The perspective and the power political configuration in which the EU and ASEAN found themselves in the international system (Tocci and Manners 2008: 312-4) following the end of the Cold War was another important factor that significantly contributed to their normative differences. For the EU, the triumphant mood in the West after the fall of Berlin Wall and the wave of democratisation movements in former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe played a key role in pushing it to
127 For example, to justify why they greatly attach to those liberal values in its post-Cold War foreign
policy, the EU and its officials often refer to Europe’s war-torn and bitter past (Forchtner and Kølvraa 2012: 387-8).
128 As noted in Chapter 3, ASEAN strongly emphasised those norms in its dealing with the Cambodia
issue and to support ASEAN, the EC even stressed the need to respect those fundamental principles of international relations.
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press developing countries towards democratisation (Tay and Goh 1999: 44; Rüland 2001c: 17; Yeo 2009a: 48). In other words, the strong self-belief and, to some extent, the sense of superiority that the European countries had after the collapse of communism made them more confident in seeking to export its liberal norms in Europe and globally. As mentioned in Chapter 3, the transformation of the EC into the EU also significantly enhanced the EU’s actorness, which inspired it to play a greater role as a political actor on the international scene. Furthermore, that transformation brought with it a new identity based on a set of liberal and democratic norms and prompted it to anchor the promotion of those values as a central objective of its foreign policy. During a meeting with ASEAN members in 1993, the European Commission’s Vice President, Manuel Marin, clearly stated that strengthening democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights and individual freedoms was one of the primary objectives of the EU’s foreign policy (Marin 1993). As shown in Chapter 4, most of the EU’s key documents on human rights and democracy were issued in the 1990s. Coupled with an enhanced actorness, a new mission and a triumphant mood, the collapse of the Soviet Union and its allies also meant that the EU no longer needed to court authoritarian governments in developing countries in general and authoritarian and pro-Western regimes in Southeast Asia (Smith 2003: 105). Subsequently, it sought to push for democratisation in this region by introducing a policy of conditionality (Tay and Goh 1999: 44; Yeo 2009a: 48). Because of this, the human rights issue and the East Timor matter fed into its relations with ASEAN in the 1990s. Overall, it is apt to say that the construction or self- presentation of the EU as a normative power in world politics as examined in Chapter 4 began due to the transformation within the EU and the change at the internal level following the end of the Cold War.
On the ASEAN side, it became more confident of its normative underpinnings and thereby strongly relied on them in its dealing with the EU because it also experienced internal dynamics in the 1990s. In fact, as an Asian scholar aptly points out, thanks to the impressive economic development of its members and its recognition as a successful diplomatic community after the Cambodian conflict, by the early 1990s, ASEAN and its individual members had become more assertive (Interview, 2009). Economically, in the 1980s and the 1990s, the average annual GDP growth of the ASEAN countries was much bigger than that of the EU members. With the exception of Ireland, which enjoyed high economic growth (i.e. 7.5), the average annual GDP growth of the EU members was below 2.8 % in the years 1990-1998. In contrast, with the
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exception of the Philippines, the average annual GDP growth of ASEAN members was above 5.5 % (see Appendix 11). Given this impressive growth, until the 1997/8 Asian financial crisis, the ASEAN region was one of the world’s fastest-growing economic regions; and such economic dynamism gave ASEAN states more confidence in dealing with regional and international affairs (European Commission 1994; Brunn and Jacobsen 2000).
At the political and diplomatic level, the self-belief and dynamism of ASEAN was also reflected in a number of proactive measures that it took to respond to the new challenges that arose in the post-Cold War era. These included the establishment of the ARF, a mechanism, which includes all major global and regional powers and deals with security and political issues in the Asia-Pacific region, and which adopted the ASEAN way as its mode of function. If the EU began to emerge as a global actor and strongly advance its liberal values of human rights and democracy in Europe and globally following the end of the Cold War, ASEAN also became an active actor in fostering cooperation as well as promoting its core Westphalian principles of sovereign and non- inference in the wider Asia-Pacific region. In fact, given such economic successes and political achievements, ASEAN and its members believed that they could manage their domestic and regional affairs in their own way. More precisely, they felt that their development model, which emphasised stability and economic growth and which favoured the community or state’s rights over the individual’s rights, was vindicated. It is for this reason that some ASEAN leaders championed the Asian values. Their development and endorsement of the Asian values, which were such a prominent and distinctive part of Southeast Asia’s identity during those boom years, not only showed that ASEAN’s normative nature became divergent from the EU’s. It also illustrated that ASEAN members sought to disconnect from the EU in terms of values and were willing to oppose what they regarded as the Western imposition of foreign values (Tay and Goh 1999: 46). Such a resistance led to tensions in its relations with the EU.