia-Pacific. New Pattern of Power, Interest, and Cooperation (Münster/New York: LIT Verlag/St Martin’s Press 2000)pp.39–68. 39 Alexander Wendt, ‘Anarchy is what states make of it: the social construction of power politics’, International Organization,Vol.46,No.2 (Spring 1992), pp. 391–425; Alexander Wendt, ‘Collective identity formation and the international state’, American Political Science Review,Vol.88,No.2 (June 1994), pp. 384–96; Alexander Wendt, A Social Theory of International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 40 Markus Hund, ASEAN and ASEAN Plus Three,p.24.

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institutionalist tenet that norms embedded in institutions may gradu- ally change actor behaviour and actor interests, increasingly directed attention to the constructivist theme of how norms and ideas impact on (regional) identity. Third, Deutsch’s security community, which explicitly rests on a set of shared values, became a precursor to constructivist theorising on identity-building. And fourth, studies on processes of collective identity-building were also inspired by the Asian value hypothesis which may be read as an initiative to build a distinct East Asian regional identity. After the West’s victory over socialism, Asian elites suspected that, led by the United States, the West was intent on imposing a Western value hegemony on the rest of the world. Western policies of making liberal democracy, respect for human rights and market economy cornerstones in their relations with non-Western countries and their threat to impose sanctions on governments not complying with these norms, seemed to buttress such fears. The US ‘policy of enlargement’ under Clinton, though short-lived and far from being consistent,41 and the EU policy to include commitment to these values in its third- generation cooperation agreements are manifestations of this policy shift. Interactions of East Asia with the West within the framework of ASEM and APEC thus produced ambivalent results. On the one hand, they intensiﬁed interregional (economic) cooperation, but on the other they also sharpened diﬀerences. They made East Asians aware of the asymmetry of their relationships with the West which were characterised by an oppressive and exploitative colonial past and a pronounced donor–recipient relationship for much of the post- World War II period. Western lecturing about democracy and human rights was thus perceived as lack of respect, and was at variance with East Asia’s impressive economic performance and the simultaneous ‘Western decline’.42 In their quest for equality, East Asians constructed a set of values, myths and symbols, which were mental representations of indigenous traditions and local history. They distinguished them from the West, explained their breathtaking economic growth and claimed a superior political and societal order, an ‘imagined identity’ that at the same time served as a legitimisation of authoritarian rule.

41 James M. McCormick, American Foreign Policy & Process, second edition (Itasca, IL: F.E. Peacock Publishers, 1998), p. 230. 42 On the ‘Western decline’ debate, see Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conﬂict from 1500 to 2000 (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988),andJosephS.Nye,Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power (New York: Basic Books, 1990).

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Unsurprisingly, constructivists interpreted the intensifying interaction between Asia and Europe as a major motivation for East Asian identity-building. Julie Gilson,43 in a theoretically sophisticated study, andHeinerHänggi44 have termed this process ‘regionalism through interregionalism’. Constructivist studies shifted research themes to issues of identity, ideas, norms and culture. Inspired by Acharya’s ground-breaking study,45 several scholars examined in great detail how and to what extent the norms embodied in the ASEAN Way constituted organisational cohesion, created a sense of belonging among member states46 and marked a process of political socialisation. Most of these studies asserted that a speciﬁc institutional, diplomatic and security cul- ture47 has emerged in East Asia which indeed distinguishes East Asian regionalism from regional institutions elsewhere. With these paradig- matic changes in theorising went a methodological shift towards dis- course analysis and interpretative sociological methods (Verstehen). Yet constructivist explanations of East Asian regionalism were not without their own ﬂaws. Regarding the ASEAN Way as a set of cooperative norms derived from notions of traditional East Asian political culture and hence as glue for East Asian regionalism, constructivist studies tended to ignore or at least downplay the realist baggage of these norms.48 I have shown in detail elsewhere how these values may have been able to construct a collective identity, but one that pre- vents substantial deepening of cooperation.49 ‘In the case of ASEAN,

43 Julie Gilson, Asia Meets Europe. 44 Heiner Hänggi, ‘Regionalism through inter-regionalism: East Asia and ASEM’, in F. Liu and Philippe Régnier (eds), Regionalism in East Asia: Paradigm Shifting? (Lon- don: Curzon Press, 2003), pp. 197–219. 45 Amitav Acharya, Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia. 46 Richard Higgott, ‘Ideas, identity and policy coordination in the Asia-Pacific’, Pacific Review,Vol.7,No.4 (1994), pp. 367–78. 47 For the term ‘diplomatic and security culture’, see Jürgen Haacke, ASEAN’s Diplomatic and Security Culture,p.1. 48 See, for instance, Nikolas Busse, ‘Constructivism and Southeast Asian security’, Pacific Review,Vol.12,No.1 (1999), pp. 39–60 and, to a lesser extent, Alistair I. Johnston, ‘The myth of the ASEAN Way? Explaining the evolution of the ASEAN regional forum’, in H. Haftendorn, R.O. Keohane and C.A. Wallander (eds), Imperfect Unions. Security Institutions over Time and Space (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 286–324; Amitav Acharya, ‘Ideas, identity, and institution-building: from the “ASEAN Way” to the Asia-Pacific Way?’ Pacific Review,Vol.10,No.3 (1997), pp. 319–46;AmitavAcharya,Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia,andJürgen Haacke, ASEAN’s Diplomatic and Security Culture. 49 Jürgen Rüland, ‘Ethnozentrismus, Nationalismus und regionale Kooperation in Asien’(Eth- nocentrism, nationalism and regional cooperation in Asia), in Brunhild Staiger (ed.), Nationalismus und regionale Kooperation in Asien (Nationalism and Regional Cooperation in Asia) (Hamburg: Mitteilungen des Instituts für Asienkunde, No. 243, 1995), pp. 1–

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the norms that are shared by the member states actually have the effect of limiting the sense of regional community,’ Narine contends.50 Nischalke’s research challenges the assumption that ASEAN members’ foreign policy behaviour is guided by domestic political culture.51 Moreover, as Rother—himself a constructivist—has persua- sively argued, constructivist interpretations displayed a bias in favour of cooperative interpretations, thus providing a distorted picture of the cognitive processes they purport to reflect.52 They underestimate the culturally pessimistic traditions of a hostile perception of the outer world, the realist socialisation of foreign policy and security elites, a distinct lack of cooperative traditions and a long history of war, conflict, violence and strife.53 Nor did theoretical optimism of the pre- crisis years sufficiently take into account the low level of institutionalisation of East Asian regionalism: rather, it overstated the assumed political learning effects and neglected the low opportunity costs (costs which arise as the result of free-riding of members of a cooperation agreement) including the resultant reluctance of governments to incur high governance costs (costs incurred in order to build up and maintain institutions).54 It thus seemed plausible to argue that, alto- gether, these factors impaired cooperation and facilitated defection in times of crisis.55 The Asian financial crisis thus seemed to vindicate

20; Jürgen Rüland, ‘Politische und sozio-kulturelle Aspekte von Kooperation und Integration im asiatisch-pazifischen Raum’ (Political and sociocultural aspects of cooperation and integration in the Asia-Pacific region), in Guido Eilenberger, Manfred Mols and Jür- gen Rüland (eds), Kooperation, Regionalismus und Integration im asiatisch-pazifischen Raum (Cooperation, Regionalism and Integration in the Asia-Pacific Region) (Hamburg: Mitteilungen des Instituts für Asienkunde, No. 266, 1996), pp. 73–92. 50 Shaun Narine, Explaining ASEAN,p.196. 51 Tobias Nischalke, ‘Insights from ASEAN’s foreign policy cooperation: the “ASEAN Way”, a real spirit or a phantom?’ Contemporary Southeast Asia,Vol.22,No. 1 (April 2000), pp. 89–112. Nischalke’s point is shared by Shaun Narine, Explaining ASEAN,p.197. 52 Stefan Rother, Normen, Identitäten und die Logik der Anarchie: Die ASEAN aus konstruk- tivistischer Perspektive (Norms, Identities and the Logic of Anarchy: ASEAN in Con- structivist Perspective) (Freiburg: Arnold-Bergstraesser-Institut, 2004). 53 Donald G. McCloud, Southeast Asia. Tradition and Modernity in the Contemporary World (Boulder: Westview, 1995). 54 The distinction of opportunity costs and governance costs is based on David A. Lake, ‘Global governance: a relational contracting approach’, in Prakash Aseem and Jeffrey A. Hart (eds), Globalization and Governance, (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 31–53. 55 Jürgen Rüland, ‘“Dichte” oder “schlanke” Institutionalisierung? Der Neue Regionalismus im Zeichen von Globalisierung und Asienkrise’ (Deep or lean institutionalisation? The new regionalism under the impact of globalisation and the Asian financial crisis), Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen (Journal of International Relations), Vol. 9,No.2 (2002), pp. 175–208.

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the limitations of these approaches and to reinvigorate the anthropological pessimism of political leaders.56 Not surprisingly, voices emerged claiming that the paralysis of East Asian regionalism during the Asian financial crisis may be better explained by realism.57 Indeed, the crisis has shown that realism has not become obsolete, as is often argued.58 Yet the flurry of new region-building activities in the aftermath of the crisis retained the momentum towards institutionalist and in particular constructivist interpretations59 and thus forestalled a renaissance of realism. For some, like Rother, this is not surprising, because constructivism is a meta-theory which can explain not only cooperative but also con- flictive behaviour.60 The reinforced trend towards institutionalist and constructivist interpretations is also mirrored in this issue. Aggarwal and Koo, for instance, use a complex and sophisticated public choice-based bargaining games model as theoretical framework for explaining the decline of trans-regional forums such as ASEM and APEC and the rise of mini-lateral and bilateral trade cooperation schemes emphasis- ing club goods (i.e. benefits restricted to group members) as opposed to public goods (i.e. benefits also accessible to non-group members). This model displays two major strengths. First, it explicitly devi- ates from the unilinear perspective of mainstream institutionalism, which regards growing interdependence and intensifying interaction as a process of strengthening regional cohesion. Aggarwal and Koo’s model captures processes of contraction of regional and interregional cooperation and a weakening of East Asia’s nesting in global multilateral institutions. Second Aggarwal and Koo’s approach incorporates

56 Donald K. Emmerson, ‘What do the blind-sided see? Reapproaching regionalism in Southeast Asia’, Pacific Review,Vol.18,No.1 (forthcoming 2005). 57 Jürgen Rüland, ASEAN and the Asian Crisis,pp.421–51; Harald David, Die ASEAN zwischen Konflikt, Kooperation und Integration (ASEAN between Conflict, Cooperation and Integration) (Hamburg: Mitteilungen des Instituts für Asienkunde, No. 371, 2003); Donald K. Emmerson, ‘What do the blind-sided see?’. Less secure, but confirming this tendency is Amitav Acharya, ‘Realism, institutionalism, and the Asian economic crisis’, Contemporary Southeast Asia,Vol.21,No.1 (April 1999), pp. 1–29. 58 Michael Zürn, ‘We can do much better! Aber muss es auf amerikanisch sein? Zum Vergleich der Disziplin “Internationale Beziehungen” in den USA und in Deutschland’(Wecando much better! But it need not be American-style), Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen (Journal of International Relations), Vol. 1,No.1 (1994), p. 98. 59 Nikolas Busse, ‘Constructivism and Southeast Asian security’, pp. 39–60;Ami- tav Acharya, Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia; Jürgen Haacke, ASEAN’s Diplomatic and Security Culture;StefanRother,Normen, Identitäten und die Logik der Anar- chie; Mely Caballero-Anthony, Regional Security in Southeast Asia. Beyond the ASEAN Way (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2005). 60 Stefan Rother, Normen, Identitäten und die Logik der Anarchie.

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domestic coalitions and regime type in their theoretical framework, thereby modelling regionalism as a two- or—more precisely—multi- level game.61 Domestic coalitions supporting or opposing regional cooperation are often neglected in favour of state-centric analyses, a point Solingen has rightly stressed with her distinction between ‘liberal-internationalist’ and ‘statist-nationalist’ coalitions.62 Dent’s concept of ‘lattice regionalism’ also strongly relies on neo-institutionalist arguments, treating East Asian governments as economic and geo-political utility maximisers. By contrast, Freistein and Yoshimatsu rely on constructivist arguments in their attempt to explore the cohesion of ASEAN after the Asian financial crisis and the genesis and evolution of the ASEAN Plus Three forum. Although Freistein’s arguments are highly persuasive, one may ask, in the light of her scepticism about ASEAN’s cohesion after the Bali Summit in 2003, if an explicit link to realist arguments would not strengthen institutionalist and constructivist explanations of the current state of East Asia’s regionalism. At least four major arguments seem to support realist perspectives. First, there seems to be widespread agreement that a major motivation for the revitalisation of East Asian regionalism is the strengthening of ASEAN’s (and East Asia’s) bargaining power in global forums and within the Triad by enlisting the support of the Northeast Asian economic powerhouses China, Japan and South Korea. This coincides well with conventional ASEAN thinking which views cooperation as a means to enhance ‘national resilience’, a concept mainly defined in terms of foreign policy autonomy and economic autarky.63 Second, studies of interregionalism have shown that among the five major functions of inter- and trans-regional forums—balancing, institution-building, rationalising, agenda-setting and identity-building—institutional balancing is the most salient.64 Third, it becomes increasingly evident that the par-

61 Robert Putnam, ‘Diplomacy and domestic politics. The logic of two-level games’, International Organization,Vol.42,No.3 (Summer 1988), pp. 427–60. 62 Etel Solingen, ‘ASEAN quo vadis? Domestic coalitions and regional cooperation’, Contemporary Southeast Asia,Vol.21,No.1 (April 1999), pp. 30–53. 63 Dewi Fortuna Anwar, Indonesia and the Security of Southeast Asia (Jakarta: Centre for Strategic and International Studies, 1992), p. 13. 64 Jürgen Rüland, ASEAN and the European Union: A Bumpy Interregional Relationship (Bonn: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, Zentrum für Europäische Integrationsforschung, Discussion Paper C 95, 2001); Mathew Doidge, ‘“East is East …” Inter- and transregionalism and the EU–ASEAN relationship’, PhD dissertation (University of Canterbury, Christchurch, 2004); Howard Loewen, Theorie und Empirie transregionaler Kooperation am Beispiel des Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) (Theory and Empir- ical Evidence of Transregional Cooperation. The Example of the Asia-Europe Meet- ing [ASEM]) (Hamburg: Verlag Dr Kovac, 2004).

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ticipation of China and Japan in APT is a double-edged sword. While it may promote East Asian cooperation where common interests exist, it is also a recipe for inviting rivalries and conflicts into the cooperative forums of the region. With intensifying Sino-Japanese competition, APT is not only becoming increasingly intertwined with Asian regional powers’ geo-political and security interests, it is also shifting from an outward-oriented balancing institution to an arena for intra- regional balancing games. China, Japan (and India) are all courting ASEAN in an attempt to balance each other and the enhanced post- 11 September presence of the US in the region.65 These developments also define the limits for Yoshimatsu’s seemingly paradoxical claim that Sino-Japanese competition boosts East Asian cooperation. While there are indeed arguments supporting Yoshimatsu’s arguments,66 it should not be ignored that rivalry also generates suspicion and exclu- sion, and that together both work against predictability—a core func- tion of cooperative institutions. Mutual suspicion is exacerbated by emotionalising value conflicts such as the periodic controversy over interpretations of World War II history. Value conflicts, however, as we know from regime theory, are the ones most difficult to reconcile. Thus, not surprisingly, Aggarwal and Koo rule out the emergence of a Northeast Asian Free Trade Area (NEAFTA) if Sino-Japanese rivalry does not subside. Fourth, and finally, the proliferating bilateral free trade areas can also be interpreted through the realist lens. In their article, Aggarwal and Koo stress the fact that countries tend to display a preference to trade with their allies. They avoid trade with enemies ‘because the (relative) gains from free trade can cause change in the relative distribution of power in politics and military affairs’.67 Okamoto supports this point by showing that East Asian promoters of bilateral free trade agreements are indeed strongly motivated by geo- political and geo-economic objectives and a desire to strengthen their bargaining power in global multilateral forums.68 An alternative to conventional theoretical explanations of international relations in East Asia has recently been offered by Kang. Although Kang must be commended for his critique of Eurocentric theorising, his explanation of Asia’s changing international order as following historically and culturally established patterns of bandwag-

65 The recent China–India accommodation must also be seen as a deliberate Chinese attempt to balance US and Japanese inﬂuence in Asia. 66 For a similar argument, see Markus Hund, ASEAN and ASEAN Plus Three,p.347. 67 See the contribution of Aggarwal and Koo in this issue. 68 Jiro Okamoto, ‘Introduction’, in Jiro Okamoto (ed.), Whither Free Trade Agree- ments? Proliferation, Evaluation and Multilateraliztion, Chiba. Institute of Developing Economics (Tokyo: JETRO, 2003), pp. 1–22.

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oning China represents no departure from mainstream realist concepts.69 It is not, as Kang himself claims, an ‘expansion of international relations theory so that scholars can better identify factors that help to explain regional and temporal differences in how states think about and achieve security and how they conduct their international relations’.70 Kang’s ‘cultural historicism’71 ignores the complex intertwining of conflict and cooperation between China and her neighbours. Acharya’s interpretation of East Asia’s relationships with China as ‘double-binding’ is thus much closer to empirical reality.72In an introductory article, it is not possible to pursue the debate between rationalists and reflexivists in greater depth. Such a discussion would have to include the ontological and epistemological roots of the controversy. A key question in this respect would be the constructivist claim that interests are endogenously constructed. Against this claim it could be argued that virtually every state—irrespective of state practices—pursues a security interest. Security is thus an exogenously given interest. What, however, might be constructed by state practices and interaction is the priority states attach to security. In a peaceful environment, other state priorities might rank higher than security. And state practices might also affect how security is pursued— by arms build-up and military means, by diplomacy or by economic means. These and other issues, such as the causal ambiguities inherent in the constructivist structure–agency relationship cannot be further addressed here. Yet my reservations against constructivist and liberal interpretations of East Asian regionalism should not be misread as a plea for a return to simplistic versions of realism. After all, the contributions to this issue corroborate the inextricably interwoven nature of power, conflict and cooperation in East Asia.73 Even though crit- ics of realism rightly point out that in East Asia power is now less defined in military terms, it cannot be denied that power, balancing games, national sovereignty and relative gains calculations are still predominant in the thinking of foreign policy-makers. The difference

69 David C. Kang, ‘Getting Asia wrong: the need for new analytic frameworks’, International Security,Vol.27,No.4 (2003), pp. 57–85. 70 David C. Kang, ‘Hierarchy, balancing and empirical puzzles in Asian international relations’, International Security,Vol.28,No.3 (2003–4), pp. 165–80. 71 Amitav Acharya, ‘Will Asia’s past be its future?’ International Security,Vol.28,No. 3 (2003–4), pp. 149–64. 72 Ibid., p. 153. 73 See, for instance, Sheldon Simon, ‘Realism and neoliberalism: international relations theory and Southeast Asian security’, Paciﬁc Review,Vol.8,No.1 (1995), pp. 5–24.

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with twenty years ago, however, is that power games have increasingly shifted from the military field to institutional arenas. On a fic- tive power–cooperation continuum, East Asia would still lean more towards the paradigm of power than towards cooperation. This has consequences for theorising. It means that perceptions of the outer world in terms of power and conflict—i.e. the cognitive underpin- nings of realism—and the concomitant anthropological pessimism still capture a wider segment of reality than cooperation. This must be adequately reflected in theoretical concepts, without, however, ignor- ing or downplaying the growth of cooperative institutions and initiatives towards collective identity-building. Vice versa, for institutionalist and constructivist interpretations it means that they must acknowl- edge the power-driven motivations of state actions and incorporate them into their framework. The result will be a convergence of theoretical approaches. Previous fundamental differences will be narrowed to nuances. In the absence of a theory of ‘institutional realism’, Kin- dermann’s ‘synoptic realism’, combining cognitive, structural, unit- based and individual factors, may come close to such requirements74 and possibly also British realism in Bull’s tradition.75 In Bull’s version of realism anarchy is mitigated by the Grotian concept of international society.76

Cohesion and intensity of regional cooperation

Departing from theoretical diversity, all contributions address the core problem of East Asian regionalism. How cohesive is it? Is it moving beyond the ASEAN Way and its underlying concepts of ‘soft law’ and ‘soft institutionalisation’? How deep is identity-building as a foundation of East Asian regionalism? And how is East Asian regionalism ‘nested’ in global multilateral institutions? Perhaps with the exception of Yoshimatsu, the articles assembled in this issue express scepticism as to what extent new initiatives of regional cooperation have fostered the coherence of East Asian regional institutions. It is thus questionable that something really new is in the oﬃng. Bargaining games as presented by Aggarwal and

74 Gottfried-Karl Kindermann (ed.), Grundelemente der Weltpolitik: eine Einführung (Basic Elements of World Politics: An Introduction) (München: Piper, 1986). 75 Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977). 76 For an earlier plea in this direction, see Acharya, with whom I agree in principle; Amitav Acharya, ‘Will Asia’s past be its future?’ pp. 149–64.

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Koo, for instance, point to the fact that, especially in times of crisis and uncertainty, club goods take precedence over public goods. In other words, cooperation is still impaired by an orientation of actors towards relative gains. This again suggests that governments in the region still habitually rely on behaviour much in tune with realist assumptions, even though their interactions are embedded in institutions. Sub-regional trans-border cooperation—albeit supplementing regional cooperation by an additional institutional layer—does not contradict this assessment, as Dosch and Hensengerth’s article shows. Although cooperation among Mekong riparian states has improved and enhanced security in a particularly conflict-prone part of South- east Asia, the main conflict of interest between upstream and down- stream riverains has not yet been effectively addressed by existing institutions. This conflict, characteristic of many international river systems, is exacerbated by the fact that the upstream country in the Mekong river system is China, the region’s hegemon. Dam-building in China’s Yunnan province adversely affects water flow in the lower river, causing severe damage for agriculture in Cambodia and Viet- nam. Mekong river cooperation also shows that increased interdependencies and increasing transactions may have their setbacks. Dam- building, with its impact on water flow, agriculture and environment, is only one issue; others are the spread of pandemics such as HIV/AIDS and SARS along routes of transportation, and irregular migration. To keep these problems in check necessitates more cooperation, thus creating pressures for ‘negative spill-over’, but in the absence of cooperative traditions they may also enhance alienation and intensify conflict. Most ASEAN observers concur with Freistein that ASEAN’s Bali Concord II is the most elaborate and ambitious effort to get regional cooperation back on track. But has it really initiated a process of adjusting ASEAN’s identity to a changing international environment? Is it reforming the ASEAN Way, moving the grouping towards greater legalisation and institutionalisation? Is the community concept it stresses more than rhetoric? Is it a tacit move towards ‘deeper’ institutionalisation? Freistein’s analysis suggests that changes in organisational princi- ples are indeed underway but so far inconclusive and ambiguous. ASEAN is still sticking to the non-interference principle and inter- governmentalism, both of which are doggedly defended by the new Indochinese members. Rifts between old and new members are deepening, the problems associated with enlargement haunt the grouping. The lessons to be drawn from ASEAN enlargement for integration theory may be three-fold. First, enlargement that is primarily

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guided by balancing motives may provide few incentives for deepening cooperation. As balancing is a short-term response to changing power equations, the incentive to invest in governance costs through institution-building is limited. Second, the more diverse a grouping in physical, political, economic and cultural terms, the more likely it is that normative consent rests on the smallest common denominator and the more difficult it is to change the norms of cooperation. And third, the greater the heterogeneity of the membership of a regional cooperation scheme, the greater the imperative for a careful political and economic preparation of the enlargement process. ASEAN, for instance, would have been well advised had it based its enlargement on norms similar to the Copenhagen criteria of the EU.77 The fact that in the Bali Concord II and in the subsequent Vien- tiane Action Programme (2004–2010) ASEAN has for the first time acknowledged democracy as one of its norms is remarkable in itself, but without immediate effect on the political systems of the member countries and ASEAN cooperation. Perhaps even more amazing is the condemnation of coups in the ASEAN Security Community Plan of Action, which seems to convey the message that ASEAN is gradu- ally moving towards a liberal concept of democracy.78 In this respect, two theoretical issues are of interest and deserve further study. The first is the question as to what extent the adoption of democracy as an ASEAN norm has been the result of East Asia’s interactions with Europe in ASEM and the Anglo-Pacific countries in APEC. Does adoption of democracy signify a shift from ‘rhetoric action’ to ‘communicative action’ in these dialogues?79 If such a link could be proven beyond mere inference, it would weaken the ‘regionalism through interregionalism’ argument. And, second, will adoption of democracy change political value patterns in East Asia as did the Helsinki Accord of the Conference of Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) in Eastern Europe after 1975? Will democracy deepen in East Asia according to the script of the spiral model developed by Thomas Risse and associates in the domain of human rights?80Myanmar is

77 Willem van der Geest, ‘ASEAN and EU economic integration’, Panorama,Vol.2 (2001), pp. 95–107. 78 The Jakarta Post, 9 December 2004. 79 Thomas Risse, ‘“Let’s argue!”: communicative action in world politics’, Interna- tional Organization,Vol.54,No.1 (Winter 2000), pp. 1–39. 80 Forschungsgruppe Menschenrechte, ‘Internationale Menschenrechtsnormen, transnationale Netzwerke und politischer Wandel in den Ländern des Südens’ (International human rights norms, transnational networks and political change in countries of the global south), Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen (Journal of International Relations), Vol. 5,No.1 (1998), pp. 5–41; Anja Jetschke, ‘International norms, transnational human

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certainly a test case for the extent to which norms are changing in ASEAN. While several ASEAN leaders have strongly criticised the junta over the treatment of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi prior to the ASEAN ministerial meeting in Phnom Penh in June 2003,with Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Muhamad (an erstwhile ardent supporter of Myanmar’s accession to ASEAN) even calling for the country’s expulsion, ASEAN leaders eventually agreed to a road map to democracy devised by the junta.81 The road map, however, soon proved another chimera with which the Burmese military seeks to diﬀuse international criticism. At the time of writing, the prospect of Myanmar taking over ASEAN’s presidency in 2007 is further dividing the grouping and might become another litmus test for its cohesion, eroding once more all good intentions for reform.82 Other developments since Bali have also cast doubts on the sin- cerity of the envisioned changes. Implementation of the economic community and the security community is still at variance with the stated objectives. Economic cooperation, for instance, is hampered by continued disagreements over the liberalisation of agriculture and services as well as the persistence of non-tariﬀ trade barriers.83 In the security realm, ASEAN members almost unanimously rejected an Indonesian overture to creating a regional peace-keeping force.84 A regional human rights mechanism is likewise still missing.85 The Troika and the High Council as trouble-shooting institutions have been emasculated by so many caveats securing national sovereignty that they will remain untested. Finally, the ‘two plus x’ formula proposed by Singapore and Thailand in Bali in an attempt to accelerate decision-making has been discussed but not adopted by ASEAN.86 Since 2001, international terrorism has moved to the top of the security agenda of Southeast Asian governments. Especially in the view of Pentagon planners, Southeast Asian countries with a sizable Islamic population have become a ‘second front’ in the war against

rights networks, and domestic political change in Indonesia and the Philippines’, PhD thesis (European University Institute, Florence, 2001). 81 The Jakarta Post Online, 4 October 2003; The Nation Online, 8 October 2003. 82 The Jakarta Post Online, 2 February 2005. 83 The Jakarta Post Online, 7 October 2003. 84 Far Eastern Economic Review, 6 May 2004,p.19,and10 June 2004,p.20. 85 Simon S.C. Tay and Rizal Sukma, ‘ASEAN’, in Watanabe Koji (ed.), Human- itarian Intervention. The Evolving Asian Debate (Tokyo: Japan Centre for International Exchange, 2003), p. 122. 86 Statement by the Chairperson of the 9th ASEAN Summit and the 7th ASEAN +3 Summit, http://www. 9aseansummit.com/detail.php?pid=122&jenis=3 (accessed 8 October 2003); Straits Times Online, 8 October 2003.

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terror.87 The bombings in Bali (October 2002), Jakarta (August 2003 and September 2004), the southern Philippines (September 2003)and south Thailand (January 2004 and April 2005) seemed to corroborate such a pessimistic security outlook. Yet optimistic expectations that security cooperation is becoming a major factor revitalising ASEAN and the US serving as an external federator have not materialised. Although it cannot be denied that police and intelligence cooperation between individual ASEAN members has intensified since 2001,the declarations condemning international terrorism by ASEAN, APT, ARF, ASEM and APEC have been essentially non-binding and did not go beyond the habitually loose previous cooperation arrangements.88 There has been no re-invention of ASEAN as a security institution after 11 September 2001 and the Bali bombing. Yoshimatsu stresses the importance of informality as a starting point for cooperation under the APT framework. While providing new insights into the crucial role of Japan and China in launching this institution, his analysis also makes evident that cooperation built on informality has its limitations, because informality is tantamount to a lack of transparency and thus hardly increases the confidence and predictability of those not involved in the communication. For cooperation to become effective and more coherent, a certain degree of formalisation is inevitable, although formal institutions must keep governance costs at an affordable and acceptable level. Moreover, East Asian regionalism is still elitist. Regional institutions are widely unknown at the grass-roots level and there is little pressure from below for closer regional cooperation.89 The ASEAN People’s Assembly is a creation of academics and NGO elites and, despite three meetings, ASEAN governments have not been attentive to its agenda so far. At the moment, it is still a token of people’s partici- pation, although this may change if democratisation flourishes or can be sustained in the member countries.90 Moves towards a parliamen- tarisation of ASEAN by creating an ASEAN parliament, as repeat-

87 John Gershman, ‘Is Southeast Asia the second front?’ Foreign Aﬀairs,Vol.81,No. 4 (July/August, 2002), pp. 60–74; Joshua Kurlantzick, ‘Tilting at dominos: America and Al Qaeda in Southeast Asia’, Current History,Vol.101,No.659 (December 2002), pp. 421–426; Martin Wagener, Second Front: Die USA, Südostasien und der Kampf gegen den Ter rorismus (Second Front: The United States, Southeast Asian and the War against Terror) (Trier: Universität Trier, ZOPS Occasional Paper No. 16,October2002). 88 Jürgen Haacke, ‘The war on terror: implications for the ASEAN region’, in Christopher M. Dent (ed.), Asia-Paciﬁc Economic and Security Cooperation. New Regional Agendas (Houndsmill, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p. 121. 89 See also Shaun Narine, Explaining ASEAN,p.203. 90 The Jakarta Post Online, 4 October 2003.

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edly proposed by the Philippine House Speaker José de Venecia, have been summarily rejected by other ASEAN members. Track two processes are characterised by lack of independence from governments and missing links to civil society.91 Missing links to civil society are also deplored by Dosch and Hensengerth in their discussion of GMS sub-regional cooperation and Aggarwal and Koo in their analysis of regional trade policies. Yet, even though civil society’s influence on ASEAN norms is still weak, Caballero-Anthony has shown that the impact of domestically generated ideas on ASEAN norms deserves more attention than hitherto. In her analysis, she extends constructivist analysis into the domestic domain—a link utterly neglected by Wendt’s state-centric version of constructivism.92 Perhaps the most contested topic in current research on East Asian regionalism is the effect of bilateral free trade areas. Examples are the China–ASEAN Free Trade Area, and the free trade areas Singapore concluded with Chile, Japan, New Zealand and the US, and the US with Australia. Many more are presently at different stages of negotiation, as the articles of Dent and Aggarwal and Koo show. Are these bilateral free trade areas building or stumbling blocks for regionalism and global multilateralism? Are they complementary to regionalism? Are they, as Dent believes, ‘heralding a new phase in regional economic relations’? Dent’s concept of ‘lattice regionalism’ concedes an increasingly dense web of economic interactions in the region.93 But it leaves open as to what extent it may become a springboard for more coherent economic relations in East Asia. While Dent does not rule out the evolution of free trade bilateralism into a region-wide East Asian free trade area, he emphasises the enormous technical and political diffi- culties involved in this objective, which has been repeatedly proposed and is also on the agenda of the forthcoming East Asian Summit. Okamoto concurs and calls for a deliberate policy of multilateralising trade bilateralism.94 Although the outcome of trade bilateralism is open and from an empirical point of view judgments may be premature, Dent’s and Okamoto’s research suggests that there is no automa- tism towards trade multilateralism.

91 Hermann S.J. Kraft, ‘The autonomy dilemma of track two diplomacy in South- east Asia’, Security Dialogue,Vol.31,No.3 (2000), pp. 343–56. 92 Mely Caballero-Anthony, Regional Security in Southeast Asia. 93 For the concept of ‘lattice regionalism’ see Christopher M. Dent, ‘Networking the region? The emergence and impact of Asia-Paciﬁc bilateral free trade agreement projects’, Paciﬁc Review,Vol.16,No.1 (2003), pp. 1–28, and also his article in this issue. 94 Jiro Okamoto, ‘Introduction’, in Jiro Okamoto (ed.), Whither Free Trade Agreements.

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Authors in favour of the region-building thesis stress that bilateral free trade areas intensify economic interactions and create new interdependencies, a requisite for closer cooperation. They may also socialise Asia-Pacific states into ‘hard law’ and thus pave the way for deeper institutionalisation of regional cooperation. After all, free- riding is more difficult in bilateral than in multilateral relationships (except, of course, where one of the partners is a hegemonic power). Bilateral free trade areas also maintain the fiction of free trade at a time when it is jeopardised by stagnating global trade negotiations.95 By creating ‘WTO-Plus’ arrangements they have the potential to revi- talise or even advance the global trade agenda. Desker, defending Sin- gapore’s role as a spearhead of trade bilateralism, thus regards bilateral FTAs as a ‘second best’ option in adverse circumstances and as a reflection of the politically attainable.96 Trade bilateralism may thus be considered as an embodiment of the pragmatism deemed characteristic of the ASEAN Way and East Asian regionalism. However, arguments questioning the region-building capacity of bilateral free trade agreements seem to be not only more numerous but also more convincing. From a critical perspective, bilateral free trade areas may be considered as part of a new plurilateralism, i.e. an institutionalisation of international relations at the lowest end of the emerging multi-layered system of global governance. FTAs are thus increasing the number of chessboards on which nation-states play, thereby creating a post-modern contingency to policy-making. Instead of creating universally accepted rules, bilateral FTAs generate many contradictory rules as protagonists negotiate special arrangements for each free trade area. Free trade agreements differ in scope of liberalisation, rules of origin, ‘broad band’ elements and implementation schedules.97 The technical variation and the complexity of these rules severely reduce transparency and enhance transaction costs. Moreover, few bilateral FTAs have so far evolved into larger regional free trade organisations. One of the main obstacles which make the emergence of an Asia-Pacific FTA unlikely in even the distant future is—according to Dent—the competition of two FTA models: the ‘asymmetric neo-liberal’ FTA model of the United States (which may force on trade partners intellectual property rights, deregulation in

95 Desker cites the failed WTO ministerials in Seattle (1999) and Cancun (2003) and the lengthy Doha process, with failure to reach agreements in time. Barry Desker, ‘In defence of FTAs: from purity to pragmatism in East Asia’, Paciﬁc Review,Vol.17, No. 1 (March 2004), p. 8f. 96 Barry Desker, ‘In defence of FTAs: from purity to pragmatism in East Asia’, p. 4. 97 For details, see the article of Christopher M. Dent in this issue.

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the service sector, investment rules, labour and environmental clauses and the cession of the right to impose emergency capital controls) and the ‘developmental industrial’ FTA model of Japan (which also seeks to take into account the interests of developing countries and there- fore contains a substantial aid component).98 The technical and political incompatibility of the arrangements and the ensuing diﬃculties in multilateralising them must also be attributed to varying geo-political and strategic interests motivating governments to conclude bilateral FTAs.99 The US, for instance, seeks to back up security cooperation with Asian partners in the war against terror, while Japan seeks to balance China and looks for partners in global multilateral forums. FTAs thus become the geo-economic element of the regional balancing games. Domestically, bilateral FTAs, while creating coalitions for trade liberalisation, may also facilitate the formation of protectionist coalitions. The discriminatory dimensions of FTAs foster rent-seeking and create vested interests in trade sectors excluded from liberalisation.100 Finally, as Dent argues, more agreements have so far been concluded with partners outside the East Asian region than within. These trends are undermining East Asia’s actorness101 and may cause rifts which make it diﬃcult to act comprehensively in global multilateral forums. Given the pivotal role of the US in the emerging trade bilateralism Bhagwati, citing US Representative of Trade Robert Zoellick, considers trade bilateralism as the economic equivalent of the ad hoc ‘coalition of the willing’ in the security domain.102

Diﬀerentiation of East Asian regionalism

The last fifteen years have seen an increasing vertical and horizontal differentiation of international relations. Asia is part of this process. Most of the differentiation has taken place at the regional level. It

98 For details, see the article of Christopher M. Dent in this issue. 99 Cited as an asset by supporters of bilateral FTAs. See Barry Desker, ‘In defence of FTAs: from purity to pragmatism in East Asia’, p. 19. 100 Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya, ‘Bilateral trade treaties are a sham’, Financial Times, 14 July 2003; Stephen M. Hoadley, New Zealand and Australia. Negotiating Closer Economic Relations (Wellington: New Zealand Institute of International Aﬀairs, 1995), p. 130. 101 On the concept of actorness, see the excellent doctoral dissertation of Mathew Doidge, ‘“East is East …” inter- and transregionalism and the EU–ASEAN relationship’. 102 After the failed Cancun ministerial in September 2003, Zoellick declared that the US would pursue trade bilateralism with ‘will do nations’. Jagdish Bhagwati, ‘Don’t cry for Cancun’, Foreign Aﬀairs,Vol.83,No.1 (2004), p. 53.

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is an outcome of the ‘New Regionalism’, a second wave of region- building often seen as a response of nation-states to the challenges of globalisation.103 Proliferating in many parts of the world, regional organisations increasingly became more or less autonomous actors in international relations. In the process, all major regional organisations developed external relations which took many forms of interregionalism.104 Aggarwal and Koo, for instance, distinguish ‘pure interregionalism’ (e.g. EU–Mercosur), ‘hybrid interregionalism’ (e.g. ASEM) and ‘trans-regionalism’ (e.g. APEC).105 At the same time, new sub- regional institutions have emerged. Inter-, trans- and sub-regional institutions may be considered as intermediaries between the global and the regional as well as between the regional and the national level of policy-making, and thus as manifestations of a vertical differentiation of international relations. Among the five functions of inter- and trans-regional forums men- tioned earlier, ASEM, APEC, FEALAC and IOR-ARC mainly per- formed balancing functions and to a lesser extent institution-building by creating new soft institutions and functions of identity-building. To a very limited extent—as a consequence of their non-binding and essentially consultative nature—they contributed to a nesting of Asia in global multilateral institutions by ‘rationalising’ global forums and ‘agenda-setting’. They failed—as Aggarwal and Koo argue—as crisis managers during the Asian financial crisis and subsequently became more or less moribund. APEC’s Early Voluntary Sectoral Liberalisation (EVSL) scheme, promoted by the US, col- lapsed at the Kuala Lumpur Summit of 1998 and was subsequently shifted to the WTO.106 Starting with the Auckland Summit in 1999, when the assembled leaders formed a coalition of those willing to

103 Andrew Wyatt-Walter, ‘Regionalism, globalization, and world economic order’, in Louise Fawcett and Andrew Hurrell (eds), Regionalism in World Politics. Regional Organization and International Order (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp.74– 121; Stefan Schirm, ‘Transnationale Globalisierung und regionale Kooperation. Ein politik- ökonomischer Ansatz zur Erklärung internationaler Zusammenarbeit in Europa und den Amerikas’ (Transnational globalisation and regional cooperation: a political economy approach to explain international cooperation in Europe and the Americas), Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen (Journal of International Relations), Vol. 4,No.1 (1997), pp. 69–106. 104 Heiner Hänggi, ‘Interregionalism as a multifaceted phenomenon: in search of a typology’, in Heiner Hänggi, Ralf Roloﬀ and Jürgen Rüland (eds), Interregionalism and International Relations (London: RoutledgeCurzon, forthcoming 2005). 105 For other distinctions, see Heiner Hänggi, ‘Interregionalism as a multifaceted phenomenon’. 106 John Ravenhill, APEC and the Construction of Paciﬁc Rim Regionalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Jürgen Rüland, “Dichte” oder “schlanke” Institutional- isierung? Der Neue Regionalismus im Zeichen von Globalisierung und Asienkrise,pp.175–208.

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intervene in East Timor, APEC has increasingly adopted a security agenda. Aggarwal and Koo show that international terrorism and trade-related security issues have been moved to the forefront of APEC meetings by the US after 11 September 2001.ASEMhas seen a similar shift towards security issues. At the Seoul Summit in 2000, the Korean Peninsula figured prominently in the consul- tations.107 Two years later, at the Copenhagen Summit, a declaration against international terrorism was passed. The declaration was at the same time a move to balance American unilateralism, as it holds interventions legitimate only if they rest on an UN man- date. The article on the GMS stands for other sub-regional cooperation schemes in Pacific Asia. The scheme increasingly approximates a sub- regional development regime to bridge the enormous wealth disparities in the enlarged ASEAN. If disparities of the original ASEAN-5 were already considerable—about 1:20 between the poorest and the richest economy—they increased to nearly 1:100 after enlargement in the 1990s. It is an old tenet of integration theory that wide disparities impede (economic) integration. GMS and other institutions promot- ing cooperation among Mekong River riparian states are now cor- recting ASEAN’s earlier, exclusively market-driven sub-regional integration strategies. In 1995, at the height of the Asian value debate, the Singaporean diplomat and intellectual Kishore Mahbubani had dis- sociated ASEAN’s regional integration strategies from the European model. Claiming that integration of poor European peripheries had failed, Mahbubani argued that ASEAN’s market-driven integration strategy, which relied mainly on FDI and trade, would deliver better results than the subsidisation of less developed regions by the EU.108 GMS and other Mekong schemes, though mainly financed exter- nally, may thus be considered as an ASEAN equivalent to the EU’s regional structure funds. But the very fact that funding is external makes Mekong cooperation an arena for regional great-power competition. Like Southeast Asia as a whole, the Mekong region is now increasingly becoming a region of Sino-Japanese competition. This raises the same question as posed in Yoshimatsu’s article on the APT. Can conflict and power rivalries be engines of cooperation or will they impair regional coherence?

107 The Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) Seoul Declaration on the Korean Peninsula, http://europa.eu.int/comm/external_relations/asem/asem_summits/decl_peace. htm (accessed 13 May 2005). 108 Kishore Mahbubani, ‘The Paciﬁc way’, Foreign Aﬀairs,Vol.74,No.4 (1995), pp. 104.

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While East Asian regionalism has become more diversified and differentiated in vertical terms, horizontal institution-building in the form of regional regimes has been very slow. The water regime in the Mekong era might be considered an exception, even though a recent game-theoretical study suggests that the formation of rules is still in an incipient stage.109 But in other policy fields, such as environment, energy and migration, regimes are almost non-existent. While East Asia has been moving from national to comprehensive security, moves towards cooperative security and human security are still in their initial stages. Aggarwal and Koo’s and Dent’s articles also highlight the increasingly blurred concept of region used in international relations research. With constructivist theories the concept of region has been considerably widened: It is now more than geographic proximity and also includes material transactions between states and a certain degree of cohesion based on shared symbols, norms and values.110 As a result, trans-regional forums such as APEC and IOR-ARC as well as cross-regional bilateral FTAs have been subsumed under the concept of region. Aggarwal and Koo have thus rightly taken issue with the ‘conflated different types of arrangements’ and their syn- onymous use which has contributed to ‘conceptual ambiguity and under-differentiation’. Their own solution of dismissing the concept of region and classifying trade relations along five dimensions, i.e. the number of actors, product coverage, geographical concentration or dispersion, the adoption of liberalising or protectionist measures and the degree of institutionalisation, is very useful for the analysis of economic interactions, but may not be transferable to other issues of global governance.

109 Timo Menniken, ‘Konflikt und Kooperation am Mekong. Internationale Politik an gren- züberschreitenden Wasserläufen’ (Conflict and cooperation in the Mekong Basin: international politics and bordercrossing river systems), MA thesis (University of Freiburg, 2005). 110 Christopher Daase, ‘Regionalisierung der Sicherheitspolitik. Eine Einführung’(Region- alisation and security policy: an introduction), in Christopher Daase (ed.), Regional- isierung der Sicherheitspolitik. Tendenzen in den internationalen Beziehungen nach dem Ost-West- Konflikt (Regionalisation of Security Policy: Trends in International Relations after the End of the Bloc Confrontation) (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1993), pp. 67–87.

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Conclusion

Robles’ assessment that East Asian regionalism is at the crossroads is still valid today, perhaps even more so than at the time when he wrote his paper.111 The trends of East Asian regionalism still remain ambiguous. To speak of a revitalisation of East Asian regionalism since the Asian crisis is premature and too optimistic. Nevertheless, theoreti- cians are discovering East Asian regionalism as a laboratory for study- ing the evolution of cooperative institutions. Since the Asian financial crisis, there have indeed been moves towards damage control and efforts towards revitalisation of East Asian regionalism. But it cannot be denied that there are also major countervailing trends. Contrary to Kang’s analysis, East Asian regionalism is still very much condi- tioned by balancing moves.112 Cooperation and the liberal norms supporting it are still in their infancy and submerged by realist perceptions of international relations. Institutions and institution-building are used as arenas for power politics. Yet, as long as the conflicts of the region such as the North Korean nuclear crisis, the Taiwan crisis and Chinese–Japanese tensions are absorbed by the region’s fledgling institutions, the likelihood of armed conflicts recedes. This in itself would be a major achievement of East Asian regionalism.

Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, and Arnold-Bergstraesser Institut, Freiburg [email protected]

111 Alfredo C. Robles, ‘East Asian regionalism at the crossroads’, paper prepared for the International Workshop on Latin America and Paciﬁc Asia, University of Mainz, 7–9 November 2002. 112 David C. Kang, ‘Getting Asia wrong’, pp. 57–85.

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