The Asia–Europe Meeting (ASEM) process: beyond the triadic political economy?

Abstract

This chapter examines one of the most important frameworks of international relations to have emerged in recent years, the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), which brought together the fifteen member states of the European Union (EU) with ten East Asian states (Japan, China, South Korea, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam) into a new interregional diplomatic process. The ASEM framework was established at its inaugural summit held in Bangkok in March 1996 and was conceived as a non-institutionalized “dialogue framework” based on three “pillars,” these being economic, political and sociocultural. The economic pillar has developed into by far the strongest in ASEM’s sub-structure. Indeed, the whole framework itself arose within a strong geoeconomic context, and more specifically as an important evolutionary stage in the “triadic” political economy. In brief this relates to how ASEM constituted the last triangular element to fall into place with regard to new interregional frameworks of relations that emerged in the postCold War period between the world’s three dominant Triad regions – Europe, East Asia and North America. Moreover, ASEM could be seen as a response to the emerging triadic calculus at this time. For example, the EU’s motivations for promoting the idea of ASEM primarily derived from anxieties over Europe’s potential geoeconomic marginalization in a then anticipated “Pacific Century.” Meanwhile, East Asian interests behind ASEM partly lay in the opportunity it presented to diversify the region’s states’ international relations beyond the Asia-Pacific, with the EU adding further counterbalance to great power influence in the region. In the analysis that follows, we examine the triadic political economy context to ASEM’s development since 1996, and consider the extent to which it remains relevant today. An extension of this debate relates to how cultivating ASEM’s multilateral utility potential presents the framework’s best opportunity for both shaping, and extending beyond the triadic political economy, not least because it focuses ASEM on making a less passive and more proactive contribution to the positive development of the globalsystem. There is hence a strong institutionalist perspective adopted here with respect to ASEM and its functional purposes. In this context, interregionalism and globalization are essentially viewed as complementary processes, and moreover ASEM may be seen as a potentially significant element of a developing architecture of multi-level cooperative diplomacy within the world system. It is thus argued in this chapter that the ASEM framework has important “global governance” responsibilities to fulfill both now and in the future.