Wednesday, February 1, 2006

By Shin Yoon Hwan, Professor at Sogang University, Seoul

In December, three important summit meetings were held back-to-back in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. One of them, the East Asia Summit (EAS), was a historic, inaugural meeting with 16 leaders from countries within and outside East Asia.

The other two, ASEAN and ASEAN+3 (China, Japan, and Korea), were much more significant. Besides the multilateral meetings, leaders from 16 countries and Russia, which was in­vited as a guest and prospective member of EAS, were busy meeting one another freely through bilateral arrangements.

Korean President Roh Moo-hyun spent seven days in Kuala Lumpur; perhaps his longest stay in a foreign country during his tenure. He not only attended three multilateral meetings-ASEAN+3, EAS and ASEAN+1 but also took that opportu­nity to share and exchange views and ideas with the prime ministers of China, India and New Zealand. Immediately be­fore and after the Kuala Lumpur summits, he paid state visits to Malaysia and the Philippines to deepen mutual understand­ing and broaden cooperation. Roh's weeklong voyage into "southern diplomacy" was fervent enough to warm the December chill back in Korea.

In what has always been the case, what Korea earned from this particular series of summit meetings looks much greater than what it may have lost. In nearly all of the documents pro­duced after those meetings, in which the Korean president and ministers participated, the support by East Asian leaders for a peaceful solution to the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula was mentioned.

ASEAN also accepted one of Korea's longtime demands with an "agreement in principle to the inclusion of products from the Gaeseong Industrial Complex in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) in the AKFTA (ASEAN-Korea Free Trade Area)." The basic agreement reached to establish this ASEAN-Korea FTA and the decision on a deadline to hammer out differences by 2006 on specifics were the substantial gains collected from the southern voyage.

As regards the AKFTA, agreement on trade in goods had been concluded a few days before, and those on such specifics as trade in services and investments had been put aside for fur­ther negotiations, which were targeted to be concluded by June 2006, at latest. According to a study by the Korean Institute for International Economic Policy (KIEP), the expected effects of AKFTA are tremendous: 1.07-percent increase in gross do­mestic product (GDP) and I.96-percent increase in total ex­port.

Korea's relationship with ASEAN has been from the begin­ning very relaxing, cooperative and positive, which is in fine contrast to those with great powers involved in Northeast Asia. At the 9th ASEAN-Korea (ASEAN+I) Summit, nearly all of the ASEAN leaders expressed their gratitude for Korea's con­tributions to their economic development and its work in bridging the economic gap in Southeast Asia by supporting the Initiative for ASEAN Integration (IAI). They also showered compliments for Korea's information and communication technology (ICT) and genetic science and biotechnology. They showed amazement at the recent high wave of Korean popular culture sweeping throughout East Asia. One can hard­ly remember when and where a Korean president has ever heard so many thanks and eulogies from national leaders. Roh's proposal made at the ASEAN+3 Summit to appoint a particular week for the East Asia week was accepted and later confirmed by the summit's Chairman's Statement. Malaysia's Premier Abdullah Badawi who chaired the ASEAN+3 said the East Asia week would "promote, among others, arts and cul­ture, awareness about East Asia cooperation and foster people-­to-people bonds."

The ASEAN+3, or East Asia in general, provides Korea with a wider space to exert greater economic and strategic leverage, as compared with any other institutional frameworks that bind the sub-region of East Asia. Within the confines of Northeast Asia, Korea would be given limited options in for­eign security and economic policy-making. Those options could be further reduced by a number of constants and vari­ables monopolized or manipulated by superpowers like the United States and China. In Northeast Asia, Korea, despite its wishes and claims, would be unable to find an ally or a partner in the truest sense of the word, but only potential patrons, "elder brothers," or "big brothers." It is also true that the cen­tury-long Sino-Japan rivalry and the intra-Korean conflict have persisted to make it very difficult to create a win-win sit­uation.

It is against this backdrop that Korea needs to take a closer look at East Asia and ASEAN+3. More than 2 billion people live in East Asia, or 32 percent of the world's population. The GDPs and exports of the member countries account for about 20 percent of the world totals. The region also consists mostly of rapidly growing economies, whose complementarities are, in turn, very high. Its resources, both natural and human, are not only rich but also variegated, and its market is already big and growing. Its regional organization. ASEAN+3 is still young, but it has matured as fast as the economy and democra­tic reforms. Within only eight years of existence, ASEAN+3 has already been engaged in hundreds of activities and pro­jects, which have produced a complex web of numerous re­gional networks.

Different from the APEC, which is a loose "forum for facil­itating economic growth, cooperation, trade and investment in the Asia-Pacific region," ASEAN+3 is a regional grouping or organization that promotes cooperation and integration in not only economic but also political and socio-cultural areas. It aims to develop into an East Asian Community (EAC), where peace, prosperity and progress prevail. It is not only commit­ted to economic growth and free trade and investment but also is interested in narrowing the digital divide and developmental gaps. The leaders of ASEAN+3 are pursuing a common goal while possessing the spirit of "community."

Since 2002, the 13-member countries of ASEAN+3 have agreed on 26 measures, ranging from economic and social to cultural and educational issues. It has rather ambitiously em­barked on their implementation. Government officials from the 13-member nations meet 49 times every year to manage ASEAN+3 businesses at the so-called Track 1 level. When Tracks 1.5 and 2 are included, the number of meetings, work­shops and seminars held for the last three years in conjunction with ASEAN+3 and the East Asian community adds up to as many as 350. The regional, ASEAN FTA (AFTA) and the three bilateral FTAs between ASEAN and the Plus Three countries, when realized, will result in a fundamental transformation of regional order. Aside from questions regarding effi­ciency, the frequency of communication and the speed of insti­tutionalization will lead ASEAN+3 to a stage close to the EAC much earlier than originally expected.

For Korea, ASEAN and ASEAN+3 hold special meaning. History's first meeting among the leaders of China, Japan and Korea was realized in the ASEAN Summit eight years ago. In the following two years, the meeting became a regular occur­rence, although it was aborted at the 2005 summit because of Koizumi's continual visits to the Yasukuni Shrine. The ASEAN Regional Forum (ARE), the only security arrange­ment both North and South Korea participated in prior to the Six-Party Talks, has also been initiated by ASEAN. Ever since Korea became a founding member of ASEAN+3, the co­-members have supported Korea's position and policies on North Korean issues.

Korea has played more than its part in the development of ASEAN+3. In fact, its role was pivotal in the formative stage of ASEAN+3. Former Korean President Kim Dae Jung served as the Northeast Asian counterpart to Malaysia's former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad in their joint contribution in bringing the two sub-regions of East Asia together. He suc­cessfully proposed the organization of scholars and experts, and then, policymakers to draft and review documents that have the visions and strategies for cooperation and integration in East Asia. The second document, the "Final Report of the East Asian Study Group" (EASG), was later "consecrated" to become the "Bible" for East Asian leaders.

How has ASEAN+3 been able to develop and prosper?

It is true that ASEAN+3 has survived and grown thanks to both the powerful member countries like China and Japan and poor and powerless countries, such as the ASEAN. ASEAN's position in the process of building up ASEAN+3 is described in varied terms that nevertheless mean identical notions: "the driving force," "the central pillar" and "the region's hub," among others.

To put it more concretely, only an ASEAN-member coun­try should take the chairmanship of ASEAN+3, and the sum­mit meetings should be only held in ASEAN-member coun­tries. Chairmanships should not be given out to China, Japan or Korea, nor should ASEAN+3 summit meeting be held in Beijing, Tokyo or Seoul.

This may sound unfair to Northeast Asian countries, but the rule has proven to be wise enough to prevent the region from turning into a battleground for hegemony, which had been true until the Cold War era. The coherence and wisdom of ASEAN shined brightly on Dec. 14, when the inaugural meeting of the EAS decided to abide by the same rule that had been applied to ASEAN+3. ASEAN will take the "driver's seat," while the other six members, including India, Australia and New Zealand, new faces on the scene, will play a "significant role" in community building.

Now that the tensions associated with the North Korean nu­clear issue appear to have been mitigated, it is time for the Korean government to reflect on its Asian foreign policy and prepare to be an active participant in ASEAN+3 and the new EAS. ASEAN is indeed ready to welcome Korea as a true partner in the construction of tomorrow's Asia.

TEXT COURTESY: JANUARY 2006 KOREA POLICY REVIEW. Embassy of ROK in Nepal-ed

Citizenship and Good Democratic Government

Ralph Ketcham

In a recent seminar at an American university, a participant from Vietnam was asked to respond to political scientist Robert Dahl's view of democracy: that it be routinely responsive to the people, who "are free to develop and use peaceful means to criticize, pressure, and replace leadership." In Dahl's analysis, leaders are obliged to pay attention and respond to the varied voices and needs of the people, expressed not only through representative institutions, but through all the other peaceful ways—petitions, demonstrations, lobbying, advocating, etc.—available in a free and liberal society.

Political scientist John Mueller contributes to the discussion by explaining that the responsibilities of citizenship are minimal. "Democracy is really quite easy—any dimwit can do it. ... People do not need to be good or noble, but merely to calculate their best interests, and if so moved, to express them." Generally apathetic and self-interested, democratic citizens need only to be able to assess reality and calculate their advantage to do their duty. The desire to pursue ideals, seek the public good, or otherwise be noble is, luckily, as unnecessary as it is largely absent from human motivation.

So how does the Vietnamese student respond? Does he see this concept of democracy and citizenship, often extolled as operational in the United States and other "mature" democracies, as a model for his country? "Absolutely not," he says, explaining his response in terms that echo a richer, stronger conception of citizenship and an understanding of democracy well beyond the procedural emphasis in the model of which he wanted no part. The idea of citizenship he had in mind was more public-spirited, resting on a different assessment of human capacity to think and act with public concerns deliberately in view. It also supposed that democratic government might work more in the "good and noble" ways disdained by the idea that democracy "is really quite easy," and thus requires simply the self-interested access of all in some conflict-of-interest or politics-of-identity model.

The more public-spirited model of citizenship required going far beyond the various self-interested activities of voting, organizing, lobbying, demonstrating, and joining parties and special interest groups. Such activities are to be expected of members of a free society and, of course, are not to be prohibited. They express what British political theorist Harold Laski (1893-1950) called "the inexpugnable variety of human wills; ... a multiplicity of wills which have no common purpose." The "latent causes" of this variety of wills, leading to "factions," U.S. President James Madison (1751-1836) observed, "are . . . sown in the nature of man, and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society." Thus, diverse people in a free society would be encouraged in self-expression, creativity, and the pursuit of happiness and prosperity. There would be political benefit, as well, from the various interests (the more, the better) being compelled to interact and compromise with each other in ways that would prevent a tyrannical dominance by any one faction, or even coalition of factions: the blessings of a free, inclusive, varied, open, equitable society.

To the Vietnamese student, and to Madison as well, though, this was not wrong or to be prohibited or even discouraged, but rather was incomplete, and it was not really citizenship or meaningful government by consent at all. Citizenship required most fundamentally what 18th-century civic republican thinking understood as the only essential political virtue: that participants in government, leaders or commoners, at national or local levels, have the public good at least partially in mind, rather than seeking only partial, factional, or selfish ends. To be citizens, members of the polity required in some degree this public perspective beyond the self- or group-interested one, beyond the right to pursue private interests, which as dwellers in a free society, they, of course, possessed as well.

THE CITIZEN'S "DOUBLE OFFICE"

The public interest, in a way, rested on interest in the public, the capacity of every citizen, as Fukuzawa Yukichi instructed his countrymen in Meiji era Japan (1868-1911) as the nation sought to understand western democracy, to hold "a double office." Of course, as good subjects of the realm had always been obliged to do, the "new citizen" would obey the laws and follow the customs of the land, but as citizens they also held an office as participants in government. This required, Fukuzawa told his students at Keio University, that they develop a "spirit of independence," attend to public affairs, and take part as discussants, voters, organizers, and officials in the nation's public business. Thus they should "plan ... an undertaking for the benefit of the nation, write about and circulate your ideas to the public... and be eager to work for your country." Above all, they should "acquire good judgment" to fulfill their office as citizen. Though it would be nearly a century before much of the Japanese polity would seek to embody these precepts, Fukuzawa clearly had in mind an office of citizenship far richer than the "minimal citizenship" called for in the conflict-of-interest model becoming dominant in the West.

American statesman Benjamin Franklin had much the same conception in mind when he told the Constitutional Convention of 1787, as it considered a proposal to "restrain the right of suffrage to freeholders," that the key factor to keep in mind on qualification to vote was "the virtue and public spirit of our common people." Thus he was skeptical of the freehold restraint because many non-freeholders might possess virtue and public spirit. Non-property holding sons of farmers, soldiers who had fought patriotically in the American Revolution, and artisans and tradesmen would, as examples, all likely be responsible voters and citizens. Another delegate explained "that every man having evidence of attachment to and permanent common interest with the society ought to share in all its rights and privileges." Wealth and property ownership were poor markers for this essential quality, he noted. Furthermore, the experience of taking part in government, especially at the local level, would likely enlarge the public spirit of the common people and thus be a sort of training in becoming good citizens. Franklin disliked, he said, "every thing that tended to debase the spirit of the common people," as he thought denying them suffrage would do. (Note, too, that none of Fukuzawa's or Franklin's criteria would exclude women, slaves, blacks, 18-year-olds, or Anglo-Americans, all generally denied suffrage and full citizenship in 18th-century America, once those categories would be understood as possessing the qualities of intelligence, reason, and political capacity, denied in them in 18th-century understanding. Full citizenship would necessarily apply, under the republican ideology of Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and other founders of the United States, as anthropological and cultural understandings of race, class, and gender progressed in later centuries. Every extension of the franchise over the next two centuries to blacks, women, former slaves, 18-year-olds (and in Britain to Catholics) occurred when those categories, formerly held not to have the requisite political intelligence and maturity, were (finally) understood to possess those capacities.)

Attention to these essential qualities of citizenship undergirded, of course, a rationale for democratic government quite different from that sustained in the minimal, conflict-of-interest model. It attended to both of the leading ideals of the American Declaration of Independence (1776): that all were created equal and endowed with unalienable rights and that governments derived "their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed." The Declaration of Independence further stated as the first "injury and usurpation" of the king of Great Britain that "he has refused his Assent to Laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public Good." That is, an essential part of a self-governing polity was that citizens must somehow be able to give their consent, express their thoughtful agreement to validate the acts of government, and that in justice no authority could stand between that consent and the enactment of laws "wholesome and necessary for the public good." Without this active and constructive participation, citizens would be regarded, as Pericles had explained more than two millennia earlier in Athens, "not as unambitious but as useless." Any dimwit, that is, cannot do it; Athenians "are able to judge and instead of looking on discussion as a stumbling block in the way of action [mere clashing factions?], we think it an indispensable preliminary to any wise action at all."

To sustain this high ideal of citizenship it would be necessary to attend to many aspects of life if self-government were to be good government. How can this be? First, the polity must be free of foreign domination or domestic oppression; hence the energy for hundreds of revolutions against tyranny across time and around the world. But even if "successful" in defeating one tyrant (English Puritans and Cromwell in 1649; Russian communists and Lenin in 1917-1921; Ho Chi Minh in 1953 and 1975; in another way, even American arms versus Saddam Hussein in 2003, etc.), the problem remains of achieving good self-rule. American diplomat George Kennan noted in 1993 that of the many "disservices" of the Soviet regime to Russian society, one of the worst was "the fact that it left, as it departed, a people so poorly qualified [note that word] to displace it with anything better." The huge attention to and literature on this difficult and portentous question has been at the heart of discussions of citizenship, civil society, and good government at least since the time of Pericles and Aristotle, and including, especially in the United States, from Franklin's worries in 1787, to writer Alexis de Tocqueville's qualms about majority rule in the 1830s, to post-Darwinian arguments by social scientists that all government was simply self-interested groups struggling for power, and to contemporary concerns about the existence or creation of "social capital." So again, what habits, what state of mind, what institutions might nourish the "virtue and public spirit" vital to the citizenry of aspiring, "transitional," and mature democracies alike?

EDUCATION FOR CITIZENSHIP

Proponents of good government from Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, and Erasmus to John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, Horace Mann, John Dewey, and Vaclav Havel have been teachers, writers, and philosophers of education, intent on assuring that those who governed would be prepared for that demanding, public-spirited, and morally attuned task. All argue, as well, that rule by those not-so-qualified leads to bad government, whatever the number of people ruling. Aristotle's classic analysis that government by one, a few, or the many could be good as in monarchy, aristocracy, or constitutional polity, or it could be bad as in tyranny, oligarchy, or democracy (mob rule under sway of demagogues in his meaning). The distinction is not how many rule, but how well they rule. In a way, the problem becomes much more complicated, but no less important, when the number ruling is enlarged from one or a few to, as in a democracy, the largest number, all the citizens.

Thomas Jefferson, an author of the Declaration of Independence and the third U.S. president, proposed in 1776 that in the newly independent, self-governing state of Virginia there should be general (even universal) education, so that all "would be qualified to understand their rights, to maintain them, and to exercise with intelligence their parts in self-government." American educator Horace Mann made the same point in 1848 when he argued that all should be taxed to support public schools, "because the general prevalence of ignorance, superstition, and vice, will breed Goth and Vandal at home, more fatal [in a democracy] to the public well-being than any Goth or Vandal from abroad." John Dewey's long career in the first half of the 20th century, linking democracy and education and seeking to transform American schools into "laboratories of democracy" where students would practice and "learn by doing" the attitudes and skills of democratic government, extended the same intention: Self-government, at any level, would work well and yield good results (in the public interest) only if the practitioners, from abroad or native-born, were educated (educed; drawn forth) to that responsibility.

Thus a system of schools and universities, public and/or private, with courses of study deliberately attuned to the encouragement of responsible citizenship and public-spirited leadership, is essential to good democratic government. Indeed, in some Asian societies, particularly, this equation has seemed so central that it has been thought necessary to defer democratic practices, people taking part in government, until all have been trained to literacy and attuned to questions of government by public discussion. Then it made sense that they be given the franchise; they would be qualified citizens rather than obedient subjects as had traditionally been their role. South Korea, Malaysia, and even China have exhibited this priority in their approaches to self-government, as did Japan in its first considerations of democracy.

THE RESPONSIBLE CITIZEN

At the conclusion of a study of the thought and career of Vaclav Havel, former president of the Czech Republic, Paul Berman in 1997 noted Havel's observation that even with much talk about human rights, laws, constitutions, and nongovernmental organizations, many countries "yet fail to achieve very much democracy. And why was that?" "It is because," Berman draws from Havel, "democracy requires a certain kind of citizen. It requires citizens who feel responsible for something more than their own well-feathered little corner; citizens who want to participate in society's affairs, who insist on it; citizens with backbones; citizens who hold their ideas of democracy at the deepest level" (what Pericles meant when he termed inactive citizens "useless"). The "certain kind of citizen" required for good democratic government is morally grounded in personal character and in concern for the public good, which leads to virtuous, public-spirited conduct at all levels of social discourse, including family, local affairs, national responsibility, and worldwide concern for peace and justice.

If this seems an impossible idealistic conception, unsuited to human nature, it may not be any more unrealistic than supposing that everything works out for the best when diverse and inclusive self-interests are simply allowed to clash in a conflict-of-interest, minimal citizenship model of public life. Furthermore, the public-spirited model requires that citizens with private interests also possess and modulate an understanding of and concern for the public good. This model also assumes that some self-interest is an indelible part of human life and will always exist in some degree in human conduct, but that this is a quality to be restrained or disciplined, not celebrated, in private as well as public life. It accepts further that some human beings accomplish this restraint and modulation better than others (examples of this diversity, of course, abound in the histories of all people), and that social habits, religion, cultural values, and education can have a significant effect on how this works in any given society. A combination of the influences of family values, social capital, media practices, schools, and political leadership can impact the quality of public life in any nation—and the beneficent impact, in terms of public spirit, can be felt microcosmically at any time or any place whenever a citizen develops and acts upon that spirit.

The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. government.

Text courtesy: Ejournal 2005 December. American Center, Kathmandu