THE scriptwriting for a brand new Asian Drama, which has nothing to do with Gunnar Myrdals original treatise, has now begun in a political flurry. Viewed as the potential drama of the 21st century, its scope, as competitively envisioned by several leaders now, is a new architecture of cooperation across East Asia or a selective arc of the Asia-Pacific region, as the case might be.
A new Asian Drama of whatever political hue is inconceivable without the participation of not only China but also India as a key actor, regardless of the relative importance of each to the continent as a whole at any given time. And, as if to address this aspect, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Chinese counterpart Wen Jiabao have once again sought to dispel the impression that the two countries see each other as a threat.
The two leaders met on the sidelines of the latest annual series of regional summits, organised by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), in Thailands resort town of Cha-am Hua Hin, late in October. The China-India meeting on October 24 might have taken place only on the margins of a multilateral conference, but the dialogue between the leaders of Asias two ancient neighbours came to be seen as a mega event.
Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi did a substantive sum-up of Wens meeting with Manmohan Singh. In a no-frills account, Yang said on October 25 that Wen and Manmohan Singh agreed that the two countries should welcome each others development rather than consider each other as a threat. In this big-picture canvas, the two countries pledged to adhere to good-neighbourly relations, maintain high-level interactions, enhance mutual political trust and expand bilateral cooperation for mutual benefit.
On the unresolved India-China border issue, Yang quoted Wen and Manmohan Singh as agreeing that the two countries should continue their frank exchanges and stay the course of a candid dialogue. Progress should be sought through negotiations on the basis of the already-agreed guiding political principles. The objective, it was reaffirmed, was to reach a fair and reasonable solution acceptable to both sides. The process of seeking a political settlement should be marked by efforts by both countries to ensure stability and peace in the border areas, it was further emphasised by the two leaders.
Yang indicated that the two Prime Ministers, turning to global issues, agreed to strengthen coordination between the two countries to tackle such pressing challenges as the current financial crisis and climate change.
The Wen-Singh meeting did, in a turn of the metaphor, signify a handshake across the Himalayas, considering the pre-meeting speculation in sections of the Indian media about the possibility of a turbulent encounter. In the reckoning of some in the media, the pre-meeting atmosphere was marked by Chinas stated and presumed views on the status of Arunachal Pradesh as an Indian State. Also in focus was Chinas likely response to the reported move by the India-based Tibetan spiritual leader, Dalai Lama, to visit Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh. On the eve of the meeting, China was reported to have sent a note of formal protest to India on the Dalai Lamas plans to visit Arunachal Pradesh.
In the event, the Dalai Lama issue did not at all cloud the seriousness or purposefulness of the meeting, judging by the official accounts of the two sides. The official understanding on the Indian side was that Wen agreed with Manmohan Singh that the issues arising in the course of bilateral engagement should be dealt with properly to prevent them from turning into impediments to the development of overall friendly ties.
Manmohan Singh told journalists later that he had, at a banquet marking the series of summits, told his Chinese counterpart that the Dalai Lama is an honoured guest [in India], a religious figure, but we [the Indian authorities] do not allow him to indulge in political activities.
A recurring theme in high-level China-India dialogue is the idea that there is sufficient space in the political and economic domains of the world for both these countries to rise peacefully, without threatening each others security. The latest meeting was no different. However, the larger China-India perspective, as seen by East Asian leaders and experts, is that these two neighbours must not treat friendship as something as distant as the outer space is from the earth. Such a subtle aspect of concern is not lost on the protagonists of a new architecture of East Asian cooperation.
In recent years, East Asia has come to acquire two different but overlapping meanings, depending on the political context of any regional narrative or discourse. In the first place, East Asia is often seen as the geographical area covered by the ASEAN+3 countries. ASEAN comprises 10 state-players, while the +3 is political shorthand for the associations dialogue partners in North-East Asia China, Japan and South Korea. Such a geographical rendition is not devoid of a huge political content. In a further refinement of such an East Asian identity, the regional leaders have formed the East Asia Summit (EAS) as a geopolitical forum comprising ASEAN+3 and India as also Australia and New Zealand. And, the new exercise at imagining an Asian Drama of the 21st century is bound to further redefine East Asia as a geopolitical theatre.
Unsurprisingly, therefore, the latest regional summits, which concluded in Cha-am Hua Hin on October 25, served as an ideal occasion for brain-storming by the chief protagonists. The Prime Ministers of Japan and Australia, Yukio Hatoyama and Kevin Rudd respectively, cheerfully expounded their competitive proposals. Manmohan Singh also chipped in with Indias own vision of an Asian Economic Community.
He had, in fact, floated his idea as far back as 2005 during a similar set of summits, held under the auspices of ASEAN itself. Thereafter, India did not push for this idea in any proactive diplomacy. A general view in the ASEAN circles at that time was that Manmohan Singhs main objective in floating this idea was to burnish Indias credentials for a role in East Asia. In doing so, he did not wish to appear selfish about just Indias case for a place in a potential East Asian order, as it then was. Knowing the difficulties of forming a pan-Asian Economic Community in a single-step exercise, he proposed an idea that would necessarily imply the inclusion of countries located outside geographical East Asia. So ran the argument within ASEAN circles about the cleverness of Manmohan Singhs 2005 proposal. His move lost traction because of New Delhis continuing image as an emerging player, not an established actor, at the centre stage of East Asian affairs. On balance, though, ASEAN invited India to become a founding member of the EAS forum. Manmohan Singhs 2005 move did a political trick for India. His latest call for an Asian regional trade pact has come in for due notice but not as a commanding strategic initiative in the category of scripting a new Asian Drama.
It was Rudd who had first articulated the idea of an Asia Pacific Community, which would categorically include the United States and India. The U.S., under Barack Obama as the new-age President since January, has not abandoned Washingtons long-established policy of playing the role of a resident power in East Asia, however the region is defined. On the other hand, India and Australia are legitimate players in geopolitical East Asia by virtue of their status as founding members of the EAS forum.
Rudds critics see his proposal as a device to rectify an existing anomaly in the structure of the EAS forum the exclusion of the U.S. ASEAN has not so far endorsed his initial outline of an Asia Pacific Community. For a variety of reasons of political conflict or competition, the major powers in geopolitical East Asia were unable to take the lead for pan-regional cooperation. This applies to not only China and Japan, which are still trying to evolve a modus vivendi, but also India or the U.S. itself. So, it was left to the less powerful South-East Asian states to form ASEAN and also evolve a network of other entities with the 10-nation bloc itself at their independent nuclei. Some of these other networks are the ASEAN+3 grouping and the EAS forum. In these circumstances, ASEAN has become very possessive about the idea of being the driving force behind any forum of cooperation across geopolitical East Asia.
This should, at one level, explain ASEANs reservations about Rudds idea of an Asia Pacific Community, which, in his view, should concern itself with all aspects of regional cooperation and conflict, including those with a global dimension. In his calculus, there should not be no-go areas for Asia-Pacific cooperation as envisioned by him. Here too, such a notion strikes at the ASEAN culture of settling for the least common denominator of cooperation. The latest such cultural example is the decision by the South-East Asian leaders, at their summit in Cha-am Hua Hin, to inaugurate the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights.
This intergovernmental body, as commended by Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, can act as a moral force in promoting human rights in the South-East Asian sub-region of geopolitical East Asia. He and other ASEAN leaders are, therefore, happy to make a beginning in this domain of human rights. And, they do not want to devalue the Commission just because it cannot intervene in the internal affairs of any ASEAN state to enforce human rights there. Military-ruled Myanmar is often seen within ASEAN and outside it as a country where a human rights commission would be justified to intervene.
Such nuances of ASEAN culture do not necessarily impinge on this groupings attitude towards Hatoyamas idea of an East Asia Community. The Japanese leader has not yet drawn up a clear blueprint of his idea which, however, resonates with ASEANs own decision to become a community by 2015 within a sub-region of geopolitical East Asia. ASEANs vision of its own community was reaffirmed during the latest summitry.
As of now, Hatoyamas idea of an East Asia Community can lead to one of three possible scenarios. The existing ASEAN+3 grouping can become an East Asia Community with a more definitive mandate than the present one. In this scenario, the community will exclude India, the U.S., Australia and New Zealand. The second possibility is that the existing EAS forum transforms itself into an East Asia Community with a prescriptive political role as well. In such a case, the U.S. will be left out. The last but not the least scenario is that the U.S. becomes a partner of the existing EAS forum.
Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada has said that the proposed East Asia Community should be larger than the ASEAN+3 grouping but not very large indeed. A top Japanese official Kazuo Kodama told this correspondent that Hatoyama had said his intention was not to exclude the U.S. from an East Asia Community.
For the U.S., the choice of being left out of a new mechanism of cooperation in the next big theatre of global affairs is no choice at all. More so, if Hatoyamas Japan begins to gravitate towards an increasingly powerful China in the political, economic and military domains. The issue of an East Asia Community will doubtless come to the fore, in some form, when ASEAN holds a summit with the U.S. in Singapore in mid-November. For now, how do regional experts view the equations among the U.S., China, India and Japan?
According to Tim Huxley, Singapore-based expert from the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the beginning of the end of the American era in East Asia occurred more than 40 years ago. In 1968, the then U.S. President, Richard Nixon, set the scene for the withdrawal of American combat forces from Vietnam and for American allies in the region doing more to defend themselves, Huxley said in a recent conversation. While China might now want to Finlandise Japan into a non-player, as in the historical case of Finland in relation to Russia, Chinas neighbours, too, might adjust to its rapid rise at this time. In this context, he cites the example of how countries, long used to the British empire, began recognising the U.S. as the hegemon not long ago.
Huang Jing, Singapore-based specialist on China-U.S. ties, is known in key Beijing circles as well. Responding to questions from this journalist, Huang said: I do not believe that China will try to develop any kind of relationship with Japan at the expense of the China-U.S. relations. So, Chinese President Hu Jintao was very, very well-guarded in responding to Hatoyamas enunciation of his idea of an East Asia Community. The two leaders had recently met in New York.
Noting that China will not worry about Indias relationship with the United States or Japan, Huang also discounted the feasibility of New Delhi being able to play a so-called Tibet card to try and win Beijings support on the Kashmir issue. In international relations, you only trade [off] interests and benefits, never problems. A few years ago, some suggested that if China would handle North Korea for the United States, the United States will do something on Taiwan for China. The argument, from the very beginning, was a dead one because when you trade [off] problems, you create another problem. It is a kind of norm and a principle in international affairs that two big powers do not want to solve the other powers problem.
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