Contested Ideas of Regionalism in Asia by He Baogang

Author:He Baogang [Baogang, He]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Diplomacy, Social Science, Political Science, Regional Studies
ISBN: 9781317229636
Google: V0QlDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 32081106
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-09-13T00:00:00+00:00

Numerous cases in Asia have supported the idea that nationalism has been a driving force for Asian regional integration. Take the example of Vietnam’s accession to ASEAN. Vietnam’s entry into ASEAN enhanced its bargaining power with China. As such, Vietnam has been ‘making maximum use of the organization [ASEAN] as a vehicle for the achievement of vital foreign policy goals, while at the same time opposing any attempt toward speeding up ASEAN’s institutional evolution’ (Dosch and Tuan 2004: 212). Another example is the competition between Japan and China and the fact that ASEAN countries were able to use this as an incentive to speed up regional cooperation. Such competition led to the rapid development of a regional free trade proposal, its agreement and its implementation from March 2001 onwards. The convergence of national interests and regional cooperation and integration have also driven Indonesia to support the AFTA and financial regionalism.

Furthermore, Malaysia as a ‘middle power’ has had to build up partnerships with its neighbors of a similar size in order to increase its influence. The growing regional consciousness and continued enmity between the region’s great powers suggest the construction of a multilateral regional political association, centered upon the small and medium powers, which draws the great powers into a framework of voluntary restraint. The aim is to increase the voice of small and middle states in international affairs. Regionalism gives the smaller countries or middle power states a say in the nature of the regional arrangement and its strategic organization. In this context, Mahathir, for example, proposed the idea of the EAEC in order to promote Malay nationalism. He played an assertive role in voicing Malaysian views in the international arena and successfully raising the country’s international profile (Vatikiotis 1992: 16). Mahathir’s vision was to establish a complex ideological alliance with the Japanese business elite and to offer a vision of mapping Malaysia among the Muslim and developing countries.

Gilbert Rozman (1998a), who examines flawed strategies of regionalism in Northeast Asia, strongly argues that nationalism stands in the way of East Asian regionalism. Rozman (2000: 18) pointed out that ‘Little was done to challenge nationalist assumptions in the name of regionalism. Regarding nationalism as a sensitive matter best left to a later stage of regionalism, they [advocates of regionalism] did not focus on how nationalist outlooks in the media and elsewhere stand in the way of both regionalism and internationalism.’ Nationalism seems to be fundamentally antithetical to the creation of a regional polity and has little sympathy for regional identities. It can therefore be regarded as a significant obstacle to the promotion of genuine regionalism. Comparatively speaking, the national sovereignty concern of the US has also blocked the development of genuine regionalism in North America (Capling and Nossal 2009: 165–6).

Historical disputes and national contestation over history have seriously damaged regional cooperation between China, Japan and South Korea. Despite the fact that Japan and South Korea are both democracies, their conflict over the contents of history textbooks has substantially inhibited the development of regionalism in Northeast Asia.

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