Toward an East Asian community: a two-speed ASEAN?

Géopolitique | 5 pages | 03-02-2006 | Format : | Note : Non noté |

PRIX : 3.60€ |

Résumé

A short paper on the prospects toward an East Asian community through a two-speed ASEAN, some countries moving ahead in the hopes that others will join later.

Extract:

“It is essential that countries who want to move quicker towards integration, on a voluntary basis and in precisely defined projects, can do so without being held back” . The author of this statement could definitely have been Singapore Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, or even his Thai counterpart Thaksin Shinawatra. Actually, these words are those of President Jacques Chirac during a European summit in 2000 in which the French leader pushed a two-speed Europe with the richest European countries moving ahead as regional integration is concerned. But in fact, as regards East Asian quest for building a regional community, Chirac's words are likely to be quite relevant too, especially as Singapore's and Thailand's view on that is concerned. Taking into account the very diverse levels of economic development and economic structure , as well as the reluctance of most East Asian countries to accept the leadership of anyone of them, giving it the right to impose certain rules on them, Singapore and Thailand are likely to “adopt a strategy of moving ahead on trade liberalization in the hopes that others may be encouraged to join” . “The two-speed approach to European integration, pushed by the Germans and the French, was key in accelerating progress at various stages of the European Union's history” , especially when new members with lower economic levels joined the union. Would it be the same for ASEAN? Is any regional organization, as soon as it includes countries with very different economic development levels, likely to adopt a multiple speed strategy? This paper argues that such a strategy could help to break the deadlock in the East Asian regionalism process since it will obviously lead to a win-win situation among the different East Asian countries while it also avoids the emergence of a dominant and maybe imperialistic actor. Why can we speak about a win-win situation, why is it in both the richest and the poorest countries' interest to agree on such a strategy? These are the questions we would like to answer in this paper by first pointing out the differences which exist among the East Asian countries and then by analyzing the arguments which support this approach [...]

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