On the rare occasions that Europeans think about Asia’s integration, they seem to suffer from amnesia. Forgetting the impediments, setbacks, and crises that Europe had to overcome in the course of its own integration, they do not see much chance of success for functional integration and community-building in Asia. Rivalries between the great powers are said to be too great, nationalism too sensitive, cultural differences too large, ideological rifts too deep, markets too controlled, monetary cooperation too implausible, and competition for energy sources and raw materials too intense.
What many Europeans forget is that in 1945 few would have held out much hope for something like the Coal and Steel Community, which was established just six years later. And after the founding of the Fifth Republic in 1958, few figured that the French would consent to the United Kingdom entering the European Community (EC) in 1973. After all, had de Gaulle not resolved to bind Germany to France in the European Economic Community in order to counterbalance the Anglo-Saxon powers?
Few recall today that the project of forming a currency union seemed dead after the Werner Plan foundered on French mercantilism in the 1970s.1 Then it would have been unimaginable that a socialist president of France, François Mitterand, —fearing German preponderance in Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall—would become the driving force behind a European currency union. His motive, to wrest the Bundesbank’s monetary policy hegemony from united Germany, has also been forgotten, in Germany the more so since German industry benefited hugely from the introduction of the Euro.
Europe’s loss of memory concerning its own experience of successful integration may also be understandable in view of present anxieties. Once again, with Nicolas Sarkozy, France has a rather mercantilist president, and he expresses dissatisfaction with a European Central Bank which, though led by a Frenchman, “outbundesbanks the Bundesbank” in the view of most anglo-saxon economists. Belgium, a founding member of the European Community as well as host to the “capital” of the European Union, threatens to disintegrate on the basis of language. “New Europe” seems driven by very old instincts of nationalism. “Idealism is mugged by reality”, a British realist writes triumphantly, though just a little worried. No wonder the rest of the world is seen through this prism, too.
But as confirmed by eminent Asian authors in the November 2007 issue of Internationale Politik, the trend is going in the opposite direction in Asia, where functional integration and community-building are understood as a strategy for the future. What had to be initiated in Europe with the political theory of idealism is in Asia the result of political and economic decisions inspired by strategic pragmatism. European idealist with a dogmatic frame of mind wrongly mistake strategic pragmatism as opportunism. As explained in more detail in our first post and in our web site www.schmiegelowpartners.com, pragmatism was developed as a philosophy by Charles Peirce, William James and John Dewey in the late 19th and early 20th century. But in more recent decades, the most impressive patterns of strategic pragmatism can be found in Asia. Since according to Kant, the necessity to decide excedes the capacity to know, strategic pragmatism is ethically superior to dogmatism.
Seeking the “win-win situations” described in Internationale Politik by both ASEAN’s former Secretary General Ong Keng Yong and China’s former Foreign Minister Qian Qichen, such strategic pragmatism has created impressive results over time.
The economic, sociocultural, and security policy ties of East and Southeast Asia described by Asian Development Bank President Haruhiko Kuroda and the President of the Japan Foundation, Kazuo Ogura, are strikingly reminiscent of the functionalist and neofunctionalist strategies of the European Community’s founding fathers, albeit in a different sequence. Whoever thinks Asian monetary cooperation is inconceivable should carefully read Kuroda’s essay. Building on ASEAN, ASEAN+3, and the East Asian Summits (EAS), the method of community-building established by the ASEAN states links the political, economic, and ecological objectives explained by Ong Keng Yong. It does so with an impressively realistic sense of the balance of power among Asia’s great powers. The fact that the heads of government of India, Australia, and New Zealand have been invited to the EAS since 2005 demonstrates a pragmatic usage of the geographical term “East Asia”. The network of asymmetrically overlapping regional organizations is developing as dynamically in Asia as in earlier phases of European integration.
Kazuo Ogura’s analysis of the historical commonalities of Asian cultures, their displacement by Western modernization in the form of colonialism, and their resurgence now casts doubt on the assertion by Western observers that the very lack of a shared culture prevents Asia from becoming a community. Yusuf Wanandi’s idea of an East Asian Community sharing the responsibilities of global governance is a strong indication that the concept of a forward-looking policy that Germany’s foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, expounds once more in the same Asia issue of Internationale Politik as a way to manage the global challenges of the future will find receptive partners in Asia.
Read more at our web site or download the article “The Road to an Asian Community” by Michele Schmiegelow and Henrik Schmiegelow offered on our site or at www.internationalepolitik.de.
International Policy Analysis by Schmiegelow Partners 