Telo M. European Union and New Regionalism. Regional Actors and Global Governance in a Post-Hegemonic Era
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European Union and New Regionalism
128
c. State-promoted regional cooperation involves de jure regime-setting,
policy decisions by governments, in general, to remove barriers to trade and
investments towards a free trade area and set instrumental intergovernmental
cooperation, mainly limited to some sectors and branches
3
which could also
include dispute settlement mechanisms.
d. A customs union and a common trade policy: these include common external
tariff and foreign economic policy (for example, MERCOSUR, the EU
and SACU, including five members of SADC). The definition of ‘strategic
regionalism’, competing for defending regional geo-economic interest and
asserting distinctive socio-economic and learning models, could also be fit
to cope with such a phenomenon.
e. By economic integration, we understand a common market and an
economic union, including not only cooperation but also coordination of
national macroeconomic policies, through intergovernmental and, rarely,
supranational institutions.
f. By a regional polity we don’t understand a regional federal state. Even the
five types above don’t need to be all included. However, several process
of deepening are in progress: a socio-political construction (or ‘cognitive
regionalism’, see Higgott chapter), various steps towards political unity
(gradually pooling national sovereignties in sensitive policy fields) and a
high institutional capacity to minimize internal asymmetries and maximize
external influence and power.
4
Since new regional associations of states as a concrete phenomenon are often still
unclear and overlapping within the current transition of the post-bipolar world
system, this book’s contributing researchers do not aim to create a general theory
of new regionalism. On the contrary, the chapters begin by describing, classifying
and raising questions and problems. What we can say is that there is no evidence
at all that different regional models correspond to an evolutionary ‘Balassian’ (B.
Balassa, 1961) process where the path and the end are established from the very
beginning. Extreme variations, steps backward or stagnation are possible. There
is no continuum either between the different degrees of formalization of regional
cooperation. Finally, different models cannot be explained through the integration
theory that was created and developed relating to western Europe and on the basis
of the political background of the European nation state, such a peculiar historical
construction. However, comparison is very useful and its main goal is not only to
stress similarities but also to underline variations. It would be a methodological
mistake to isolate a single regional organization and underestimate the systemic
trends and the common features within the partially globalized economy. Europe
is a laboratory and a reference – even if the kind of high institutionalization found
in European regionalism is not to be found elsewhere in the world.
5
Some of the
current forms of regionalization do emulate the European patterns, namely the
EFTA, Common Market and Single European Act, while some others react against
them or consciously avoid the European way.
The main reasons for comparing are the relevant international factors of new
regionalism; regional organizations do have the same global environment in
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129
common. They not only experienced the common challenges of the globalizing
economy, but also of the turning points of the evolving world system: 1931, 1944/47,
1971, 1989/91. However, they have quite a different experience with globalization
and global institutions; furthermore they interact with the American leadership
and the past Soviet policy and regional leaders in different ways. For example,
multilateralism became a common rule in the USA–Western Europe relationship
whereas bilateralism characterized the USA–Asia relationship, in the framework of
the huge heterogeneity of the Asian continent. They have been differently affected
by the evolution in American economic and security leadership, for example, think
about the ‘transatlantic triangle’ or the decline of FTAA and APEC. Regional
variations can be classified depending both upon the impact of the international
system or upon the degree of internal cohesion and domestic pressures.
As far as internal factors are concerned, regional organizations all have
experience of networks and intergovernmental regimes, policy making and
communities. They all give rise to multi-tier, multi-level, multi-channel, multi-actor
regional systems, partly informal and partly formal. Continental and sub-continental
variations are explained through several historical, political and economic factors,
partly exogenous and partly endogenous, including the difference of the states’
preferences, the degree of divergence among them, the distribution of capabilities
among members of regional organizations and so on.
6
Finally, ‘club size’, the balance between widening and deepening of each
regional grouping, is important: very often it is a matter of sub-regional
organizations, including only a part of the states, belonging to that region of the
world. An important transversal question raised by the literature is whether a
regional leader is necessary and sufficient to build up a regional organization
7
and
to shape membership and borders. The separate chapters provide both analytical
and critical assessments to answer these questions.
1 ASEAN, SAARC and the Asian way to new regionalism
The international literature on the Association of South-East Asian Nations
(ASEAN) is characterized by a crucial question: how could ASEAN possibly
survive the dramatic changes incurred as the security framework of this particularly
turbulent region, the domestic post-colonial regime transition for over thirty years,
and the financial crisis of the late 1990s? On the one hand, ASEAN had to be
flexible enough to cope with the challenges of internal diversity and the political
fragility of regimes within Pacific Asia.
8
On the other hand, it had to be sufficiently
innovative to be able to face huge strategic uncertainties and the negative regional
legacy of bilateral experiences – including arms control.
9
A comparison with the
very poor achievements of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation
(SAARC) is particularly interesting in this respect.
10
In fact, this regional grouping
with the largest population world wide seems to have not only a very low degree
of integration among national economies and societies and no incrementalism, but
was experiencing the worst periods of conflicts between its two leaders (India and
Pakistan) during its fifteen-year history. The four main reasons for the stagnation
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include the legacy of the colonial past, the problems of underdevelopment, the
lack of complementarity between national economies and the political tensions
within the region. Bilateral issues, and particularly the conflict between the two
nuclear powers India and Pakistan, rigorously left off the SAARC agenda, do brake
any further progress in regional cooperation. All in all, the results over fifteen
years, often intergovernmental summits, many attempts to improve information
exchange, coordination, networking and so on, are so modest that, given the present
circumstances, the survival of SAARC as a forum in one of the most dangerous
regions of the world illustrates the centrality of the hard politics issues and the
question of leadership.
Internal asymmetry is only a partial explanation of failures and stagnation.
Certainly with 72 per cent of land and 77 per cent of population, India represents
the giant of the region. However, even other regional organizations (including
MERCOSUR, ASEAN and SADC) are characterized by huge internal asymmetries
that do not stop regional agreements from progressing. Clearly a second internal
negative factor (common to many regional groupings, including developing
countries) must not be forgotten: the lack of functional dynamics of regional
economic integration and of complementarity among national economies as exports
and imports are concerned.
According to a more convincing political explanation, the absence of mutual
confidence-building measures condemns regional cooperation to the margins.
Bilateral political understanding between the two major powers of the region
– as in Western Europe (France and Germany) and in Latin America (Argentina
and Brazil) – largely explains the success of regional agreements elsewhere. In
Asia, the common feeling of an external threat, whether political (Soviet and
Chinese expansionism, Vietnam War) has been an important early integrative
factor for ASEAN countries. However, the end of the Cold War is significantly
reducing the impact of systemic political factors within the Asian continent with
the consequence of increasing the influence of both economic (the growing fear
of marginalization within the globalizing economy) and endogenous factors.
11
By
building no security in the post-Cold War era, the South Asian crisis shows that
regionalism does not easily substitute bilateralism or global multilateralism either.
In Southern Asia, when bilateralism or globalism are unable to provide solutions
for regional conflicts, a regional association does not yet offer more than a forum
for a dialogue.
Finally, even the limits of another possible positive external factor are clearly
showing the case of the still ambivalent and poor influence of the EU policy
supporting regional cooperation in Southern Asia.
12
The EU supporting policies
are more successful where internal factors of integration are well balanced with
external factors, as in the case of ASEAN. The increasing bilateral cooperation
between the EU and India (Strategic Partnership of 2004 and Action Plan since
2005) is consistent with the idea of setting inter-regional relations; however, it had
to face political challenges: the new situation created by the military coup d’état in
Pakistan and the anti-Pakistan evolution of SAARC, on the one hand, the triangular
competitive relationship (including economic, nuclear and political cooperation)
between the US–EU–India, on the other hand.
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In its presentation of Asia’s most important regional organization, Eliassen/
Borves’s chapter raises a methodological issue by proposing the comparison of
ASEAN with the EC of the 1970s rather than with the highly institutionalized
EU of today. The question is to what extent we can consider the synchronic
dimension of their controversial relation to a globalized world by comparing
regional organizations to each other. Furthermore, to what extent must a diachronic
approach be chosen in order to have a better understanding of the gradual evolution
of regional organizations? Out of any Euro-centric understanding, this book aims
to combine both of these approaches, which is particularly useful as far as this case
study is concerned.
ASEAN states were able to develop their intergovernmental cooperation, in spite
of unusual obstacles and extraordinary difficulties. For four decades, ASEAN has
been looking for an Asian way to regional cooperation. At only a very first glance,
it is similar to the EU insofar as the scope and range of its activities are concerned.
The willingness of some members in the early decades to emulate the western
European model and, in the 1990s, to react to the danger of diluting ASEAN within
the broader interregional liberalization carried out by APEC,
13
played a certain role.
In its Jakarta meeting of 1994, APEC adopted an ambitious programme to set up an
inter-regional free trade area by 2020. With the setting up of APEC, we were faced,
in Asia as in Europe and elsewhere, with competitive concepts of regionalism. Two
opposite barriers were paradoxically braking the Clinton administration preference
for a comprehensive and more institutionalized APEC as a model of so-called ‘open
regionalism’,
14
that is, ASEAN’s fear of being absorbed into an intercontinental
US-centered organization and a preference of many Asian states for a very soft,
multiple geometry, Most Favored Nation-based, kind of APEC. However, as R.
Higgott argues, the Bush Administration ironically transformed the US presence
in the Asia–Pacific regional in an external unintended federalizing factor of East
Asian regional cooperation without the US. The US seriously affected East Asian
regionalism even during the Cold War era. Nevertheless, such an external potential
factor was not as unifying in the Asia–Pacific region as in western Europe, which
can be explained largely by underlining that the US’s preference in Asia was for
bilateralism rather than multilateralism.
Considering the internal factors, one has to take into account the great economic
disparities among ASEAN countries in terms of industrial and technological
development, labour costs, and export capacity. Furthermore, many observers
stress the cultural and political heterogeneity of the region and the particular state
traditions (populism, religious parties, role of the army, corruption, and so on)
as well as the various difficulties of coping with the challenges of both global
liberalization and regional cooperation.
As a consequence, ASEAN followed its own way to regional cooperation and,
in spite of the aforesaid weaknesses, it is about to undergo an important change.
Despite its very political origins, ASEAN can currently be defined as a mainly
network-based regional integration. After the end of the bipolar world, the main
driving force became the business community. Business networks are demanding
further integration and institution building. The project for an ASEAN Free Trade
Area has a main instrument: a Common Effective Preferential Tariff. The most
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likely issue could be similar to the European Free Trade Association,
15
according
to Eliassen/Børve’s chapter. However, common market, cooperation on security
issues, a ASEAN-Charta are on the current agenda. Moreover, Higgott focuses
on the growing relevance of the issues related to monetary cooperation. Indeed,
the ASEAN way means that transnational private networks, ethnic business,
technological clusters, subregional policy communities, and free trade areas are
pushing the governments forward. Personal contacts and business networks created
along ethnic and cultural lines certainly build a complex multi-tier system using
geographical proximity and both formal and informal meetings as a means to
strengthen regional interests in global competition. Of course, as a consequence
of such an approach, the institutional structure still is, relatively speaking, rather
weak. The Council of Foreign Affairs Ministers (taking decisions on the basis
of a consensual procedure and in a collegial way), the permanent and ad hoc
committees, and the small General Secretariat in Jakarta are still very limited in
scope and authority and lack a credible dispute settlement procedure.
Might ASEAN progress as a political entity as well? As far as the political
dimension is concerned, a curious process characterizes ASEAN. It was born as
an anticommunist security community, even when the bipolar construct was less
constraining and more flexible in Asia than in Europe (because of the impact of
the USSR–China conflict). Furthermore, the internal divisions on security issues
between neutral Indonesia, pro-UK Malaysia and Singapore, the influence of the
US and bilateral conflicts between member states were some of the main factors
restraining economic cooperation and regional integration. Ten years after its
foundation, the Bali Summit of 1976 did essentially reconfirm the primacy of
political cooperation as an attempt to defend a non-communist international
identity within that turbulent area. Why has there been a change towards economic
priorities since 1992? Why the surprising ASEAN revival after the hard financial
crisis of the late 1990s?
Regarding post-1992, this book focuses both on internal factors (business
networks) and on a changed perception of common external threats acting as a
catalyst on regional cooperation, particularly the new need to react to growing
international competition and liberalization. This includes the consequences of
the troubled Uruguay Round, the implementation of the Single European Act,
the creation of NAFTA, and so on. To increase the competitiveness of ASEAN
companies became a new raison d’être of the regional organization. As a matter
of fact, things changed very quickly in the 1990s, as shown both by consolidation
and by the simultaneous ability to expand and to include former enemies, such as
Vietnam, which joined in 1995, Laos and Burma in 1997, and finally Cambodia.
Regarding the post-Hanoi summit (1998) and the ASEAN revival after the deepest
financial crisis, namely the current dynamic evolution, the Higgott chapter provides
a comprehensive explanation of both economic and political dimensions.
The consequences of the economic and financial crisis of 1997/98 on the
evolution of ASEAN looked highly contradictory, at least , at the beginning: it
increased inward-looking policies and, later on, there was a growing expectation
of a more institutionalized intergovernmental regional framework for settling
disputes and strengthening regional cooperation. As for the ability of ASEAN
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to survive the financial crisis of the late 1990s, the Hanoi Summit in December
1998 succeeded in launching a common anti-crisis programme and in relaunching
financial cooperation with Japan. Step by step, a form of intergovernmental
watchdog has appeared on the agenda of ASEAN: the Manila network of mutual
surveillance could be substituted by something less vague. According to Eliassen/
Børve and Higgott, a kind of ‘cognitive regionalism’ could work better than the
IMF monitoring and constraining system, which failed and provoked a reaction in
the name of an increased sense of South-East Asian identity. A regional approach
to internal adjustment has indeed been more effective than a global one. Facing
common challenges helps to develop a new ASEAN awareness and a social
cohesion; oscillating processes of democratization (in Indonesia, Philippines, East
Timor) helps to increase and allow regional cooperation to grow. The worst case
scenario is that, on the one hand, fundamentalist terrorism and, on the other hand,
economic and social crisis could increase infra-regional conflicts as elsewhere in
the past decades. Refugee problems between Indonesia and Malaysia, protectionist
conjunctural policies, the external consequences of Indonesian forest destruction,
and new domestic political instability in the Philippines and Indonesia (as shown by
the Atjeh and Moluchs secession movements) could put into question the delicate
balance between external and internal politics in the region. At present, economy
and politics have closer links than in the past. The Action Plan 1999–2004 of
December 1998 has consolidated the achieved steps of cooperation and started
providing common answers to common problems: calling for foreign investments,
planning infrastructures, and coordinating currency policies. The twentieth century
ended with the Thailand’s Foreign Minister’s concepts of ‘flexible engagement’
and of ‘strengthened interaction’ among member states in a reinforced ASEAN.
Could joint political will and common interests cope with the current difficult two
level game and further implement the ASEAN way of regional cooperation? The
main variable is the complex interaction with the unstable economic and political
environment.
What has to be further underlined is that the economic dynamics towards a
free trade area are also establishing a new political framework and a new security
agenda, firstly, with ASEAN states’ decision to discuss regional security issues at the
Annual Conference. Secondly, we are witnessing the development of a promising
‘concentric circles’ system with the creation of ‘ASEAN + Three’ (APT) including
China, Southern Korea and Japan. Furthermore, the meetings in 2005 and 2006
of East Asian countries entail relevant potential implications both at regional and
global levels. Thirdly, with regard to security issues, it is important to mention the
even wider ‘ASEAN Regional Forum’ (ARF), including China, Japan, South Korea,
the EU, the USA, India and the main Asian-Pacific countries, which is asserting an
ASEAN pivotal role, at least as a driving force. The ARF was created in 1993–94 in
order to pursue and adapt, in the new international context characterized by a form
of security vacuum, the original aim of stability and peace in the area. The major
challenge for South-East Asian states is to place ASEAN within the framework of
the evolving Asia-Pacific security triangle between the three giants, the USA, Japan
and China. This attempt is proceeding quite successfully, even though ARF is still
far from becoming a kind of East Asian OSCE. The ASEAN Regional Forum still
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is a weak structure based on consultation. However, in spite of the principle of non-
intervention, something new is currently happening. Dialogue with the growing
(and often feared) neighbour, China, seems to be improving. The management
of this relationship to the potentially regional hegemon, the People’s Republic of
China, within a multilateral framework, despite its current economic transition,
its nationalistic tendencies and its internal uncertainty, is a crucial issue for the
regional security agenda. That is why the achievements of the Bangkok Summit
of 1994 and the consequent meeting of heads of states were so important in terms
of establishing confidence-building measures, preventive diplomacy, and peaceful
conflict settlement. Furthermore, the normalization process with Vietnam and the
renouncement by the ASEAN countries and China of the use of force as a means
of addressing conflicts over territory and natural resources with regard to territorial
problems and the natural resources of the Southern Chinese Sea, were important
steps forward. The relationship with China and the ability to settle quarrels – a
very sensitive issue in South-East Asia – are crucial for ASEAN as a regional
peacekeeping organization. ASEAN member states decided, as a consequence of
the harsh financial crisis, to drastically reduce their military budgets and defence
programmes. The success of the ARF is particularly commendable because, for the
first time in Asian–Pacific history, the economic and political competitive influence
of both China and Japan is increasing simultaneously. The influence of the USA in
the region is still crucial in order to push free trade, establish military cooperation,
and campaign for democratization and the rule of law. However, the role of the
USA in the region is likely to decline, if not as an economic power, at least as
the ‘first range’ hegemonic power, at least in a scientific understanding (O’Brien/
Clesse, 2002 and Keohane, 1984/2004).
The Hanoi Summit of 1998 was a relevant attempt of change regarding the
internal obstacles to deeper integration (heterogeneity, non-intervention principle).
With reference to Cambodia (traditionally a difficult issue for ASEAN in spite
of its participation to the Paris Agreement of 1991), the enlargement had been
postponed to 1999, because of the coup d’etat by Hun Sen and the divergent
points of view between ASEAN countries. The return of Vietnam to regional
cooperation after many years of low-profile foreign policy was a success. Not only
was there increasing interference during the two main political crises of 1998/99
in Indonesia and Malaysia, but also Thailand and other MS openly proposed, on
several occasions, a ‘strengthened interaction’ going beyond the principle of non-
interference, which was typical of the Suharto era. Deeper integration and stronger
institutional cooperation have been conditioned by the very heterogeneity and
pre-democratic nature of almost all of the national regimes during the previous
decades. This explains oscillations as far as democratization is concerned. ASEAN
was, for instance, supporting Corazon Aquino’s campaign in 1987, criticizing Hun
Sen’s coup d’état in Cambodia, and is pressing the Myanmar junta. However, in
spite of the paradoxical post-crisis democratization wave (Indonesia, Philippines),
new regionalism does not yet entail generalized domestic democratization (as
shown also by the coup d’etat of 2006 in Thailand). The weight of a very diverse
colonial and neocolonial past, the legacy of the Cold War, the cultural, religious,
and linguistic diversity, the unique relation between state and society, are together
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making regional cooperation more difficult than elsewhere, even regarding common
problems such as the fight against air pollution, AIDS, pirates and criminality.
In spite of such problems, economic and political regionalism is increasing
in East Asia. Not only is China setting up a free trade area with ASEAN before
2015 and Japan is showing a new interest in regional cooperation after the Tokyo
Declaration of 2003; but new issues are on the agenda: monetary cooperation, a
ASEAN Charta. The normally sacred principle of non-intervention is starting to be
questioned although no consensus yet exists on new regional post-sovereign rules.
The current prudent interference in the domestic affairs of other member states is
justified in the name of the huge external implications of national crises like those
of Indonesia (difficult post-Suharto transition era; East-Timor crisis, and so on) or
Malaysia (limited democracy, human rights, and media freedom) or Thailand. The
democratization of Myanmar, though openly requested by ASEAN member states
along with the EU, UN and US, is still an open issue. The European style troika
created by the ASEAN Bangkok Summit of 2000 in order to face regional security
problems is confronted by the mainly domestic and internal nature of challenges.
Summing up, the process of building an internal problem-solving authority will be
very gradual.
A more active role within the international arena was part of the huge dynamism
of ASEAN during the 1980s, 1990s and into the twenty-first century. On the one
hand, it participated in the APEC process and, on the other hand, in the Asia
Europe Meeting (ASEM). The process leading to the ASEM was started in 1994
(Singapore project and the Karlsruhe Summit) under the convergent pressure of
strategic interests and private lobbying. The question remains about similarities
and dissimilarities in the expectations of both partners. ASEAN has three main
goals: to achieve an improved international status, to get better access to the EU
market, and to attract European investment. Why is the EU interested in taking
a step forward beyond old post-colonial patterns of cooperation with developing
countries to reach cooperation on an equal basis? There are two main answers:
to accede economically and politically to a strategic area of the planet and to
strengthen regional organizations world wide.
Both ASEAN and the EU want to complete a kind of world trade triangle
(Europe, Asia, North America), diversify markets, enhance their respective
bargaining power with the North Americans and, eventually, push the USA towards
a global multilateral approach. The first ASEM Summit, at Head of State level,
which took place in Bangkok in 1996, succeeded, as is shown by the chairman’s
statement and the common final document setting a regular – though informal
– interregional agenda. Further summits took place in 1998 (London), 2000
(Seoul), 2002 (Copenhagen), Hanoi (2004), Helsinki (2006), plus an irrelevant
ministerial meeting in Vientiane. ASEM still pays a high price for its marginal
role during the financial crisis of the late 1990s. Notwithstanding the evident
limits of institutionalization of a relationship called ‘Meeting’, both ASEAN and
EU are definitely about to take the opportunity to use ASEM as one of the many
instruments strengthening their international role after the end of a bipolar era,
through interregional cooperation, including political dialogue. The common
goals of economic and political cooperation and socio-cultural dialogue have been
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partly implemented through ministerial meetings, business forums, managerial and
youth leader meetings and the new Europe–Asia Foundation project. Of course the
‘strategic partnership’ between the EU and Japan already set in the early 1990s,
between EU and China (2003) and between EU and India (2004) not only are part
of the comprehensive concept on interregional relations, but entail a much more
relevant substance (which should push ASEAN to be more proactive).
Of course, there are still several problems to be faced which make ASEM seem a
fledging organization: first of all, the EU’s protectionism; secondly, the very limited
people to people dialogue, the lacking inter-parliamentarian cooperation, the limits
of ASEF as a framework of transnational relations at the level of civil society, which
could help by changing the Asian authoritarian or post-authoritarian regimes; and
thirdly, the bad souvenir of the EU’s relative passivity during the financial crisis
in the region. One should add that the EU wishes to legally strengthen beyond the
current low level and widen the ASEM process to include more Asian countries.
India is particularly interested, as due to its size and the paralysis of SAARC, it
cannot be encapsulated solely within the South Asian framework. However, to
include India as a full member and not only as an observer, is not an easy issue for
ASEAN. The main challenge is a political one: is the EU-ASEAN relationship able
to evolve towards a building block for global governance?
In conclusion, two parallel and linked trends characterize ASEAN’s evolution
within the current post-hegemonic world. The member states of ASEAN have been
able to overcome their worst financial crisis, to enlarge the regional association
to up to ten member states and to take further steps (even if they are somewhat
delayed) toward a more comprehensive cooperation agenda. One of the main
challenges for ASEAN is how to combine its deepening cooperation with both
the concentric circles and the troubled global competitiveness. Politically, ASEAN
is now focusing on stabilizing territorial integrity and order against domestic
fragmentation (particularly within multi-ethnic member states), even though the
East Timor crises of 1999 and 2006 confirm that ASEAN states still are reluctant
to get involved in the domestic politics of a member state. Moreover, they are
establishing a broader, less rigid, regional security dialogue involving the US, the
EU, Australia and the two potential regional leaders, China and Japan.
Secondly, the defensive approach of ASEAN states to economic globalization
is evolving toward a more strategic view on the one hand, strengthening the
‘ASEAN + Three’ and East Asian Summits. China is ready to multilaterally
cooperate, including at regional level. Even the new role of the economic giant and
technological leader Japan is beyond its previous inattention to regional policy
16
(and not limited to a mere bilateral relationship with the USA) and is likely to
become a very dynamic factor. An enlarged regional cooperation process is in
progress in East Asia where South-East Asia and North-East Asia are joining, both
at economic and security levels (Buzan, 2003). While Japan failed to become the
leader in monetary cooperation in 2000–03; however, it is a huge source of public
financing and private investments, fund against poverty, and so on, for the whole
area. Along with historical links and economic interests, trade tensions with the US
and the repeated failures of the WTO new rounds between 2000 and 2006, help to
explain the Japanese will to become a strong partner of Asian Pacific countries.
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Higgott expertly shows how relevant the challenge raised by the conflicting China
and Japan will of leadership is.
Coping with the relationship with China is traditionally the main issue at stake
for ASEAN countries. Bringing both Japan and China within multilateral global
and regional frameworks is crucial for the security of the region. Improving its
relationship with the emerging economic and nuclear power and the technology
giant really is salient for ASEAN, particularly because of the legacy of historical
problems and the countervailing tendencies as far as the transformation of Pacific
Asia in a Japan-centered region is concerned.
In spite of the weight of bilateralism and of the tripolar political structure of
the region (China, Japan, US), Asian Pacific new regionalism is evolving in new
ways in the wake of the local challenges and the problems that are arising within
the globalized economy. Against inward-looking strategies, it is also aiming to
complement trade and interregional openness with stronger, more specialized
regional agreements. Even more than in the past decades, the institutional settlement
of ASEAN will be a crucial factor, as it adapts to internal differentiation but also
becomes strong enough to cope with domestic concerns, and, particularly, to help
to bring the whole region beyond current uncertainties. Economic dynamics was
the way for the old ASEAN to revive. However, to settle a regional polity and a
‘regional security architecture’
17
is the challenge not only to avoid competition
for resources and exacerbating disputes but particularly to compromise between
ambitions of leadership.
2 MERCOSUR and the Transatlantic Triangle
Regional groupings in Latin America and particularly the Organization of
American States were for decades weak and stagnant. Nevertheless, there are
currently examples of vital subregional integration, namely MERCOSUR and the
Andean Community.
18
MERCOSUR shows salient similarities with the EU: the
customs union, the political aim and its political function of stabilizing domestic
democracies of member states. These are part of a post-sovereign political culture
which explains, according to many observers, its outstanding success story in such
a short time.
19
The Italian philosopher of the eighteenth century, Giambattista Vico said that
the true nature of things is to be found in their birth. As MERCOSUR is concerned,
its origin as a ‘security community’ in Karl Deutsch’s words
20
is crucial in order to
understand its future developments. Indeed, the first step of the current integration
process between the countries of the southern cone of Latin America was a
confidence-building treaty between Argentina and Brazil. The countries agreed
to abandon their nuclear programmes and their previous mutually suspicious
and aggressive political culture like France and Germany did at the beginning of
the European construction. However, it is not an ‘amalgamated’ kind of security
community, because national sovereignty still matters more than in Europe.
MERCOSUR is a political association. The democratic conditionality and
intergovernmental political cooperation worked quite efficiently, as far as the