How Should the Atlantic Community View the Asian Community?

Before the recent Asia issue of Internationale Politik, the emerging Asian community did not receive much attention in the Atlantic Community. Inversely, European integration as inspired by American functionalism has attracted intense Asian interest for decades. The imbalance of attention is not in the Atlantic community’s own best interest. Here are six proposals to reduce the Atlantic deficit.

The first concerns political theory. The postwar international order was inspired by American idealism: Atlantic Community, United Nations, Bretton Woods system, Europe’s integration. Asia’s integration should therefore appear familiar and welcome, if not to political realists, at least to idealists. Instead, today’s contending Hobbesians and Lockeans agree on one thing: discounting Asian integration. Realists consider functional integration unrealistic anywhere, be it in Europe or Asia. European idealists perceive Asia as divided by power politics, cultural diversity or nationalism, and therefore incapable of applying the European pattern. Both schools should prepare themselves for refutation by Asian evidence.

Second, we need to revisit functionalist integration theory. If its (American) founding fathers could see the Asian evidence today, they would classify it as an advanced stage in the promotion of peace and prosperity between former enemy nation states through mutually advantageous exchange of goods, capital, services, infrastructures and information. Like Europe’s nation states, most ASEAN and ASEAN+3 states are former enemy states. The Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia, on the brink of war over Borneo, thought better of it and, prodded by Singapore and Thailand, instead became cofounders of ASEAN in 1967. Today, China and Vietnam are linking their portions of the “Asian highway” at Lao Cai, theater of their bloody war for influence in South East Asia in 1979. However, the Asian case of functional integration exhibits a sequence of trade integration and institution-building strikingly different from the European case. Asia’s integration began with a classic functionalist pattern: enterprise-driven flows of foreign direct investment and trade despite tariff barriers. By 1997 already, intraregional trade accounted for 51 percent, close to Europe’s 62 percent. Asia’s economic institution building began only in 1997 in reaction to the Asian financial crisis. By contrast, Jean Monnet’s Europe needed first neo-functionalist strategy, i.e. the building of supranational institutions, before two-thirds of Europe’s trade finally flowed into the bed prepared by the customs union, the single market, and the currency union. This difference is certainly not a sign of dysfunctional weakness in Asia’s pattern of integration.

Third, we must realize what the Asian community may mean for the world economy and the international system. With Japan, it includes the second largest mature economy after the US, with China and India, the biggest emerging economies. American Palmerstonians have globalized the model of Europe’s 19th century balance-of-power pentarchy: US, Russia, China, India and Japan. Europe has disappeared in the process. Asia emerged with the majority of the players. American idealists may focus on the peaceful, autonomous spread of democracy in Asia and the free trade opportunities in ASEAN’s project to create an Asian trade zone of 3 bn people with an annual production of $ 9.000 bn. In the US subprime crisis, investors considered Asia’s emerging markets for the first time as “safe haven”, one sign this crisis may be a turning point for the world. Eminent economists discuss an Asian monetary regime. America continues to wield the greatest power and wealth for the foreseeable future, but it can no longer manage the world order alone, not even with Europe’s undivided support.

Fourth, ideological rearmament such as Robert Kagan’s vision of a struggle of Western liberalism against Chinese and Russian autocracies or Edouard Balladur‘s plea for a “union occidentale” circling the wagons against Asia’s rise is certain to feed the media’s hunger for big words. The convergence of neo-conservative and Gaullist paranoia is striking. But like all paranoia, it is full of risks and empty of solutions. The Atlantic Community should heed the lessons of the Iraq war and return to a more rational path.

Fifth, the Atlantic and Asian communities’ interests overlap functionally. For any of the most pressing multilateral issues, from climate change to non-proliferation, Asia’s contribution is indispensable. Foreign Minister Steinmeier’s call for partnership should be heard.

Sixth, the Asian case contains useful lessons. Asia’s functional integration avoids the contention between idealism and realism. It is the result of political and entrepreneurial decisions with strategic pragmatism. Europeans dismissing pragmatism as opportunism err. According to Kant, the necessity to decide exceeds the possibility to know. This makes strategic pragmatism ethically superior to dogmatism. As a philosophy, pragmatism was developed in America by Charles Peirce, William James and John Dewey. Today’s Asia stands out by strategic practice of that philosophy: Setting ambitious goals, but without ideological bombast, working with long-term horizons, but always ready for trial and error. Inspired by America’s best philosophy, Europe should learn from Asia.