ASEAN economics -- recovery or retreat?

By David Harries

JAKARTA (JP): These are tough times for ASEAN. The only countries not deep in trouble on the money front are those whose currencies have value only within their own borders.

Everywhere else, devaluation has raised the price of golf, karaoke can't avoid the blues, and dialog is painful; it's hard to avoid talking about a crisis that makes the future seem far less bright and certain than was the case only a few short months ago.

Describing the state of ASEAN right now may well take a paraphrase of the Indonesian motto -- Unity in Adversity.

It might help to remember that crises and the changes they cause not only make huge demands but also offer huge opportunities, even when the crisis is self-inflicted.

ASEAN has no choice but to face up to these unfolding financial problems if its members hope to compete successfully in the global market. On the other hand, taking up opportunities is a matter of choice. How can both be done well?

A starting point might be to take a page from Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's manual on tactics. Among his many recent comments was a call for a review and rewrite of the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights. The reason he gave was that such a document produced long ago, when fewer than one third of the current membership were in the organization, deserves to be revisited.

Maybe it's time to review, and at least reinterpret, ASEAN's preeminent declaration; the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation. That document was produced long ago, when just more than half of the current members were in the association.

Events and behavior in ASEAN in the last two months have been little influenced by the treaty or its principles. Cambodia's return to war, the Myanmar controversy, and region-wide currency and stock market devaluations all happened and continued in spite of them.

Significant intervention in the status quo of the association, and at least some its members, is called for to both meet demands and exploit the opportunities of the current crisis, while halting it and then building a recovery.

There is a particular need to better balance substance and illusion with regard to ASEAN solidarity, and to take the edge off the long-standing custom of unanimity as the precondition to ASEAN decisions.

In today's world, strict unanimity constrains responsiveness and fosters lowest common denominator action. For the association to put its house in order and to retain control over the form and processes of its own destiny, priority must be given to achieving output with a higher common denominator.

If ASEAN members do not take the initiative now, outsiders soon will either by design or default. What China or the developed world might offer or impose is unlikely to satisfy ASEAN's needs, wishes or ways.

But the unrealistically absolutist interpretation of non- intervention stands in the way of debate, timely decision and response to the current crisis. The time is long past when hard issues can just be set aside for another day. Agreeing to disagree is no longer enough.

A first step is to cost the planned expansion of ASEAN. This should be done for a number of the more likely scenarios in relative development of member states with input from both ASEAN and external sources.

Statements of requirement, division of labor, and funding flow should be emphasized in the budget. Guidance is readily available from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

That alliance is carrying out an equivalent, if relatively less ambitious, expansion whose list of governing factors is surprisingly similar to that of ASEAN's.

Two aspects of the NATO program offer insights for the ASEAN one. First, although its three new members are far less diverse and historically distant than are ASEAN's, integrating them is proving challenging even before they are formally ratified, in 1999. Second, NATO expansion is being carried out in less hurried and more financially detailed fashion.

A second step should be the creation of a structure for peace affairs, and something more than a "virtual" arrangement.

Its mandate will be to welcome, house and support ASEAN policy-planners and policy-makers, military and civilian leaders, and thinkers and businesspeople so they can assemble to discuss, debate and if necessary dispute issues which need more understanding and those that threaten peace and stability in the region.

Clearly, if war were added to today's long list of problems, ASEAN's recovery from financial troubles would be made harder, longer and more costly. And it goes almost without saying that, in today's world, peace cannot be taken for granted.

Third, today's bureaucratic ASEAN must give way to a more people-oriented one. The association should make it a priority to inform and teach citizens, particularly the young, about their own countries and neighboring ones, and about other states and interests which influence their Association and their lives.

Myths must not be a part of this education. There is no use, and now some cost, pretending that the association's states will ever be anything but different with often opposing priorities.

The futures of the states and the region will not be best served by ignoring historical diversity which is being amplified by competition and development.

Fourth, in each and every state, in the belief that there is no better way, existing laws and policies must be enforced for all, or changed so they can be.

The poor and the powerless, not to mention growing middle classes which are finding empowerment arriving more slowly than they wish or believe necessary, will increasingly resist being treated unfairly or unequally. Social and civil unrest exaggerate difficulties with all development.

Uncertainty exists in the world as to whether Asian governments have the ability to recover from the currency and stock meltdown and the will to seize the opportunities the crisis offers.

Recovery and then new progress will not be achieved by more of the same. And if, as some are considering, reform is slowed, transparency delayed and less emphasis placed on rule of law and success-by-merit, recovery could be transformed into retreat.

The world is watching. It is a world which in the last two months may have found many coming to the conclusion that the miracle of Asia's economic progress is not so much that it happened, but rather that it survived so long with so many weaknesses in its design and foundation.

The writer is a former researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and an observer of ASEAN affairs.