The Delusions of Asian Engagement

There is a tendency in international politics to confuse activity with substance. Witness the Seventh East Asian Summit held in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh in November. The summit involved an impressive array of states, including the ten members of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand as well as the USA and Russia.[1] It is the acme of a distinctively Asian model of multilateral diplomacy. There was enough activity on display to give the impression that something substantive would emerge from its proceedings.

In fact, little emerged apart from acrimony, although you would not have known this from most Australian media reports. The summit is, in fact, the last act in an annual, ASEAN-sponsored, process of diplomatic theatre. It has evolved, over time, from the practice of the smaller and weaker states of South-East Asia and their commitment, to a largely rhetorical, consensus-based, non-binding and…