Again in Indonesia, the country whose cultural history I have been most busy trying to face, it is very clear there that the most dangerous time for local indigenous cultural expressions was not so much the present time of globalization, but the post-war period between '45 and '65. This was when enormous cultural vandalism occurred in the name of the nation state and modernization in many countries. Of course China is the most extraordinary case of the world's richest civilization, being apparently deliberately rejected by its own government. But similarly in many other countries that was the period when the new nation states were erected with heroic efforts of nation building, but the eagerness to embrace what was national and modern left behind a great deal of cultural variety. This echoes the situation in Europe where Basque, Scottish or Welsh localism can flourish in a more globalized world, because the threat of the nation states is no longer quite as urgent as it was in suffering this kind of cultural diversity in the name of the "nation".
Fourthly, what about the regionalism which, I think, must be seen as a part of internationalization rather than an opposition to it. The increasingly interdependent world we have in the post-cold-War world requires more and more multilateral ways of handling problems that cannot all be dealt with at the global level. The U.S. is unpopular and often unwilling to deal with the problems, while the U.N. is difficult to mobilize. Many problems are best handled regionally and locally. One can think of some unsuccessful regional endeavors in Africa; and the Bosnia embroglia was not a successful European regional effort before U.S. intervention. But nevertheless, local initiatives are usually the quickest and least objectionable ways of acting multilaterally. In my part of the world the problem between Bougainville and Papua New Guinea did not need to involve the U.S. nor the U.N., but involved New Zealand, the Solomons, Fiji and inevitably Australia, providing some back up to attempt to resolve that issue. In other words, we need organizations like the South Pacific Forum, ASEAN, AFTA and APEC. It seems to me that these organizations are absolutely essential parts of the intentional order we have to try to build. They have to be open and they have to be over-lapping. We cannot really think of one organization as solving all the problems at one level. The boundaries of these organizations are always difficult. To make them impermeable and to make them the absolute resort for all issues would exacerbate those boundary problems. The extension of ASEAN is one of the many new situations the consequences of which cannot be predicted. It has some dangers. It's going to be harder for ASEAN to gain consensus with such a diverse membership. On the other hand, it may bring great benefits in terms of gradually incorporating Vietnam and Burma into that regionalism. I was glad that Dr. Lee mentioned the problem of China. I think that is the major problem for regionalism in Asia. By comparison, Australia, the "odd man of Asia", is rather easy to handle, being the right size and having the right general disposition for multilateralism. But China will be the problem for any regionalism we care to construct. Is it in or is it out? How do we handle China? This is the big problem for regionalism, and we ought to be very careful in the way we handle it.
Finally, one of the most positive things one can say is also a tribute to organizations like Osaka International House Foundation. The role of NGOs and all kinds of internationally-oriented organizations is crucial in building a kind of civil society, the regional and international civil society that we need. We are engaged in this exact enterprise.
During these two days, the kind of work the Foundation has done to bring us together is exactly the kind of work we need more of. We need more think-tanks, opportunities to think multilaterally about problems because every problem now is multilateral one. So let me end with thanks to the Foundation for bringing us together.
｡?Commentator: Takashi SHIRAISHI
Professor, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University
Two speakers, reports today addressed four big concepts, that is, the nation, the market, the society and the culture which we often take up when we think about the society or the history in which we now live. We talked about them up to this morning and yesterday afternoon we talked about culture. We basically talked about the nation and the market. Culture was brought up once along with the history and it was taken up once again. Then the problem of the society appeared for the first time in this session.
Well what I want to say is that when it comes to globalization, we tend to talk about only the nation and the market. We know culture and the society are also important topics to discuss but because they do not fit in with our discussion smoothly, we do not treat them in the same way as we treat the nation and the market. We include them in our session only because we must do so. However, in today's session they were brought up successfully, which is important, I
