A S I headed back recently to Europe’s unusually cold winter after a short visit to balmy Southeast Asia, it became clear that the world is indeed divided into two. Western nations are old, tired, mired in crisis and nervous about the future and a young, self-confident, optimistic and increasingly assertive Asia wants to keep growing and growing.
True, such assertions are simplistic. Not all of Europe is in decline and the US remains the world’s undisputed dominant power. Similarly, for all the ‘ascendant Asia’ hype, the continent is home to some of the world’s poorest nations as well as economic giants. Asia’s rich live side by side with the poor. Mediaeval and modern share a space as do democrats and autocrats. Rising China has little to do with poverty-stricken Laos or the security challenges facing Pakistan and Afghanistan.
And yet, there is little doubt that the ‘can do’ spirit of many Asian countries is inspiring.
At the Bali Democracy Forum (BDF) in Indonesia, I was happy not only to get away from the chilling cold weather in Brussels but also to get another taste of outward-looking and multicultural Indonesia. A few days later, back in Brussels, I watched EU leaders grapple with ways to tackle the crisis facing the single European currency, conscious that failure to send a strong and united message on the euro would further erode the credibility of the 27-nation bloc.
Of the two encounters, there is little doubt that the BDF made more of an impression. And not just because the opening session attended by Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was opened by beautiful dancing girls and exquisite music.
The BDF is no simple exercise in Indonesian PR. Launched in 2008 as the first intergovernmental forum in Asia on democracy, BDF aims to spread the message of democracy and moderation in Asia and beyond.
In Bali, President Yudhoyono or SBY as he is called, warned that uneven political development posed a threat to Asian security. Asians had so far focused almost exclusively on economic development but there was an “urgent need to overcome the ‘political development’ gap” as well. “If we don’t handle this carefully, this political development gap could cause trouble for development, create political instability and become a security threat to the region,” he said.
BDF participants agreed that democracy needs to be strengthened in Asia, but this should be ‘homegrown’ and not forced from the outside.
Indonesia is a founding member of the 10-nation Asean. As the bloc’s biggest economy, it has been keen to advance principles of democracy and human rights which it has championed since the fall of military strongman Suharto in 1998. The democracy forum is an initiative of Yudhoyono’s to encourage open discussion of democracy among the region’s disparate states.
This year’s forum was co-chaired by Yudhoyono and South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak who took time off from the crisis on the Korean peninsula to attend the Bali meeting. “Asia has emerged as an axis of world change; that’s why we have to cooperate across a number of responsibilities so that democracy and our economies can grow together,” Lee said. Representatives of some 70 countries attended the two-day meeting.
“Democracy is not enough for gaining prosperity because it must also be completed with rule of law, unity and hard work of the nation,” the Indonesian leader said, adding that there was “no single model of democracy” in the world. Meanwhile, back in Brussels, EU policymakers are hoping that 2011 will be a better year than 2010.
Undoubtedly, the euro crisis facing the bloc’s single currency will continue to cast a dark shadow in the new year, despite efforts by EU leaders at their summit in Brussels on Dec 16-17 to try and thrash out a coherent and coordinated response to defend the currency. But there’s more than the euro that ails Europe that has seen the 27-nation bloc falter in its relations with key global powers even as attention in Brussels has centred on the established of a new European foreign service, merging diplomats from the 27 EU states with Brussels-based EU officials.
The focus on the euro is about more than just the economies of Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain — the four countries generally believed to be worst hit by the crisis. As German Chancellor Angela Merkel pointed out, Europe needs to demonstrate to the outside world that “we all share the same goal, namely a stable Europe and a stable currency”.
EU leaders have agreed to make minor changes to the EU’s governing treaty to set up a permanent mechanism from mid2013 to solve sovereign debt problems. However, even as they struggle to put up a united front on the euro, few try and disguise the deep fissures that have emerged among EU nations. The German chancellor has been attacked from all sides, with EU policymakers berating Berlin for a seeming lack of solidarity and German opposition leaders at home accusing Merkel of dithering and populism.
Merkel and Germany’s popularity in the rest of the EU is at its lowest ebb in decades. Berlin’s opposition to a number of proposals for dealing with the euro crisis from Eurobonds to an increase in the euro zone’s bailout fund, has left many other member states questioning Germany’s solidarity with its struggling neighbours.
This is not to say that Europe is headed for immediate and automatic irrelevance and decline or that Asia’s economies will continue to be turbo-charged for all time to come. Both Asia and Europe face enormous pitfalls. For the moment, however, I’m betting on Asia and Asians to provide a better, brighter and bigger story in the new year. ¦ The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Brussels.
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