Making multilateralism work with multipolarity

The growing importance of Asia in the world economy should not be a cause for worry, as Asia needs diverse partners and access to global markets to continue to prosper, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has said. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the global political and economic architecture has been undergirded largely by one superpower, which set the stage for an unprecedented period of globalisation managed through multilateral institutions and actors. Now that unipolar moment is giving way to an era of diffused powers, with countries like the US, China and Russia each bearing considerable disruptive capacities, and each struggling to stitch together new norms and rules for these rapidly changing times. This phase, the beginning of which was marked by the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 and characterised by America's two bruising wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has seen a vacuum emerge.  Many are seeking to fill it, most determinedly China, but with a push back from countries such as Japan and India. Separately, ISIS and radical energies in the Middle East also seek to grab new space.  Russia has chosen this very moment to signal its ability to muddy the Eurasian fields and intervene in the Middle East. The fact is, there is not enough room to accommodate all of these ambitions.  A median will have to be arrived at, but who will sacrifice what? Today's 'multi-power' reality is most visible in Asia and this can be attributed to the lack of a unifying political and security architecture for the Asian region (or regions).  The question then arises: Will the Asian century be defined by contestation or cooperation? And how will Asian powers reconcile multipolarity and multilateralism, a process for which there are no handy 20th century templates?  The trans-Atlantic political and economic regimes that were the 'hub' of the liberal international order has no parallel in Asia. And the single guarantor of good behaviour (certainty and/or predictability) is clearly absent. The quest for global or regional leadership is the quest for control of common spaces. If in the earlier centuries, territorial borders and maritime frontiers were the crown jewels, today's common spaces have been rendered seamless by digital arenas and technology that straddles deep oceans and outer-space.  What makes the Asian century unique is the differing conceptions of common spaces by major actors. Continental trade regimes and economic integration will sculpt Asia's future, but these terms are by themselves contested.  How can the competing agendas of, for instance, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and One Belt, One Road be reconciled? The Asian Century refers to the projected 21st-century dominance of Asia in the world, the way the 20th century was seen as the American Century. Three possibilities — distinct, but not mutually exclusive — emerge. At the commencement of the 21st century, Asia's politics resembles the fraught, rudderless multipolarity of the beginning of the 20th. It took 50 years and two wars for that reckless order to settle into a multilateral equilibrium. Asia has to do it better, faster and without the external stimulus of a great War. As the dowager power, the US can incubate new institutional arrangements in Asia, playing Greece to emergent Asia's Rome, to borrow from Harold Macmillan's description of the post-war relationship between Britain and the US. While the centre of gravity will continue to shift towards Asia, powered by the rise of China and India, Mr Lee said he does not see Asia becoming "the centre of the world", as the region needs outside markets, cooperation, and technology in order to prosper. The CPTPP is a free trade agreement between Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. Once fully implemented, the 11 countries will form a trading bloc representing 495 million consumers and 13.5 per cent of global GDP, valued at approximately US$13.5 trillion (S$18.3 trillion).

Covering a market of about 2 billion people and one-third of global gross domestic product, or less than US$30 trillion, RCEP will link 15 Asia-Pacific countries - Australia, Brunei, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam - and create the world's largest trading bloc.