Asia-Europe Meeting: Beyond the Silk Road

Este ensaio foi laborado para a cadeira "Prospective of Europe", em Agosto de 2004, do "Master in European Studies" no Instituto de Estudos Europeus de Macau.
José Carlos Matias dos Santos


“As a matter of fact, Asia matters to Europe today as it did in the days of the spice and silk trade across land and sea”

Nadia Mushtaq Abbasi

Introduction

Historically there have been two main routes linking Europe and Asia: the Silk Road by land and the ocean way from the Atlantic through the Indian Towards the Pacific. More than 700 years after the famous trip of Marco Polo through the Silk Road, five centuries after the completion of the first all water trade route between Europe and India and more than 400 years passed after the first trips of the Portuguese navigators to the South China Sea and Japan, after the age of Imperialism and Western colonialism in South Asia and in South East Asia, Europe rediscovers the wonders of the commerce with the East Asia. And In the beginning of the 21st Century the some of the new paths are built through interregional dialogue between the European Union (EU) – 25 countries, 455 million people – and the ten Countries of “Asian ASEM” – more than 1.8 billion people.

Indeed ASEM constitutes a unique phenomena in the current International Relations scenario: a Forum between the European Union member states and ten Asian countries, seven of which from the Association of the Southeast Nations (ASEAN) – Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and Philippines – and three from the East-Northeast Asia – China, South Korea and Japan. Here we assume that this dynamic is part of a wider trend in the world politics: the Interregionalism, the dialogue between regions in a new framework of the world governance.

The aim of this paper is to map out three different approaches to the ASEM: liberal-institutionalism, neorealism and social constructivism. These are, in our point of view, the more useful and meaningful theories of international relations, which can be applied to the interregional dialogue between the European Union and the East Asian countries. In other words the objective is to enquiry about the nature, the common nature and conflict interests of the two parts of the interregional dialogue.

Before analyzing the concept of the three images, we will regard ASEM in the framework of the dialogue between Europe and Asia and focus on two key concepts: Inter regionalism and globalization, pointing out in what way we regard ASEM as an inter regional forum and the meaning of inter regionalism today, articulating it with a certain idea of globalization. This debate can be summed in the following question: Globalization and regionalization are contradictory or complementary processes?


1. Interregionalism and Globalization
In the post cold war era, the dialogue between regional blocs assumes a particular importance, at a time when the international system is embedded into a process of reorganization. In this process Globalization and regionalization are key issues to understand the dynamics of world politics and the new shape of world politics will to a certain extend depend on the evolution these phenomena. Globalization is indeed a very slippery concept used to describe different events, attitudes, realities and processes. Here we regard globalization on the one hand as 'a process of removing government-imposed restrictions on movements between countries in order to create an "open", "borderless" world economy' (Scholte 2000: 16) and, on the other hand, as internationalization, i.e. cross-border relations between countries'. It describes the growth in international exchange and interdependence. Notwithstanding we underline as well the idea of deterritorialization, as David Held et al (1999: 16) envisage it: “transformation in the spatial organization of social relations and transactions (...) generating transcontinental or inter-regional flows and networks of activity”. Thus in a globalized process of liberalization, internationalization and deterritorialization, in a post Cold War framework new alliances through the dialogue between regions are being built. If before the end of the Soviet Union inter regional cooperation was based on the bipolar rationale, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the roles of USA and EU in the world have shifted. The former endeavors to cement it hegemony as the military leader, the latter is developing its own way to strength its role as global actor and civil power.
Heiner Hanggi (2000) distinguishes three types of Interregionalism, in an empirical perspective: relations between groupings, hybrids such as relations between regional groupings and single powers and biregional and transregional groupings. The oldest phenomenon is the first category. In group-to-group relations EU is a paradigmatic case, as the EC ha developed increasingly dialogues with other regional blocs, such as the ASEAN the African Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) States or the MERCOSUR. The second type refers to the relations between regional groupings and single power, like the EU-China or EU-Russia partnerships or the ASEAN plus Three (China, Japan and South Korea). The ASEM is an example of the third category of Interregionalism, emerged in the framework of the new Triad, the tripolar relationship between the major economic regions: North America, Western Europe and East Asia. Besides ASEM, the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) with 21 Pacific Rim countries (15 East Asian countries, the three North Americans and two from South America) and the Europe-Latin America Rio Summit (a bi regional endeavor between 33 Latin American and Caribbean states with the EU member states) are other examples of biregional and transregional agreements.
However other scholars disagree with this analysis. While Jurgen Ruland distinguishes the bilateral inter-regionalism such as the early relationship of EC with ASEAN and transregionalism like the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), Julie Gilson defends that ASEM must be shaped as an interregional process. "Transregionalism is a structural attempt to combine a range of states within a coherent unified framework. Interregionalism, by contrast, sets one region in a dialogue (or potentially in conflict) with another" (Gilson, 2002).


2. The Asia-Europe Meeting
What is new about ASEM? First, it is the first interregional framework in which the Asian and European countries are required to provide collective responses – this is absolutely new for the Asian side of ASEM[1]. Second it is a product of the Post Cold War reorganization in which the major world power, the United States of America, is absent. Third, contrary to the APEC, ASEM’s agenda involves wide range of political, economic, cultural and intellectual dialogue. Finally from a theoretical point of view ASEM challenges the concepts of regionalism, new regionalism and inter-regionalism.
The first Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) took place in Bangkok, March 1996, gathering the Heads of State and Government of Seven ASEAN member states (all ASEAN, except Burma, Cambodia and Laos), the three Northeast Asian countries and the President of the European Commission. This meeting brings theses two blocs of partners in one encounter of “equal partners”. The ASEM has four main key characteristics: informality, complementary, multidimensionally, emphasis on equal partnership and provision of a platform for meetings addition ASEM must be understood as a non binding and consensus-oriented forum with a pre-agreed agenda. For Julie Gilson it is worthy to pay special attention to the ASEM process because we are facing an explicitly interregional forum; it was created during the post-cold war period, at a time that alliances are more undefined; it contains a three pillar agenda with economic, political and other socio-cultural dialogue; it points out new questions about inter-regionalism and the relation between regional integration and globalization (Gilson: 1, 2002b).
The ASEM process was launched form the existing channels between the EU and the East Asian countries like the EU-ASEAN cooperation process, the EU-Japan and the participation of Brussels in the ARF. This process must be understood also under the “New Asia Strategy”, issued in 1994, by the EU to improve the relations with the Asian countries with a special focus on the East Asia. In ASEM I, it was set up the nature scope of the new the new partnership: commitments to market economy, open multilateral trading system, non-discrimination. Liberalization and “open regionalism” (Chair's Statement at ASEM I). Since 1996 every two years the ASEM takes place alternately in Asia and in Europe. ASEM II, London 1998, reaffirmed the engagement in a regular forum, despite the alleged lack of substantial European support to depression caused by the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997.
The trust fund and technical assistance programmes were considered small beers compared to the totality of the financial problems then facing by the Asia Pacific Region. ASEM III, in Seoul, stressed the rapprochement of North and South Korea, the AEM IV, held in Copenhagen in 2002, under the topic “Unity and Strength in Diversity”, focused on the fight against terrorism that have gained growing importance in the international relations after the September 11, the Leaders signed the “ASEM Copenhagen Declaration on Cooperation Against International Terrorism”.

The Summit of the Heads of State or Government and the President of the European Commission is at the top of the ASEM structure[2]. Bellow, in the realm of political dialogue, there are the Foreign Minister’s Meetings and the senior official's meeting and the senior official’s meeting on trade and investment. The cooperation encompasses three main dialogue bridges: the economic, political and socio-cultural pillar, under these three stakes Europe and East Asia set cooperation projects economy, finance, environment, migratory flows, cultural heritage, child welfare among others.


3. Theoretical Approaches

3.1 A (neo) realist point of view

Classical realism perspective on international relations regards the inter-state system as a permanent state of war and anarchy. As Michael Doyle (1997, 13) notes, “this possibility of war requires that states follow realpolitik: be self-interested, prepare for war and calculate relative balances of power”. This leads to the security dilemma: to protect and defend the nation is the only way to guarantee political security but this defense makes the other state insecure. In the international system, the states are the most important actors, under which the other players, like transnational corporations or international organizations, act. Therefore, realists conceive a hierarchy: on the top, the “high” politics of military security and the low politics of economics and social affairs. Even when the economic vector seems the dominant in an interstate organization or forum, it is subjected to a strategic security objective. The main authors of classical realism are Thucydides, Machiavelli, Rousseau and Hobbes. In the 1970s there a new branch of realism was envisaged in Kenneth Waltz’s masterpiece "Man, the state and War", in which war was explained through three images or levels of analysis: human nature, internal structures of states and international anarchy. According to the neorealists the states do not attempt inevitably to maximize the power, but to endeavor the balance of power. Under this perspective, the balancing of power in the interstate system can be unipolar, one power, bipolar, two powers or multipolar, several powers.

Based on these assumptions, realists tend to foresee the 21st century as a time of conflict and fragmentation. Empirical evidences can lead us to agree with this school because the ethnic conflicts and wars sparked in the 1990s and state failure has been also a trend in the aftermath of the Cold War. In addition, the rise of international terrorism strengthened this idea of putative Clash of Civilizations. As globalization and regionalization are seen as contradictory processes ASEM is, for realists and neorealists, about balancing of power. For the European Union to build an interregional forum with East Asian countries became a necessity due to the gravitation of the world economics from the Atlantic to the Pacific region, a trend that had began in the 1970s with the rise of the New Industrialized Countries (NIC) of East Asia, also called the little Asian Tigers: Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore. Together with the emergence of Japan, the shift of China from a centralized socialist economy towards a socialist market economy and the dynamic of the Southeast Asian nations, East Asian is becoming a major player in the International Political Economy. Therefore, in the mid’1990s, after the recession years of the early 1990s and at the time of geopolitical reorientation, EU had to create this link in order not to loose out in the Triad competition. Under this point of view ASEM was launched, in the European perspective, aiming to compete with the APEC led by the United States. The lack of institutionalization of ASEM is underlined by the realists as a sign that, as Jurgen Ruland (2002) notes, that the balancing function of ASEM explain the low level of institutionalization, since as power constellations these organizations and fora avoid costly investments into institutions. There is also a cognitive rationale pointed out, due to the past experiences of several Southeast Asian countries of subjection to European colonial powers.

3.2 The liberal-institutionalist approach

Liberalism is realism’s rival theory. In opposition to realism, liberalism regards the interstate system as a state of war and peace and not a state of permanent anarchy. Although there are several types of liberalism – commercialism of Adam Smith, internationalism of Immanuel Kant, institutionalism of John Locke or neoliberal institutionalism – all question the basic principle of realism that state is the main actor in the international system. Moreover, while realists defend that institutions are created by powerful states to serve its interests, liberals regard institutions as the necessity to overcome difficulties and functional needs.

Specifically, liberal-institutionalism focus more on the cooperation than on the conflict. where realists assume that states focus on relative gains and the potential for conflict, neoliberal institutionalists assume that states concentrate on absolute gains and the prospects for cooperation. Neoliberal institutionalists believe that the potential for conflict is overstated by realists and suggest that there are countervailing forces, such as repeated interactions, that propel states toward cooperation. They regard cheating as the greatest threat to cooperation and anarchy as the lack of organization to enforce rules against cheating.

As neoliberal institutionalist regard regions as a forms of regime which function as a way to reduce transaction costs. In the ASEM process, the institutionalist approach emphasizes the creation of the missing link between Europe and Asia in the framework of the Triad, the institutionalization of the Asia-Europe meeting, despite the critics of costs low level of institutionalization and also the institutionalization of the East Asia Cooperation[3]. Moreover neo-liberal and institutionalist approaches highlight the role of ASEM as institution-builder, agenda setting and rationaliser (Ruland, 2002). If as an institution-builder ASEM appears to be low developed, in what concerns the agenda-setting function, from The Chair’s Statements of the Meetings, at the top the agenda in ASEM I was the stepping stone chart of intentions towards a new partnership: commitments to market economy, open multilateral trading system, non-discrimination, Liberalization and open regionalism. In ASEM II the leaders committed themselves to the affirmation of the forum in a regular base, In ASEM III there was a rapprochement of North and South Korea and the AEM IV focused on the fight against terrorism that have gained growing importance in the international relations after the September 11.



2.2 The Constructivist perspective

Social Constructivism challenges the classical realists and liberal approaches to the International relations. From a philosophical point of view human consciousness is the core of the socio-cultural activities and as consequence in the international relations. Constructivists oppose the realist assumption of the rational role of the state in the power seeking modus operandi of the interstate system, since these perceptions create an obstacle for the realists to understand the evolution of world politics after the end of the cold War. In other words, realism and neorealism are not adjusted to the rapid transformations occurred in the 1980s and 1990s. Liberalists, in the constructivist point of view, overlook the relevance of nationalism and identity building. And the constructions of identities are part of the core of constructivism. Moreover processes not structures determine Identities and interests of states. Bearing this in mind constructivism aims to explain variation in state behavior in various policy areas of global politics such as international security, human rights policy or environment policy.

Thus, while realists regard ASEM as balancing, liberal-institutionalists as institutional building links, constructivists see it from the angle of identity building. Julie Gilson (2002a, 64) underlines the cognitive dimension of the ASEM: “the concretized idea of Asia can create a sense of identity among a group which had no such group formation”. What Gilson suggests in this constructivist approach to the ASEM is that the process of dialogue about political, economic, social, environmental and cultural issues between the European Union and these countries of East Asia is provoking inevitably a representation of the self and other and obligating the member states of Asia to compromise in a common agenda to discuss in an equal basis with the European counterparts. In other words throufg the interaction Asia gets its identity confoirmed by the other, Europe, because a fundamental part of one’s identity derives form the juxtaposition of self and other.
This analysis may seem abstract and somehow obscure, however one has to recognize that regionalization and interregionalism transforms the member states, in progressive and low process.



Concluding remarks

Analyzing the phenomenon of the Asia-Europe Meeting requires a complex exercise which includes the interaction of several key concepts - Regionalization, Regionalism Interregionalism, Governance and Globalization - and a comprehension of the evolution in the International Political Economy of the last 30 years. Due to the novelty of this forum the main theories cannot explain totally the nature of the ASEM: neorealism, liberal-institutionalism and constructivism provide useful insights but have also some pitfalls. Probably the intersection of these three instruments may give us a more accurate overview of the interregional cooperation between Europe and Asia through ASEM.

ASEM is, to some extend, about balancing of power in the world politics and in the international economy. The rising of the USA as the super power after the Cold War led to a reorganization the alliances. And as neorealists regards trade and investment as a means to expand the power of a nation, or a here of a group of nations, the European Union, ASEM may function as balancing. However this explanation neglects other important aspects. The increasing global economic interdependence provoked the creation of this missing link in the Triad, and despite being low institutionalized, ASEM is sparking a de facto East Asian Economic Community, because Asian countries have to set up a common agenda and THE ASEM process has led to the formation of the "ASEAN plus Three" encounters. Moreover, the evolution of the European Union since 1992 with the completion process of the Single European Market and the increasing role of EU an economic and trade giant and as a global player in the dialogue with other regions, such as the ACP countries, MERCOSUR, and ASEAN, and the growing role of East Asian countries in the international Economy provoked the inevitable attraction of the two blocs. Despite the low level of institutionalization and the hegemony of Economic exchange in comparison with the other pillars, the political dialogue and the civic and cultural aspects, in functionalist point of view, the interaction and the creation of stronger economic ties in the realm of trade and investment may lead to a spill over effect in the other areas.

However there are several points to be underline regarding the shortcomings and the risks of failure. First, there is an Asia concern about he commitment of European Union member states in this process. The poor attendance of EU Foreign Ministers in all ASEM meetings even when they were held in European Countries is raising this question. Second, the alleged low efforts of EU at the time of the Asian Financial Crisis may be a wound in the mutual trust and in the relationship. Third, if from a liberal point of view regional blocs are always a second best solution towards the objective of global free market, how will the ASEM alliance work in the current negotiations of the World Trade Organization? Fourth, from a realist point of view the forum serves the interests of different states which have both conflict and common interests: taking into account the diversity of interests among major Asian players such as China, Japan and Indonesia, how East Asian cooperation will go beyond this point in the future? Finally EU acts as a sole players, but indeed, we are referring to 25 member states with an incipient if not almost invisible Common Foreign and Security Policy. If trade is part of the Community Pillar based on the supranational modus operandi, foreign policy remains as part of the intergovernmentalist Second Pillar.




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[1] “An East Asia Common Market. One East Asia currency and One East Asia Community” were the calls made by Joseph Estrada, the then president of Philippines, at the ASEAN plus Three (APT) Summit in Manila. The statement seems rhetorical and not feasible in the short and medium term however it demonstrates the interest of an East Asia integration process, in opposition to an Asia-Pacific view or even to a Pan-Asia perspective. This idea of an East Asian Economic Community (EAEC) has been surrounding the intelligentsia for many years.
[2] See Annexe I
[3] Indeed the ASEM process played a key role in the formation of the ASEAN Plus Three (APT) process, the meeting between the ten nations of ASEAN and three Northeast Asian countries: China, Japan and South Korea. In 1995, when the ASEAN member states were preparing the first Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), China, Japan and South Korea were invited to join the Asian representatives in the Meeting. At the ASEM I, in Bangkok, the Asian partners mapped out the continuation of the APT process, first at the level of senior officials, then through foreign and economic ministers meetings, which took place in 1997.