Asean as regional leader?

IF ONE had any doubts about the world being in the midst of a huge power shift, recent events should have dispelled them.

From Europeans appealing to China to save the euro to President Barack Obama arriving in Bali to lobby for Asian support, the transformation is evident.

Less clear is who will lead the world in the 21st century and how.

There is plenty of talk about the 21st century being an Asian century, featuring China, Japan and India.

These countries certainly seek an enhanced role in world affairs, including a greater share of decision-making authority in the governance of global bodies. But are they doing enough to deserve it?

The intervention in Libya, led by Britain and France, and carried out by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), says it all. There is no Nato in Asia, and there's unlikely to be one.

Imagining a scenario in which China, India and Japan come together to lead a coalition of the willing to force a brutally repressive regime out of power, or undertake any major peace and security operation in their neighbourhood, is implausible.

China and Japan are the world's second- and third-largest economies. India is sixth in purchasing-power parity terms.

China's defence spending has experienced double-digit annual growth during the past two decades. India was the world's largest buyer of conventional weapons last year.

Chinese, Indian and Japanese foreign-policy ideas have evolved. India has abandoned non-alignment. China has moved well past Maoist socialist internationalism. Japan pursues the idea of a "normal state" that can say yes to using force in multilateral operations.

But, unfortunately, these shifts have not led to greater leadership in global governance. National power ambitions and regional rivalries have restricted their contributions to global governance.

China has increased its participation in multilateralism and global governance, but not offered leadership. This is sometimes explained as a lingering legacy of Deng Xiaoping's caution about Chinese leadership on behalf of the developing world.

More telling is China's desire not to sacrifice its sovereignty and independence for the sake of multilateralism and global governance.

Chen Dongxiao of the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies calls China a "part- time leader" in selected areas of global affairs.

Japan's policy conception of a "normal state", initially presented as a way of reclaiming Japan's right to use force, but only in support of United Nations-sanctioned operations, may sound conducive to greater global leadership. But it also reflects it also reflects strategic motivations: to hedge against any drawdown of US forces in the region, and to counter the rise of China and the growing threat from North Korea.

Beset by chronic uncertainty in domestic leadership and a declining economy, Japan has not been a proactive global leader when it comes to crisis management.

Its response to the 2008 global financial crisis was a far cry from that to the 1997 crisis, when it took centre-stage and proposed the creation of a regional monetary fund.

In 2005, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asserted that "the 21st century will be an Indian century". In this ambition, India was praised by US presidents George W. Bush and Obama.

Yet, the Indian foreign-policy worldview has shifted in the direction of greater realpolitik. India is pursuing dominance of the maritime sphere, partly driven by a desire, encouraged by the US and South-east Asian countries, to assume the role of a regional balancer vis-a-vis China.

Like Japan, India has sought a permanent seat in the UN Security Council, a dream likely destined to remain unfulfilled for some time.

India has engaged in the Group of 20 forum, but has not presented obvious Indian ideas or imprints to inspire reform and restructuring of the global multilateral order.

Asia's role in global governance cannot be delinked from the question: Who leads Asia?

In Asia today, although Japan, China and India now have the resources, they still suffer from a deficit of regional legitimacy. This might be partly a legacy of the past - Japanese wartime role, Chinese subversion and Indian diplomatic high-handedness. But their mutual rivalry also prevents the Asian powers from assuming regional leadership singly or collectively.

Hence, regional leadership rests with a group of the region's weaker states: Asean. While Asean is a useful and influential voice in regional affairs, its ability to manage Asia - home to three of the world's four largest economies; four, excluding Russia, of the eight nuclear-weapon states; and the fastest-growing military forces - is by no means assured.

Greater engagement with regional forums is useful for the Asian powers to prepare for a more robust role in global governance. So many of the global problems - climate change, energy, pandemics, illegal migration and more - have Asian roots.

By jointly managing them at the regional level, Asian powers can limit their rivalries, secure neighbours' support, and gain expertise that could facilitate a substantive contribution to global governance from a position of leadership and strength.