ended, or an age where the Japanese economic system is regarded as a model has ended, and that the age of democracy has overwhelmed the world. They insist that, for example, Indonesia should shift to democracy from now on. The problem is, of course, whether their argument is right. To be honest, I do not think so. I would like to explain the reason later, but these arguments seem to come from a shallow understanding of the Asian history, without looking at the long history of Asia. I think this kind of conclusion would be reached when someone looks at only some decades of Asian history. In short, we can argue the history using various time-scales. We can look at the history of some region, for example, just for one year. We can also use various time-scales such as 50, 150, 500 or even 1,000 years when arguing the history. We might find different lessons depending on which time-scale we use. This is the first point I should like to make. The second point regards my definition of Asia in this speech since I want to avoid misunderstanding.
I use the word "Asia" as a political and economic order prevailed in a region to facilitate the argument. And I do not intend, by any means, to argue the issue of identity or culture.
Asia as an order has changed over time in history. When we think of how Asia as an order can be understood in different time-scales, we find 3 lessons regarding the current crisis.
First, I would like to argue using the time-scale of 50 years.
It is because I would like to think about how the people who made post-war orders such as Attison and Kennan planned and created such order in Asia from the latter half of 1940s to the beginning of 1950s. We should understand the current crisis in terms of such order. Then, what is Asia in the time-scale of 50 years? Simply put, that is Asia in the cold war era, and the post-cold war era as for the last 10 years. From the standpoint of 1940s, more precisely, from that of the United States, it means to contain communized China and call the rest of the Asian Region "Free Asia", and then make a triangular trade system between Japan, Southeast Asia and the United States. And finally, they made a mutual security system by bundling bi-national security treaties concluded between the U.S. and other countries such as Japan, South Korea and the Philippines. Based on such an economic and security order, a liberal international order, as Kennan said, was established in 1980s, even China became a part of such order. I think that is the story. Therefore, the principle of the order was, in the first place, the extreme supremacy of the U.S. in the security treaty.
In the second place, there is the principle of market capital, or capitalism, especially that of liberal capitalism. And finally liberal democracy - I think these were the 3 principles.
As a result, from the point of the view of the U.S., aiming to maintain and enhance such a liberal international order, the promotion of a system that facilitates market mechanisms will be easily reached as a conclusion. Under such circumstances, the transparency of markets will be secured and expanded and deregulation will be promoted further. In addition, liberal democracy will be promoted in the political aspects.
However, is this the true lesson when we look at the history in the span of 50 years? Honestly, I do not think so, I would like to mention only 2 points here, though. First, I do not think the hegemony of the U.S. in the Asian region is so solid. In the field of finance, it symbolizes the strength of the hegemony of the U.S. that Southeast Asian countries link their currencies to U.S. dollar. I think no country in Asia would do that any more, though there might be an exception with Indonesia. Then, is it possible to say that the hegemony of the U.S. has been strengthened by the fact that links with the U.S. dollar have lost? We should rather discuss the possibility that the hegemony of the U.S. based on which the order in the Asian region has been maintained is facing a serious crisis. I think this is one lesson we should learn in addition, in the light of politics, I do not think it is a useful lesson to draw from the current crisis to understand politics by such a simple structure as the democratic system versus the authoritarian system. For example, Thailand is facing a serious economic crisis even though it holds democracy. On the other hand, Indonesia is employing a typical authoritarian system and is also in a critical situation. That means countries fall into a crisis regardless of the principle they hold.
Then, what is common in these countries? Central banks of both countries did not function properly as the central bank.
That leads to mismanagement in the field of international finance. I think the point is about what should be done to establish a system that makes the central bank play its role.
More generally put, among the processes of politics, there are political process done by politicians, as it literally means, and a process done by technocrat. There should be the division of labor between these two processes in case of Japan as well as Southeast countess. I think this is the lesson when we look at the span of 50 years.
What if we use the span of 150 years? In fact, in the geographical region from East to Southeast Asia that is generally called "Asia", a modem international system was
