The Future of Asian Regionalism: Not What It Used to Be?

Abstract

The largely unexpected election of Donald Trump as President of the United States has overturned many assumptions and expectations about the future of Australia's regional relationships. Even before Trump's election, however, the history of regional evolution in East Asia presented a number of striking paradoxes and raised important questions about the forces that encourage or obstruct integration and cooperation at the regional level. For a region that has frequently been associated with comparatively limited cross-border political institutionalization and development, East Asia has recently been the centre of a large number of initiatives and proposals that are intended to give expression to particular visions of the region. We argue that the outcome of such regional processes is profoundly influenced by both geo-economic and geopolitical forces. We illustrate this claim by looking at the history of institutional development in the 'AsiaPacific', before considering the attempt to create a new 'Indo-Pacific region', which, we suggest, has more to do with contemporary geopolitical concerns rather than any underlying 'natural' coherence. The Australian policy-making community needs to think carefully about the implications of the Trump presidency for such initiatives.

Concept of Regional Security in Philosophical Approaches

“…Contemporary Western liberal values are not considered a universal way of maintaining peace. Researchers such as Lake (2011), Jervis (1978, Newman (2016), Aniche (2020), Beeson and Lee-Brown (2016) see them as the epitome of aggression on the part of the world leaders.…”

“…Lake (2011), R. Jervis (1978, J. Newman (2016), E. T. Aniche (2020), M. Beeson and T. Lee-Brown (2016), A. Acharya (2018), B. N. Coe (2019), A. K. Cusack (2019), andL. Fawcett (2016) comprehensively studied contemporary regional security problems.…”

“…However, this concept has been criticized by regional security researchers such as D. A. Lake (2011), R. Jervis (1978), J. Newman ( 2016), E. T. Aniche (2020), M. Beeson and T. Lee-Brown (2016) due to its lack of empirical verifiability, relativist and speculative quality and pronounced Eurocentrism. The modern understanding of regional security, as outlined by A.…”

Testing Times for Regionalism: Coping with Great Power Rivalry in the Asia–Pacific

“…Disintegration may not be the order of the day, but rather differentiated integration (Murray & Brianson, 2019, forthcoming). This is one of the reasons that many scholars and policymakers prefer to talk about "East Asia", "Southeast Asia" or even the newly fashionable "Indo-Pacific" (Beeson & Lee-Brown, 2017). There is more than semantic accuracy at stake here, however: the way regions are defined determines the membership of any regional body, the purposes to which such organisations are put, and their capacity to implement policy.…”

Regionalism

“…It is in the early 2000s, for example, that European integration theory comes to the fore (Wiener & Diez, 2003), and that Europe's experience is analysed in the wider normative and institutional structure of world politics (Diez & Whitman, 2002; see also Stivachtis, 2008). Yet, at the same time, it is undeniable that in this and the following decade the field of regionalism finally ventures solidly into non-European domains, establishing real sub-fields within itself: African regionalism (Fagbayibo, 2018;Fioramonti & Mattheis, 2015;Nathan, 2010) Middle Eastern regionalism (Beck, 2015;Dakhalallah, 2012;Ibrahim, 2018), South American regionalism (Malamud & Gardini, 2012;Quiliconi & Espinoza, 2017;Riggirozzi, 2012), (South-)East Asian regionalism (Acharya, 2017;Beeson, 2018;Beeson & Lee-Brown, 2017;Goh, 2011;Katada, 2011), Eurasian regionalism (Allison, 2008;Aris, 2011;Libman & Vinokurov, 2018) and even Arctic regionalism (Ingimundarson, 2014;Young, 2005;Zimmerbauer, 2013).…”