The Eurasian space : far more than two continents

222 Pages·2004·3.049 MB·English

by  Wim Stokhof

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IIAS/ISEAS Series on Asia
Series Editors: Wim Stokhof and Paul van der Velde
The IIAS/ISEAS Series on Asia takes a multidisciplinary approach to
issues of inter-regional and multilateral importance for Asia in a global
context. The series aims to stimulate dialogue amongst scholars and civil
society groups at the local, regional and international levels.
Titles in This Series
Srilata Ravi, Mario Rutten and Beng-Lan Goh, eds., Asia in Europe, Europe
in Asia (2004). Volume 1.
Wim Stokhof, Paul van der Velde and Yeo Lay Hwee, eds., The Eurasian
Space: Far More Than Two Continents (2004). Volume 2.
The International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) is a postdoctoral
research centre based in Leiden and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Its
main objective is to encourage the study of Asia and to promote national
and international co-operation in this field. The geographical scope of the
Institute covers South Asia, Southeast Asia, East Asia, and Central Asia.
The Institute focuses on the humanities and the social sciences and, where
relevant, on their interaction with other sciences.
The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) was established as an
autonomous organization in 1968. It is a regional centre dedicated to the
study of socio-political, security and economic trends and developments
in Southeast Asia and its wider geostrategic and economic environment.
The Institute’s research programmes are the Regional Economic Studies
(RES, including ASEAN and APEC), Regional Strategic and Political Studies
(RSPS), and Regional Social and Cultural Studies (RSCS).
ISEAS Publications, an established academic press, has issued more
than 1,000 books and journals. It is the largest scholarly publisher of
research about Southeast Asia from within the region. ISEAS Publications
works with many other academic and trade publishers and distributors to
disseminate important research and analyses from and about Southeast
Asia to the rest of the world.
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First published in Singapore in 2004 by
ISEAS Publications
Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
30 Heng Mui Keng Terrace
Pasir Panjang
Singapore 119614
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg
First published in Europe in 2004 by
International Institute for Asian Studies
P.O. Box 9515
2300 RA Leiden
The Netherlands
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: http://iias.leidenuniv.nl
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the Institute
of Southeast Asian Studies.
© 2004 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore
The responsibility for facts and opinions in this publication rests exclusively with the
authors and their interpretations do not necessarily reflect the views or the policy of the
publishers or their supporters.
ISEAS Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
The Eurasian Space : Far More Than Two Continents / edited by Wim Stokhof,
Paul van der Velde and Yeo Lay Hwee.
1. Regionalism—Asia.
2. Regionalism—Europe.
3. Asia-Europe Meeting.
4. Asia—Foreign relations—Europe.
5. Europe—Foreign relations—Asia.
6. Asia—Foreign economic relations—Europe.
7. Europe—Foreign economic relations—Asia.
I. Stokhof, W. A. L.
II. Velde, Paul van der.
III. Yeo, Lay Hwee.
DS33.4 E8E91 2004
ISBN 981-230-255-7 (soft cover)
ISBN 981-230-263-8 (hard cover)
Typeset by Superskill Graphics Pte Ltd
Printed in Singapore by Oxford Graphic Printers Pte Ltd
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Contents
1 Introduction — The Eurasian Space:
Far More Than Two Continents 1
Wim Stokhof, Paul van der Velde and Yeo Lay Hwee
2 ASEM: Value-Added to International Relations
and to the Asia-Europe Relationship 9
Michael Reiterer
3 Collective Identity-Building through Trans-regionalism:
ASEM and East Asian Regional Identity 23
Julie Gilson and Yeo Lay Hwee
4 Inter-regionalism and Regional Actors:
The EU-ASEAN Example 39
Mathew Doidge
5 ASEM’s Extra-regionalism: Converging Europe’s and
East Asia’s External Projections toward Other Regions 58
César de Prado Yepes
6 ASEM — A Catalyst for Dialogue and Co-operation:
The Case of FEALAC 75
David M. Milliot
7 ASEM’s Security Agenda Revisited 93
Heiner Hänggi
8 The Euro and East Asian Monetary Co-operation 119
Xu Mingqi
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vi Contents
9 China and ASEM: Strengthening Multilateralism
through Inter-regionalism 138
Sebastian Bersick
10 Japan and ASEM 155
Kazuhiko Togo
11 Korea and ASEM 172
David Camroux and Park Sunghee
Abbreviations 195
References 199
Contributors 215
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Introduction to the Eurasian Space 1
1
Introduction — The Eurasian Space:
Far More Than Two Continents
Wim Stokhof, Paul van der Velde
and Yeo Lay Hwee
The Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) officially established in 1996 is an inter-
regional, some say trans-regional, forum that consists of the seven members
of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), China, Japan and
South Korea and the fifteen member states of the European Union (EU)
and the European Commission (EC). The three pillars of the ASEM process,
which has so far been loosely organized, include political, economic and
socio-cultural dialogue. It is a soft-institutionalized process of consultation
and co-operation between states from different regions of the world acting
in their individual capacity. ASEM’s operating mode is based on informality,
mutual respect and mutual benefit. Its scope of discussion and activity is
multi-dimensional and encompasses politics, economics, societal, as well
as cultural and intellectual exchange. In general the process is considered
by all parties involved as a forum for enhancing the relations between
Asia and Europe at all levels deemed necessary to achieve a more balanced
multilateral world order. In the post-9/11 world and with the war and
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2 Wim Stokhof, Paul van der Velde and Yeo Lay Hwee
ongoing instability in Iraq there is ever more reason for Asia and Europe
to deepen their co-operation to meet the common challenges of international
terrorism, and maintaining a just and stable world order.
This book, The Eurasian Space: Far More than Two Continents, is a sequel
to the two books Stokhof and Van der Velde edited respectively five and
three years ago: ASEM The Asia-Europe Meeting A Window of Opportunity
(London 1999) and Asian-European Perspectives: Developing the ASEM Process
(London 2001). In ASEM The Asia-Europe Meeting A Window of Opportunity
we took a look at the politicians’ and bureaucrats’ view of ASEM, the
possibilities to improve mutual contact between Asia and Europe while
simultaneously trying to delineate the challenges and problem areas and
hence map out the future of ASEM. In Asian-European Perspectives:
Developing the ASEM Process answers to questions of a more practical
nature or views on the process were given: How can the ASEM potential
be realized? How can we create a usable ASEM vocabulary and how can
we create a Eurasian research culture?
This present volume have been edited together with Yeo Lay Hwee,
Executive Director and Senior Research Fellow of the Singapore Institute
of International Affairs, and co-published with the Institute of Southeast
Asian Studies in Singapore. This is a conscious move to increase academic
co-operation between Asia and Europe.
The contributors of this book consist of academics who can rightly be
called specialists in the budding field of ASEM studies. They share a deep
interest in how the relationship between Asia and Europe can be further
enhanced. Their articles are written with the objective of examining the
level of engagement between Asia and Europe, and highlighting how the
ASEM process has been useful directly or indirectly not only in enhancing
the ties between the various Asian and European countries, but also in
contributing to the general development of new approaches to international
co-operation. We have brought their contributions under four main
headings: ASEMness and East Asianness; Inter-regionalism, trans-
regionalism and extra-regionalism; Security and monetary co-operation;
and East Asia and ASEM.
ASEMness and East Asianness
Against the backdrop of the issue of the enlargement of ASEM, Michael
Reiterer in his contribution, “ASEM: Value-Added to International
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Introduction to the Eurasian Space 3
Relations and to the Asia-Europe Relationship”, addresses a key question:
what is ASEM all about and what function can it play in the area of
international politics and the wider Asia-Europe relationship? He
reiterates and highlights some of the discussion and debates on how
ASEM has conceptually contributed to multi-level governance in
international politics through encouraging inter-regional and intra-
regional co-operation and regional identity building and by enhancing
multilateralism. In more concrete terms ASEM made a contribution to
world governance in the fields of furthering cross-cultural understanding
and mutual respect; overcoming narrow nationalism; regime building
in specific issue areas; encouraging multi-dimensional dialogue and
co-operation; the EU acting as a balancing and stabilizing power in
East Asia and by enhancing the visibility and the role of the EU. More
generally, ASEM can be regarded as a valuable experiment of quasi-
institutionalization, which brings together different cultural approaches
to international co-operation, that is, the legalistic formal European
approach and the pragmatic informal Asian approach.
One of the issues in relation to the conceptual framework of the Asia-
Europe relationship, is the effects of inter-regional interactions on regional
identity building or more concisely, fostering regionalism through inter-
regionalism. This is taken up by Julie Gilson and Yeo Lay Hwee in their
chapter, “Collective Identity-Building through Trans-regionalsim: ASEM
and the East Asian Regional Identity”. In it a constructivist perspective is
taken, focusing on the role of ideas and interests in the creation of regional
identity and on critical historical junctures from which new structural or
institutional arrangements, norms and identities emerge and on interactions
between existing cultures and institutions. The latter are defined as
regularized channels of communication among state representatives acting
in accordance with obligations set out in statements or declarations such
as ASEM. While they do not overtly say that ASEM has been the impetus
behind an East Asian regional identity, they conceive ASEM along the
lines as lying within a process of increasing regional identification for the
purpose of external affairs, which can ultimately lead to the development
of a dominant discourse of East Asianness. Be that as it may, Gilson and
Yeo do not hesitate to speak about an Asian identity in the context of
ASEM that has become established by participation within a forum where
a clear “other”, that is, the European Union, exists. At the basis of this
emerging Asian identity is the intensification of co-operation among Asian
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4 Wim Stokhof, Paul van der Velde and Yeo Lay Hwee
countries in which ASEM has functioned as a stepping-stone for other
regional initiatives such as the ASEAN+3 (South Korea, Japan and China)
process (1997), which in turn reinforced ASEM.
Inter-regionalism, Trans-regionalism
and Extra-regionalism
The EU-ASEAN relationship is one of the oldest group-to-group dialogues
and has been in existence since 1972. Mathew Doidge’s contribution “Inter-
regionalism and Regional Actors: The EU-ASEAN Example” focuses on
the function such a dialogue may perform. He applies the concept of
actorness, the capacity to act in the international system, to explain
performance and non-performance of this relationship. In addition to
identity, actorness has three main components: action triggers (goals,
interests, principles); policy structures and processes which involves the
capacity to take decisions in relation to action triggers; and performance
structures which includes all those structures and resources necessary for
the actual performance of a given task once a decision has been taken.
Doidge concludes that despite its long existence almost all advanced
functions of inter-regionalism such as alliance-style balancing, rationalizing
and agenda setting are hardly performed in the EU-ASEAN context. By
applying the concept of actorness to ASEM, it would create the possibility
of assessing the qualitative levels of actorness, which can be used in
targetting efforts towards areas where success is most likely, instead of
wasting them in those areas where their actorness is insufficient.
In his article, “ASEM’s Extra-Regionalism: Converging Europe’s and
East Asia’s External Projections towards Other Regions”, Cesar de Prado
Yepes first focuses on the commonalities of the regional processes of the
EU and East Asia which are reflected in the ASEM. At the heart of this
process lays the conviction of all members that multilateralism fed by
regional and inter-regional processes should be the facilitator of
international relations. De Prado Yepes continues with an overview of the
many regionalisms outside Asia and Europe such as the North American
Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR),
the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation (SAARC), the
African Union (AU) and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
In a matrix, de Prado Yepes demonstrates that ASEM can potentially
create extra-regional synergies with other world regions through the
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