Regional security for the Asia-Pacific: ends and means.

• Author: Rolfe, Jim
• Position: Report

In August 2007 former Australian Prime Minister and architect of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) process, Paul Keating, advocated that that organization take on a wider role to "move from its traditional focus on trade and economics to a much wider agenda of security and strategic issues". (1) This, he argued, because the world needed such a body with the leaders of the region's major countries meeting at a time when China is rising and "the challenge is to ease China into the world" rather than make the mistakes of the past and try to suppress its rising and legitimate aspirations. A year earlier there had been a call for a "Pacific NATO", (2) and sixteen years earlier still then Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans had called for a Council for Security Cooperation in Asia (CSCA) modelled on its European counterpart the Council for Security Cooperation in Europe, (3) and there are regular calls for some form of East Asia security system, (4) or for security sector reform. (5)

None of these initiatives has gone any further for different reasons, mostly to do with a lack of will, a worry that European models are not applicable to the Asia-Pacific region and a belief that any effective security regime would inevitably have an effect on sovereign autonomy, although the CSCA proposal ended up as the Track 2 Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific (CSCAP). Despite the lack of progress however, there is clearly, at the least, a perception that regional security is lacking something, although there is perhaps disagreement over which region--Asia, the Asia-Pacific, Pacific-Asia, or East Asia--is lacking the security and what precisely needs to be done about it.

On the face of it, calls for a more formal regional security system are strange. Much of the "traditional" security aim has already been achieved. Consider the Asia-Pacific region 50 or 60 years ago. Then it was a region in which war was almost legitimate and always possible as a means of resolving inter-state disputes. It was a region, indeed, where the state was the only significant international actor. It was a period of more or less closed trading systems and it was a period before the processes of globalization had opened societies. It was also a period in which to a large extent power rather than rules determined the limits of action. This was a greatly different international environment from that of today. Most of the important factors which defined the region 50 years ago have disappeared. Most importantly, war is rapidly becoming an illegitimate element of state policy except as a last resort in cases of self-defence. (6) That being the case, security in the traditional sense--freedom from the threat or fear of war, protection from neighbours--is almost with us.

On the other hand, there are still states within the region that do not necessarily accept the "no war" norm and that do not conform to the regional "non-intervention" norm. And even if the problems from those few states are greatly overrated, a point I do not argue in this paper, the belief of state policy-makers is still overwhelmingly that their main task is to ensure the protection of their (often relatively new) state against these kinds of traditional threats and, as importantly, to protect the state against encroachments on its sovereignty. We also now have to face a "long war", or a state of "persistent conflict", in the "war against terror", which has been the salient feature of twenty-first century affairs and will be with us for some time yet. As well, there is the new(ish) security agenda encapsulated by the all-encompassing term "comprehensive security". (7)

Combine those factors with the understanding that security issues today cannot, by and large, be solved by states acting alone--transnational issues at least require international cooperation--and we move almost inevitably to the idea of cooperation in security issues and perhaps to more than that; possibly coordination, collaboration or even a form of integration. That being the case, we need a mechanism to achieve such cooperation--something the region does not yet have in any multilateral sense with some very limited exceptions such as the Five Power Defence Arrangements (FPDA) between Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore and the United Kingdom, or the narrowly focused Six Party talks dealing with Korean Peninsula issues. I also discuss less "hands-on" security relationships, such as the dialogue processes of the ASEAN Regional Forum, below.

In this article, the issues surrounding the development of a systematic mechanism for security cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region and what such a mechanism might encompass are discussed. This is an exercise of the imagination only: the conclusions are not likely to be realized in practice in the short to medium term, but the factors considered will have to be discussed and resolved eventually if the region is to move towards any form of regional security regime.

I do not discuss what I mean by "Asia-Pacific". There are many alternatives. We could discuss the region covered by, for example the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), or by APEC, or from the western littoral of the Indian Ocean to the eastern shores of the Pacific, or other alternatives. Any of these approaches is valid. As Ellen Frost has noted recently "Asia is an especially porous region than can be defined in different ways for different purposes. Its boundaries have always been subject to interpretation and imagination." (8) For the purposes of this article it does not matter. In principle and in practice, the centre of any Asia-Pacific is going to be East Asia. In the short term that will be focused on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), in the longer term it might focus on China or it might focus on a future East Asian community. But it will inevitably have additional members from around the region: the United States, Australia, Russia, Mongolia, Chile and others are all potential members of any Asia-Pacific security grouping.

Current Mechanisms, Structures and Concerns

On the face of it, the region has a plethora of structures and mechanisms, all devoted to protecting interests and values and maximising the outcomes for their members--another formulation of security. But most of the region's 250 or so multilateral cooperative organizations have only a narrowly functional or geographical focus and, although they contribute to wealth, confidence and stability, they do not individually address a wide range of issues or cover the full region. (9) There are, however, a number of multilateral institutions already extant that have a wide agenda and could perhaps form, the basis of a region-wide security architecture. None of these institutions currently has an Asia-Pacific wide security maintenance role, no matter whether security is defined narrowly or widely. They do not, in short, guarantee or even particularly promote security in any systematic sense. (10) Figure 1 shows the institutions and their overlapping memberships.

As we look at these institutions we see that between them well over half the states in the Asia-Pacific region, however defined, are represented within these institutions, including all of East Asia, some of South Asia, most of North and Pacific America, Australasia and a number of other states. We see also that no one organization encompasses all the states (the closest to achieving that is APEC), although the core ASEAN states belong to all the organizations.

Relations within and between these organizations are complicated. There is no general agreement as to what the individual organizations should be doing as organizations, or how fast they should be doing it. There are arguments that one institution or another should be doing more (or sometimes less) and there are endless discussions about ends as well as about the means to those ends. Even at the core of the Asia-Pacific project--East Asia--we have discussion as to which of the institutions ASEAN, ASEAN Plus Three, or the East Asia Summit should be central, (11) and there is continuing debate and discussion over the concept of the East Asian Community. At the moment ASEAN is central, in large part because the alternatives, China or Japan, can not take a central role in the region as, for different reasons, too many of the region's states would resist either of those countries as "leader".

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

ASEAN is the premier regional grouping in terms of its longevity and centrality to regional processes. It has a secretariat, although one without significant autonomy, and a well-developed system of institutional processes (subsumed under an ever expanding "meeting culture" (12) and using the concept of the ASEAN Way) and, most importantly, it has kept the peace for and increased the prosperity of its members for 40 years. ASEAN has legitimacy both internally and internationally, but this could be because it does not exert its position. ASEAN is inclusive for states within the area of its geographic focus but does not have any inclination or capability to expand its membership beyond its 10 (soon to be 11 when East Timor becomes ready for membership) Southeast Asian members. ASEAN's focus is extremely wide, with almost all areas of regional activity within its purview, but is explicitly not a security institution...