Other valuable forums and institutions have also emerged, some centred on ASEAN.  The way they all relate to each other is not yet clear.  Rudd is correct to point out that none of them deal with all the potential dimensions of cooperation.  Several do not span the Pacific and many do not include a new emerging economic giant, India.

Mr. Rudd’s speech subtly redefines the Asia Pacific region, reflecting new strategic interests.  Twenty years ago, the strategic task of APEC was seen as “bridging the Pacific” to bring the US into regular dialogue with China and the rest of East Asia.  Today’s challenge is to facilitate and accommodate a dramatic increase in the economic weight – and the consequent economic and political stature of the world’s two most populous nations.  The rapid rise of well over two billion people from low to middle income levels over just a few decades poses unprecedented technological and policy challenges.

Accordingly, the Prime Minister’s call for fresh collective thinking about the nature and scope of Asia Pacific cooperation is timely. We do need to have a clearer idea of where we want to be in 2020.  As he said we need :

Strong institutions that will underpin an open, peaceful, stable, prosperous and sustainable region,

that can address

collective challenges that no one country can address alone – and they help us develop a common idea of what those challenges are.

By re-launching the concept of an Asia Pacific Community, Rudd can accelerate the development of a genuine and comprehensive sense of community whose habitual operating principle is cooperation.  He notes that without a strong sense of shared interests, there remains a:

…risk of succumbing to the perception that future conflict within our region may somehow be inevitable.

There is growing regional as well as global concern about access to scarce resources such as raw materials, sources of energy and fresh water, combined with the urgent need for agreement on how to limit the accumulation of GHGs in the atmosphere.  Therefore, Rudd is quite right to warn of the risk of conflict.

To deal with these concerns, he calls for a regional institution which spans the entire Asia-Pacific region – including the United States, Japan, China India, Indonesia and the others in the region.  Such an institution should be able to engage in the full spectrum of dialogue, cooperation and action on economic and political matters and future challenges related to security.

Mr. Rudd’s speech emphasises that Asia Pacific community-building needs to be set in a global context to create a region which is open to the rest of the world, rather than seeking to shut ourselves off from it.

The speech shows an awareness of the complex issues he has raised.  He has asked the experienced and supremely well-connected diplomat, Richard Woolcott, to seek views on next steps from non-governmental as well as official sources.

It may be helpful to consider some of the complex issues that this new community would address and the approach to dealing with them.  Pedestrian considerations then intrude.  Are various potential dimension and features of community-building necessary, feasible or desirable?

For example, is it necessary, feasible or desirable to seek a single institution?  There are already many plurilateral forums in the Asia Pacific, competing for attention and for very scarce policy-making resources.  There may be merit in seeking to collapse these into one, but which one should give way to others?

If there is to be a single institution, what will be its nature?

Western Europe has opted for the EU, a treaty based organisation, with strong supra-national authority which has required members to cede very substantial sovereignty.  Membership has expanded from 6 to 27, but those wishing to join need to adopt a vast body of legislation and social norms designed by the existing members. The EU’s approach to economic cooperation is quite explicitly discriminatory and the EU is notorious (though not alone) for its opposition to WTO-wide genuine free trade in agricultural products and other labour-intensive products vital to the ability of the poorest to trade their way toward prosperity.

As early as the 1960s, it has been recognised that such an approach is quite inconsistent with the diversity and global interests of a region which, unlike Western Europe accounts, for more than half of global population, production and trade.

Experience has shown that successful cooperation in the Asia Pacific, including in ASEAN needs to be based on principles of openness, equality and evolution:

• Openness reflects the objective of open regionalism to ensure that decisions to promote the objectives of APEC are transparent and avoid any discrimination.
• Equality implies that activities should not only be of mutual benefit to all participants, but also combined with respect for diversity within the region.
• Evolution reflects a gradual, pragmatic and sustained process of voluntary cooperation, within which substantive cooperation will evolve through consensus-building.

The European approach is fundamentally at odds with the first two of these principles.

On the other hand, Western Europe did adopt an evolutionary approach, expanding the scope of cooperation and membership over several decades, based on a general but undefined objective of “ever-closer union” with no specific deadline. That accepts the reality that there is always more to be done. The EU has achieved a lot, but does not yet have a common security policy, energy policy or even free trade in services.

It may help the cause of cooperation in the Asia Pacific to reaffirm an evolutionary approach towards “an ever-increasing sense of community”, rather than seek some kind of nirvana by 2010, 2020 or even 2030.

The capacity to set achievable objectives depends on the scope of cooperation. One can wish for institutions which cover all aspects of regional cooperation ranging from security, economic and cultural cooperation and which include as many participants as possible. But it is hard to reconcile cooperation by many on many things with achieving meaningful depth of cooperation on any issue.

The APEC experience is salutary. Its membership has expanded from 12 to 21 economies. It has already proved hard to establish a genuine sense of community among its far-flung, diverse participants. Now, India needs to be included, but is it feasible to stop at India? It has also proved hard to set measurable and achievable objectives for progress on any concrete matter. Yet, year after year, new tasks are added to the agenda.

It is not obvious that one institution with a membership wider than APEC can tackle all of APEC’s current agenda together with all the many security issues which do need to be considered.

It  may be more realistic to hold regular meetings of Asia Pacific leaders and ministers to oversee the work of existing and possibly new forums and institutions which are sufficiently specialised and cohesive to set and achieve realistic targets.uch oversight could help set priorities and avoid needless overlap or duplication of work, while ensuring that decisions of parts of the Asia Pacific region take increasing account of the rest of the region.

That brings us back to the need to take account of global interests.

APEC has not been able to resolve the tension between those who seek to defend and strengthen an open rules-based international trading system based on the WTO and those who want to create the world’s largest so-called free trade area.

It may be tempting to pretend that the Bogor goal of free and open trade and investment by no later than 2020 can be finessed by negotiating a Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP).  But that would achieve neither free trade nor open trade.

It would represent a blatant disregard for the interests of the poorest of the world who would be discriminated against by the Asia Pacific as well as by the EU – that is not consistent with any meaningful definition of openness.

If a potential FTAAP followed the example of recent FTAs in avoiding the hardest issues, it would not even remove all formal border barriers to trade in goods. The European experience has taught us that getting rid of all border barriers to trade in goods, achieved in the 1960s, is nowhere near enough to promote genuine economic integration.

Border barriers to trade are no longer the most serious obstacle to the many facets of international commerce, except in a few ‘sensitive sectors’. Given all the many challenges for Asia Pacific cooperation, we can set a sensible division of labour with the WTO. Let it seek to deal with the remaining sensitive products of the past, while we find ways to avoid the emergence of more sensitive products in the future.

Given the challenges posed by competition for scarce resources, population pressures and environmental threats and other  sources of instability, management of security looms large in Mr Rudd’s proposal. There are many possible ways to address these concerns and Rudd is correct to encourage the region to build on the experience of the ASEAN Regional Forum and the six-party talks which are seeking to defuse the risks posed by North Korea.

We certainly cannot wait for an overarching institution to deal with the issue of climate change. Within the Asia Pacific, at a minimum, the United States, China, India and Japan need to agree on a way to share the burden of adjustment needed to stabilising GHGs in the atmosphere. Otherwise, there is no prospect of a secure region.

Others, including Australia, will want to be part of the discussions on mitigating climate change.  We can buy a seat at that table by making a commitment to an ambitious time path for reducing our emissions of GHGs. As Professor Garnaut has recommended in his interim report on dealing with climate change, we also need to offer more to provide an incentive for others.

There is scope for a specific initiative for Asia Pacific community-building:  to reach consensus on how to provide adequate incentives for India and China to make commitments to reducing their emissions. Moreover, such commitment needs to be sufficient to defuse the looming threat of a trade war, rather than free trade, across the Pacific.

This is an aspect of cooperation in the Asia Pacific which is necessary as well as desirable. It is also urgent. If agreement on collective action to reduce emissions  does not prove feasible during the next few years, then we can forget about an Asia Pacific Community.