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Kevin Rudd's Asian vision quietly buried
by Rowan Callick
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/ ... rg6so-1225881987040
THE "natural order" has been restored in Asia.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations last week in Canberra quietly entrenched its position as the hub of all senior Asian organisations, except APEC.
When Kevin Rudd took office, Australians assumed - however untested he might be in economic management - international affairs would be in safe hands.
But he has let go one of the three ambitious pillars of his foreign policy. The others are admission to the UN Security Council and nuclear disarmament.
Now he has conceded, two years after launching his grand vision for a new Asia-Pacific Community, that the development of the regional architecture must be left in the hands of ASEAN.
Rudd says this is not a backdown, and his vision is under "active consideration" by ASEAN. But the point of no return has been reached. Rudd will not now regain the initiative in devising new regional infrastructure.
ASEAN, for which Singapore is the most zealous torch-bearer, has jealously guarded for decades its role as the hub of Asian summitry and has now succeeded in fending off this latest challenge.
George Yeo, Singapore's Foreign Minister, who visited Canberra last week, said Rudd told him he was now "quite happy to leave ASEAN to discuss how the original configuration should evolve". It would be one of the items on the agenda of an ASEAN ministerial meeting in Hanoi next month, Yeo said.
"I hope we can come to an early decision, but we'll see."
The most far-reaching outcome that can now be anticipated, is the extension of ASEAN's annual East Asian Summits - which include Australia - to participation by the US and Russia.
Rudd launched the ambitious initiative, which he said meant "thinking big", in a speech to the Asia Society in Sydney two years ago. He dispatched diplomatic doyen Richard Woolcott as his envoy to explain his idea to a surprised region.
The concept struggled from the start to gain traction in Asia. But six months ago Rudd attempted to re-energise his idea by hosting a conference in Sydney on the Asia-Pacific Community. He said in his welcome: "As yet, there is no single institution in the Asia-Pacific region with the membership and the mandate to address comprehensively the challenges ahead.
"Such an institution would be invaluable in managing an increasingly crowded landscape of intra-regional interactions, and ensure that outward-looking regionalism is sustained as the bedrock of Asia-Pacific integration. My view is simple: either we shape the future, or the future shapes us."
But the conference failed to convince sufficient doubters to win a quorum for reshaping the future, Rudd-style.
Earlier this year, Rudd considered commissioning Labor luminaries Bob Hawke and Gareth Evans as a last throw of the dice to help promote the vision. There are reports Evans made some informal soundings, but the idea was then dropped - as the whole concept appeared to run out of steam.
Woolcott said last month: "The concept has made considerable progress, and the government is still considering the best next step." This now appears to be to leave it to the 10 nations of ASEAN and its secretariat in Jakarta.
Tony Milner, Basham professor of Asian history at the Australian National University, welcomes the government's flexibility: "In being prepared to move forward with ASEAN-related architecture we are being realistic. It also means we are working more, not less, closely with regional partners - and, after all, that might be seen as evenmore important than architecture." But it then raises the question: what was all the palaver about in the first place?
Hugh White, head of the strategic and defence studies centre at the ANU, says: "Leaving it for ASEAN to decide is very different from what Kevin Rudd was originally aiming for. It appears the decision has been taken not to pursue it any further.
"This is a step backwards, bowing to the inevitable. But the idea was never clearly thought out. It was a very ambitious vision when first launched. But there was an overwhelming problem of process - it was just sprung on the world, an act of diplomatic incompetence."
And it had two very different aims, he says: managing present challenges, from tsunamis to financial crises, and managing the transition to a new regional order reflecting the rise of China and India. "The first of these aims was banal but acceptable, the other, heroic and scary.
"The faults in the development and delivery of the proposal, in the tradecraft, are similar to those for the resource super-profits tax."
Andrew Shearer, director of studies at the Lowy Institute, agrees: "The proposal failed both in conception and execution.
"It betrays a complete lack of understanding of regional dynamics, and of the role Australia has traditionally played in building regional architecture," with even strong allies such as the US and Japan caught by surprise by Rudd's proposal.
"It is a failure consistent with broader failings of the Rudd government, with its grand rhetoric and poor process, which leads to bad policy which is then poorly executed," Shearer says.
"We've run down our regional credibility, in an area where Australia has always been a thought leader and first mover, under Bob Hawke founding APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation), Paul Keating helping set up the first APEC leaders' summit, and John Howard bringing Australia into the East Asia Summits.
"It's not a fatal calamity for Australian foreign policy, but it is a major diplomatic rebuff. We have been marginalised, our diplomacy tone deaf, if not stone deaf.
"This now makes it harder to pursue other Australian interests." |
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赶搭征文末班车－在澳洲的第一辆车 我们新生活的开端 (2008-1-31) villa 
发表于 2010-6-22 22:25
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