WHAT WE'RE THINKING

Although some commentators in the United States and elsewhere have described the recent November 18-19 meeting of U.S. and Asian leaders at the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum (APEC) in Vietnam as unimportant and historically insignificant, in fact it seems to have achieved some of the fundamental, albeit nonglamorous, goals of such international organizations: they prove that people from very diverse societies and cultural backgrounds, and even with strong competing political and economic interests, can in practice come together as a large body to agree on shared goals and to announce these to the world. In a century already marked by terrorism and international conflict, and with pessimism and cynicism about political organizations of all stripes common everywhere, the persistent existence of international organizations such as APEC should itself be seen as evidence of the possibility of nations being able to work well with others.
 
APEC government leaders came together to denounce North Korea’s nuclear weapon development plans, and they also discussed expanding APEC’s mission to include regional trade negotiations and coordination of trade liberalization policies. In so doing, they thereby maintained the possibility of truly multilateral negotiations on regional security issues and global economic issues. In practice, effective cooperation in these areas— especially at the level of shared sanctions for noncompliance—will be problematic, but simply having this as the starting point for future discussions is a contribution to international cooperation.
 
The timing of such a demonstration is particularly important because the complexity of merging bilateral discussions across issues affecting all of the Asian societies is expanding. It is now clear that East Asia’s security issues are South Asia’s as well. If North Korea develops a nuclear military, will Japan need to as well? And if Japan develops one, will China feel it needs to increase its nuclear forces? Other neighbors, including India, Pakistan, Iran, and Central Asian countries, may then feel they need nuclear deterrents. Clearly nobody would benefit from the revival of such regional arms races, and yet without a demonstration of the possibility of broad multinational cooperation to prevent them, they could become the default assumption by policymakers and publics alike.
 
Some of the same logic applies in trade negotiations as well. Should important energy security concerns—for example, China and India, as the fastest growing economies, need to be brought into the International Energy Agency’s system of strategic petroleum reserves and shared release of oil stocks and information during crises—be included in negotiations over a liberalization of financial markets and expansion in the use of advanced financial instruments? Should discussions on the removal of trade barriers for manufactured goods, agricultural products, and professional services be included in broader negotiations over compensation to populations adversely affected by sudden shifts in trade flows and by changes in social security, pension, and health care policies? APEC has at least expressed a shared willingness to consider collective solutions to these emerging problems.
 
The APEC 2006 Forum will most likely not be known as an historic event. But the fact that it produced shared statements and a free exchange among a large body of governments demonstrated that bilateral negotiations are not the only way to conduct the affairs of nations.