East Asia’s New Multilateralism: Hopes and Illusions

The emergence of East Asian regionalism is arguably one of the most important developments in the international relations of Asia. The trend began in 1997, when the region was hit by a massive economic crisis. The crisis undermined the credibility of regional institutions that were developed within a sub-regional or Asia-Pacific basis, namely the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). These institutions were seen to have failed to anticipate or contain the crisis and repair the damage to the region’s economic dynamism and political relationships caused by it. Since then, East Asian institutions, comprising the ASEAN Plus Three (APT, 1997), the East Asian Summit (EAS, 2005), and the futuristic notion of an East Asian Community (EAC), have gained momentum in the growing alphabet soup of regional institutions in Asia. So much so that proponents of East Asian regionalism envision them as the basis for a “bona fide [East Asian] regional community... for peace, prosperity and progress”. In this talk, I analyze the prospects for East Asian regionalism, focusing particularly on the East Asian Summit and the proposed East Asian Community. After discussing the factors that led to its emergence, I will outline some of the comparative advantages of building regional institutions within an East Asian framework. I then turn to the limitations of East Asian regionalism. My argument is that although the East Asian framework does offer some important comparative advantages in promoting regional cooperation, it is not necessarily a more viable framework for addressing the economic and strategic problems of contemporary Asian security order. At best, it can co-exist with Asia Pacific institutions, providing a platform for useful summit-level talks and undertaking a limited range of functional tasks which other regional institutions are illsuited or unwilling to take on. But a host of institutional, political and strategic problems would need to be overcome before East Asia could really develop a genuine sense of regional community.