1
the Asia-Pacific Region
Chyungly LeeAssociate Research Fellow, Institute of International Relations, National Chengchi University
Abstract
In the past two decades, countries in the Asia-Pacific region experienced a new phase of dynamics: multilateralism. Two compatible tracks of regional processes—Asia-Pacific and East Asian—have shared a common modality, i.e. the ASEAN-way diplomacy. This paper starts with a summary of a modus operandi of Asia Pacific/East Asian multilateralism. The main theoretical puzzle is “why is it the ASEAN-way diplomacy, not a hegemonic way?” Borrowing the concept of equilibrium from economic philosophy, I suggest that the ASEAN-way diplomacy is not only a necessary condition to start regional multilateralism but also a sufficient element to create a Nash equilibrium that satisfies strategic rationales of regional powers at the nascent stage of Asia Pacific multilateralism.
Key words: regional multilateralism, the ASEAN-way diplomacy,
ASEAN Charter, Nash equilibrium, Asia-Pacific
* The earlier version of this paper was delivered at the 2010 CAPAS-VASS International Conference on “ASEAN External Relations”, Center for Asia-Pacific Area Studies (CAPAS), RCHSS, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, December 3, 2010.
I. Introduction
In the past two decades, countries in the Asia-Pacific region experienced a new phase of dynamics: multilateralism. Apparently, multilateralism is not simply a question of numbers, but a long-term relationship involving three or more states coming together to tackle a specific issue or a set of issues on the basis of “specific generalized principles of conduct” (Ruggie 1992: 565–566). From the viewpoint of neoliberal institutionalism, multilateralism is seen as the practice of coordinating national policies in groups of three or more states, through ad hoc arrangements or by means of institutions “with persistent sets of rules”(Keohane 1990a: 731–732). In the Asia-Pacific regional context, ad hoc multilateralism is often distinguished from institutional multilateralism (Capie and Evans 2007: 1–3, 159–160). In this paper, more specifically, multilateralism refers to regional intergovernmental arrangements with institutional designs. Ad hoc multilateral arrangements responding to specific issues and concerns without developing into commonly accepted rules or principles of state conducts (or policies) would not be included in this study.
In terms of membership and participation, there are two models of intergovernmental mechanisms in the region—the Pan Asia-Pacific model and the ASEAN-extended East Asian integration process.
The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, established in 1989, is the first post-Cold War intergovernmental cooperation mechanism in the region. It started with a mandate of open-regionalism, which allows non-member economies to enjoy the same concessions made among member economies for regional trade and investment liberalization and facilitation. In 1993, the United States initiated and hosted the first APEC informal Leaders’ Summit in Seattle. Since then, the strategic significance of APEC has arose (Feinberg 2003; Plummer 1998). Until now, APEC remains an important venue for exchanging views on regional issues among
member leaders, and thus has become a cornerstone of a more comprehensive regional architecture in the future. In terms of security multilateralism, ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), an initiative of the ASEAN Post-Ministerial Meeting in 1994, was established mainly for the purpose of facilitating dialogues between ASEAN and non-ASEAN member states on their common security concerns. Despite criticism and limitations on the effectiveness, ARF remains the only multilateral security mechanism in Asia Pacific (Kawasaki 2006). There is no pre-condition regarding the regional boundary of ARF membership; accordingly, when a state’s security perception involves Asia-Pacific regional concerns, it would be entitled to become a member. Nowadays, the membership and participation of ARF cover geographical areas of East Asia, South Asia, America and Europe.
Another track of regional multilateralism is ASEAN-extended post-crisis East Asia regionalism. ASEAN Plus Three (APT), consisting of ASEAN member states, Japan, China, and South Korea, was a state-led collective response to the regional economic distress triggered by the 1997–1998 Asian financial crises (Beeson 2003; Hund 2003). In 2002, APT manifested a vision of East Asia Community and officially began socio-economic and politico-security processes of region-building. Later on, the East Asia Summit (EAS) was launched in 2005. Membership of the EAS is open to the ASEAN’s dialogue partners who hold substantive ties with ASEAN and are legally committed to the ASEAN Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC). Participation of non-East Asian states in EAS to a great extent suggests that EAS, as opposed to the traditional thinking of regionalism, is triggered not merely by geographical or economic factors, but also strategic and geo-political concerns. In 2011, the United States and Russia, joining Australia, New Zealand, and India, became the newest non-ASEAN member states in EAS.
As multi-track regional processes continue to evolve, states are more willing to develop collective responses to changing environments than before. It is noteworthy that, despite their overlapping memberships and agendas, these processes are only compatible but not leading to regional unity. Moreover, sets of rules and principles commonly adopted across various tracks of regional processes are in line with the so-called ASEAN-way diplomacy, highlighting informality of consultation and consensus decision-making. Theoretically, the phenomenon that regional powers (such the United States, China, and Japan) yields to a formula suggested by a group of relatively small and middle-sized countries (ASEAN) directly challenges the argument of power-based institutionalism, which emphasizes the need for hegemony to start and stabilize multilateral institutions.
Contrasting to neorealist perspectives, many students take a constructivist approach to understand the dynamics of norm-shaping in Asia-Pacific and East Asian multilateralism, and suggest that ASEAN is in the driver seat of regional institutional building. However, two theoretical fallouts limit the utility of constructivism in explaining the proliferation and compatibility of multilateralism in the region. First, until now, debates on how to define the Asia Pacific as a region are still unsettled. The lack of regional identity thus weakens social constructive arguments based on distinctions of “self” from “others”. Second, the lack of direct evidence to prove causalities between ideational changes of national elites and shifts of state behaviors in the process of regional institutional building is indeed a methodological deficiency of constructivism in explaining dynamics of Asia Pacific and East Asia regional processes.
In this paper, I borrow the concept of “equilibrium” from economic philosophy and game theory, and suggest that the ASEAN-way diplomacy is not only a necessary condition to start
regional multilateralism but also a sufficient element to create a “Nash equilibrium” at the nascent stage of establishing Asia Pacific multilateral regional order. Moreover, the “ASEAN centrality” in building regional architecture, as manifested in the ASEAN Charter, is not likely to be a power-based assertion. Rather, it is the “way”, not the organization itself, which prompts ASEAN to be in the center of regional architecture.
II. Features of Regional Institutional Building
In many recent discussions among national leaders and strategic elites, searching for a model of regional architecture has been on top of the agenda. The original meaning of “architecture” refers to the art of planning, designing, and constructing buildings. It is a specific style in which the building is designed and constructed, and also a solid structure or framework on which a system relies. In a regional context, the word has been used to conceptualize and theorize the making of a region (Wanandi 2008). “Regional architecture” thus refers to an overarching regional arrangement with specific political, economic, and strategic goals and the components within which the regional states can interact with each other (Yang and Lee 2010). Nevertheless, a solid architecture cannot be built around without a close reference to the modus operandi of existing venues. In this section, common features of compatible tracks in the Asia-Pacific regional processes are summarized.
1. The Forum Model
The end of the East-West ideological confrontation after the collapse of the Soviet Union facilitated inter-governmental cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region. The pace, however, was predictably slow due to the lack of mutual trust and cooperative experience among regional states. Although the launch of APEC was to a great extent in
response to the regulatory economic integration in both America and Europe, APEC did not follow either the EU’s supranational integration formula or America’s free trade area model applied in NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement). The Asia-Pacific region was too diverse and heterogeneous for countries within to commit to a rule-based legal body. Rather, the agreed formula was to exchange concerns and coordinate policies in a “forum model” so that the anxiety of being obliged to follow mandates of regional organization could be eased.
Nevertheless, a forum model to start a regional organization has puzzled many neo-realist analysts, who prioritize power structure over other concerns in international institution building. Indeed, the membership structure of APEC was rather asymmetrical in 1989. The United States allying with Australia hoped to make APEC into a rule-based institution and form a trading bloc, while Japan and members from ASEAN, which shared concerns of sovereignty equality and non-interference principles, were apparently not ready to commit themselves to any formal institutional design. The gravity of momentum seemed to be on the structurally weaker side. Most member economies were more receptive to ideas of an informal consultation than to a legalist approach to start the regional process of policy coordination and exchanges. The United States, even being the only superpower in the post-Cold War period, accommodated itself to the ASEAN way at last.
ARF, APT and EAS were initiated later on the basis of different rationales and institutional goals but all shared the same core institution: ASEAN. The informality and consultation patterns in the ASEAN-way diplomacy were thus naturally extended into ARF, APT and EAS. Despite the criticism of being ineffective, this forum model has been applied to the region’s multilateral diplomacy for almost two decades. The success of APEC and the developments of other
ASEAN-extended regional multilateralism have shown that such a “forum” model was not only a necessary condition to connect distrustful states together in the first place, but also a sufficient condition to make the mechanisms sustain and grow.
2. The Principle of Voluntariness
Obviously, a forum model of multilateral cooperation does not aim at negotiating solutions for specific problems. A more pragmatic expectation is for members to use the forum for building consensus or shaping visions of regional development. Under a consensus-based umbrella, individual member states retain their policy flexibility to develop their individual pace of accomplishing the common goals. In other words, in terms of implementation, there is no single formula that fits all. On the basis of state interests and capacities, some members might voluntarily do more, while others carry out their policies cautiously. The flexibility of implementation allows members to be free from pressure of being discriminated against or sanctioned by other members, even when the designated goals are not reached. Such unilateral voluntariness has been critical in fostering the willingness of states to continue their participation in regional processes when there are conflicting interests between the region’s consensus and countries’ individual plans.
In APEC, the two-tier trade liberalization schedule allows developed and developing member economies, with individual action plans, to reach Bogor goals in 2010 and 2020 respectively. This arrangement has best reflected the concept of unilateral voluntariness. The extent of flexibility in such a unilateral voluntary model has become a key element of sustaining cooperation, particularly in issues concerning regional economic disparities. With such flexibility, member states are able to adopt policies according to subjective or objective conditions as a response to the regional consensus. When
the disparity is gradually narrowed, collective responses requiring the same level of state capacity can be more effectively implemented. If an explicit binding contract is introduced, less developing member states may not be able to fulfill their commitments and end up withdrawing from the multilateral cooperation mechanisms.
In the past 20 years of practices, despite no explicit sanction or punishment for noncompliance, the “peer pressure” held members’ commitments and formulated an “implicit contract” of unilateral voluntariness. Such a behavioral pattern has laid the foundation of multilateral order in the Asia-Pacific region. This pattern is especially evident in economic cooperation, but also can be seen in other regional mechanisms, especially when the same level of state capacity is required to jointly respond to transnational issues. In ARF, for instance, participation in the joint exercises of disaster relief management and other non-traditional security issues are mainly on a voluntary basis, but member states sharing risks and concerns all joined in the drills. Gradually, the tacit understanding for implicit contracts de facto institutionalizes the principle of unilateral voluntariness in the early stage of region-building process.
3. An Evolutionary Approach
The third key feature of regional institutional building is the open-end evolutionary approach which allows flexibility and room for members’ collective adaptation toward common goals. By not contracting into any fixed rules and regulations at the outset, all the members have the opportunity to shape the rules of the game through participation. In the course of regional integration, states can flexibly adjust the agenda, framework, and the pace of cooperation. While specific goals of cooperation are pre-set, this flexibility permits routes and timetables to be adjusted to the new dynamics of international environments. At the beginning of APEC’s institution building, the
mechanism was defined as “informal intergovernmental ‘processes’” aiming at promoting trade and investment liberalization and facilitation. This orientation implies not only the aforementioned non-binding forum model, but also reserves flexibility for the future organizational developments. For instances, in response to emerging regional human security concerns, APEC members agreed to add several initiatives, such as Health Task Force in 2003 (upgraded into a working group in 2007) and Task Force for Emergency Preparedness in 2005 (upgraded into a working group in 2010), into the organizational structure.
In ARF, the concept paper issued in 1994 also explicitly stated that “a gradual evolutionary approach” is required to tackle challenges. This evolution would take place in three stages: Stage I: Promotion of Confidence-Building Measures; Stage II: Development of Preventive Diplomacy Mechanisms; and Stage III: Development of Conflict-Resolution Mechanisms. By bringing together both the ASEAN member states and twelve dialogue partners into non-confrontational dialogues, it was hoped that the security of the Asia-Pacific would be guaranteed through process-oriented confidence building in ARF (Khoo and Smith 2002: 68). As for the pace of moving from one stage to another, members agreed that the ARF should also progress at a pace comfortable to all participants. In other words, the ARF should not move “too fast for those who want to go slow and not too slow for those who want to go fast” (ASEAN Regional Forum 1995).
III. Variations after the ASEAN Charter
In the short history of Asia Pacific multilateralism, the ASEAN model allows individual states to be unrestrained by overlapping legal commitments in regional institutional building. Such an attribute also explains the compatibility of Asia-Pacific multilateralism and East
Asian integration processes. Since ASEAN member states signed the ASEAN Charter in 2007 (in effect in December 2008), the binding commitments to the organization have been enhanced. Although the core principles of tackling intra-ASEAN affairs remain unchanged, the content of Charter and the ensuing development have suggested several variations of the ASEAN-way diplomacy. To some extent, the Charter not only consolidates ASEAN’s own institution building but might also bring about spillover effects to other regional mechanisms which traditionally adopt principles of ASEAN-way diplomacy in practice.
1. Consolidating ASEAN Unity through Community
Building
Before the establishment of the Charter, many have argued that ASEAN can only be effective if it remains united (Hernandez 1995: 71). The Bali Concord II, adopted in the 2003 ASEAN Leaders’ Summit, manifested the concept of ASEAN community building and set the direction of consolidating ASEAN’s unity. The Charter further provides a legal basis for implementation. The ASEAN Community is framed with three pillars: economic, political-security and socio-cultural. Blueprints of each community were pronounced in 2009 to map out directions and plans of moving toward the goal. With the Charter, the organization is moving towards a legal body and is expected to increase its binding power over member states (ASEAN Secretarial 2007: Article 3). The subscription of member states and their commitment to the Charter thus suggest a developing trend of normative-contractual order in the future.
Notably, a more ambitious goal behind the idea of ASEAN unity is to maintain and indeed gain political influence in a wider region (Tay 2010: 155–156). It is hoped that a united ASEAN will increase its influence and bargaining power in international society. As the
organization has been an engine for many regional initiatives, a “one ASEAN” entity could have more leverage over norm-building and shaping in regional architecture. In APEC, the utility of “one ASEAN” has not been salient because not all the ASEAN member states are member economies of APEC. In ARF, however, the ASEAN Charter caught more attention. In the ASEAN Regional Forum Vision Statement released in 2009, Ministers of ARF members “reaffirm ASEAN’s role as the primary driving force in the ARF process.” Noting the ASEAN Charter, the Ministers are committed to realizing enhanced synergies between the ASEAN Political-Security Community and the ARF.” In many of the following documents, ARF members recognize ASEAN’s central role in the existing regional mechanisms as well as in an evolving regional architecture (ASEAN Regional Forum 2010).
2. An “ASEAN minus X” Formula
Although the Charter is supposed to make ASEAN a more rules-based organization and to increase institutional accountability, it does not specify sanctions for non-compliance. Instead, cases of non-compliance with provisions of agreements would be referred to the ASEAN Summit (ASEAN Secretarial 2007: Chapter VII, Article 20–4). With consensus decision-making rule, it can hardly reach a verdict or impose a sanction against non-compliant conducts of any individual member. Apparently, persuasion and bargaining continue to be measures of encouraging members’ voluntary commitment to obligations. However, on specific issues, the Charter states that when consensus cannot be reached, the ASEAN Summit may decide how a specific decision can be made. It thus increases the likelihood of moving ASEAN toward a credible enforcement mechanism.
stipulates an “ASEAN minus X” formula, which suggests pre-agreed issue-specific exclusion of the obligations of compliance. As opposed to the unilateral voluntariness in the implicit contract model discussed in the previous section, the new formula explicitly grants flexibility to individual member states to set their own paths of realizing organizational goals and allows a waiver to consensus-based decisions. At the same time, however, sanctions against non-compliance with specific rules and norms may become possible without full consensus if those rules and norms are not explicitly pre-excluded (Caballero-Anthony 2008: 78).
To pessimists, the “ASEAN minus X” provision could signal a danger that fragmentation of ASEAN might follow (Amador III 2010: 610). Member states might only abide conditionally under the framework of the Charter. Although the “non-interference” principle remains a critical code of conduct in ASEAN, the flexibility of constructive engagements has indeed been used in the past. However, if the “issues” allowing constructive engagements have to be specified in advance, there is a risk of losing flexibility and institutionally excluding critical and hard security issues from agendas of collective response. If the trend of “ASEAN minus X” is applied to the security realm, this means that some of the member states can escape from the region’s norm binding on specific issues as long as they win the agreement of the other member states. When the process of specifying issues is not power-free, the provision would likely bring realism back to liberal and cooperation security agenda.
ARF, the only security cooperation mechanism in the region, has developed a more practical security agenda recently in response to the increasing risk and uncertainties of non-traditional security concerns, including terrorism, maritime security, and disaster relief. The recent developments suggested that the ARF’s cautious embrace of practical cooperation was not the outcome of ASEAN’s exercise of
diplomatic centrality, but the result of initiatives jointly pursued by a small group of ASEAN and non-ASEAN member states (Haacke 2009). It seems that the “ASEAN minus X” provision in the Charter provides ASEAN member states a legal basis for not acting unanimously in other international organizations, even in those characterized by ASEAN-centered institutional building.
3. ASEAN Centrality
As opposed to the evolutionary approach in the past, the ASEAN Charter sets timetables of realizing the ASEAN Community and moves the operation of the organization toward a roadmap approach. In other words, instead of an open-end process preferred at the nascent stage of the institutional building, the organization now has clear goals, routes, and timetables to achieve for the future. To a great extent, member states have certain fixed expectations and no longer consider participation in regional cooperation to be only a learning process in which they revise their expectations from time to time.
Moreover, in Article 2.2 of the Charter, ASEAN calls for members to promote the centrality of the organization in its external political, economic, social, and cultural relations. Before the Charter, some indeed have claimed that ASEAN is the core of regionalism in East Asia and the Asia Pacific (Severino 2007), and the hub of parallel initiatives to involve neighboring countries in multilateral cooperative arrangements (Baviera 2008). ASEAN centrality in regional security issues can be seen in the agenda setting and institutional processes for meetings through ASEAN Secretariat (Rolf 2008). Further, in regard to non-traditional security cooperation, ASEAN’s conception can be used as a model for the region to follow (Caballero-Anthony 2005).
Ironically, not all are persuaded by the claim of ASEAN centrality in the Charter. Although only ASEAN member-states can host EAS
or APT summits and chair the ARF meetings, their agenda-setting prerogatives are being challenged, as extra-regional states have no obligation to use ASEAN as an arbiter of their bilateral and multilateral relations (Amador III 2010: 607). To some, what ASEAN promotes is the capacity building of regional cooperation rather than the substantive aspects of non-traditional security cooperation (Amador III 2010: 609). Weak institutions, poor infrastructure, and low financial resources at both the national and regional levels will challenge the goal of ASEAN centrality in Asia Pacific or East Asia regionalism.
Although the ASEAN Charter did not win the full confidence of ASEAN watchers, in practice, international society seems to be happy to embrace ASEAN in a more serious way than before. Examples such as the ASEAN-UN cooperation in disaster management of Myanmar’s Nargis, ASEAN’s participation in G20 after the global financial tsunami, and dialogue partners’ appointing senior ambassador to the ASEAN headquarter in Jakarta have demonstrated to a great extent that ASEAN, with a legal personality, has increased its visibility and influence in international affairs.
IV. Implications for Regional Order
Regional order refers to the existence of a stable structure that characterizes inter-governmental relationships in the region on the basis of common assumption and expectation of state behaviors. In other words, regional order might reflect security obtained from states’ adherence to a formal or informal set of rules and practices (Leifer 1987; Lim 2008: 408–409). In the Asia-Pacific region, the distrust and tensions in unresolved historical, territorial, and political disputes among regional security actors continue to be major concerns impeding the building of a rule-based multilateral order. Consequently, the principles of the so-called ASEAN-way diplomacy,
highlighting informal consultation, consensus decision-making, non-binding voluntariness, and evolutionary institutional building, were more applicable at the nascent stage of building regional multilateralism.
The increase of regional cooperation and multilateral dialogues so far has not either facilitated political integration as argued in neo-functionalism, or enhanced a regional identity as suggested in social constructivism. Through the lens of realist perspectives, the hegemonic stability theory is also challenged by the coexistence of leadership competitions in regional institutional building and the continuing growth of multilateral mechanisms. Theoretically, all multilateral arrangements presume the possibility of cooperation among states (Caporaso 1993). By establishing institutional links among not-likeminded countries or potential adversaries, it is hoped that member states will be abided by pre-agreed principles of conducts and reduce their antagonizing against each other. Therefore, multilateralism reflects community-based security order.
Although exercise of power is relatively limited in a community-based regional order, participation of regional powers in Asia-Pacific multilateralism to a certain extent signifies that the logic of ASEAN-way diplomacy has been compatible in their strategic calculations. When no one is willing to take the risk of upsetting the current modus operandi, the status quo can be seen as a “Nash equilibrium”, a concept originated from a solution of a game, in which players’ strategies are transparent to each other and no one will be better off by changing only his or her own strategy unilaterally (Morrow 1994: 91). In equilibrium, the distribution of power may still matter but not as much as in balance-of-power or hegemonic orders. To some, power is restrained not through counterbalancing but through the operation of cooperative and agreed-upon rules that limit how power and violence can be employed (Ikenberry and
Tsuchiyama 2002: 73–78; Adler and Barnett 1998).
In the future the dynamic equilibrium of Asia-Pacific regional multilateralism would depend on whether the formula of modus operandi continues to sufficiently satisfy strategic interests of regional security actors. In order to argue the establishment of a multilateral regional order, not only do regional actors have to be willing to use multilateral forums as regular channels of security management and governance, but also regional institutions should be accountable in shaping security thinking and changing behaviors of regional security actors (Bull 1977). Students of security multilateralism thus should be encouraged to look beyond the fixed organizational structure into the content and nature of state interactions in the evolution of multilateral mechanisms (Twining 1998: 3).
In the case of Asia-Pacific/East Asian multilateralism, at the nascent stage the Japan-led flying-geese model laid the foundation of Japan’s role in the dynamics of de facto economic-strategic security regionalization. The ensuing development, however, has moved beyond any single national model to the coexistence of several alternatives to a hybrid form of regionalism (Friman, Katzenstein, Leheny and Okawara 2006). In contrast to Japan’s enthusiasm, China and the United States were skeptical about the multilateral approach to the Asia-Pacific security order during the immediate post-Cold War period. For China, it was due to its lack of experience in multilateral cooperation. Although China does not have treaty-based military alliances, it prefers to use bilateralism in conflict management and to address territorial and political disputes with individual neighboring states. For the United States, it is a result of cost-benefit calculation. Being the hub in the hub-and-spoke security arrangements in the region (Goh 2006), the United States has enjoyed superior strategic leverage over regional security and was thus not interested in moving toward a new form of multilateralism.
The lack of support and endeavors from China and the United States did not prevent other weaker or smaller regional states from launching initiatives. ASEAN, a relatively weak regional security actor, has played an important role. Southeast Asian states successfully utilized ASEAN as a platform to engage great powers and create a complex balance of influences (Goh 2007). Some argue that a stable and predictable pattern of multilateral-based diplomacy to manage rivalry and reduce tension is often required in the midst of regional uncertainties, and that ASEAN could provide the basis of regional security management (Acharya 1993: 3–7). Through engagements, attitudes of China and the United States toward multilateral diplomacy were softened in mid-1990s. The format of the “ASEAN-way” diplomacy gradually eased China’s anxiety of regional approach and modified China’s views toward multilateral diplomacy. In recent, China even proactively facilitated its strategic utilization of multilateral institutions in the region by leading many initiatives (Yahuda 2008; Johnston 1999: 295–297). The shift of China’s position and its emerging leadership in East Asia multilateralism in turn called for the US attention to multilateral approaches of making its power legitimacy (Ikenberry and Mastanduno 2003).
In contrast to the argument that the immatureness of Asia Pacific multilateralism coinciding with formal and informal setting is due to the lack of support by the great powers, I argue that the compatibility featured by the ASEAN-way diplomacy in both East Asia and Asia Pacific multilateralism is indeed a Nash equilibrium of strategic rationales of great powers. In other words, no great power can leave the behavioral equilibrium without taking the risk of provoking regional stability or losing its own strategic interests. In this context, ASEAN has played an important role in building multilateral order beyond neo-realist structural factors. The format of ASEAN-way
diplomacy creates a sufficient space for policy maneuverings of regional powers, especially China and the United States, in both tracks of East Asia and Asia Pacific multilateralism, and thus explains the compatibility of the two tracks.
V. Concluding Remarks
This paper starts with a summary of a modus operandi of regional multilateralism in Asia Pacific. The main theoretical puzzle is “why is it the ASEAN-way diplomacy, not a hegemonic way?” With the help from the concept of Nash equilibrium, we understand that no regional power would be willing to change their strategy unilaterally. However, Nash equilibrium does not necessarily mean the best cumulative payoff for all the players involved. Players might all be better off if they jointly shift their strategies, i.e. deviating from Nash equilibrium. In searching for new sets of rules and principles, regional economic and security stakeholders would have to take risks of breaking the ASEAN-way diplomacy into account. The new equilibrium can be reached only when strategic interests of regional powers are re-satisfied.
The ASEAN Charter could be a new force to bring about changes. The Charter has strengthened ASEAN’s political position in the Asia-Pacific region. In spite of some internal doubts, the core of the ASEAN-way diplomacy continues to be asserted under one unity of ASEAN. The legal unity enhances ASEAN’s role in shaping regional order. The Asia-Pacific multilateralism is expected to continue its state-led integrative process, in which new elements of the “ASEAN way” suggested in the ASEAN Charter would be taken into account. Nevertheless, community-based regional order presented in the Charter requires modification of the non-intervention principle and human right mechanisms. These norms and principles to a great extent contradict China’s national interests and its conduct in foreign
policy. In contrast, the community value is more receptive to the United States. If China decides to adopt a different strategy, then there might be a risk of destabilizing the existing equilibrium in regional order.
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