APEC and politics

By P. S. Suryanarayana

IT IS now a diplomatic norm in multilateral economic summitry that contemporary political concerns of the major participants determine the ambience of the deliberations. The latest summit of the forum for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), held in Brunei, was no exception. The APEC forum's political outreach on this occasion was defined by the question of taming a `rogue state', North Korea. The prime poser was how could the U.S. engage its `Stalinist' ruler, Mr. Kim Jong Il, in an optimistic bid to reduce his `missile threat' to the global order in general and the Asia-Pacific geopolitical configuration in particular.

In the event, the issue was left hanging fire. The pluses and minuses of Washington's engagement with Pyongyang at the highest political echelon remain to be evaluated more thoroughly before the outgoing U.S. President, Mr. Bill Clinton, can decide whether to travel to North Korea for a personal summitry aimed at snuffing out `communism' in one of its residual bastions. The question is of building a U.S.-fabricated bridge to North Korea. This is somewhat akin to the search by a former U.S. President, Richard Nixon, for an `open sesame' formula to draw out China in the early 1970s. The only difference is that Mr. Clinton is being much more transparent compared to Nixon's secret diplomacy. For the present, however, the Brunei summit came under the political shadow of North Korea. As a result, the unfinished delineation of the APEC zone's geopolitical contours has come into a much sharper focus.

The politicisation of the APEC ambience is often accomplished in the public domain and on the margins of the economic deliberations. This does not, therefore, affect the inevitably slow process of consensus-making on global trade issues of direct concern to the APEC members. The ground reality, though, is that the political confabulations have overshadowed the economic agenda at the recent summits. The diplomatic mood at the latest summit, not hampered by Seattle-style protests over the injustices of the globalisation process, was defined largely by the Korean political question.

Mr. Clinton discussed this with several leaders including his South Korean counterpart, Mr. Kim Dae-jung. The U.S.-orchestrated consensus, not involving China, was that North Korea must be defanged as an aspiring merchant of ballistic missiles, which Pyongyang would like to make and test-fire. The security-related sensitivities of Japan as also South Korea and other U.S.- friendly South East Asian states in regard to North Korea could thus be addressed. The overriding parameter spelt out by Mr. Clinton was that these efforts should be harmonised with the South Korean leader's current efforts under his `sunshine policy' to sketch out a new modus vivendi with Pyongyang. Addressed tangentially was the danger that North Korea's missile-related ambitions could pose to other countries such as India, given its perceived proclivity to transfer the devices to Pakistan. India is not a member of the APEC club, the reason having much to do with New Delhi's lackadaisical economic policies at the time of the forum's formation eight years ago.

India, however, often figures in the exchanges among the APEC leaders. At last year's APEC summit in Auckland, Mr. Clinton suggested to the Chinese President, Mr. Jiang Zemin, that they discuss the ``problems in South Asia'' - a diplomatic euphemism for the vagaries of the India- Pakistan equation - as an intrinsic part of the U.S.-China dialogue on global arms control issues. The U.S. wanted to ``get them (the Chinese) to cut off nuclear (armament) cooperation with Pakistan''. But China took the line that both India and Pakistan should exercise nuclear arms-related restraint and hinted that there was nothing much that Beijing itself could do beyond making an ardent appeal. This year, Mr. Clinton has said, about his talks with Mr. Jiang, that the U.S. and China have made progress in the past several years on the global nuclear non-proliferation agenda. Now, the Nuclear Club does not include either India or Pakistan despite their demonstrated prowess in making the relevant weapons. And, the Club denies to those outside its portals the very right it cites for possessing nuclear weapons on the basis of a variant of the Churchillian logic about waging wars - there is no sense in making atomic bombs only a political purpose.

Two other political issues suffused Mr. Clinton's talks with the other APEC leaders in Brunei this year. The U.S. is keen to determine the elasticity of North Korea's abilities to make, deploy and perhaps even use long-range ballistic missiles. It needs to know this to decide whether to proceed with its plans for a national missile defence shield against possible attacks by terrorists and `rogue' nations (if not also potential political competitors such as Russia). Mr. Clinton's new `gain' in talks with Mr. Jiang in Brunei was China's latest promise of restraint in missile export. The politics of China's imminent entry into the World Trade Organisation is a prime U.S.' concern. Guided until not long ago by ``the new emperors'', Mao and Deng, Beijing now embraces free international trade and thereby eclipses the glow of Edgar Snow's red star over China.

Last year's APEC summit in Auckland was memorable for Mr. Clinton's dramatic learning curve and firm decision-making about East Timor's political freedom from Indonesia. Juridically at that time, East Timor was still a disputed province of Indonesia, although its people had just then, in a U.N.-sponsored vote, rejected autonomy as an alternative to independence. Impinging on the deliberations were also the geostrategic interests of Australia and New Zealand, two `Asiatic' Anglo-Saxon members of the APEC forum. Following their intense interaction with the U.S. at the highest political echelons, Indonesia upheld the APEC spirit of fraternity and, before the Auckland summit ended, agreed to allow a U.N. peace force into East Timor ahead of its formal `constitutional' removal from Jakarta's suzerainty.

The APEC summit in Kuala Lumpur in 1998 was marked by a public American rebuke of the host - the Malaysian Prime Minister, Dr. Mahathir Mohammad - for his alleged `authoritarianism'. Mr. Clinton had stayed away from that summit to deal with a period- specific manifestation of the intransigence of Mr. Saddam Hussein's Iraq over U.N. weapons inspections. In the event, the U.S. Vice-President, Mr. Al Gore, sought to portray Dr. Mahathir as a virtual Saddam Hussein in the making. Mr. Gore backed the calls for `reform' being raised at that time by the deposed Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mr. Anwar Ibrahim. Mr. Gore's action appalled America's Anglo-Saxon allies within the APEC and hurt the pride of ordinary Malaysians too.

The 1998 summit was noteworthy for the `Gorespeak' on globalisation of politics as an inter-related variant of the internationalisation of the market place. Although the catch- phrase - gobalisation of politics - was avoided, there was no mistaking the intent. While democracy is certainly a political virtue worth propagating internationally, the Gore campaign on that occasion was hampered by the extraordinary political diversity within the APEC forum. Moreover, Mr. Gore had committed the elementary mistake of equating Vietnam's version of perestroika, namely doi moi, with the then vibrant calls for reform or reformasi in Indonesia and Malaysia (these being a people- initiated variant of glasnost). But it requires much more than a hectoring speech to prove the point that democracy is the springboard for economic progress within individual states.

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