ASEAN's long road to economic integration<\/p>\n
Kamrul Idris, New Straits Times, Kuala Lumpur<\/p>\n
\"Consensual looseness\" compared to the European Union, which
\nwill be enlarged by 10 new members on May 1, ASEAN looks like a
\nregional community on life-support.<\/p>\n
Europe has open borders, no customs or trade barriers, a
\nsingle currency and something close to an encompassing,
\ncontinent-wide identity -- all of which had begun as pipe dreams
\namid the rubble of the World War II. The EU's total of 25 nations
\nis a magnificent jumble of cultures, languages, societies and
\neconomies held together by a gigantic bureaucracy centered in
\nBrussels. Europeans are cracking their heads over a constitution,
\nno less, while ASEAN officials endlessly mull over the costs and
\nbenefits of start-up co-operative agreements.<\/p>\n
Like it or not, ever closer integration in the part of the
\nworld that unleashed two of history's most devastating conflicts
\nhas acted as a scold on ASEAN. It stands as an object lesson in
\nthe art of the possible against the truism that Southeast Asia,
\nand Asia as a whole, is simply too disparate for tighter concord.
\nDiversity hasn't been a hindrance in Europe -- as much, or as
\nlittle, separates Singapore from Laos as Luxembourg from Latvia
\nor Europe's poorest country, Romania, which is on its way to
\naccession, probably in 2007.<\/p>\n
A United States of Southeast Asia isn't a delusion. By any
\nreckoning, merging a population of half a billion people in 10
\ncontiguous countries makes perfectly good economic sense.
\nLiberalization under the ASEAN Free Trade Area, even with its
\nconcessions to laggard members and state sectors, caused regional
\ntrade to jump by more than 25 percent per year.<\/p>\n
Former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad tried to push the logic
\nof a common market by hitching up Japan and South Korea into an
\nEast Asian economic group. But he was stymied at every turn by an
\nAmerica suspicious of the formation of blocs outside its sphere
\nof influence.<\/p>\n
So why is Southeast Asia stuck in limbo? There is something to
\nbe said for Europe's hare and ASEAN's tortoise being quite
\ndifferent political animals. Former ASEAN secretary-general
\nRodolfo Severino, speaking at a conference in Fukuoka, Japan, on
\nApril 7, said the grouping had been knit together by a consensual
\n\"looseness\".<\/p>\n
This seeming contradiction in terms reflected the hard-headed
\nrealities of the day. An Association of Southeast Asian Nations
\nwas cobbled together in 1967 as a \"non-binding, informal, non-
\nideological, equal\" club, resting above all on the notion that
\ngood fences made good neighbors.<\/p>\n
The confrontation between Indonesia and Malaysia had ended
\njust a year before; the Philippines was piqued over Sabah; after
\nsplitting off from Malaysia, island Singapore needed an anchor;
\nand the Vietnam War was in full blast on Thailand's doorstep. To
\nthe five signatories of the Bangkok Declaration, Southeast Asian
\nnations had to hang together or hang separately.<\/p>\n
Good fences took time and sensitivity to each other's
\nhandicaps. Nearly a decade had to pass before ASEAN held its
\nfirst summit, in Bali in 1976. Unlike Europe, the newly
\nsovereign, post-colonial member countries wanted the liberty to
\nlook inwards without interference, either from each other or
\nanyone else. ASEAN was getting wedded to the concept of the
\nnation-state, while Europe was tiring of it.<\/p>\n
And looseness succeeded, perhaps too well. ASEAN suffers no
\nlack of vision, as Razak testified, but its members are so leery
\nof meddling in each other's domestic affairs that its relevance
\nas a multilateral institution has been questioned. The urge for
\narms-length neutrality has lapsed since the end of the Cold War.<\/p>\n
ASEAN's proponents, however, have never been embarrassed by
\nthe label \"talk shop\"; the ASEAN Regional Forum, for example, is
\na high-profile event in the international security calendar. As a
\n\"debating chamber\", the ASEAN format still offers a quick
\nmechanism to deal with intra-regional matters such as trans-
\nboundary haze, the SARS and bird flu outbreaks and the Asian
\nfinancial crisis of 1997.<\/p>\n
But at the Fukuoka conference, organized by the European
\nCommission delegation in Japan and the Asia-Europe Foundation,
\nattention quickly shifted after Severino's keynote address. To
\nthe journalists invited to contribute to the topic of \"a new
\nEurope, a new Asia\", ASEAN doesn't make news, except perhaps for
\nthe controversy over Myanmar's membership. Its peoples haven't
\nbeen engaged enough to interest the media.<\/p>\n
Of course, a direct comparison with the EU can be taken too
\nfar. The European project is a one-off, and specific to a region
\nlaid so low by internal rivalry that it was ready to compromise
\non national sovereignty. ASEAN, said Severino, was an inter-
\ngovernmental concept. It was, and continues to be, driven by
\nelites, its deliberations confined to a closed circle of
\nministers and bureaucrats.<\/p>\n
Europe, on the other hand, is far more democratic. Its leaders
\nevangelized and the people converted to the faith -- by
\nreferendums if necessary. That is probably the biggest difference
\nbetween the two: Without a popular mandate for concrete action,
\nthe limits of the ASEAN informal model are plain to see. \"ASEAN
\nhas to be more legally binding for future credibility,\" said
\nSeverino. \"It is good at frameworks but backs away from difficult
\npolitical steps. As a result, many initiatives stagnate.\"<\/p>\n
Last October's Declaration of ASEAN Concord II in Bali
\nestablished the \"x+2\" formula, which allows for a pioneer team of
\nmembers to move ahead, rather like France and Germany did for
\nEurope. Though even the most ardent Europhiles will admit that
\nthe EU is not for copying, the ASEAN Vision 2020, a statement of
\nintent made at the 1997 Kuala Lumpur summit, clearly had
\nsomething like it in mind. But how far theory can diverge from
\npractice was acknowledged by Berhard Zepter, head of the EC
\ndelegation in Japan. He said that there was more than one model
\nof democracy and cautioned that the depth of regional integration
\ndepended on a willingness \"to contribute to it as much as take
\nfrom it\".<\/p>\n
That calls for harder rules in place of the ASEAN habit of
\nsoft observance. Rules require a supranational authority for
\ncompliance and dispute settlement and, more importantly, a
\nsharper focus on what it means to be part of a shared endeavor.
\nASEAN has to evolve from unbuttoned principles to what Severino
\ncalled \"norms of behavior\" -- something akin to Europe's
\ndefinition of itself as a \"community of values\". \"Norms\" and
\n\"values\", if they are ever to mean anything more than nice words
\non paper, have to be enforced by political will and a budget to
\nmatch.<\/p>\n
ASEAN's high ambition cannot yet afford anything like another
\nBrussels nor, to its shame, emergency help to members in crisis,
\nsuch as Indonesia's over East Timor. Until members' GDP levels
\nrise higher, Severino's offer that \"perhaps it is time for a new
\nASEAN\" will remain tentative.<\/p>",
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