Dr Frank Frost, Foreign Affairs, Defence and Security
Section
Successive Australian governments have placed heavy emphasis on
the development of both bilateral relations and multilateral
engagements in East Asia and the wider Asia Pacific regions. Most
recently, the Rudd Government in 2009 signed the
ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement (following
negotiations since 2004), gained Australian entry in 2009 to the
Asia-Europe Meetings (ASEM, a dialogue inaugurated in 1996 between
Asian states and the European Union to advance inter-regional ties,
now involving 49 participants, which Australia will begin attending
in October 2010), and promoted discussions on an ‘Asia
Pacific community’. Some further developments in regional
engagement are now underway.
Regional cooperation in East Asia and the Asia Pacific has
confronted many obstacles, including the great diversity of peoples
and countries, deep-seated rivalries (for example, Japan and China)
and a preference for informality rather than rules-based
institutions. Multilateral cooperation has nonetheless enhanced
security and development in the past four decades, especially in
Southeast Asia. ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations)
is deepening its own integration and has developed forums to
coordinate its ten members with Japan, China and South Korea in the
‘ASEAN Plus Three’ process. It also meets at a
leadership level with those 13 states along with India, Australia
and New Zealand in the East Asia Summit (EAS), and has sponsored
security dialogue in the much larger 27 member ASEAN Regional Forum
(ARF). Alongside these groups, the Asia Pacific Economic
Cooperation (APEC) forum has pursued many areas of economic and
functional cooperation with a diverse membership spanning the Asia
Pacific and an annual leaders’ meeting. These and a number of
other groupings have all made contributions. However, different
states gather in different forums, which operate in parallel and
sometimes overlap.
Cooperation efforts are continuing at a time of dynamic change.
China’s rapid growth is enhancing its international and
regional influence, in economic, political and security terms.
While China’s dynamism is fuelling growth across the Asia
Pacific, its rising profile and ongoing defence modernisation
programs have directed attention towards its future potential
policy directions, for example, in the contested areas of the South
China Sea, and towards the vital need for constructive relations
among all regional parties. The changing regional environment is
encouraging states to seek institutions which can include the Asia
Pacific major powers (China, Japan, India and the US) to bolster
cooperation, help ameliorate potentially dangerous rivalries and
avoid conflict. Discussion has accordingly continued on how
institutions and processes can best be enhanced to meet these
needs.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd sought to add to these discussions in
a speech on 4 June 2008 when he declared that the Asia Pacific
region needed an institution with wide membership ‘…
able to engage in the full spectrum of dialogue, cooperation and
action on economic and political matters and future challenges
related to security’, to achieve an ‘Asia Pacific
community’ by 2020. The proposal met with a mixed response,
with support accompanied by criticism, particularly from some ASEAN
countries (notably Singapore) on the basis that it appeared to
challenge ASEAN’s role at the centre of cooperation efforts
and that emphasis should remain on developing existing forums. The
Government in response emphasised its recognition of ASEAN’s
crucial role in regional cooperation, including its efforts to
encourage the US and Russia to deepen their involvement in evolving
regional architecture.
Since 2009, other developments have encouraged institutional
adaptation. In significant policy moves, the Obama Administration
has upgraded US ties with ASEAN by signing ASEAN’s Treaty of
Amity and Cooperation and holding the first US–ASEAN
multilateral leaders meeting in 2009 (with a second meeting to be
held in New York in September 2010). It also declared an interest
in joining the East Asia Summit. In this climate of reassessment
and change, ASEAN is moving to adapt its cooperation efforts in two
potentially important ways—and Australia will be involved in
both.
Firstly, ASEAN has invited the US and Russia to join the East
Asia Summit. The EAS has evolved cautiously since 2005 as a forum
for leadership dialogue and broad declarations of purpose, but its
profile may rise. An expanded EAS would include all the major
powers with interests in East Asia. Secretary of State Clinton
declared on 23 July 2010 in Hanoi that the US ‘... will be
working with EAS members to encourage its development into a
foundational security and political institution for Asia in this
century’. It is now expected that the US (along with Russia)
will gain entry and that President Obama will attend his first
annual Summit in Jakarta in 2011.
Secondly, on 12 October 2010 in Hanoi, ASEAN will host the first
ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting Plus Eight. This will
bring together the same 18 states which will be members of an
expanded EAS, and it will be the first such forum specifically for
defence ministers. The Meeting will initially convene once every
three years and will need to reach agreement on cooperation
agendas. As it develops, the Defence Ministers Meeting could
facilitate useful cooperation in areas such as humanitarian and
disaster relief as well as security policy dialogue. There is also
a pressing need for improved communication among the defence forces
of highly armed states, including the US and China.
The character of the next phase in regional cooperation is still
emerging and further changes to institutional arrangements may well
occur. Nonetheless, if the two new ASEAN-sponsored dialogues of
‘the eighteen’ develop momentum, they can provide
significant venues for cooperation on security and other issues at
head of government/state and defence minister levels. Australia
will have a valuable opportunity to play a role in helping to
establish priorities and agendas for constructive dialogue and
cooperation programs.
Library publications and key documents
Ralf Emmers and John Ravenhill, The Asian
and global financial crises: consequences for East Asian
regionalism, RSIS Working Paper no. 208, S. Rajaratnam School
of International Studies, Singapore, 16 August 2010, http://www.rsis.edu.sg/publications/WorkingPapers/WP208.pdf
Frank Frost, Australia’s proposal for
an ‘Asia Pacific Community’: Issues and prospects,
Research paper,
no. 13, 2009–10, Parliamentary Library, Canberra,2009,
http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/rp/2009-10/10rp13.pdf
Zhu Liqun, Tan Seng Chye, Prapat Thepchatree
and Anthony Milner, ‘Regionalism—an Asian conversation:
Three Viewpoints’, The Asialink Essays, vol. 2, no.
4, 2010,
http://www.asialink.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/30489/Regionalism_An_Asian_Conversation29-6-2010.pdf
Carlyle A. Thayer, Southeast Asia: patterns
of security cooperation, ASPI Strategy Report, Australian
Strategic Policy Institute, Canberra, September 2010
(forthcoming).