Europe’s existential nightmare has come alive; a seething young population of angry and dissatisfied Muslims just across the Mediterranean in increasingly unstable states. Europe made the strategic error of assuming that its support for the autocratic pro-Western regimes of Presidents Ben Ali and Mubarak in Tunisia and Egypt would enable them to carry on forever. But by bottling up change, these two regimes instead unleashed political volcanoes that exploded on Europe’s doorstep. And Libya, no matter how it ends, will exacerbate the political instability.
These political explosions are another powerful reason why Europe should re-examine its Asian policies. The biggest strategic flaw in the EU’s policies towards Asia is the assumption that these policies can continue on autopilot, even when the world is changing rapidly and Asia keeps rising so steadily.
Just look at how dramatically Europe’s and Asia’s roles have reversed in the past 20 years. When the Cold War ended the EU was overcome with political hubris. I was present when in 1991 the then EU Commission President confidently pontificated at an ASEAN-EU meeting that after the Cold War only two superpowers remained: the US and the EU. What arrogance! And then in 1997/8 the Europeans enjoyed a moment of schadenfreude as the rapidly emerging East Asian economies crashed in the Asian financial crisis.
Now the shoe is on the other foot. The eurozone economies are struggling to emerge from the Western financial crisis (yes, the Western financial crisis of 2007/9). Some EU states face the danger of defaulting and the euro’s fate is uncertain. But while the eurozone was struggling, China’s economy grew by 9% in 2010, India’s by about 8% and Singapore’s economy grew by almost 15%.
Yet even while power shifted rapidly to Asia, the EU strategic documents on Asia published in 1994, 2001 and 2007 continued with the same tone and content as though nothing fundamental had changed in the strategic balance between Europe and Asia. A great deal of European condescension towards Asia drips through their pages; just look at how its Regional Programme for Asia strategy document (2007-2013) described the political situation in Asia: “The region is also characterised by: the emergence of two dominant powers (China and India) in an unstable region; security challenges and the fragile situation in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal; large refugee and migratory flows; the risk of nuclear proliferation; problems with democratisation and respect for human rights; lack of adherence to labour standards; unemployment, against the background of significant demographic challenges; the potential scale of natural disasters, as well as health threats (Avian Influenza, HIV/AIDS); and the extent of environmental degradation and related global threats.”
This analysis is not wrong. The glass remains half-empty in Asia, but look too at how the situation has improved. Despite the rapid emergence of the new powers, the region remains geo-politically stable. ASEAN continues to outperform the EU geo-politically by bringing all the great powers into new concentric circles of cooperative engagement. To understand how much more geo-politically stable the East Asian region looks, the EU should ask itself the simple question of whether it would feel more secure if it had governments like those of Indonesia, Brunei and Malaysia at its doorstep rather than the current regimes of Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. Doesn’t this indicate that the time has come for the EU to learn some geo-political lessons from Asia?
Continue reading the full article at Europe's World, a partner of atlantic-community.org.
Kishore Mahbubani is Dean and Professor in the Practice of Public Policy of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. He previously served for 33 years in Singapore's diplomatic service and is recognised as an expert on Asian and world affairs.
- 8
September 9, 2011
Bernhard Lucke, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Platinum Contributor (503)
With regard to Europe's Arab neighbours, we have in my opinion afforded too long a comfortable and pessimistic policy of cooperation that was characterized by only lukewarm interest in our Arab partners, and by general prejudice against Islam. Due to our missing interest and prejudice, we were all to happy accepting the simplified black-and-white images presented by the regimes, and dared not to ask too many uncomfortable questions. Thus Europe was largely caught by surprise when the pot exploded that had long cooked, although westerners working with the real people in the region said since long that sooner or later the regimes would not be able to continue. But nobody could know when the change would happen.
Although Asians might not like it that Europeans are not very interested in their view, this is largely due to the dominant role played by the U.S. in world policies. I would say the main frontiers of discussion run along this frontier: Europeans being more ready to accept the complexity and greyish colours of international relations, but the U.S. more ready to get involved, and more optimistic about the outcomes.
I would say a mixture of both could be optimal: More readiness by the western partners to get involved, but with a more differentiated view of the countries and policies. If we can achieve a better mixture of these, both messianic crusades and desinterested, pessimistic idleness would be disqualified from the beginning and a more realistic foreign policy could be carried out. If we'd take advice by other partners such as southeast Asians more into consideration, that would certainly help to further improve the outcomes.