Obstacles to greater Pan-Pacific co-operation: a view from Asean

Abstract

SOME years ago, the Far Eastern Economic Review newsmagazine (which may well need to change its name more aptly to the Pacific Economic Review) analysed the idea of a Pacific Basin community as mooted at several conferences at that time and the suggestion of an organisational framework to be called 'PACIFIC' (for 'Pacific/Asia Commission for Increasing and Facilitating Inter-Regional Co- operation').' Whatever the merits of that suggestion, proposed by a delegate to the 1980 Bali Conference on the Pacific Community, the notion of a Pan-Pacific community and the concept of Pan-Pacific co-operation are in fact idealised visions. The title of this paper may give the impression that there is co-operation in the region known as the Pacific; that what is lacking is greater co-operation on a Pan-Pacific scale, and that there are obstacles. But what is 'greater co-operation', and in what form, and is it true that there already is co-operation? Raising these issues may be begging the question but they are important in the enquiry that follows. To be sure, there is increasing interaction among the nations of the Pacific and some cases of this interaction may be instances of co-operation, but a multilateral effort on a scale that encompasses the length and breadth of the Pacific Ocean is a phenomenon for which the time has not come yet.