The 35th Policy Plenary Meeting on“The Recent Development and Future Challenges
in the Regional Cooperation in Politics andSecurity”
October 28, 2009
The 35th Policy Plenary Meeting of the Council on East Asian Community (CEAC)
was held on October 28 at the conference room of the Japan Forum on International
Relations, to discuss ʺThe Recent Development and Future Challenges in the Regional
Cooperation in Politics and Security.ʺ Dr. FUKUSHIMA Akiko, a member of CEAC andSenior Fellow of the Japan Foundation, made keynote report, which was followed by anactive exchange of views among members of CEAC. Dr. FUKUSHIMA stated as follows:
Discussion on East Asia community building in politico‐security field had lost its
steam after the first East Asia Summit. This does not reflect the interest lost in the concept.
Rather, instead of debating the concept of a community, East Asian countries havepromoted actual functional cooperation on trade, finance and non‐traditional security
challenges including pandemic, disaster relief, environmental protection, and foodsecurity.
When Prime Minister Hatoyama immediately after taking office in September 2009
proposed an East Asian community (EAc) based on his concept of Yuai, fraternity at theUN General Assembly and subsequent bilateral and multilateral meetings, this proposal
prompted active debate on regional architectures in Asia. His vision of an East Asia
community seems to be in the making at the time of this writing but the basic tone of hisspeech was the promotion of functional cooperation including security agenda which is inaccord with the policy recommendations presented by CEAC in its Policy Report in 2005.
While Japan was perceived as not forthcoming in leading regionalism or at best isleading from behind due to its history problem, Prime Minister Hatoyama faced the history
problem squarely in his speeches and was straightforward in proposing an East Asia

community. His speeches have certainly removed the criticism on Japan’s lack of initiativein East Asia regionalism.
Meanwhile, in the past two decades after the Cold War, Asia which was known tobe void of regional architectures is now crowded with numerous regional architectures forpolitico‐security cooperation, such as ASEAN plus frameworks including ASEAN+3, East
Asia Summit, ASEAN Regional Forum, ADMM as well as APEC, and new trilateralframeworks such as Japan‐China‐Korea. And yet proposals for new architectures do notcease. Most prominently Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has proposed an
Asia‐Pacific community (APc) as a single institution to cover both economy and security.
The challenges of the regional cooperation in East Asia in political and security areas
are how to overcome the differences in political and security regimes and values. The mostprominent architecture of regional cooperation for traditional security is a web of bilateralalliances with the United States. Some of them are forming trilateral framework such as
Japan‐Australia‐US and Japan‐China‐Korea. On top of these, there are mechanisms forbroader security cooperation at track one and two levels. One of such framework is ARF,
which is evolving its function of confidence‐building. Other regional frameworks such as
ASEAN+3, East Asia Summit and APEC, as well as track 2 process such as Shangri‐La
provide venue for security dialogue. Under these frameworks substantial functional
cooperation is underway, more than commonly perceived.
ASEAN who has been a convening power in East Asia regionalism faces a questionof geographical footprint of regional architectures whether it should be East Asia or Asia
Pacific. With ASEAN Charter, ASEAN is moving towards a new phase of their regionalismwith a plan to create politico‐security, economy and cultural communities. ASEAN
welcomes the U.S. engagement in Asia, with the U.S. signing on TAC and its policy shift
toward Myanmar. Meanwhile US which also hosts APEC Leaders Meeting in 2011emphasizes the role of APEC as an architecture for regional cooperation in wider
Asia‐Pacific which also covers human security challenges such as food safety. With therenewed interests on Asia by the United States and aforementioned proposals for EAc andAPc, ASEAN is now exploring ways to make sure that they can keep their drivers’ seat forregionalism.
To conclude, as far as regional cooperation in politics and security in East Asia isconcerned, it is necessary to leverage not only bilateral frameworks, but also multilateralframeworks. Rather than choosing or creating a comprehensive architecture forcooperation at this point of time, we should let existing multilayered frameworks forregional cooperation to grow and to let the ones most effective to survive. Survival of thefittest. Especially, it is important to maintain cooperative relations in the area ofnon‐traditional security. Regional cooperation in Asia is certainly led by economic activities,
most notably by FTAs and EPAs. In order to make such cooperation sustainable, it isequally important to promote politico‐security cooperation. Traditional security would
require the current web of bilateral alliances, while non‐traditional security issues would
require transnational cooperation to ably cope with challenges. Multilateral architectures in
Asia when combined with bilateral layer of cooperation would work as a stabilizer of theregion.
Japan should strive to establish cooperative ties on a regional level as well as
bilateral ties though difficult a task as it is, there would be stabilizing effects as it could
have broadened diplomatic choices in the political and security areas. In addition to theoutcome, a process towards community building in politico‐security counts. It can turn
antipathy to empathy.
In response to the above reports, 18 members of CEAC joined in an active exchangeof views on the topic.