Why can't Asia unite even for the sake of its own security?

Why can't Asia unite even for the sake of its own security?
For decades, Western experts have complained about the failure of
the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to learn the
value of collective security from Europe's postwar experience.
ASEAN's leaders have ignored the lessons offered first by the
Common Market, and then the European Union.

The benefits of these models are supposedly so obvious that it
seems incomprehensible that ASEAN's leaders cannot see them.

East Asia's apparent disarray over a response to North Korea's
nuclear demarche brings these complaints into the open once
again. A North Korea with nuclear bombs surely poses a common
threat to all Asians. Everybody, it is said, should help the
United States put Kim Jong-il in his place. The fact that North
Korea's close neighbors seem unable to grasp this seems to
confirm that Asian disunity is not just stupid, but chronic and
willful.

But history and geography matter in assessing the nature of a
threat. Different traditions in tactical and strategic thinking
also matter -- to say nothing of the unique way Europeans forged
their current cooperative arrangements out of aggressive nation-
states that shared a common civilization.

Nothing in Asia's history, however, remotely compares to
Europe's half-century of division and veritable occupation by two
rival superpowers. So it is no surprise that Asia's leaders do
not look to Europe for solutions to their regional problems.

Of course, human beings and nation-states do often behave in
similar ways. When threatened, countries tend to group together
against a common enemy. When the world was divided into two camps
during the Cold War, deciding who was an enemy and who a friend
seemed easy. Alliances were established along pro-American or
pro-Soviet lines.

But even then, things in Asia were not so clear-cut. A jagged
line loosely joining Tokyo to Jakarta via Seoul, Taipei, Hong
Kong, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore was sufficient to
sustain international cooperation. But that cooperation was
nothing like a lasting alliance.

Why? There are many layers of explanation. At one level, Asian
history has been dominated by rival elites from China,
"Turkestan," India, Persia, "Arabia," Japan and Java (to name but
a few examples) who claimed to lead separate indigenous cultural
entities. This differs markedly from Europe's shared Greco-Roman-
Christian civilization.

Throughout Asian history, the continent's ancient foundations
of power were more sharply divided from one another -- and over
much longer time spans -- than in Europe.

Modern history, however, did teach Asians that disunity led to
European triumphs over them. In the 20th century, leaders
advocating unity against the colonial and imperial powers
emerged. But the Europeans, who controlled over half the globe,
seemed able to disrupt any temporary gains.

Europe's approach was two-pronged. First, it aimed to keep
Asia divided insofar as the West was concerned. This was
relatively easy during the Cold War, as Asia's postcolonial
elites were forced to choose sides in a conflict of ideologies.
Today's global war against terrorism permits this approach to be
modified to create new divisions. Second, Asia was brought under
the rubric of a single interdependent global economy in which the
West holds the key technological and financial cards.

That strategy has proved remarkably successful. Over the past
decade, Asia moved from division between two superpowers to
something that could be described as dominance by one super-
economy. Either way, no regional unity on politics and security
has arisen. The only prospect for a feeble identity of interest
is the emergence of some form of economic regionalism, pursued by
Asian leaders through free trade agreements.

Asian disunity can be overcome only if Asia as a whole
confronts a common enemy. The West will do everything possible to
prevent Asians from viewing Westerners as that enemy. In fact,
most calls for Asian unity are concerned with uniting Asia "with"
the West (often equated with the interests of the whole world)
against some part of Asia, whether it be Iraq, Iran, North Korea,
or Myanmar. Given that most Asian leaders believe Asian disunity
made the West all-powerful in the first place, these calls are
treated with understandable caution.

What, then, of the future? It will take time for Asia's
leaders to shed the burdens of the past, in some cases especially
where relations with the West are concerned. In the meantime, if
the global economy continues to integrate, will the prospect of
Asian unity be enhanced or hindered?

Much depends on whether the West retains its sway in other
parts of the world. If that dominance continues through
increasingly powerful networking technologies, the chances of
Asia creating a distinct unity of its own are slim.

It is in this context that we can see why Asian leaders appear
two-faced or unreliable in the eyes of Europe and the United
States. Asia cannot afford to unite against the West. But Asia
equally cannot afford to divide itself by ostracizing one of its
parts. For that way lies permanent dependence on the West.