Seminars Series: Abstract

2.00pm
October 23 2009
Lecture Theatre 2 (Room 1.09), Hedley Bull Centre, Building # 130, Garran Road

Soft-core East Asia: Differentiated Cooperation in an Amorphous Region
Professor Douglas Webber, Professor of Political Science at INSEAD and visiting International Fellow at the Monash European and EU Centre

Scholars of East Asian international relations diverge over how politically integrated the region is; whether it is becoming politically more integrated, and to what extent the degree of political integration matters for regional peace and stability.

The argument of this paper is that East Asia has not become much more politically integrated in the last decade. What has developed is rather a pattern of differentiated cooperation distinguished by the central role occupied by ASEAN and the primacy among bilateral relationships of that between ASEAN and China within a region that remains both porous and amorphous.

These four main traits of contemporary East Asian regionalism may be attributable respectively to ASEAN’s status as a regional cooperation pioneer, its perceived harmlessness and the image it enjoys as an ‘honest broker’ among antagonistic regional big powers, to China’s rapid economic rise along with its relatively recent adoption of a positive attitude towards participation in regional organisations, to the continuing significance of external powers, notably the US, in regional affairs and to the concern of many regional states to hedge against an increasingly powerful China, about whose future intentions they remain uncertain.