What are we voting for?

What are we voting for?

From direct quantity upwards to wider quality in democracy

The two Anglo-Saxon shocks during last year in many minds cast doubts on the practice of liberal democracy, as we know it in the Western world. Rather than voting for certain policies and personalities, majorities mainly voted only against what they perceived as elites and establishment without really knowing what the other choice really would mean for their future. A wider net would also catch other fishy results of direct voting that won’t easily fit into our orthodox order of political rationality. Referenda on Ukraine’s association in the Netherlands, on CETA with Canada in Wallonia, on reform linking to the Prime Minister’s post in Italy and on immigration in Switzerland as well as farther away direct presidential elections in the Philippines, all show sudden unexpected often emotion-carried changes of the status quo of established democracies that amount to more than just cusps of ‘disruption’ as in business competition.

Anglo-shock not only for the European bloc

We were delighted to hear loud shouts of “Wir sind das Volk!” after the ‘Fall of the Wall’ in Berlin. We foresaw the ‘End of Ideologies’ and once Fukuyama even the ‘End of History’ altogether. However, these ‘Ends’ ended with the Americans’ shock of 9/11 and only years later many media claimed not to have heard the other ‘secret voices’ of angry people opposing their establishment that finally voted for Brexit and for Trump; only the official results convinced us of their quantity in the majority. The vote for President in the USA in practice is directly binding without Congress even convening, but also the vote for Brexit in the UK will hardly be overturned by its Parliament and rather followed up by the British government (BBC on 31.1.2017: “… by bill of only 133 words.”), although it might take some time to negotiate with the EU.

This Anglo-Saxon decisive directness – though both fought almost 50-50 -- differs from the fate of referenda on the European continent. In September the Swiss saw their representatives in Parliament climbing down from the solid mountain of a popular majority vote in favour of limits on immigration and their government caving in to EU intransigence on free movement that only would allow access to the EU Single Market. Down in the Netherlands, a clear two-thirds majority of the people dismissed the proposal of an EU association treaty with Ukraine, only to see their Prime Minister chairing the European Council to champion that very deal with Ukraine. Idem for CETA in Wallonia.

Obviously, the votes on the continent – though with clearer majorities – shocked us less in the end since the established elites have found ways to qualify the quantities and airbrush them, often in rational compromise. However, the Anglo-Saxon shocks also seem to relate more to individual politicians and concrete cases than abstract principles and distant people that remind us of the basic differences between more flexible British case law and stable continental legal provisions.

Nevertheless, thanks or rather due to the increasing role of the (not only social) mass media the individual political ‘person’ has greatly gained in simply getting politically undeserved attention, in particular in the more direct presidential systems, often independent from the candidate’s substantive argumentation. Taking the Latin term persona literally not only from its original meaning of ‘mask or false face’ as worn by the actors in the Roman theatres, one is tempted here to trace it further in Latin to “per sonum”, meaning merely ‘through the sound’, when hearing the big talkers from Nigel Farage to Donald Trump. They cheaply profit from their sheer showmanship in the mass media and attract with simplistic slogans quantities of people in the ‘echo chambers’ built by confirmation-biased algorithms for ‘fake facts‘ favouring right-wing sites 38% over 19% for instance on Facebook (almost 2 billion regular users, including foreign hackers; FT, 19.11.2016; whilst the established BBC reaches only 500 million) and the like. An unfortunate fact is that some 60% of adults in the USA have only passing familiarity with political reality and rely on such hardly reliable information from social networks. And with such focus on beaming personalities and less-rational but emotional choice the outcomes have become less predictable and manageable.

These politicians can directly impress the masses on TV and the more virtual screens of the Internet with divisive self-praise and pillory of ‘post-truth’ much more than any quack would ever dare for the quality of his goods on the real market. And here we link to another phenomenon of recent politics, namely the marketisation of it. By their appeal to voters like consumers of superficial (talk-)shows and post-factual tweets they advertise themselves through unheeded promises in quantities of glib and unqualified words. Anglo-Western individualism adds its bit to the admiration of pretentious big-mouthed men, notably if they carry the image of success in Big Business (“Why not also in ‘Small Government’?”) or a big mug of beer. Marketing methods with spin doctors make their way also into continental politics, but the parliamentary system seems still to be a strong qualifying filter in most European countries. While short-termism also spills from Anglo-led business management into public governance here, it de facto further reduces political planning and responsibility in favour of the fast ups and downs of the markets’ volatility. High-frequency trading and commercial profiling of us as consumers deeply dig into Big Data of enormous amounts of information up to the limit of the numeric capacity of the latest super-computers. But it is only recently that economists increasingly realise that the crunching of pure quantities of numbers often do not suffice to succeed. In her book “Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy” Cathy O’Neil argues on the basis of her experience as a ‘Quant’ (quantitative analyst) that Big Data is sowing injustice and exacerbating social stratification. Programmers behind computerised systems have encoded their prejudices, misunderstanding and bias into software that increasingly manages our lives. These self-validating systems with their untested assumption amount to “weapons of math destruction”.

 However, even econometrists recognise unquantifiable patterns of human conduct on markets that transcend rationality and that only qualified behaviourism can explain. Not only as economic actors and hungry consumers, but often even more so as voters, people decide off the cuff and from the belly rather emotionally in a way (even as an outlet for anger while hi-tech dominates most of their life) that pre-election surveys and number-crunching cannot quantify, but often favours populism. QED in this year’s votes for Brexit and Trump.

Learning from the shift in economics towards more behaviourism, public governance and democratic processes should also better reflect the reality of society by giving competences in decision-making to the stakeholders and actors involved at the various levels from local, provincial, national, regional all the way to global.

We should, in the interest of all omnilaterally, start with improvements in the mass media that ought to mediate between the private sphere (where they are the biggest actors on public opinion) and public governance. Three big Internet companies, Google, Facebook and Amazon, have become ‘netopolies’ with almost 90% share in their respective markets, decrying any competition law. In democracies, these media with their filtering function also have an immense impact on voting outcomes because of their Big Data and micro-targeting (SZ 10.12.2016). On decision-making at local level such media’s impact is the lowest, because people know their neighbours rather directly through everyday experience. However, the higher we advance in multi-level governance of our democracies, notably in federal systems or even to the regional and global level, the less people can judge from their own direct experience but have to rely on information from these media. Nobody directly heard him say it and only the Pope himself could confirm whether or not he endorsed Trump. It is the media and their multiplying (ab-)users that made it an influential message ‘right or wrong’ going viral on the Internet and getting a million clicks. 80% of 13 year old students in the USA cannot distinguish between news and advertisement (Die Zeit, 8.12.2016). Some enlightened users already left Twitter because of lies like “Pope endorses Trump” or “Queen for Brexit”. Although 35% of Europeans have lost trust in social media (EBU study 2016), for most information they see no other choice and depend on it. Now under criticism from reliable sources in view of Trump’s ‘majority’ of the electorate, Facebook’s American boss Mark Zuckerberg reluctantly admitted that there is a problem and has just announced that he is considering blocking fake news with the help of third parties.

However, with the help of these mass media the damage to democracy is already done, at least to the governance by the Anglo-Saxon elites that have lost votes to Brexiters and Trump, nationally and additionally in geopolitics. Consequently, the Anglo-sphere is also ceding leadership at global level to European continentals and to Chinese leaders. Obama made that markedly clear during his last presidential visits to Athens and Berlin, and Chinese President Xi already has  shown his eagerness to step into the geopolitical vacuum at the recent summit of APEC in Peru, partly supported by Putin; primarily only pacifically in the Pacific (FT, 21.11.16: Headline p.1: “China claims Pacific mantle in Trump era”, i.e. taken away from the USA).

From quantitative economics to behaviourism also in governance?

When Abraham Lincoln famously referred to “government of the people, by the people, for the people” in his Gettysburg address, he was referring to the representative nature of the USA’s democracy.  (Since, at that time, in 1863, at least half the adult population did not yet have the vote, ‘by the people’ was a rather relative term; and on top even today the electorate system can have a filtering function.)  

In our more fully enfranchised age, the ‘people’s’ voices -- in most countries with more parliamentarian democracies many millions of them -- are filtered through elected representatives as the most workable modus operandi for stable government. For instance, since 2008 the economic shock that knocked the door open in Iceland for more participatory democracy has led to further refinement of representative governance on this northern island. Even from abroad “red cards” have fed into the collective intelligence of the newly added crowd-sourcing ‘Constitutional Council’ that grew out of a thousand randomly selected Icelanders outside the established parliament. Similarly, the Belgian historian David van Reybrouck (“Against Elections”, 2016) pleads for a mixed procedure of lottery and elections. According to him, citizens drawn by chance into a ‘House of Lots’ and supported by experts should supplement the elected parliament in order to bridge the gap between the politicians and the people.

Obviously, empowered by access to social media and other channels of algorithmic echo-chambers inviting feedback of ‘likes’, opinion and petition-signing, it appears that many citizens now want a more direct say not just as consumers on the market, but also in political decision-making. However, the public sphere (Habermas’ “Öffentlichkeit”) -- as political equivalent to the free market in the economy – is fragmented in narrow-minded echo-chambers, chat-rooms and redirecting mails and thereby isolated from the mainstream of more balanced argumentation.

Even in our online one-click age, could any government realistically deliver responsible policy on the basis of such disparaged direct democracy i.e. by means of frequent online polls and all sorts of referenda? Would the purely quantitative capture of ad-hoc public opinion (and fluctuating emotion) prevailing on any one day really provide a better basis than decision-shaping by mandated representatives over a period of time, as situations evolve and the consequences of particular policies, sometimes unintended, reveal themselves for assessment and adjustment? A murder of a cute child that goes viral on the Internet would immediately bring back the death penalty, and long-term policies against climate-change at the cost of certain cars would hardly find majorities.

And yet what is the outlook for our system of representative democracy if, once elected and seasoned, these same representatives are rejected by populists as elite insiders out of touch with voters and either operating in a distant ‘bubble’ (Westminster, in the Brexit context) or as part of a faraway ‘swamp’ to be drained (Washington, according to Trump). Experts claim the Internet would bring the ‘death of distance’, but still all the quantities of fast data flows in real time are often the less verifiable the farther their origin. At local level, the citizen can easily verify if the commune’s taxes were better spent on a new football stadium or for building a theatre. He/she can check the interests involved in the neighbourhood and might even directly know the responsible politicians in person and possibly join the debate for the decision. However, the higher the stage in our multi-level governance from local to global, the less clear the situation becomes for the voter, notably in the bigger industrialised countries where economic and political interests are intertwined, mixed and mingled to such degree and density that even the American NSA’s comprehensive data capacity would not suffice except for taking out tiny parts in its own interest.

Social media giants and algorithms may be relatively new to the mix but populist demagogues swaying the masses are not new.  Worrying perhaps that Trump’s newly appointed chief White House strategist, Steve Bannon, has declared that building the ‘economic nationalist movement’ is as “exciting as the 1930s” (cf. The Times of London, 21.11.2016), when plain majorities already carried the day but brought the night over Europe.  

Could direct or populist presidential democracy actually mean less democracy, not more? Unlike the traditional Swiss system of weekly votes on direct concerns in the Cantons, historic examples range from Napoleon III reaching by a direct vote for the imperial title of Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin as well as more recently Vladimir Putin using referenda to incorporate territories. Why not also leave a territory like the EU, logically in line with such history, one might ask? Not only have our societies advanced towards more refined representative democracies in order to deal with today’s much more complex issues (cf. Prof. N. Khrushcheva in NE, 9.10.2016) than unilaterally gobbling up weaker neighbours of the past. But also the new social divisions from technological advances and feral globalisation have created emotional eruptions of assumed empowerment among many voters that render dangerous the direct-democracy process of a simplifying ‘Yes or No’ decision. Such decisions should not only serve divergent interests as on the consumer market, but also ought to share overall responsibility in politics based on common values -- and not only interests -- as laid down in constitutions and (still too few) global agreements omnilaterally for humankind. A rebalancing of the relationship between private profit and public welfare is overdue (cf. “Europe rewrites the rules for Silicon Valley” by Philip Stephens in FT, 4.11.16).

Conclusion for Europeans

With Brexit, the output-legitimacy of the British government is expected to decrease in parallel with increasing numbers of particularly ‘Bregreters’ suffering first as consumers from higher prices as well as from less choice on their markets. Likewise, their reduced mobility outside their islands will impact in particular the younger and more educated Brits. In parallel, we might soon see some early negative impact of Trump’s rule in the USA on the lives of not only Americans (his support already in early January shrinking to only 37%, BBC on 12.1 2017), but also worldwide to arrest and turn around this falsely nurtured nationalism based on fakes instead of facts. In Germany, the trust in the traditional media already is growing (Die Zeit, 26.1.2017). The widening gap in our societies is a fact to overcome together, but a return from the global economy to smaller units and “introspective unilateralism” in the end hurts all of us.

As an optimistic European, one can only hope that we learn this lesson fast and the negative effects of Brexit and Trump manifest themselves early enough to be reflected by the voters on the Continent before the forthcoming elections in France (Can François Fillon stop Marine Le Pen?), the Netherlands (DutchNews.nl on 26.11.2016: Wilder’s PVV “dropping to 19%”) and Germany (SZ on 10.12.2016: AfD dropping another 1% to 12%) in order for qualitative arguments to de-mask the quantity of fake and biased news from the glibly chattering mouths and viciously controlled keyboards of only one-sided nationalistic orientation. Some observers already see support for EU membership shooting up in most countries since the Brexit vote and also Trump’s win as strengthening Europeans’ resolve (The Economist, 12.11.2016). If events bear out the unwisdom of these ruptures, politics will tilt back. Populists are the weakest in the tedious matter of sound government (Janan Ganesh in FT, 24.1.2017).

Learning from recent lessons of voting, there is a silver lining on the horizon with the younger generations moving forward to share not only angst and anger from the past. But they also exchange valid arguments for the future of governance in Europe towards more directness at local and wider representation at higher up to omnilateral global level.

Original article on: www.neurope.eu/articles/94608.php

Obama as an omnilateralist - is he open to all?

Issue: 837 Posted: June,07 2009

During his State of the Union address in 2002, then US president George W. Bush unilaterally listed North Korea along with Iran and Iraq in the what he called the Axis of Evil. His motto was, “You’re with us, or against us!” Together with his Vice-President Dick Cheney, he became the incarnation of unilateralism, declarations and actions emanating from the White House without much ado or consideration for others. Few, even amongst the allies or foreign governments, and much less the UN were consulted when American unilateralism peaked with the war in Iraq. President Barack Obama, who went to the Middle East last week to woo Muslims, showed even before he became president that he was ready to listen and during his election campaign demonstrated an omnilateral approach, by raising most of his money not from a few big spenders – as Bush did, mainly from the oil industry - but from millions of small engaging donours in America, mainly through the Internet. This provided him with a much broader basis and political independence. Now he has proclaimed a policy of omnilateral openness towards Africa, North Korea and Iran, and made overtures to Cuba and the Taliban. Obama, whose father was Kenyan, had been particularly outspoken as a Senator on US policy towards Africa. Early on, he advocated opening dialogue with Iran, since he recognised that the war in Iraq strengthened Iran’s influence in the region, and he wanted Iran to play a more constructive role with Iraq. Obama also has supported developing an international coalition to handle the nuclear issue of North Korea, and says he supports “sustained, direct, and aggressive diplomacy.” In a September 2008 presidential debate, Obama said a lack of diplomatic engagement with North Korea led the country to significantly increase its nuclear capacity. In his first extensive interview since taking office as Obama went as far as pointing out his childhood in predominantly Muslim Indonesia to open up to his audience on Arab TV. On his first day in office he phoned major leaders in the Middle East and he was voted the “most respected” amongst world leaders in the West. So, is Obama the new Omnilateralist, opening the West to the rest and to all sides? Will his administration - to the Muslim world and others – really “seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect” as he said in his inaugural address? Will the Americans “extend a hand” if the others are willing to unclench the fist? Or is the American nation still so deeply “at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred” (Obama’s inaugural address) that Omnilateralism, namely governance for and by all, remains a dream of some Kantian idealists in Europe, but cannot persuade the new American leadership? An American move towards such Omnilateralism could lead to more participatory international politics which is a dire need not only for global goods like the trans-border environment, but now obviously also for regulating global finance to tackle the current economic crisis. Mere multilateral solutions through a Washington Consensus or the traditional institutions of the UN, IMF etc. might not suffice anymore, as too many major players – public or private, North or South, West or East— do not feel properly represented. While we widen the circles from G7 to G20, many more - also NGOs - want their voices heard. If President Obama starts to open the ears of the American administration (his new envoys abroad are told to “listen first”!) he might indeed meet high expectations and become the Omnilateralist, driving a popular omnibus, rather than a gas-guzzling SUV.

Dr. Wolfgang Pape is currently Policy Officer, International Affairs, in DG Enterprise of the European Commission after having studied and served in America and Asia. This commentary does not reflect the position of the European Commission and reflects only the personal opinions of the writer

The Challenge of Omnilateral Governance

“The mystery to be overcome is one all peoples share – how divergent historic experiences and values can be shaped into a common order.” These are the words of Henry Kissinger introducing his latest bestseller with the subtitle ‘Reflections on the Character of Nations and the Course of History’. However, the current ‘World Order’ is far from accepted and shared by all people(s). It is basically limited to governance by ‘nations’. However, the term ’nation’ originated in Europe under particular circumstances, notably following long-fought religious wars, and found its definition in the western concept of what nowadays is regarded as ’international law’ in order to rule between and among those ‚nations’. Only colonialisation -mainly by force- brought the concept to Africa, America and Asia, where ‚national’ borders were drawn by the conquerors irrespective of natural, native  and cultural identities on these continents.
As a result, the subsequently Western-dominated multilateral system of ‘nations’ is today in the globalising world increasingly dysfunctional, especially with its fiction of ‘national sovereignty’ badly operating in view of growing interdependence. The days of the so-called ‘international’ rules and institutions established by the West seem to be numbered for many critical observers. The present system’s protagonists in America as well as in Europe hardly show any willingness or capability to implement the necessary reforms in the relevant institutions, such as the UN, UNSC, IMF, WB, WTO etc. Our mostly militarily circumscribed ‘nations’ now are often falsely considered the only official actors in the ‘inter-national’ or rather global arena. Neither does it include all the major non-state stakeholders ranging from civil society and multinational corporations to various representatives of other global interests. Nor does it cover for instance the High Sea or (Cyber and Outer) Space beyond any national borders that urgently need comprehensive and legitimate governance by and for all, that is to say omnibus. Furthermore, the entities recognised as ‘nations’ in the official bodies of the current so-called multilateral order of the world, the two hundred-odd officially listed members of the United Nations (UN), hardly represent the weight of their various peoples and societies. Hence, amendments for enhanced global governance are needed to ensure not only a better weighting of representation, but also for opening of the current exclusively multilateral framework towards an omnilateral participation, namely by all stakeholders involved. Recent plurilateral initiatives, like the G20, ‘coalitions of the willing’ and certain members within the WTO for instance, have improved consensus-building amongst the few involved, but are far from legitimately representing a comprehensive global governance by and for all. Hence, notably in view of the highly advanced state of globalisation in terms of economics and notably finance, there remains the immense challenge to open up for omnilateralism with all relevant stakeholders worldwide to enhance the pyramid of multi-level governance at its very top. In addition, such opening upstream from the nation and region at the very top should also lead to enhanced governance downstream within nation-states all the way to the local level with people empowered by more proximity and participation in decision-making.

Dr Wolfgang PAPE, Bruxelles                                                                                         2016/01/05

The Omnilateralist

Monday, 28 July 2008

The Omnilateralist

Omnilateralism

The concept of "omnilateralism" was first developed by Dr. Wolfgang Pape in World Affairs, Jul-Sep 1997, p.94-109, in the context of international relations and global governance.


The term is derived from the Latin "omnibus" meaning 'for and by all', as abbreviated in the word 'bus' used in most languages for a vehicle carrying people, for my more detailed definition see under "omnilateralism" in Wikipedia.

See also Working Paper "Opening the World to Omnilateralism" at http://ec.europa.eu/comm/cdp/working-paper/opening_the_wold.pdf

I invite creative comments to share, but please give source and use if you copy. Thanks!

Omnilateralism: EU and USA in East Asia 1997

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World Affairs, Geneva , Jul-Sep 1997 Vol 1 No 3

THE   EUROPEAN   UNION   AND   THE

UNITED   STATES   IN   EAST   ASIA:   THE

NEED   FOR   OMNILATERALISM

A PERSONAL VIEW BY A EUROPEAN

WOLGANG PAPE

Europe and the US have often adopted different approaches to East Asia, but their policy objectives regarding trade and investment are fundamentally similar. It is now time for a shift from the established multilateral framework that is essentially Western-oriented towards a more global or "omnilateral" system.

As a continental European one often feels somewhere in the middle between the US and Asia, as if the dateline over the Pacific Ocean still marks the fault line between two extremes; to quote Goethe: Prophete rechts, Prophete links, das Weltkind in der Mitten! (Prophet to the right, prophet to the left, the child of the world in the middle!) However, now the Europeans have started to wonder, who is really unique in this world: the Japanese islanders at the periphery of Asia who have often so pretended by claiming their yuniku-sa (uniqueness), or the pioneering Americans on their seemingly endless mainland?

A recent book by the former Harvard professor Seymour Lipset under the title, American Exceptionalism, confirmed indirectly that we Europeans are in many respects somewhere in the middle between two extremes in this shrinking world. Lipset contrasts in particular the exceptionalism of the Americans with the self-proclaimed uniqueness of the Japanese at both ends of the range of possibilities. Some Europeans simply claim that we are closer to both sides than they are to each other. This can easily be confirmed if you just measure the distance between Brussels and Beijing and Washington and Beijing. The ominous "Japan-passing" of recent date is an exclusively American term, as we Europeans need not fly across Nippon's islands anyway, but can reach China directly, and also by Eur-Asian railway! While many Japanese have slowly come to realise the dangers of being passed over in view of missed new ideas from visitors and foreign direct investment, the next level of indifference has already been discussed on the borderless Internet under the slogan "Japan nothing".

FROM CONFRONTATION TO COOPERATION

In contrast to such "nothing", the European Union has during the last decade stressed "cooperation" time and again in its policies towards East Asia. However, we had to come a long way to reach the necessary mutual understanding which underlies such cooperation.

Despite Japan's accession into GATT in 1955, there have remained rocks like Scylla and Charybdis in the path towards cooperation. Major trade frictions occurred in the 1960s when Japan produced plans to slowly liberalise its economy only after her Western trade partners exerted pressure. Such a pattern recalled the forced opening of the country, particularly as symbolised by Admiral Perry's Black Ships in the middle of the nineteenth century, and soon the term gaiatsu (outside pressure) found its way into the foreign media almost as widely as Japan's exports flooded into the markets of the West. But it is for reasons other than merely historic that the Japanese nowadays associate gaiatsu much more with America than with Europe. There are even suggestions about applying reverse gaiatsu by the EU and Japan in the multilateral context against the US, in order to see American policymakers forswear negative hegemony and short-term unilateralism, (eg, most recently, before the WTO on the Massachusetts law denying state contracts to companies doing business in Myanmar).

However, vis-à-vis its Asian partners, the EU not only often lacks the means to build up such pressure due to its absence of military power and as a restrained exporter of foodstuff, it also has to bring together the often diverging interests of fifteen member states. Furthermore, as a supra-national entity it is by its very structure and also by conviction much more inclined to resort to the multilateral system. Thus it tends to rather apply the mechanisms of the WTO, GATT, and even OECD, to pursue its policy goals. The basic objectives of Europe's East Asia policies are best described in the recent Communications of the European Commission (EC). The most general one is entitled, "Towards a New Asia Strategy", (Communication of July, 1994) while the others are more specifically on Japan, China, ASEM (Asia-Europe Meeting), etc, and most recently on Hong Kong called, "The EU and Hong Kong: Beyond 1997".

The European Union has during the last decade stressed “cooperation" time and again in its policies towards East Asia. In the Communication on Japan, the word "cooperation" comes up close to 30 times and in the Communication on China even more frequently. Of course, in the background of such slogans lie strong economic interests expressed in such terms as "market access" and "business opportunities". However, the intentions of the EU go clearly beyond the strictly economic, into areas of science and technology, environment, and even such multilateral issues as disarmament and non-proliferation.

The actual implementation of Europe's East Asia Policies varies greatly according to the individual Asian country or economy concerned. By fir the greatest number of declared EU policies that have been implemented concern Japan, especially with regard to the numerous fields of cooperation. There has also been more advanced political dialogue with Japan than with other partners in East Asia. Nevertheless, the frequent procrastination of summits and ministerial meetings highlights the Japanese tatemae (facade) of mere declarations without substantive content or honne (reality). However, for the sake of comparison and contrast with the US, the concrete implementation of EU trade policy with Japan is worth looking at in detail.

An instructive example is provided by TAM (Trade Assessment Mechanism) which the Commission has been conducting with Japan since 1993. It aims at improving access to the Japanese market by mutual agreement on an objective basis of data. For this purpose an EC-Japan group has been set up jointly with experts from both sides who analyse the factors affecting the comparative performance of European products on the Japanese market and vice versa. Using Europe's performance regarding other advanced partners, like the US, Canada and Australia, as a reference, the Commission regularly conducts a systematic evaluation together with the Japanese ministries. The purpose of this joint TAM exercise is not to set any quantified target for trade, but to identify problems, to establish their causes, and to propose action for their timely resolution.

TAM, by simply creating mutual awareness of problems for trade in both markets, has contributed considerably to overcoming stereotype perceptions, building confidence and, more concretely, reducing barriers to trade (eg, for the beer market in Japan). It is noteworthy that the EU-Japan TAM exercise preceded by about half a year the rather controversial "Framework for a New Economic Partnership" agreed upon between the US and Japan. With the passing of Japan bashing, it is now obviously China which draws most of the attention in Washington. The Europeans too have woken up to the challenges perceived in the "Middle Kingdom".

The cooperative approach of the EU is best exemplified by one particular project of the EU with China, because it clearly contrasts with a similar endeavour by the US which lost steam a couple of years ago. The need for management training in China was recognised by Europe as well as by America. In fact, the US Department of Commerce perceived this need early on and established a school in Dairen. However, for various reasons the school had to be closed in 1994.

The EC similarly understood the demand for such schooling and gradually started cooperating with the State Economic Commission of China in Beijing on human resource development in the project for a management institute. About 10 years later in 1994, just when the American school in Dairen was closing, we opened our "China Europe International Business School” (CEIBS) in Shanghai. Hundreds of MBA graduates have been trained in accounting, marketing and law, through this educational joint venture and many of them now occupy senior positions in China. This year the CEIBS will more than double the intake of full-time MBA students to 130 per year. In addition, more than 1200 executives from Sino-foreign joint ventures and Chinese companies have been participating in its management programmes. CEIBS is now already three times the size of the operation envisaged at the outset.

With the trade balance showing an American surplus, South Korea presently figures less prominently in the US. In October 1996 the EU entered into a Framework Agreement of Cooperation. The EU's decision to contribute 75 million ECU over a five-year period to the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organisation (KEDO), after allocating 15 million in 1996, has stepped up efforts to attract Brussels, through Euratom, to participate with Seoul, Washington and Tokyo as a full member on the executive board of the consortium to promote nuclear safety in Korea.

One cannot leave EU-East Asia relations without briefly throwing at least some light on Europe's growing partnership with ASEAN. The strengthened relations help member states to reach beyond their colonial past and bilateral links to cooperation between the two regions. The Cooperation Agreement of 1980 makes the European Union ASEAN's longest dialogue partner. Obviously the challenges of vast markets and common experiences in regional integration are major motives for cooperation. But beyond the economy, along with the US and others, the EU is also an active partner in the ASEAN Regional Forum where security issues dominate the agenda.

It is therefore not surprising that it was a member of ASEAN, viz, Singapore, which took the initiative leading to the first Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM). Under this new acronym, ASEM brought together twenty-five heads of state and government in March 1996 in Bangkok. This has been a point of crystallisation in recent European policy towards East Asia.

ASEAN invited China, Japan and South Korea to participate in the first ASEM, thus forming an Asian side of "ASEAN plus 3”, that means 10 Asian countries. It is interesting to note that the self-chosen format of the participting countries "ASEAN plus 3” coincides with the membership of the East Asian Economic Caucus (EAEC, or "Caucus without Caucasians") proposed by Malaysia's prime minister Dr Mahathir. Furthermore, at ASEAN's thirtieth anniversary at the end of 1997, it is again this constellation of ASEAN plus 3 which were invited to an informal East Asian summit, which the US and consequently Japan's Foreign Ministry have long opposed.

In spite of pre-summit uncertainties and earlier scepticism about ASEM, the Bangkok meeting of leaders last year was regarded as "success beyond expectation". It marked a historic turning point in the relations between the two regions, as a new dialogue among equals between Europe and Asia has begun to replace the notion of the "missing link" in the Triad. A surprising reaction after the Meeting came from Malaysia's prime minister, as he was one of the most sceptical at the outset: "Dr Mahathir prefers ASEM to APEC" read the headline in Kuala Lumpur (Sunday Star, Malaysia, February 3, 1996)

Also unexpected was not so much the partly condescending criticism from major third countries, but the surprising reaction of some who considered it a quasi-counter balance to the grouping of a so-called JUSCANZ. This initiative to bring together Japan, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, is very flattering. It shows that ASEM is taken much more seriously than was originally thought. In particular, the reported attempt of JUSCANZ to include Switzerland and Norway as EU outsiders, might result in new theories of anchoring or even containment.

US EAST ASIA POLICIES

Ever since the end of the Vietnam War, the American President and his administration cannot be considered the only source of foreign policy in the US, other players have to be included in our analysis. For instance, the Senate's Committee on Foreign Relations and in particular its present chairman, Jesse Helms, exert immense influence. Major decisions depend on them ranging from the confirmation of the presidential nominee for secretaries of State and Commerce, or the US Trade Representative, to the ratification of international treaties.

In the recent scandal regarding “Indonesia Gate” in the US elections, we find a further indication that Asian-Americans are now moving increasingly into the hitherto occidental mainstream of US politics in their own Asian fashion, ie, with guonxi and money, (few people complain about British tobacco interests putting money into Dole's coffers to support his stance). Ambitious Asian-Americans have started advancing into elite positions in American society. For example, in the much publicised OJ Simpson case, judges Ito and Fukusaki gave many viewers abroad the prima‑facie impression that Japanese-Americans have taken over the US judiciary. However, the mainstream of “the American way” is still formed by the WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) establishment and "the Asian way" is regarded as almost diametrically opposed to it. Such contrasts are emphasised not only by Asians, such as Lee Kuan Yew, Mahathir and Ishihara, but also by Americans, like Harvard's Lipset in his aforementioned book "American Exceptionalism".

Another major "agent of influence" is the business lobby whose influence often is reflected very directly in the international negotiations of the government. Often such lobbying is evident in the case-by-case approach of market-opening demands of the US administration, eg, the "Kodak-case" with Japan. The "Market-Oriented, Sector-Specific" ‑(MOSS) negotiations of the 1980s with the Japanese are now considered as barely successful, thus discrediting the sector-by-sector approach in the US.

Such obvious opening of international trade negotiations under the pressure of specific business companies is not without danger. The displayed reduction to a concrete individual case of the lobbying firm allows the foreign country concerned to limit the often structural issue of wider interest (eg, closed distribution system and enforcement of competition law) to one company's case (eg, Kodak), and find an accordingly limited compromise, satisfying only that one company's interest. Such a short-sighted approach by US negotiators might provide appropriate headlines for politicians, and the media with concrete examples. In the long-term, however, it only skims the problem and does not solve the wider issues at stake. Naturally, it is also the basic concept of Anglo-Saxon case-law that manifests itself in this approach in contrast to the continental European understanding of more abstract legal codes which, on the other hand, runs the risk of dogmatically neglecting the individual tree while serving the principles of the overall forest.

From the opening of markets to the creation of new jobs, from democracy to human rights, the basic objectives of US policy towards East Asia, apart from nuances, hardly diverge from the goals of the Europeans. Here the common values of “the West” broadly draw from the same sources and their economic interests run parallel.

A detailed analysis of the objectives of US policy towards East Asia is difficult. Not only because of the apparent lack of continuity, but also because of the less dogmatic and more case-oriented approach of the Americans in general. Thus US objectives seem to be less clearly defined in official documents, and these sometimes have to be interpreted retrospectively after the implementation of concrete action. This leads to the slogan that some people in Washington are "too active to be reflective" about policies. While several observers advocate that the US diminish its involvement in the region, ie, they criticise the policy in quantitative terms, others examine the goals set and the methods used to reach those objectives. One influential, conservative, American think tank recently called for a "coherent US policy in East Asia" by putting the emphasis on US commitment to Japan, South Korea and Taiwan whilst "preventing China from engaging in dangerous adventures". Nevertheless its report acknowledges, ‘What happens in China will depend on its own choices, but the United States and its allies can develop a free and rich Northeast Asia and assure the Chinese people that the door is open for them to join’.

It seems that US policy is fluctuating with the size of the trade deficit as far as North East Asia, and especially Japan is concerned.

Such wide and abstract objectives, of course, are difficult to prove and at the risk of oversimplification, one can say that President Clinton started his first presidency with high priorities for reforms in Asia, thus initially subordinating trade to strategy. At last with the delinking of the MFN issue from human rights problems in China in 1996 and the quickening approach to Vietnam, economic objectives have clearly come to dominate the American agenda. This has provoked considerable criticism in the heart of America.

While the priority given to US exports in Asia to create 'jobs back home' is still on the rise, particularly in regard to China and South East Asia, it seems that US policy is fluctuating with the size of the trade deficit as far as North East Asia, and especially Japan, is concerned. The Pentagon's former Japan expert Joseph Nye has focused attention on wider security issues. The recent developments concerning the bilateral Security Treaty reflect their new found importance. Obviously, the USA as a superpower is still regarded by many as the major arbiter on security in Pacific Asia. Apart from its bilateral arrangements as "neighbour beyond the ocean", it claims to have a considerable stake in the guarantee of peace in the region in general.

This contrasts sharply with EU policy which has only an overall interest in global peace. Only one member state is directly involved in a major East Asian security treaty, ie, the Five-Power Defence Arrangement which links the UK with Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand. The EU, however, has also been participating as such, since the early stages of the ASEAN Regional Forum where security issues are raised. Recently calls like, Europe Has a Major Role to Play in Asia-Pacific Security have also been found in the American press. (International Herald Tribune (1HT), July 9 1997).

In this short paper one can only be very general about policy-making in the USA and the EU vis-à-vis East Asia - a region composed of a highly heterogeneous set of countries and economies in terms of geography, state of development and policies regarding the West. Furthermore, the policies of the US and EU in various sectors, from trade to fundamental rights, are not always consistent nor complementary. Often addressing different interests and lobbies, they may at times even be contradictory.

Given these reservations, I dare to draw a generalising conclusion concerning the overall consistency of both players' East Asia policy. In recent years there appears to be greater continuity in European policy objectives and implementation than in the American. The Clinton administration defends this lack of “grand design by pointing out‑that "all-embracing strategies went out with the Cold War” and "with no single great enemy, the Clinton approach is one of case-by-case management". (IHT, September 2, 1995).

As for the implementation of US policy towards East Asia, it seems to link more closely with its objectives which are less long-term and rather ad hoc. Often the objectives are only recognisable in the implementing action itself This pragmatism is increasingly true for American trade policy where the business lobby often joins Washington's negotiations, expounding individual firms' interest during official visits, for eg, President Bush's infamous tour of Japan with the "'Big Three" of the American car industry in January 1991. The European Commissioners have recently also joined the US bandwagon travelling with an - albeit smaller and lower key - business entourage.

To give a quantitative assessment of the impact of such involvement of business in American diplomacy, the Economist (August 12, 1995) under the headline "Sales Force One" pointed out that 'In the year 1994 the Clinton administration was involved in providing advocacy on transactions worth $46 on, with an export content of $20 billion'. On issues like human rights also, American policy is more directly reflected in action, exemplified in the much published support of Harry Wu's return from China as well as in private companies investment decisions which sometimes are even exploited in commercials back home.

Such support for a political objective contrasts with the little attention East Asian issues of fundamental rights receive in Europe. For example, among the Commission financed projects to promote human rights, not a single country of he region appears on any of the Commission 's lists (Europe, No 6429 of February 27, 1995 p 12‑13). Nonetheless, the Commission pursues a policy of including a clause on the protection of human rights generally in all treaties with relevant countries, most recently with Vietnam (while Australia still does not accept it).

It can be accepted as a valid generalisation that the Americans adopt a more confrontational approach towards China and Asia than the EU. The methodology of the implementation of the US trade policy towards East Asia has been subject to criticism from various sources. In particular, its policy since mid-1980 when it moved away from the instruments of the multilateral system, which it had helped to build in the first place. Henceforth, the US has increasingly tended towards a position which experts like Jagdish Bhagwati have come to call "aggressive unilateralism" ranging from the "super" and “special" variants of section 301 of the 1988 Trade Act to the direct imposition of unilateral sanctions.

Outside interpreters have recently described US policy in East Asia, especially China, as moving increasingly from "positive engagement" (China into WTO, etc) as demonstrated at the Seattle APEC summit of 1993 towards what some call, "containment of an Asian dragon with growing economic power or its "constrainment". (IHT, August 9, 1996). Similarly exaggerated are descriptions of European policies of "collusion" with Asian partners to keep out American business by unrestrained export credits, etc.

However, it can be accepted as a valid generalisation that the Americans adopt "a more confrontational approach towards China and Asia" than the EU. They often like to throw their weight around as a superpower (not only in military terms, but also in terms of main supplier of basic foodstuffs to Japan, and of technological know-how to most of East Asia). Often propagating their model to the world with almost religious zeal, as seen most recently at the Denver Summit in June. This is done evidently in order to impress their partners with unilateral threats often on the basis of national laws like "Super 301 ", or even extra-territorial application and possible action by Congress.

In concluding the comparison of EU and US policies on East Asia, one might easily say that there is a greater tendency in the American policy to pursue its objectives unilaterally. This is done mainly by exploiting the instruments of pressure available only to the US as a superpower and also with the leverage at its disposal due to certain dependencies on American supplies in the region. Not only for the lack of such means, but also because of its very nature as a growing regional union of traditional nation states, bound by the common conviction of deeper super national integration, Europe as a "soft power" is apt to implement its common policies towards East Asia more through long-term persuasion and cooperative efforts.

       Nevertheless, one cannot deny a wide transatlantic commonality of policy objectives, as far as trade and investment in East Asia are concerned. Therefore, from an Asian perspective there is neither the danger of a "ganging up of the West against Asia", nor is there any basis to conduct a policy of divide et impera by Asian countries against the West. However, there are plenty of opportunities for concrete cooperation in the Triad to open up to a global system of governance beyond the established multilateral framework towards ‑ what 1 would like to call - the "omni-lateral" system.

OMNILATERALISM

As the above-mentioned logic of the European Weltkind in der Mitten already indicates, there has to be some balance of weight on both sides, in the East as well as in the West of Europe. Without any doubt, America to the West of Europe has contributed enormously to the setting-up of the multilateral system. For example, it would be impossible to imagine the creation of the United Nations, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation, just to mention the main institutions, without the pro-active participation of the US. Similarly, Europeans have contributed to the establishment of these organisations through the Atlantic Charter with the UK, for instance. These contributions can be tracked to a point where the current multilateral system appears not only Western inspired, but an outgrowth of almost pure Western thinking, including of course its tolerance of otherness in pluralism.

For an outsider, it may be hard to make out the influence of non-Western and in particular Asian cultures in the setting-up of these institutions or their working processes. Although some countries were early members or even founding fathers of the institutions, the Asian impact on these multilateral institutions seems to have been minimal. This has often been attributed to economic backwardness of the Asian countries, until Japan caught up with the West after having joined the IMF in 1952, GATT in 1955 and OECD in 1964, subsequently benefiting considerably from that multilateral system.

Although some countries were early members or even founding fathers of the institutions, the Asian impact on these multilateral institutions seems to have been minimal. Most European countries then applied Article 35 of GATT against Japan, thus denying her advantages which they granted to the other contracting parties. These restrictions were gradually lifted over the years as Japan's trade partners perceived the need to at least partly replace those restrictions by Voluntary Restraint Agreements and the like. In doing so, the question remains even after decades of membership: Has Japan really adapted its internal economic patterns to this multilateral system? ­Following the debate on Japan's, industrial policy, some critics argued that GATT's traditional market-based and non-discriminatory orientation showed weaknesses and thus needed modification. The West then demanded Japan play a more active role on the international stage "commensurate with her economic might". However, as a matter of fact, the Japanese mainstream understanding of their hackneyed internationalisation is still too passive to lead to any proactive input into the multilateral system, which would help it also to encompass the particularities of the internal workings of their very Japanese society. While the process of deregulation might render the country's legal basis more similar to Anglo‑Saxon concepts, it will hardly, or at least only in the long term, alter ingrained patterns of behaviour on the Japanese islands.

The German scholar, Josef Kohler, once explained law as a cultural phenomenon. Hence, if it is alien in a given society, such incompatibility creates friction and might even lead to forms of schizophrenia. Also the OECD points out in its "Vision 2020" that the prospects for the new Global Age, in which all countries can be active players, depend on the ability to adapt to changes, and emphasises first the many "behind-the-border" barriers which need to be tackled (OECD Document, "Towards a New Global Age", C (97) 80, Pan's 1997).

A similar dualism could sharpen in a China which under outside pressure precipitately and superficially adopts Western rules, but internally cannot rapidly adapt her traditional pattern of behaviour. For some - especially young people in China - the reception. of Western thinking has already gone too far. From Japan's experience with gaiatsu to open up since the mid-nineteenth century to similar outside pressures from other countries, one can easily conclude that civil liberties in a state are inversely proportional to the impact of such external pressures. Others go even further in drawing a worst-case scenario, arguing that the economic determinism of the West could well cause ‘violent efforts to throw off, master, or revenge, the invasive influence of disruptive Western ideas and values’. According to William Pfaff, 'The internationalisation of any non-Western economy automatically undermines social practices, and religious and cultural norms. It is a literally subversive force... There will sooner or later be a reaction.'

On this timing, I should like to qualify Kaffs analysis, as we in Europe and America also first had to develop these concepts, and one of the major problems for East Asia is the incomparable speed of development. First in Japan followed by the "Four Tigers" and then with Southeast Asia, the acceleration to reach industrialisation and subsequently beyond, has dramatically progressed with each "Wild Goose" following Japan and now even the "Dragon". Social advances that have taken centuries in the UK to grow internally are now pushed into these countries within a few years. Backlashes, therefore, cannot be avoided, even in still well controlled societies like that of South Korea. Furthermore, there is growing realisation in Asia that nowadays modernisation does not, necessarily, mean Westernisation.

Such development in China could not only cause much greater problems for the West in view of China's size, but also because China is clearly more assertive internationally, as the re-emerging "Middle Kingdom", supported by an already highly active network of 50 Million overseas Chinese. China is the world's second largest holder of foreign exchange reserves, after Japan. With its trade surplus with the US expected to be greater than that of Japan soon, China has bought a sizeable number of US treasury bonds exceeding that of Japan in 1996. 'China could jolt the US financial market as well as the world economy by dumping those bonds ... such a danger involving China is much greater compared with Japan's holding of US bonds.' (Mainiciii Shimbun, February 24, 1997). Unless China joins as an integral "stake-holder", and not only a passive trader in the existing multilateral system, such a system remains only "multilateral Western". The acclaimed world order would not be truly all-compassing and thus would remain unable to claim genuine universal values for all.

Without going into the details of underlying philosophies, there are good reasons to doubt the absolutism that we have reached the "end of history".

There is growing realisation in Asia that nowadays modernisation does not, necessarily, mean Westernisation. Rather we can see the increasing re-emergence of culturally divergent identities, which the contentions of the hot and cold wars of our century had covered up under superficial layers of ideologies. While now roots are sought more and more in regional, and even local, cultures by mobile individuals in order to balance their loss of identity within globalising economies, world bodies rightfully deserve their name, only if these organisations fully encompass the pro-active partnership of all players on this globe, from the occident as well as the orient.

The absolutism of neither Hegelian nor, more recently, that, of Fukuyama's claimed "End of History", is convincing but the forces of pertinent, traded cultural notions and new patterns of communication, (for example "death of distance" through the Internet) are too strong to be any longer neglected in global governance. These divergent cultural presumptions have to be understood first, in order to establish a sense of "co-ownership" and an all-inclusive approach by international institutions.

One example, where Eastern concepts might greatly contribute to. World-wide problem solving is their more holistic approach to nature and consequently more direct comprehension of interdependence in our common ecological system. On the highly topical issues of the protection of the environment, it is the old Buddhist principles of interdependence in nature and in cycles of reincarnation which serve as a much better basis to understand the need for the recycling of materials, than our Western concept - or rather illusion - of creation from zero. Holistic views of nature conserve, whereas our analytical approaches often tend to divide before conceiving common elements. If some East Asian economies have not yet manifested these holistic values as much as would be expected from their religious background, it can be attributed mainly to the speed of development and social transformation that does not reflect traditional values. With the stabilisation of a broader middle class in society, there will re-emerge a stronger identification with original values, as we have seen already in Japan.

One concrete manifestation of the holistic approach can be seen in the long established Japanese horticultural art of miniaturising an otherwise intact landscape, as Sansui (compare also Chinese Bonsai), whilst gardening in the West traditionally amounts to the systematic, geometric separation of the elements and sorts of plants, as in Parc de Versailles, for example. Seeing "nature as the mother", (Takeshi Umehara, Voice, Tokyo, July 95, p 166, in Japanese) is now perceived as one of the reasons for success. It was not by accident that the Worldwatch Institute gave Japan and China relatively good marks on their environment policies (State of the World 1997, New York 1997, p 9). The fact that Chinese cities have relatively few polluting, motorised bikes or mopeds, but still millions of human driven non-polluting bicycles seems to be the result less of technical and economic backwardness, than the intended outcome of a strict licence system. Apparently, it is very difficult to get a licence for a motorcycle and frequently it is refused.

The generic nexus of guatixi or connections in China is the traditional variant of the modern concept of networking, be it in persona or only virtually through the Internet. Some go even further and suggest the linked verses in dialogue in the Japanese renga tradition of multi-dimensional unit is the possible structure for networking in the information age. For them there is a need for “synthetic" perspectives with "circulation" and "symbiosis" instead of the Western "analytic" methods with "progress" through competition. (cf. Kenichi Ito, Non-European Civilisations Rediscovered, Symposium at the JDZ Berlin, June 1,1996).

      There must be numerous other examples for the comparative culturalist, drawn not only from Asian cultures, but also from other continents which, as co-owning and proactive stakeholders, could enrich global governance. The search for such constructive elements in emerging societies to build a truly omnilateral system of course, remain an ongoing task that will never be finished as long as history flows.

If we do not open up to such omnilateralism - in contrast to the "only multilateral system" of today - there is a danger, at some point in the future, that China will no longer see the need to join the "Western-made" institutions or enter as a passive member, like Japan did in GATT in 1955, but may sooner or later break up its purely Western concepts from the inside like an alien cuckoo in a nightingale's nest. Admittedly, such omnilateralism seems to be an idealistic vision which underrates the urgent need to "constructively engage" China into the world trading system. However, it is precisely the constructive, ie, building together nature of the engagement which should reflect China's input to build an omnilateral system. Otherwise, there is clearly a risk of taking non-Westeners into the existing system like accepting a new member into a conservative club, because they just happened to move into the neighbourhood in terms of development (like South Korea into the OECD), or because they have grown sufficiently important as the new boys on the block (for eg, Russia into "Group of 8 " and China into WTO). If one accepts Europe as Weltkind in der Mitten, then it should naturally assume the role of a mediator. This is a role Europe can, and should play much more often. The multilateral organisations, however, are expanding their geographical and thereby also their cultural reach, which, likewise, should also encompass their particularities. This, of course, does not at all exclude the existence of universal fundamental values, as then agreed upon by all " omnilaterally".

When I quoted Goethe's Weltkind in der Mitten at the beginning to locate Europe in between America and Asia, I wanted to indicate the relative nearness of Europe to both. If one accepts Europe as Weltkind in der Mitten, then it should naturally assume the role of a mediator. This is a role Europe can and should play much more often. But its preoccupation with its own integration process (now in particular with East Europe) has hitherto prevented it from fulfilling that function. The Cold War strengthened the alliance with America, but left the missing link" with East Asia. It is time the Weltkind regains its balance and opens up to omnilateralism.