What Is to Be Done?

How can one help the "optimist" future to be realized? What needs to be done to safeguard our future against the "realist" nightmares, as depicted in George Orwell's 1984 or Huntington's "clash of civilizations"? The logical answer is to reduce uncertainty and make every country act positively for the future of the world and Asia. Effective measures can be sought on multiple levels - global, regional and national; governmental as well as civic domains; by groups or individuals, and so on.

On the global dimension, there is, first, a need to institutionalize regular consultation at summits on global issues. Secondly, the world also needs to foster the emergence of a transformational leadership, a leadership (1) to facilitate the beginning of the new, and end the old way of conducting politics, (2) to change the way people look at and act for the future global village, (3) to pass the test of democratic leadership and build democratic authority, and (4) to bring out the best in their peoples at this crucial turning point of human history. Thirdly, a new system of world education should be introduced in order to inculcate new values for global cooperation and to teach the skills necessary for global problem-solving to the rising generations of leaders and followers. Raising consciousness among intellectuals and decision-makers on the need for global thinking and problem-solving is also required. Nurturing the spirit of community solidarity and fostering active citizenship to build democracy are additional requirements for the future. Finally, the principle of equal participation of small and medium-sized countries is to be respected in the process. On regional security matters, peace and democratic changes in North-East Asia depend crucially upon our ability to make regional powers act positively. The prospect of regional order in North-East Asia hinges on whether the following key issues are managed properly:

1. The United States should not make a precipitate exit from Asia. For the time being, at least, it is desirable that the US continue its presence and play a constructive role in Asia as a balancer and guarantor against the uncertainties discussed earlier.

2. China must not use its growing prosperity as a means for its military advancement, seeking to occupy the military vacuum left by the disengaging US.

3. Japan should be encouraged to play a positive political role commensurate with its economic power. Japan's security interests need to be placed in the larger and more constructive context of the Asia-Pacific region. For this, Japan's economic, political and security relations with the US are a crucial factor.

4. The two Koreas need outside assistance to reunify peacefully and to remain unified without resorting to nuclear options.

In the area of multilateralism, the Asia-Pacific countries should work together to make the APEC framework work. North-East Asian states can do much more to make the region more stable so that investors would gain confidence in a good business environment. They should also strengthen other regional or subregional networks to foster democracy, economic development, peace and human rights in Asia. The scope of the APEC framework can be further enlarged to create a forum for security cooperation by gradual and incremental steps, so that the mechanisms can serve to peacefully settle disputes among regional states and reduce the danger of an arms race.

The Asia-Pacific region and North-East Asia should strive harder, as a community, to upgrade the level of interdependence and to form a "new identity". Economic policies should be kept open, not closed, among the countries in the region. In addition, the region must be open to imports and investments from all over the world. Exclusive trading blocs and "big brotherism" will hinder the growth of open regionalism, thus causing discriminatory barriers against the rest of the world. A precondition for a new Asian or North-East Asian security community is that all members agree to cooperate to promote region-wide interests. For this, we first need to dissolve our "old identities", which have divided us and antagonized one another, and then construct a new and more positive identity that will bind us together.

On a politico-cultural dimension, Asians need to learn how the West won the world leadership. Nations grew, prospered, and effectively led the peoples towards the joy of democratic life, only after their state agencies had encouraged civic vitality. Components of civic vitality are many; political democracy, a free economic system, social and cultural diversity, and so on. But democracy, of which the basic principle is to respect and enhance political freedom and human rights, is the first and foremost ingredient for the rise of the West. Democracy brings economic growth via market forces under human control. Peace is possible when there are democracy and economic prosperity. Peace, in turn, makes democracy and economic prosperity real.

Finally, throughout Asia nowadays, there is an "emerging civil society"16 and a proliferation of cross-national (and cross-regional) activities being performed by various non-governmental organizations. Paul M. Evans noted in this respect that,

unlike Europe, the first and most active proponents of new institutions and processes in North-East Asia have not been governments but rather members of the private and non-governmental sector. Think tanks and academics, not government officials, were the driving forces behind the growth of regional multilateralism in the late 1980s. Even as the role of governments in these activities expands, the non-governmental role is likely to remain crucial.17

A maturing civil society and growing NGO activities can be put to work to nurture a new "common identity" in Asia that transcends the narrow, constraining, state-and-nation-bounded values and ideas. It is noteworthy that, with its legitimate institutional role and structure, the UN University is ideally placed to perform a leading role in constructing and shaping a new sense of security community in North-East Asia or, better yet, in building a new "Asia Pacific Gemeinschaft".

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Notes

1. This paper was presented at a lecture to the UN University Global Seminar '96 "Shonan Session" on Globalism and Regionalism, which was held in Shonan Village, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan, 2-6 September 1996. It was revised when the author was a visiting fellow at the Institute of South-East Asian Studies in Singapore in September 1996-January 1997. The author would like to thank the Institute and its staff for providing a stimulating intellectual environment for developing and testing ideas. Portions of this work were printed earlier in Korea in Chung-Si Ahn, "The New World Order and North-East Asia: Options for the Future", Institute of Social Sciences, Seoul National University, Social Science and Policy Research 16, no. 3 (December 1994): 45-56.

2. North-East Asia is herein defined to include East Asia (China, Japan, South and North Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan) plus northern Pacific Rim countries (Russia and the United States). To a lesser extent, it also includes Mongolia and Canada.

3. Aaron Friedberg, "Warring States: Theoretical Models of Asia Pacific Security", Harvard International Review (Spring 1996): 12-15, 68. See also, Jonathan D. Pollack, "Pacific Insecurity: Emerging Threats to Stability in East Asia", in the same Review: 8-11.

4. The "liberal-optimist" model can broadly include such schools of thought as "interdependence", "institutionalism", and "democratization". See Takashi Inoguchi, "Conclusion: A Peace-and-Security Taxonomy", Takashi Inoguchi and Grant B. Stillman, eds., North-East Asian Regional Security: The Role of International Institutions (United Nations University Press, 1997), pp. 181-206.

5. Inoguchi subdivides the realist school into two variant modes of analysis. The "balancing realism" puts premium on the peacemaking effects of power balance and tends to be the popular viewpoint among policy makers and strategic thinkers. The "bandwagonning realism", more often subscribed to among the academic realists, argues that "hegemony is conducive to peace". The logic goes that if a single power achieves hegemony, smaller powers will accommodate their bahaviour and act within the rules of the hegemon. Ibid., pp. 184-187.

6. Far Eastern Economic Review, 2 June 1994, p. 21.

7. See, for example, The East Asian Miracle: Economic Growth and Public Policy (Washington, DC: A World Bank Policy Research Report, the World Bank, 1993).

8. Quoted from his article cited above, p. 13.

9. See also Chung-Si Ahn and Changik Chung, "Economic Growth, Democratization and Peace: Perspectives in the Asia-Pacific Region", Korean Association of Southeast Asian Studies, The South-East Asian Review 4 (January 1996): 233-262.

10. Time, 22 November 1993, p. 16.

11. See Ahn and Chung (1996): pp. 246-253, 256.

12. R. J. Rummel, "Libertarianism and International Violence", Journal of Conflict Resolution, 27, no. 1 (1983): 21-71; Rummel, "Libertarian Proposition on Violence Within and Between Nations: A Test Against Published Results", Journal of Conflict Resolution 29, no. 3 (1985): 419-455; and Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).

13. According to one account, there were more than 130 multilateral meetings which were related to Asia Pacific security issues in 1995. Paul M. Evans, "Reinventing East Asia: Multilateral Cooperation and Regional Order", Harvard International Review (Spring 1996): 18.

14. Far Eastern Economic Review, 11 November 1993, p. 42.

15. See Taichiro Mitani, "The Idea of 'Regionalism': The Case of Modern Japan", (Paper presented at the Kyoto Roundtable of the International Political Association, Kyoto, Japan, 25-27 March 1994).

16. Tadashi Yamamoto, ed., Emerging Civil Society in the Asia Pacific Community (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1996, revised).

17. Quoted from his article cited above, p. 19.

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