{"id":8721,"date":"2013-08-26T06:00:28","date_gmt":"2013-08-25T20:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=8721"},"modified":"2013-08-27T11:43:34","modified_gmt":"2013-08-27T01:43:34","slug":"asia-essentials-soft-not-hard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/asia-essentials-soft-not-hard\/","title":{"rendered":"Asia Essentials: soft not hard"},"content":{"rendered":"
Given its preferences, Australia would always choose \u2018hard regionalism\u2019, based on legal agreement, enforceable treaties and agreed norms. The experience of the past two decades, though, is that Asia\u2019s own multilateral security system can only emerge through the \u2018soft regionalism\u2019 of consultation and consensus inculcated by ASEAN.<\/p>\n Australia\u2019s \u2018hard regionalism\u2019 instinct had to soften markedly in two big efforts\u201420 years apart\u2014at creating an Asia Pacific Community. The 1989 version became APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation). In the original Australian vision, the C in APEC would stand for Community. Asia wasn\u2019t ready for the legal or social ambition of Community (nor the European model of economic and diplomatic Community).<\/p>\n Australia again confronted the essence of the Essentials as it pursued Kevin Rudd\u2019s initiative for an Asia Pacific Community. Launched in 2008 as a quest for Community<\/a>, the effort was re-named in 2009\u2014going from large C to small c and becoming a discussion about community. By 2010, Rudd had to concede that the best available expression of his desired community would be in ASEAN\u2019s expansion of the East Asia Summit to include the United States and Russia<\/a>. As Australia had to step back from Community to community, so Asia is reaching for a concert (not Concert) as what\u2019s currently achievable.<\/p>\n In grappling with the intricacies and possibilities of the Essentials, Australia poses a question that\u2019s also a deep fear: can Asia create a concert to avert cataclysm? Or, to pose the question using the history of Europe in the 20th Century: is Asia today poised where Europe was in 1900 or 1950? If it\u2019s 1900, economic interdependence and globalisation will be overturned by a naval arms race, surging nationalism, deepening apprehension and the growing chance of great power miscalculation. If it\u2019s 1950, then Asia will use the lessons of history to build new regional institutions and legal regimes that redefine state interests and remake military assumptions.<\/p>\n Rudd\u2019s reach for an Asia Pacific Community and then Asia Pacific community were attempts to shift Asia towards such a 1950s frame. The cataclysm 1900 scenario was invoked by Rudd in his 2009 speech to the Shangri-La dialogue<\/a> calling on Asia to build institutions to deal with the buffeting that will be delivered by economic and strategic shifts and shocks:<\/p>\n In the first half of the 20th Century, we saw the tragic consequences of rampant nationalism as nations competed for power. Great powers in Europe bumped up against each other without the benefit of regional institutions to smooth problems as they arose. The result was devastating conflict.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The European Union can\u2019t be an identikit model for the Asia Pacific but, as Rudd noted, the EU shows what the aspiration to community can achieve:<\/p>\n In the 1950s, sceptics saw European integration as unrealistic. But most people would now agree that the goal of the visionaries in Europe who sat down in the 1950s and resolved to build prosperity and a common sense of security community has been achieved. It is that spirit we need to capture in our hemisphere.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So, is Asia\u2019s future where Europe is today, or is Asia\u2019s future the European past? Will economic cooperation or strategic competition take precedence? The Australian community effort and the emerging Asian concert seek to evade the cataclysm conundrum.<\/p>\n<\/a>The Asia Essentials express Australia\u2019s experiences during more than two decades of slow institutional construction in Asia since the end of the Cold War. The emerging weak system is an expression of Asian habits of \u2018soft regionalism\u2019, as opposed to the Western habits of \u2018hard regionalism\u2019 as expressed in institutions such as NATO and the European Union.<\/p>\n