8 - Globalization and the Crisis of Regional Identity

Summary

A key question about regions is their permanence and transience. Regional identity can be altered or undermined by a variety of forces, external and internal to the region. In modern times, the forces that are especially likely to affect regional identity are globalization, the rise of new power centres within or in proximity to a region, altered political interactions with countries outside the region, and regional social forces that compete with state-sponsored national and regional identities. In this chapter, I discuss four key challenges to Southeast Asia that have arisen since the turn of the last century: (1) the perils of globalization, including the “Asian financial crisis” of 1997 and the “global financial crisis” of 2008, and new transnational dangers, such as pandemics, environmental degradation, natural disasters and terrorism; (2) the emergence of a civil society regionalism; (3) the rise of China and India; and (4) the emergence of the idea of an East Asian Community (EAC). These challenges have raised serious questions about whether the regional idea of Southeast Asia can endure into the future.

The Perils of Globalization

Southeast Asia's exposure to the forces of globalization, such as financial downturns, terrorism, pandemics and environmental degradation, was amply evident throughout the post-Cold War period. The Asian financial crisis (or the Asian economic crisis, as it is also called) began in mid-1997, underscoring the pitfalls of economic development strategies that were based on an emphasis on foreign investment and exportoriented industrialization without adequate regulatory mechanisms. Commenting on the seriousness of the crisis for Southeast Asia, Rodolfo Severino, then Secretary-General of ASEAN, commented: “Since ASEAN's founding thirty-one years ago, no disaster has hit the countries of Southeast Asia with such widespread impact as the financial crisis.” While the crisis was not “Southeast Asian” in scope (apart from South Korea, it acquired the attributes of a global crisis affecting countries as far apart as Russia and Brazil), the “contagion” effect of the crisis was most seriously felt in Southeast Asia. Moreover, the crisis was peculiarly Southeast Asian in the way it threatened to unravel and reshape intraregional politics, and created the impetus for a broader East Asian Community.