US Grand Strategy in Asia: the East Asian Summit

When you find yourself writing posts on who accompanied the hearse at Kim Jong Il’s funeral, it is definitely time to pull back and look at the larger geostrategic picture.

In an earlier post, we provided a somewhat skeptical read on Secretary Clinton’s pre-APEC Hawaii speech signaling a US “pivot” back toward Asia. With the benefit of the holidays, we have reflected on President Obama’s trip to the region, including US participation in the East Asia summit. For many, the jockeying over East Asia’s regional institutions is the epitome of sound and fury signifying nothing. But watching these institutions is a hobby (an ADB working paper on the topic can be found here) and provides an interesting indicator of larger strategic preoccupations in the region. Developments in the EAS suggest that it is not just the US that is pivoting to Asia but also that peripheral Asia may be more actively balancing China.

To understand the issue, we have to go all the way back to Malaysian Prime Minister Mahatir’s proposal for an East Asian Economic Caucus (EAEC) in 1990. The EAEC seemed innocent enough: an opportunity to create an East Asian grouping centered on ASEAN and reaching out to China, South Korea and Japan. In fact, the EAEC was Mahatir’s effort to create an Asian-only alternative to APEC, of which the United States was a member. The Bush senior administration vehemently objected to the EAEC—Secretary of State James Baker said it would divide the Pacific—and Japan chose not to participate.

Fast forward to 2002 and intra-ASEAN discussions of how to institutionalize the ASEAN+3 (the three again being China, South Korea and Japan). The big issue was whether India, New Zealand and Australia would be allowed to join in the creation of the proposed East Asian Summit (EAS). In the end, they were—over Malaysian objections—and most interpreted the move as a partial counterweight to China. But the body was still geographically Asian: the US was pointedly excluded, once again putting Japan and Australia in a strategically awkward position.

Fast forward once again to 2009. At the 4^th EAS, Prime Ministers Rudd and Hatoyama advanced competing proposals (Australia’s Asia-Pacific Community and Japan’s East Asian Community), each with fatal flaws. But China’s bullying approach to the South China Sea, and their handling of the 2010 trawler incident around the Senkakus, provided a perfect opening for the US. Secretary Clinton stated that the US had an interest in the outcome of maritime disputes in the region when she attended the 5^th EAS as an invited observer and even invoked the alliance commitment to Japan.

This context provided the backdrop for ASEAN to rethink its position with respect to American participation in the EAS. In effect, ASEAN embraced the trans-Pacific Rudd proposal and made it ASEAN’s own. The US was now in the EAS, and although the inclusion of Russia could be a seen as a sop to Beijing this decision was a clear diplomatic defeat for China.

What does this have to do with Northeast Asia? Substantively not much. But as I argue in the ADB paper cited above, the membership of international institutions drives their agendas. When President Obama attended the 6^th EAS in Indonesia, he took with him an agenda that included not only maritime disputes but non-proliferation concerns as well. The White House fact sheet on the summit is worth quoting at length:

“President Obama also called on EAS leaders to:

• Reaffirm their full commitment to the complete and verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula in order to maintain peace and stability in the region;
• Work together to ensure full compliance and implementation of relevant United Nations non-proliferation commitments and to pursue cooperation through other multilateral mechanisms;
• Reaffirm their support for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Action Plan adopted at the May 2010 Review Conference and for the Nuclear Security Summit to be held in Seoul in March 2012, and agreed to work together toward a successful Biological Weapons Convention Review Conference in December 2011;
• Endorse efforts undertaken in other regional institutions, including the ARF, to strengthen the capacities of all EAS members to address the challenge of proliferation in the Asia-Pacific region;
• Reaffirm their commitment to develop a culture of transparency throughout the Asia-Pacific region with regard to the development of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, to increase cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and to ensure the IAEA has the resources and authority it needs to carry out its role; and
• Commit to sign and bring into force Additional Protocols to Safeguard Agreements with the IAEA with an aim to have the Additional Protocol in place throughout the Asia-Pacific region as soon as possible.”

Again, the substantive significance of this new diplomatic front may be minimal. But the US effort to multilateralize the Korean issue through the EAS is noteworthy, and the shifting membership in the body is a mirror not only of the US “pivot" but of the geopolitical Zeitgeist in Asia as well.