APEC's future direction largely depends on ASEAN

By Edward Neilan

Clinton 'victory lap' is sideshow to regional concerns; Japan's role seen as crucial.

TOKYO (JP): In the alphabet soup of Southeast Asian regional politics and economics, it is important to be aware of the subtle differences between Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and Association of Southeast Asia (ASEAN).

Many will be attempting to employ this discernment while U.S. President Bill Clinton takes his "victory lap" (based on domestic events) through Asia over the next few days, stopping at the APEC summit in Kuala Lumpur Nov. 15-17 and then briefly in Japan and South Korea.

ASEAN started with six members: Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, The Philippines and Brunei. Recently there have been added Myanmar (Burma), Vietnam and Laos.

The next ASEAN summit will be held in Hanoi, Vietnam, on Dec. 15-16, one month after the annual APEC meeting. ASEAN was founded with high hopes--generally fulfilled--for a Third World alliance or grouping that was based on common economic good, lack of military provocations and a pledge not to meddle in members' domestic political activities.

Conspicuous by their absence in the grouping were nations like the United States, Britain, France, Australia and New Zealand. These old "colonialists and imperialists" had hoped the security grouping known as the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) could be carried over as a regional security alliance.

But the "wisemen" of ASEAN--among them former president Soeharto of Indonesia, former president Marcos of The Philippines, Singapore's former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, a then-young Malaysian politician named Mahathir Mohamad--preferred not to have a bunch of foreigners cluttering up the landscape in positions of influence.

Nor meddling in the "Asian way of doing business," which barbarian Westerners persist in describing as "corruption." This particular "cultural pattern" is ingrained, sometimes ungraciously called "crony capitalism," and will be hard to change.

But ASEAN never quite got around to realizing its potential prosperity.

Ultimately the leaders had to turn to the West again for the capital and big money management to help produce the "Asian tigers" syndrome.

Westerners were only too happy to oblige and seized the opportunity to get back in the region in a big way, some looking at security considerations and others pursuing the limits of avarice.

Some give the idea for conception of APEC to onetime Australia prime minister Robert Hawke or former U.S. secretary of state James Baker. Others spread the praise for inception around more evenly.

In November 1989 foreign ministers and economic ministers from 12 Asia-Pacific countries gathered in Canberra, Australia, for the inaugural ministerial meeting of APEC. The countries represented were Australia, Canada, Japan, the Republic of Korea, New Zealand, United States, and the ASEAN members.

The Tiananmen Square unpleasantries in China a few months earlier had given space for formation of a grouping that did not at first include China.

After the November 1993 ministerial meeting in Seattle, U.S. President Clinton hosted an economic leaders' meeting at which time the respective chiefs confirmed their shared understanding of the regional economy and the issues facing it.

It was a major victory for the United States; the West was back in the game in Asia.

Whether for good or bad, whether the West aggravated or eased the eventual crisis will be debated.

APEC added Chile, China, Hong Kong, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, Taiwan, and will welcome Peru, Russia and Vietnam next week.

Only Laos and Myanmar from the region, both ASEAN members, are excluded.

ASEAN countries are the core problem because the confidence factor in them is so low.

As World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn told me Tuesday, before I introduced him as a breakfast speaker to the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan, "At a time of crisis, everyone wants to cooperate. What comes next is important."

This week Asia is flooded with proposals from the West about what to do to solve the Asian financial crisis. According to Wolfensohn, the headlines about "a $50 billion infusion" and "a $30 billion package" aren't the answer. "The answer lies in improving water supply and schools and roads and administrative efficiency and transparency," he said.

Two points: APEC will not go anywhere as a group unless its ASEAN core states first get on their feet.

For the ASEAN-APEC recovery-growth cycle to commence, high- visibility America leadership is needed while Japan provides the cash and on-the-ground know-how.

Wolfensohn suggested that the Japan-bashers should take a walk. "Read the facts not the headlines," the top international banker said. "The Japanese government and people have responded wonderfully. They should be complimented."

The writer is a veteran Tokyo-based analyst of Northeast Asian affairs and Media Fellow at Hoover Institution, Stanford University.