The United Kingdom, in voting to divorce itself
from the European Union, is steering the West into uncharted territory.
Will
the EU now unravel, as other populists and nationalists demand plebiscites on
their respective countries’ membership?
Will NATO, the grand post-war alliance
that has guaranteed Europe’s security for almost seven decades, also begin to
disintegrate, as its members turn inward like Britain or, worse, against each
other?
Many
people in Asia will dismiss these questions the way Neville Chamberlain wrote
off Central Europe back in 1938 – as problems in faraway countries about which
they know and care little. But the truth is that the populist surge now rocking
the West has its own echoes in Asia.
Greater
disunity here is particularly dangerous, because Asia lacks the West’s
connective institutional framework and regional shock absorbers. The recent
recall of an agreed statement by ASEAN criticising China for its actions in the
South China Sea is but the latest sad example of the immaturity of Asia’s
collective security process.
Across
the region, national rivalries remain raw and historical memories continue to
sow divisions. So all Asians must recognise that their countries and region are
equally vulnerable to those who would undermine the rule of law and today’s
existing structures of peace and prosperity, flimsy as they may be.
Asia must
thus take note of the message Brexit sends. The “Leave” camp’s ability to
scrape together a simple majority by appealing to voters’ basest instincts
shows that many people now take their liberties, security and prosperity for
granted. It shows that too many have lost sight of what made the post-war
developed world so affluent, free and safe to begin with.
For
decades, democracies – in Asia and in the West – have not questioned the
foundations of their success. We understood that we needed to stand together,
sometimes in formal alliances, sometimes in alliances bound together simply by
a shared interest in democracy.
We
understood that our prosperity was built on the rule of law, the fundamental
integrity of our political institutions and the openness of our societies – to
the outside world and to the “outsiders” among us.
This
historical wisdom is now being mocked and dismissed, openly by the likes of
Donald Trump in America and Marine Le Pen in France, and cryptically, with a
nudge and a wink, by Brexit leaders like former London mayor Boris Johnson and
Tory justice secretary Michael Gove.
Many
voters, eager for confirmation of their biases, believed that a smear bordering
on parody – the portrayal by Johnson and Gove of the EU as some sort of
latter-day Nazi project – actually described reality.
An honest
historical accounting of the EU would recognise that it established for
Europeans a zone of peace founded on individual rights, the rule of law and
social justice. This is arguably the central reason that Europe was able to
overcome the economic ravages of World War II and achieve unprecedented living
standards across the continent, while also resolving ancient enmities – such as
between France and Germany.
Europe’s
unification required great political vision and will, born of collective
revulsion at the horrors of WWII, the insecurity unleashed by the Cold War and
the economic dynamism brought forth by the founding of the European Economic
Community, the forerunner to the EU.
But as
the British “Remain” camp just learned, much to its sorrow, economic forces
alone do not furnish the sense of cohesion or solidarity needed to sustain the
project of unification. To function as a viable and vital polity, Europe now
needs a new imperative, a new sense of mission around which to rally. Asia’s
democracies need the same thing.
In the
West and in Asia today, solidarity – a genuine sense of civic community and
self-identity – is more necessary than ever to manage the profound social and
political changes brought about by global capitalism. Markets, and the supply
and production chains that now link Asia more intimately than ever before, may
create the material basis for a people, or peoples, to cooperate. They cannot,
however, produce the sense of shared purpose that societies need in order to
flourish.
Today,
the British people have clearly lost sight of common goals – goals shared with
each other and with Europe. They have delivered a body blow to the West that
can be counteracted only by reviving the will and spirit that inspired European
integration and the creation of NATO in the first place.
And where
European unity was once the project of the future, greater unity among Asia’s
democracies must become our region’s project for today. Asian democracies have
a clear opportunity to begin to forge a sense of solidarity among themselves,
but they must do so in a way that our citizens understand. Successive British
governments failed to defend their country’s membership in the EU – and most
regularly used it as an all-purpose bogeyman to explain away their own policy
failures.
Britain
and Europe – where many other governments behave in the same manner – are now
paying the price. Asia must not make the same mistake.
A test of
Asia’s ability and willingness to build a sense of regional solidarity is at
hand. In the coming weeks, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague will
rule on whether China’s expansive claim on ownership of the South China Sea has
any legal basis. If Asia’s democracies stand behind the Court of Arbitration’s
ruling, whatever it is, they can begin to demonstrate that, with a shared sense
of purpose, they are prepared to defend the rule of law – and each other.
It was
such robust solidarity in the face of a common threat that helped impel
European unity many decades ago. Now it’s Asia’s turn to try to get it right.
Yuriko
Koike
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