This was published in MalaysiaKini and taken from here.

Asia?s newest integration stunt
Manjit Bhatia
Jan 19, 05 12:38pm

The hubbub following the Asean summit in Vientianne, Laos, last December was really frothing over the cups of the region?s leaders and of those who were invited to the party.

Australian premier John Howard beamed as Laotian artistes banged out the populist Aussie tune Waltzing Maltilda. And a waltzing Matilda it turned out to be ? in more ways than one.

This year, Australia will push forth with its stepped-up agenda to ?integrate? with the Asian economies, particularly Asean.

This move comes years after Howard, on winning power in 1996, stepped well away from the previous Labor government?s affinity for Asia. Instead, he has worked tirelessly to forge a heightened relationship with the United States ? steeped in renewing the Anzus Treaty, which had been flagging under Labor.

He has also been exhorting Australians living in the ?Asian neighbourhood? to be ?relaxed and comfortable? with themselves. The way public and corporate Australia has rallied around the victims of the Asian tsunami, with donations of at least $A170 million so far, the country is very relaxed about its place in the region and indeed the world.

But despite the focus on its US relationship, especially since the 9/11 fanatical Islamic terrorist attacks, Australia?s trade relations with Asia have been growing steadily. With multilateral trade all but gutted, bilateral free trade agreements have flourished in its place.

Australia has signed FTAs with Singapore and Thailand. It is looking for closer economic relations with Japan, similar to the one with New Zealand. An FTA with Malaysia is also on the cards. So, too, one with China, although reservations have been emerging in Australia about how to designate the Chinese economy.

Good, Mahathir is gone

Today Asean, which has consistently rejected Australia?s place in the grouping - never mind its farcical consensus decision-making process - is no longer subjugated to the rants and raves by one Asean dictator, former Malaysian premier Dr Mahathir Mohamad, and his deep-seated hatred of Australia.

Thankfully Mahathir is gone, and Australia has played it smartly: it simply waited for the old fogey?s exit before actively seeking Australia?s re-alignment with Asia, and this time a little beyond mere rhetoric and humbug.

The difference this time - and crucially - is that Australia has key support from within Asean. For one thing ? and no doubt to Mahathir?s chagrin ? Malaysian Prime Mnister Abdullah Badawi has ?unofficially? invited Australia (and New Zealand) to participate at this year?s Asean Regional Forum.

What?s more, with Australia?s massive aid to tsunami-ravaged Aceh, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is expected to throw his support behind Australia?s enlarged role in Asean.

Australian generosity and rapid response to the tsunami crisis also rubs out the hullabaloo surrounding Australia?s refusal to sign a non-aggression pact with Asean ? a throwback to and relic of Asean?s cold war claustrophobia. But the Laos summit turned out to be more about pushing ahead with greater trade-based and broader regional political integration. And Australia is preparing to negotiate a free-trade area pact with Asean?s 10 member-states.

If the noise out of Vientianne can be believed, Asean will also begin pursuing a more liberal and more politically unencumbered free-trade area framework for itself than the farce it has consistently produced since its inception in 1967.

Or will it?

Framework wanted

What?s surprising is the announcement in Laos of the creation of the new East Asia summit as a region-wide forum. Mahathir?s ideologically-driven East Asia bloc never stood a chance with the Japanese and South Koreans refusing to back it given their support for the dead-duck Apec, and without a nod from Washington.

It?s early days but if the East Asia summit does take root, it will displace Apec. Not that Apec matters; it was a junket for regional leaders who achieved bupkus on deepening the multilateral trading system. The Americans had again hijacked this year?s Apec agenda with their half-baked and cockeyed war against global terrorism.

Still, let?s not get carried away with the new East Asia forum. The world?s media went bananas over it in Laos, but there?s a Jerry McGuire somewhere screaming: ?Show me the money!?

Indeed. Nobody has yet seen the details of this new creation. For example: will it absorb the current Asean+Three (China, Japan and South Korea)? Or will it turn out to be yet another hyperbole-crammed talk-shop?

Forerunners Asean and Apec provide glimpses of what?s to come. The East Asia summit will probably look like another Apec and Asean. Fact is, if the summit is to be held this year, in Kuala Lumpur, and if all the talk is to be measured by the walk, somebody had better come up fast with a framework for this newfangled creature.

But in a region renowned for its ugly, historic, ethno nationalist-based, ideologically-driven diplomatic spats ? such as where Taiwan will sit at the forum ? should Australia be holding its breath? Even if it does, there is no way the Howard government will let its politico-security and trade relations with the US play second-fiddle to Asia?s newest promise.

Real question

Yet talk of region-wide economic integration has been a regular soap with operatic drones for decades, and for all that Asean and indeed Apec have little if anything to show for their spiel. At every Asean and Apec summit, talk has always been cheap: it?s always high on rhetoric than substance. That?s clear every time Western and Asian media writers begin to lavish praise for the leaders? ?pragmatism? ? a label devalued by the frequent embellishment of facts.

The real question to ask is: does Asean now possess the genuine political will to integrate the region through trade economics vis-à­¶is the European Union? Probably not. For starters, EU integration has taken place at two intertwined levels: political and economics.

Asean regionalism is at best ludicrous. Despite the growth of interdependence ? and that famous buzzword ?globalisation? ? Asean has never pursued a co-ordinated economic policy except on the political front.

The items being traded among Asean countries, ostensibly in the name of economic integration, do not hold out the promise of a new competitive liberalisation. On the contrary, powerful local crony businesses are being heavily protected still by the highly interventionist Asian states ? and even more so after the other Asian tsunami, the one that buffeted the region financially in the late 1990s.

Despite the changing parameters of international relations, Asean will hold steadfast to its notion of sovereignty ? a notion steeped in its Asian values hubris. It?s also ideologically driven by its pressing need to not cause any imbalance between unity and diversity, since that could ultimately recalibrate ? dangerously ? the national(ist) elite?s long-time stranglehold on power through unintended widespread political change.

So a new East Asia phoenix simply won?t rise from the ashes of other Asia-Pacific integration failures any time soon. Besides Apec?s 15-year history, Asean?s 37-year old record, are abysmal for what they have consistently failed to deliver.

Litmus test

In fact, Asean?s leaders could have shown their true mettle ? their leadership ? over the vexed Burma question and the re-arrest of that country?s pro-democracy leader, Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. Instead, Asean?s leaders blithely began to praise the corrupt, brutal and parasitic military junta?s magnanimous gesture of releasing 9,000 political prisoners. And Australia?s Howard was highly conspicuous by his silence on Burma.

True to Asian form, the Burmese dictators, who will chair Asean next year ? perhaps fittingly ? poked the eyes of their regional neighbours. Dare you, they said. And Asean?s leaders baulked. Plainly, none of Asean?s leaders even expressed a single concern about Burma?s eroding politics. Yet they continue to embrace Rangoon as their partner ? an Asean member since 1997. And many Asean leaders continue to legitimise the nefarious, corruption-ridden junta through capital investments by Asean?s crony businessmen.

It?s time Asean?s leaders and Howard pluck up courage and drop the cheap, crass talk steeped in their version of ?pragmatism? and toss Burma out of Asean or continue to be ridiculed as a two-headed monster of hypocrisy. But 10-to-one, they will even buy Rangoon?s commitment, claimed by Burmese Foreign Minister Nyan Win in Vientianne, to its proposed ?roadmap to democracy?.
And if Howard and his newfound companionship with Asean?s leaders can?t ? and won?t ? face down Burma?s human rights abuses, what are the chances doing likewise of China?s atrocious human rights record ? and others within Asean?

The story of East Asia?s trade-based economic integration is much the same as before: the politics behind trade relations are awesome ? and debilitating by its own humbug and malarkey. This explains why Apec continues to be a monumental failure of modern ?free? trade liberalisation, and a farce by half. And why Asean lags not far behind it. But if Australia and its Asean partners think they can counterweight American economic muscle by hitching their wagons to the iffy Chinese economy, they have another think coming.

Plus who in their right minds would be so cocky as to think that, even leaving out the US in this equation (as though one could), that China and Japan will not dominate the new East Asia grouping?

As it is, Beijing has quickly shoved Tokyo aside to claim the venue for the second East Asia summit in 2006. That?s even before anyone could blink or utter the first syllable at the first summit?s agenda and framework. In neo-mercantilist Asia, the fog is always thicker.

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MANJIT BHATIA, an academician and writer, is also research director of AsiaRisk, a political, economic and risk analysis consultancy in Australia. He specialises in international economics and politics, with a focus on the Asia-Pacific.

  

Posted on January 20th, 2005 by jl
Filed under: Regionalisation