Mixed signals in run-up to APEC

From government to the opposition, among business to the security services, traffic minders, anti-war activists, mischief makers and public-spirited citizenry, APEC has come in for much discussion.

Not since Canberra laid claim to being midwife, in 1989, for the regional forum spanning the Asia-Pacific rim, has this summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum been held in Australia.

Back then there were competing claims to regional leadership. Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad sought to limit membership of his East Asia Economic Caucus to the 10-member Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) plus China, Japan and South Korea. This led to his skipping APEC’s first official leaders summit in Seattle in 1993, for which then Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating introduced the word “recalcitrant” to the popular vernacular.

As Sydney braces for Australia’s first hosting of the leaders’ summit next weekend, there is a sense of trepidation along with Prime Minister John Howard’s obvious enthusiasm and pride in what he regards as “the most beautiful big city in the world”.

Security is unprecedented for the gathering of 21 world leaders who represent more than half of global production. Much of that security is to keep in check protests against US President George W. Bush and the war in Iraq, and the conduct of US foreign policy.

Howard says the security is less because of the fear of terrorism rather it is the “violent propensity of many of the demonstrations that take place against such international gatherings”.

This is true to a point. It was the case in Seattle and it may turn out to be the case in Sydney. But it wasn’t for most of the annual gatherings, which have been held in different member states, in between.

This difference in reactions underpins the balance of competing attitudes of state and people in the respective host cities. Preparations for Sydney have brought into relief the difference in governance and differences in the conduct of foreign relations across the disparate communities lining the shores of the Pacific.

There are those who will see it as too much of a challenge to make a forum like APEC work. But the more optimistic will see the opportunities along with the challenges.

The run-up to Sydney has had different people thinking - and planning.

Howard, over the last week, has assessed the value of APEC at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney. Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd, across the city on the same day, was doing the same at the Australian Institute of International Affairs. In Melbourne two days later, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer delivered the inaugural Monash Asia Institute public lecture on “Australian foreign policy today and tomorrow”.

Meanwhile in the labyrinth of Sydney’s rocky outcrops, protesters are working out how to make their voices heard from behind the police barriers and water cannons held in reserve.

A picture is emerging of how Australia today views the world and how it views itself.

If Downer’s account is to be given credence then Asia looms, writ large, in the markets and strategic weight of China and India and the containment of terrorism at the front line of Indonesia. He offers optimism - and pessimism. As with Howard and Rudd, Downer is optimistic about the “shifting distribution of global power” to Asia. He acknowledges a region “transforming themselves economically and politically”.

“So in the 21st century, two of the world’s oldest civilisations (China and India) are two of its newest powers,” Downer told his academic audience. “Both are engaging more with the international community. And both are seeking to regain what they see as their rightful place among the leading nations of the world.”

Yet he stops short of prescribing a shift for Australia to meet that transformation. In juxtaposing Australia’s relationships in the region with that of its “natural alliance” with the US, Downer makes clear his distinction. He talks of shared “values” with the US, on the one hand, and on the other hand of relationships in the region, of instrumental “interests” predicated on Australian convictions on liberal democratic traditions and the free market.

The suggestion, not in so many words, is that “Asians” are different: keep relations to the dollars and cents of trade, investment, commerce and economics, and security and strategic interests of terrorism, nuclear non-proliferation, climate change and the like.

Tolerance, pluralism, respect for human dignity - these are the bedrock of Australian values. Where these values, concepts of governance, social and administrative institutions and norms of rights and behaviour are concerned, there is little room for dialogue and exchange of ideas.

Hence there is ambivalence about the worth of informal forums such as APEC, trickled down through to the populace. Yet Howard hints of a socialisation to pan-Asian notions of musyawarah consensus building possibly compatible with the legalistic approaches demanded of Western institutions.

“There is no reason why different approaches cannot reinforce and complement each other,” Howard told his Lowy Institute audience.

Apart from the merits of inter-governmental dialogue claimed by Howard, the bigger prize is the prospects of a better inter-cultural understanding that could come out of an openness and listening to others as much as just arguing one’s own conviction. The possibility of accommodating others’ points of view calls for some knowledge about them.

On this, Downer gives cause for pessimism in his singular, top-down, statist perspective on foreign policy to the neglect of bottom-up Australian public opinion. In his view, foreign policy is the preserve of government. Thus nowhere in Downer’s address at the Monash Asia Institute does he mention the people - the actors who feed the political decision-makers, the diplomatic and public service, business and services sectors, and social and cultural interlocutors. Nor does he mention how competent these people need to be in matching performance with the rhetoric of a transforming Asia. With few exceptions, scholars of Asia and educators were disappointed.

Professor Marika Vicziany, director of the Monash Asia Institute, believes there is more Asian studies than ever before in Australia. Dr Robert Cribb, associate professor in Indonesian studies at the Australian National University, does not disagree, but the president of the Asian Studies Association of Australia laments the running down of facilities and resources. In 2002, the Government abolished a nationwide schools program established two years before Howard came into office in 1996. There has been no equivalent program since.

“The loss of NALSAS (National Asian Languages and Studies in Australian Schools) was a setback, because there were few other institutional and cultural forces to help reinforce the study of Asia,” Cribb tells the New Sunday Times (Malaysia). “NALSAS helped to make up for the absence of Asian Goethe Institutes and Alliances Francaise, and for the weaknesses of general Australian cultural ties with Asia. In this respect, it was a setback for the study of Asia and thus for Asia literacy.”

Cribb’s colleagues, professors Stewart Firth and Stuart Harris, share his sense of loss.

Many of the students now coming through Australian schools without the foundation of NALSAS are not quite old enough for university and the workforce, but Firth and Harris are starting to worry for the future of their fields of study and interest.

Firth, head of the Pacific Centre at ANU’s Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, is author of the seminal text Australia in international politics: an introduction to Australian foreign policy. Harris brings to the masters program that he started this year, on China’s global engagement and domestic transformation, his long experience in the diplomatic service, where he was departmental secretary from 1984-87.

Among Asia scholars, much store is put by the prospects of the former diplomat and Mandarin-speaking Kevin Rudd - China product of the ANU - in government.

As Cribb assures, there are no fundamental differences in values between Australia and its neighbours in the region, only one of emphasis - as is the case when comparing any different sets of peoples; there isn’t a “clash of civilisations” scenario in the region.

It's complex even for Asia-literate Rudd, as can be seen in his ambiguity with APEC. Confessing to having been an APEC sceptic in his address to the Australian Institute of International Affairs, he said "Australians are never much interested in meetings for the sake of having meetings".

Among Australia’s neighbours in ASEAN, the spirit of musyawarah is pluralism and tolerance by another name - the first step is an openness to listen as much as to prescribe.