Asian Conceptions of International Relations and Global Governance

Delivered at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, on 4th December 2008, as part of the S.T. Lee Project on Global Governance. The ideas presented in this paper draw upon a few previous writings by the author, especially “Will Asia’s Past Be Its Future?”, International Security (Spring 2004); Asia Rising: Who Is Leading? (World Scientific 2007), “Why is There no Non-Western International Relations Theory? Perspectives on and from Asia,” Special issue of International Relations of the Asia Pacific (2007) co-edited by Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan; and Whose Ideas Matter: Agency and Power in Asian Regionalism (Cornell University Press, 2009).

Argument and Caveats

“Has Asia been doing enough in leading the world opinion on how to manage, and in particular not to mismanage, the global challenges we face today, including that of terrorism, violence, and global injustice”, asked Indian Nobel laureate Amartya Sen at a forum in Bangkok in 2007. Sen was raising a fundamental question about Asia’s role in global governance. Extending his list of challenges to other issues such as climate change and financial volatility, the obvious answer to his question would be that Asia is doing more than before, but this is still far from enough. A key reason for this, I argue in this essay, is that leading Asian powers today are far more concerned with developing and legitimising their national power aspirations (using the traditional notions and means of international relations) than contributing to global or even regional governance. This disjuncture is not entirely surprising, but a debate over how to reconcile national aspirations with collective good is long overdue in Asia, and hopefully, this conference and project will offer some answers and pathways.

At a first glance, Asian conceptions of international relations and global governance are indeed changing in keeping with the region’s ascendancy in the world power structure. The early leaders of modern Asian states were preoccupied with bringing down colonial rule, protesting Western dominance of the international system, asserting their juridical sovereignty, and demanding economic concessions and aid from the West. Hence, their ideas about international relations centred on nationalism and what might be called ‘defensive sovereignty’. But if one takes the shift in world power to Asia as an incontrovertible fact or an irreversible trend, as Kishore Mahbubani has done in his The New Asian Hemisphere, then should not one expect Asian ideas about and approaches to international relations to change as well? One might expect that instead of defensive sovereignty, Asia will harness its economic and political achievements of recent decades to seek out a share of global leadership. This paper is an attempt to understand whether and to what extent such a shift might be taking place and its implications for global governance in the 21st century.

Some initial caveats about this paper are necessary. First, given the diversity of Asia, and differences over where its boundaries lie, it will be highly simplistic to speak of an Asian conception of international relations, world order or global governance. What this essay sets out to investigate instead is a plurality of ideas and approaches that can be found in Asia, both historically and in the contemporary context, and to ascertain both variations and commonalities among them. It is difficult enough to speak of an American conception of world order since the collapse of the American foreign policy consensus in the 1970s, or a European conception, despite the extraordinary recent progress of European integration. The notion of an Asian conception is even more problematic, given sharp contestations that exists over what Asia is and where to draw it regional and subregional boundaries.

Second, while it is more plausible to speak of national conceptions of, and approaches to international relations, they are not always representative of the nation itself. In authoritarian states, any ‘national’ ideas about statecraft and world order promoted by the ruling elite are not necessarily shared by the people. The worldviews of individual leaders, the ruling elite or governments are of course crucial. But perspectives from the society also matter. For example, Western conceptions of international relations theory are dominated by philosophers rather than policymakers. For every Machiavelli, (whose The Prince, one must be reminded, was written after he had been deposed as an official in the Florentine court), Kissinger, or Woodrow Wilson, there are dozens of Thucydides, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Morgenthau and Waltz, who were not members of the policymaking elite.

This leads to a third caveat: the general paucity of conceptual thinking in Asia about modern international relations and world order. To be sure, Asia has a rich classical intellectual heritage from which it can draw ideas about statecraft, and here the ideas from Kautilya, Confucius or religious traditions like Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam are especially important. But the conceptualization of international relations in the modern era has been especially thin. This can be explained by several factors, beginning with the superimposition of the essentially European (Westphalian) ideas about sovereignty and statecraft (such as balance of power) on Asian leaders and intellectuals as a result of colonialism and decolonisation. This not only had the effect of suppressing indigenous thinking, based on historical ideas about governance, statecraft and interstate relations within the region, but also shaped Asian conceptions of international relations as little more than reactions to, and localization of, Western concepts.

Compounding this state of affairs is the fact that the study and training of international relations in classrooms around Asia discourages and disparages long-term conceptual thinking and theoretical work in favour of policy-oriented research geared to the immediate needs of governments (Acharya and Buzan 2007). At the same time, Western ideas and theories of international relations have acquired a hegemonic status, and West retains an overwhelming dominance in terms of intellectual resources (academics, especially theorists of international relations, journals, publishing houses and venues of free and inclusive debate) that are essential to the creative formulations and dissemination of ideas and concepts of international relations. With very few exceptions, Asians have made a far less conceptual contribution to the study of international relations than Western scholars and analysts to the state of international relations and future of world order.

Indeed, some of the concepts that we associate with Asia and use to explain Asian political and economic dynamics have been coined and conceptualized by Western scholars. For example, the concept that launched the debate over globalisation and global governance in Asia, the so-called ‘East Asian model’ of economic development focusing on the role of the state in creating market-friendly development policies, was largely coined and elaborated by Western scholars.

Finally, national role conceptions and ideas about world order are not a given or constant, but are shaped and reshaped continually by domestic and external developments, including economic growth, war and economic crises. While this holds true anywhere, in a rapidly transforming region like Asia, where the most dramatic shift in the world economic and military power is taking place, change is more regular and perhaps even more fundamental. For example, Chinese, Indian and even Japanese role conceptions of international relations and world order have changed in significant ways since the early post-Second World War period, in keeping with changes in their domestic politics, economic capacity and policy, and the impact of external developments such as the end of the Cold War. India has abandoned its non-alignment concept, and more arguably, moved significantly away from the entire Nehruvian approach. Some analysts describe Indian foreign and security policy today more in tune with the realist approach to international relations. China has moved past the tenets of Maoist socialist internationalism to embrace a worldview that is best described as neo-Westphalianism. The shift occurring in Japan is from post-War pacifism to becoming a “normal state”.

Asian Conceptions of International Relations: Towards Convergence?

International relations theory accommodates a range of perspectives on world order and global governance. The most important of these are realism and liberalism (which incorporates elements of idealism). For Realists, international relations is a highly competitive game driven by considerations of national interest and relative gain and where war remains a constant possibility with genuine international cooperation highly improbable. Liberals take a more optimistic view, believing that conflict can be mitigated through the pacific effects of economic interdependence, international institutions and shared democratic governance.

But these categories, which draw mostly from Western philosophical thinking, and reflect Western historical experience, do not do justice to the ‘maverick’ or eclectic perspectives of many Asian leaders. For example, India’s Jawaharlal Nehru was foremost among those nationalist leaders whose ideas about world order were eminently compatible with Wilsonian liberal internationalism. Burma’s leader Aung San was a self-professed internationalist (“I am an internationalist, but an internationalist who does not all [allow] himself to be swept off the firm Earth”) who championed economic interdependence and regional integration in Asia (“The one fact from which no nation, big or small, can escape is the increasing universal interdependence of nations. A free and independent Burma is quite ready to enter into any arrangement with other nations for common welfare and security etc.”) – a far cry from the self-imposed autarchy and isolationism of the latter military junta. But Nehru’s critics in Asia, such as Carlos Romulo of the Philippines, who accused him of being a ‘starry-eyed idealist’, were not necessarily people who, as a realist might expect, dismissed regional and international cooperation. Romulo was actually an active champion of regional multilateral institutions. Realism, as some academic analysts argue, may well be the dominant mode of thinking among Asia’s policymaking elite, but this has not prevented Asian states from engaging in multilateral cooperation at the global and increasingly, regional levels, as the case of Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew, foremost among Asia’s realist statesmen, attests.

Perhaps a better way to look at post-War Asian thinking on international relations is to assess how Asian states related to an international order which was practically an extension of the ‘European international society’ and was overwhelmingly dominated by the West. Here, despite some early rhetoric on Asian unity, there remained significant differences within the region, which I would label as conformist, revisionist, and adaptive.

The classic conformist nation was Japan, the first Asian nation to modernize by imitating the West. Because of its economic accomplishments and military power, Meiji Japan was granted limited entry into the European international society as a ‘civilised’ nation, a status that was denied to the European colonies in Asia, such as India. To be sure, Japan did turn against Western powers when its effort to dominate its own immediate Asian neighbourhood was challenged. But post-war Japan, despite its distinct cultural-political style and a plurality of voices within its academic institutions (Marxism was a strong force there), retained a largely conformist posture in the international system, accepting Western ideas, rules and institutions and becoming a significant financial stakeholder in them. Japan might not have been the ‘yes-man’ of Asia, but it was certainly not, and still not, a ‘Japan that can say no’.

This was especially in contrast to communist China, which occupied the other end of the spectrum as Asia’s leading revisionist power. China under the nationalist regime started out as a conformist nation, but communist China was a different story. “From its birth date,” writes Chinese historian Chen Jian, “Mao's China challenged the Western powers in general and the United States in particular by questioning and, consequently, negating the legitimacy of the ‘norms of international relations’”.

India remained somewhere in between, and its position may be best described as an adaptive one. Jawaharlal Nehru rejected European style power politics and was especially scathing on the realist prescriptions about international order which, as proposed in the 1940s by Nicholas Spykman, Winston Churchill and Walter Lippman, would have divided the world into a series of regional blocs each under a great power’s leadership (including one under India itself). Instead, Nehru would propose what he called a ‘world association’ of states that recognized the essential equality of states. But Nehru never went too far in his critique of Western dominance or in pushing for the creation of an anti-Western bloc in Asia, a fact recognised and appreciated by Britain (but not the US). He kept the tone of the Asian Relations Conference of 1947 (of which he was the chief organizer) or the Asia-Africa Conference in Bandung in 1955 (of which he was a co-sponsor) remarkably moderate. Nehru defended the United Nations, and for all his early championing of Asian unity and shepherding of communist China, disagreed with Chou En-lai at Bandung when the latter proposed a permanent regional association of Asian and African countries to serve China’s need at a time when it was not recognized by the UN. Nehru’s concept of “non-involvement’ (which later fused into the broader doctrine of ‘non-alignment”) was practically an adaptive extension (which I would call ‘localization’ see Acharya, Whose Ideas Matter, 2009) of the Western principle of non-intervention at a time when the two superpowers were violating the doctrine with impunity.

The predicament and position of Southeast Asian nations was closer to India’s than to China’s or Japan’s. They were willing to live within the existing system of international governance which preserved their independence. With the brief revisionist posture of Sukarno in the 1960s when he withdrew Indonesia from the UN and flirted his own ideas about ‘old established forces’ (OLDEFOS) and ‘new emerging forces (NEFOS), and that of communist Vietnam in the 1970s and 80s, Southeast Asian states have generally accepted the rules and norms of the international system, especially non-interference, diplomatic interdependence and sovereignty equality of states. Burma’s Aung San and U Nu exemplified this thinking in the early period, and later, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations spearheaded the emergence of a regional international society based on adaptations of these rules.

The divergent attitudes and responses of Asia’s key nations towards the existing international order meant significant intra-regional differences over how to organize the region and the world at large. Japan’s sense of cultural and political supremacy as Asia’s first modernising nation had underpinned its quest for an East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. But while Japan’s initial military victories over Western powers inspired Asian nationalists, its Japanese idea of an exclusionary regional economic and political bloc did not. Thus, Aung San after flirting for a while with the Japan’s East Asian co-prosperity sphere idea would declare: “a new Asian order…will not and must not be one like the Co-prosperity Sphere of militarist Japan, nor should it be another Asiatic Monroe doctrine, nor imperial preference or currency bloc.”

Wide differences emerged over the philosophy of international economic relations, such as between China and Japan (the undisputed leader of East Asia’s market economies). India’s economic approach had more in common with socialist China than with democratic Japan. One offshoot of the divergent positions of Asia’s three major powers was that none would be able to lead an Asian regional organisation. After World War II doomed Japan’s effort to create an East Asian bloc, Nationalist China and Nehruvian India in a competitive way and India and communist China in a more cooperative manner were central actors in a period from 1947 to 1955 when Asia tried to develop a regional multilateral grouping. But neither would succeed, conceding the ground to ASEAN, which emerged and survived precisely because it was not led by any of the three great Asian powers. This rejection of great power leadership could become a norm of Asian regional governance.

Has matters changed? The end of the Cold War, a common adherence to state-supported capitalist economic development, and the emergence of Asia-wide multilateral regional groupings like the ARF and East Asian Summit has effectively put an end to the conformist-revisionist-adaptive divide. The differences between Japan, China, India, ASEAN countries over concepts and approaches to economic development are hardly fundamental. In foreign policy terms, India by abandoning Nehruvian non-alignment and China similarly ditching Maoism have moved closer to Japan’s position. Globally, all Asian powers, China included, are status quo powers. All have embraced ASEAN-led multilateralism in the region. Ironically, it was the US under the Bush administration which seemed the least conformist power in relation to a world order and governance structure that it had played a central role in creating.

This apparent convergence of worldviews and approaches does not, however, mean Asian powers share a common view of global governance and how to reform it. Realists argue that the simultaneous rise of India and China and their respective moves beyond non-aligned and socialist ideologies may actually mean greater competition, rather than cooperation between them. As C. Raja Mohan argues, India and China have become essentially similar players in the international system, both are aspiring great powers who are equally willing to assert their national interest, increase their power and influence in the world at large, and resort to the use of force in international relations. Realists see distinct prospects for an intensified security dilemma in 21st century Asia not unlike what Europe experienced in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Moreover, there remain important areas of diversity in contemporary Asian thinking on the relationship between democracy and regional stability and international order. While Asian leaders have generally accepted the liberal view that economic interdependence is a force for peace and that international (including regional) institutions are useful if not powerful instruments for managing regional order, sharp divisions remain over the role of democracy: whether democracy promotes development (the Lee Kuan Yew versus Fidel Ramos debate in the 1980s), whether democracy is at all a suitable political arrangement for Asia (Lee Kuan Yew versus Kim Dae Jung in Foreign Affairs) and whether democracy is a force of national and regional stability or a prescription for violence and disorder (for a review see: Acharya, Asia Rising)

Against this backdrop, what is prospect for Asian approach to reform of global governance?

Global and Regional Governance in an Era of Rising Asia

It is in China, rather than in Japan or India, that a good deal of conceptual thinking in Asia about the future of international order has taken place, both official and semi-official (academic) levels. This is partly in response to the international community’s doubts and misgivings about China’s global role following its spectacular ascent, doubts that are less pronounced in relation to the role of Japan or India. Unsurprisingly therefore, Chinese thinking on international relations today is to a large extent an attempt to legitimise the rise of China as a fundamentally positive force in international relations.

China’s initial conceptualisation of the post-Cold War order was to view it as a multipolar one. Consider the following statement posted at the Chinese Foreign Ministry Website in 2000:

Since the end of the Cold War, the world has moved towards multi-polarity, and the international situation on the whole has become more relaxed. This is an objective tendency independent of people's will, reflecting the trend of the development of the present era. Multi-polarization on the whole helps weaken and curb hegemonism and power politics, serves to bring about a just and equitable new international political and economic order and contributes to world peace and development.

But the concept of multi-polarization was dampened by the US victory over Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1991 and the advent of the so-called ‘unipolar moment’. This led some Chinese to modify their position by recognising what they called ‘uni-multipolarity’. At the same time, Chinese policy and academic discourse (the two are often inseparable) developed its thesis about China’s ‘peaceful rise’, thereby rejecting the neorealist ideas of power transition or the ‘tragedy of great power politics’ (the title of John Mearsheimer’s well-known book).

In terms global governance, Chinese attitude towards multilateralism has changed. China has moved a fair distance from being a revisionist power to being Zoellick’s ‘responsible stakeholder’ for which its ASEAN neighbours, especially ASEAN, can take some credit. And in Iain Johnston’s words, China is not only a ‘status quo power’ but also a ‘social state’. Johnston finds China despite its initial suspicion of multilateralism, has now embraced it thanks to a socialization process through international and regional institutions. At the regional level, China, once a sceptic of multilateral security through the ARF, has emerged as an active participant. In Chinese academia, efforts are ongoing to develop a ‘Chinese school of international relations’ based partly on the historical features of the old tributary system, and what Fairbank had called the ‘Chinese world order’ (See Qin Yaqin’s article “Why is there no Chinese IR Theory”, in Acharya and Buzan, 2007).

Leadership is a key element of global governance and China retains an ambiguous attitude towards the question of leadership. (See Acharya, Asia Rising, Chapter on ‘Can China Lead?’) Deng Xiaoping’s dictum that “China should not lead” continues to be echoed in China’s recent reluctance to take the lead in allowing its ample financial resources play a direct role in alleviating the impact of the global financial crisis. Hence the argument from President Hun Jintao:

The Chinese economy is increasingly interconnected with the global economy…China’s sound economic growth is in itself a major contribution to global financial stability and economic growth. This is why we must first and foremost run our own affairs well. (Japan Times 11 November 2008)

China has been less reticent in assuming a regional leadership, as exemplified in its promotion of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) and the East Asian Community. But even here China has been a cautious exponent, backtracking in the face of resistance to any real or imagined effort on its past to drive the membership and agenda of the larger East Asian institutions.

No comparable conceptual discourse underpins Japan’s attitude towards global governance today, at least at the official level. One possible exception is the idea ‘normal statehood’ for Japan promoted by Koizumi and elaborated by Japanese scholars such as Takashi Inoguchi. Koizumi’s purpose was strategic, i.e. to use the concept to counter and dilute some of the constitutional limits on Japanese diplomacy and power projection at a time when Japan was under pressure to do more for the US-Japan alliance, than to use it as the basis of redefining Japanese approach to global governance. But as a Japanese ambassador to Canada, comparing normal state with the notion of ‘middle power’, put it, ‘a "normal state" meant a state that is not only interested in its own security and prosperity, but also contributes proactively to international peace, security and prosperity.’ Inoguchi finds links Japan’s normal state quest with its desire and capacity ability to provide leadership in global governance. As he put it, ‘The globalization of governance entails more integrated markets, the global diffusion of military weapons, and the global permeation of public elite culture…Astute, articulate and agile leaders must always be mindful of domestic audiences and yet must act globally – and decisively.” This requires Japan to move beyond its post-war constitutional constraints. Importantly, Inoguchi cites the Japanese naval deployment to the Indian Ocean to support US operations in West Asia as one example of normal statehood, along side regional trade negotiations.

When he was foreign minister, the current Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso spoke of Japan as a “thought leader” of Asian regionalism, hence of regional governance. Another former foreign minister, Taro Nakayama, actually brokered ideas about turning the ASEAN Post-Ministerial Conferences into the ASEAN Regional Forum, but he was drawing on ideas already circulating in Asia-Pacific second track dialogues than espousing an entirely original formula. Japanese contribution to concepts of regional governance has been more substantive; Japanese intellectuals such as Professor Kojima were pioneers of the Pacific Community concept in the 1970s and 80s. The 1997 Japanese proposal to develop an Asian Monetary Fund (which some saw as a challenge to the authority of the IMF) might seem to have been an exception, but the Japanese initiative faded quickly in the face of strong US opposition. Japan has actively sought a permanent seat in the UN Security Council, and is willing to collaborate with India (whom it has in the past defeated in a bid for a temporary seat), but its is not clear whether this move reflects a any genuine desire to change the basic rules of the global multilateral system or simply to win itself due recognition for its abundant financial and other contributions to the UN system. Takashi Inoguchi (in Acharya and Buzan, 2007) is right in arguing that Japan has “become one of the major rule makers relinquishing the role of a rule taker in global governance in a number of policy areas.” Among the niche areas he identifies in the academic arena are attempts to reconcile different conceptions of human rights, developing “rules and norms of transnational business transactions”, and peaceful uses of nuclear energy. But none of these represents a fundamental rethinking of the contemporary global governance structure. In short, Japan continues to be a conformist status quo power. And in the current global financial turmoil, while Japan has offered to strengthen the IMF’s coffers, Premier Aso, like the Chinese leadership, has indicated that ‘Japan’s primary responsibility lies in invigorating its own economy…this would be the most immediately effective contribution that Japan can deliver.” (Japan Times, 11 November 2008)

In India’s case, the demise of non-alignment has not been replaced by any broad organising framework, developed at official or academic levels, to describe and guide its international relations. In his Crossing the Rubicon, C. Raja Mohan argued that India under the BJP government might be reverting to a Curzonian view of geopolitics, replacing Nehruvian idealism. The Curzonian approach assumed Indian centrality in Asia, and envisaged a proactive Indian role in staibilizing Asia as a whole. The end of the BJP government might have slowed if not ended that transition, but Indian power projection in both western and eastern Indian Ocean areas is growing. But while India will not revert to non-alignment, even under a Sino-US bipolar system should it materialise, Nehruvian thinking is not entirely dead or out of date in India. I would argue that Nehruvian thinking, if not his approach to China, partly explains why India, while implicitly embracing the role of a ‘regional balancer” vis-à-vis China, avoids any outright containment of China or offers unconditional support to the US strategic framework vis-à-vis China.

Indian conceptions of global governance are likely to reflect its interest in legitimising its relative power position in the international system that comes through respectable growth rates, info-tech power, nuclear weapons capability and space dreams (now a partial reality). Like Japan, India has sought a permanent seat in the UN Security Council, a dream that seems destined to remain unfulfilled for some time. It has done better through the G-20 forum, but even there, there does not seem to be any obvious Indian ideas or imprint that may inspire the reform and restructuring of the global multilateral order.

Within Asia itself, India has returned to the fold of Asian regionalism, but in stark contrast to the Nehru era, India’s role today is that of a follower, rather than as a leader. And its regional involvement is much stronger in its economic dimension than in its political and security one, even though it remains excluded from APEC.

Although China, Japan and India are among the biggest players in the global economy today and they are also rapidly developing their military power, Asia continues to offer little leadership in world affairs. The present economic crisis may enable China, India and even Indonesia to assume a greater role in global economic governance through their participation in the G-20. But whether the G-20 will develop concrete institutional capacity or even emerge as a viable and permanent global institution sharing decision-making and agenda-setting powers from the G-7 and the Bretton Woods institutions is far from clear.

Nor is there any natural leader of Asia in managing the region’s own economic and security problems. Legitimacy deficit (sometimes for historical reasons, e,g, pre-war Japanese imperialism, communist Chinese subversion, and Indian diplomatic arrogance) and mutual rivalry, if not resource capacity, prevent Japan, China and India from assuming leadership in dealing with common challenges such as terrorism, climate change, pandemics and internal conflicts.

For example, China, largely out of strategic considerations, has not been supportive of the bids by India and Japan to acquire a permanent seat in the UN Security Council. If Europe can have two members of UNSC, (and a third, Germany, whose membership is not objected to by France and Britain), why not Asia? After all, such a development would be supportive of China’s own ‘multi-polarization’ concept.

Finally, Asian thinking on global governance can not be isolated from the development of Asian regional governance. There is a general sense in Asia that regional institutions here are distinctive from those in Europe, in the sense that they are more informal and non-legalistic. There is general agreement among the Asian participants to keep Asian multilateral institutions loose and sovereignty-bound. But differences exist over membership of regional institutions, especially the East Asian Summit and the idea of an East Asian Community. Japan opposed China’s desire to keep the EAS exclusively East Asian, and in response, China is seeking to develop an East Asian Community out of the ASEAN Plus Three, rather than the broader EAS. While Asian regional groups have performed better in engaging China than their European counterparts in engaging Russia (See author’s keynote speech, ‘Regional Worlds in a Post-Hegemonic Era,’ to the 3rd GARNET Annual Conference, Bordeaux, 17-20 September 2008), there remains significant doubts about their ability to cope with global and transnational challenges without a significant shift to the neo-Westphalian mindset of their leadership.

Conclusion

“China, Japan can help by helping themselves’, ran the headline of a Japan Times commentary by journalist Frank Ching on Chinese and Japanese responses to the latest global financial crisis (Japan Times, 11 November 2008). (Admittedly, why should they go out of their way to correct a crisis caused by America’s folly?) These responses are remarkably revealing. What they tell us is that while Asian conceptions of international relations are no longer a defensive or confrontational reaction to Western dominance, there is a perceptible and growing gap between Asia’s rise in terms of the traditional power indices of international relations and its role in global governance. The gap may be explained partly by resentment against Western resistance to the desire of Asian countries to increase their influence over global institutions commensurate with their rise in the global power structure. But it is a fair guess whether a larger say over global institutions will yield a great willingness on the part of Asian powers to go beyond their ‘helping others by helping themselves” mindset. There is also little question that intra-Asian differences and rivalries stifle Asia’s bid to assume a greater share of the leadership in the global governance structure.

Changing national role conceptions, such as China’s ‘multi-polarization’ and ‘peaceful rise’, Japan’s ‘normal state’, and more questionably, India’s shift from Nehru to Curzon, are not authentic concepts of global governance, but are efforts at redefining the status of these Asian powers in the emerging international order. Such conceptual thinking is closely tied to the power aspirations and policy imperatives of the Asian great powers. The desire for increasing its representation in, and share of leadership of, global institutions is growing in Asia. But with few exceptions, there is no coherent Asian thinking on global governance and the equivalent of the European discourse that redefines EU’s global role as that of a ‘normative power’. For such a role conception to develop, Asia needs to overcome its internal divisions and competition, and engage in greater self-reflection and long-term conceptual debate and thinking. There is no unitary Asian view of international relations and there never will be one. But ideas found in the writings of some of the people at this workshop, such as The New Asian Hemisphere or The Quest for World Order (which outlines Tommy Koh’ ‘pragmatic idealism’), and what might emerge from the ST Lee project may be an excellent step in exploring a more proactive and positive conception of Asia’s role in global governance.

(This is a synopsis only. References to be provided later)