Rudd Pacific Plan Lost at Sea?

June 02, 2010

By Anthony Fensom

Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s ‘East Asian Community’ proposal, which reportedly places Japan, China, South Korea and ASEAN at the forefront, also has potential to conflict with Rudd’s broader APc grouping.

Meanwhile, ties with Asia’s other new emerging power, India, have suffered due to the Rudd government’s reneging on its predecessor’s pledge to allow the export of uranium to the nuclear-armed nation.

Building Blocks

What then is the future of Rudd’s APc? Will it become ‘another acronym in search of a verb’ or a practical body that binds the disparate region with enormous economic, political and cultural disparities together?

Hope for Rudd’s plan has come from steadfast ally the United States, with US Ambassador Jeffrey Bleich quoted as saying that the APc would figure prominently in talks between the two leaders.

‘The US has applauded the leadership of the Prime Minister in saying we should reassess and re-evaluate the Asia-Pacific architecture—see if we can make it stronger and more coherent so we have all the major players on all the critical issues—both economic and security-related at the table. Right now we have a number of strong institutions but that doesn’t mean we can’t make them stronger or more efficient,’ he was quoted as saying to The Australian in a February 4, 2010 article.

On the down side, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono reportedly told Rudd during his March visit that the APc was ‘an interesting idea to explore,’ but that Indonesia’s policy priority was in strengthening ASEAN and not supporting a new forum.

‘The challenge is to make the existing institutions work properly and to build the key bilateral relationships which aren’t only important in themselves, but are very important in making sure we are able to operate effectively in regional institutions,’ Downer concurred. ‘You have to be careful in pushing for new institutions—if you start pushing a new institution then by definition you are detracting from the importance of the existing ones.’

Prof. Jeff Kingston, Director of Asian Studies at Temple University Japan, says a ‘pragmatic, ad-hoc results-oriented approach’ was necessary for any new regional body. He cites the recent multilateral currency swap, the Chiang Mai Initiative, as the type of ‘building block’ required to create the foundations for regional architecture.

‘You have to build from the bottom up—you can’t impose on top a new institution and say, “OK now, let’s figure out how to make it work,”’ he says.

‘Everybody can talk themselves blue in the face about what we need and who should be in and who should be out, but unless the organisation can make concrete progress on specific issues, then it doesn’t have a raison d’être. And it seems clear that the current hodgepodge of regional organisations have left lots of opportunities for another body to prove its value.’