Speech
of
His Excellency Fidel V. Ramos
President of the Philippines
Before the Pacific Basin Economic Council

[Delivered in Seoul, South Korea, May 24, 1993]

Toward greater freedom

A VISIT to the Republic of Korea is for me almost like a homecoming. Since arriving over the weekend, I have been recalling old times with comrades-in-arms from the Korean War. Forty-three years ago this June, United Nations forces came to Korea—in the belief that if freedom were extinguished anywhere, the whole world would be diminished. The Philippines was part of those U.N. forces, I soldiered here in 1952 as a lieutenant-platoon leader in my country’s 20th Battalion Combat Team, which took part in many battles around the 38th parallel, not far from here.

Today as we plan the future growth of the Asia-Pacific region, it is only fitting that we look back to that time—to acknowledge the Republic of Korea’s heroic role as part of the worldwide perimeter of freedom. Behind that perimeter of freedom our separate nations have been given a breathing spell to grow and prosper in peace and freedom.

Mutual security based on economic interdependence

In the age of the Cold War just past, great powers typically progressed from economic strength to military power—and then to imperialism.

Today no state need aspire to hegemony—because it can attain its goals through peaceful commerce and integration in the community of nations. A truly global market has risen and it is founded not on force but on mutual benefit.

In our time, economic interdependence binds separate nation-states together and reconciles even the most bitter enemies. Against the gravitational pull of mutual benefit, ideology cannot prevail, and even the most obstinate nationalism must give way to economic cooperation and synergy.

We all remember when the multinational corporation was the bogeyman of our economic nationalists. Between the foreign company and our resources of land, subsoil and sea, nationalists set up barrier after barrier—in the mistaken belief that an ample stock of natural resources was enough to make a country rich and competitive.

What makes a nation great

Today we know that it is not really just material resources that make a nation great, but the talent and vigor of its people. Not only are nationalist ideologies being redefined. So are international relations being governed increasingly by the power of ideas rather than by the power of arms; by law rather than by command.

Economic competition is not a zero-sum game in which one side wins what the other side loses. In economic competition, everybody wins, and even the relative loser ends up richer than when he started.

We in ASEAN have gotten together to achieve a kind of unification that would give our six countries the cultural variety, the talent pool, the economic weight, the technological resilience, and the attractiveness to investors that we need to become a major player in the future world.

But we in ASEAN do not see the globe as divided into friends or foes. We do not see business competition as preventing economic cooperation. And we do not intend to shut ourselves away from the world.

Like ASEAN, the whole Asia-Pacific region has no reason to protect its economies by erecting tariff walls, because it need not fear competition.

Our own host-country, the Republic of Korea, is the very exemplar of the Asia-Pacific quality. At the very start of its drive to modernization, the Republic of Korea rejected the conventional wisdom that resource endowments determine future income. It dared to create its own comparative advantage—most dramatically in steel and shipbuilding—by sheer political will, intelligence, entrepreneurial drive and willingness to learn.

I am sure you are all familiar with the industrial epic of Pohang Iron and Steel. Pohang was founded in 1968—in defiance of a World Bank study’s conclusion that “an integrated steel mill in Korea was a premature proposition without economic feasibility.” Yet, only 18 years later, Pohang had become one of the most cost-effective and largest steel-makers in the world!

Economic growth and political liberalization

Korea also has political lessons for us. Here, economic growth and political liberalization have progressed hand in hand. This process was recently capped by the election of President Kim Young Sam—who spent 30 years in the opposition. Since taking office in February, President Kim has moved quickly and decisively to clean up politics and the bureaucracy, consolidate civilian authority over the military, and revitalize the economy.

East Asia leads this worldwide movement of peoples, having awakened to their political entitlements, dismantling authoritarian and statist systems. The Philippines itself reclaimed its democracy in February 1986 by way of a peaceful, nonviolent People Power revolution after 14 years of oppressive rule.

Economic growth generates a libertarian momentum that has proved compelling. Similarly, the growth of the democratic spirit in many countries has opened vast opportunities for greater people’s productivity and faster economic advance.

In my country we are working to reconcile our political democracy with an oligarchic economy left over from the colonial period, not by changing the political system as so many well-meaning outsiders would have us do, but by democratizing the economy.

Our most recent reforms allow the wider participation of foreign investment in nearly every aspect of the economy, including commercial banking.

The special powers granted by the Philippine Congress allow me to deal decisively with our shortage of electric power. In our energy needs, we are encouraged by discoveries of substantial quantities of oil and gas in our western province of Palawan.

We have freed all foreign-exchange transactions and begun a five-year program of tariff reduction.

We aim in short to establish a democracy of rights, of opportunities, of means, of productivity.

This vision is embodied in my Government’s program of “Philippines 2000″—our national strategy for sustained development over the next six years.

Asia-Pacific cooperation

The growing consensus concerning our political and economic systems paves the way toward the critical steps our countries must take—steps toward one Asia-Pacific community.

Only then can the ocean we share live up to its name. And the groundwork for this shared vision we must begin in our time. It must start from a shared belief in the synergy of getting together and working together as a regional community.

If it is to get anywhere, unification should begin not by way of some grand political design, but through practical and doable origins.

Unification, in my view, begins best with subgroupings and “growth triangles” and “quadrangles of opportunity” cutting across national borders, among areas with strong complementary and historic associations. From these smaller beginnings, unification can develop through larger and ever-widening circles of cooperation.

Toward those countries that keep themselves apart, our best approach is not “containment” but “engagement.” We need to draw them into the web of regional collaboration that shapes our common interests, reinforces our common values and regulates our own common behavior.

Today’s Asia-Pacific region has several circles of economic and political cooperation. The widest circle is formed by the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), which is the official counterpart of this council.

Speeding up economic cooperation

A more modest circle—the East Asia Economic Caucus (EAEC) encompassing Northeast and Southeast Asia—has been proposed by Malaysia. EAEC is designed to be consistent with APEC. But, in both groupings, the processes and mechanisms for closer economic cooperation are just beginning. These processes we must now speed up.

We all agree with the need for a forum that shall ensure that businessmen can trade, produce, build and interact in peace and tranquility.

Because security issues are complex and often area-specific, an Asia-Pacific-wide security forum appears impractical for the moment. For this reason, we need a forum—or forums—where groups of countries within APEC can thresh out subregional differences and security problems.

This initial step I propose for our immediate consideration at Government and non-Government levels.

In our part of the world, the shifts in big-power arrangements have generated national uncertainties that countries of the region themselves must allay.

An institution where such problems can be threshed out is at the moment provided by the ASEAN’S Post-Ministerial Conference (PMC). At the end of every regular meeting of the ASEAN Foreign Ministers, they sit down informally with “dialogue partners.”

In Singapore less than a week ago, the senior officials of the PMC got together to hold, for the first time, discussions exclusively on regional security. Among other subjects, they considered our participation in the regional security dialogue of those countries that have a critical impact on the security of the region but are now—not yet, anyway—members of the PMC, countries like China, Russia and Vietnam.

It is time we started to sort out the precise relationships of these Asia-Pacific forums. This can be done by the Asia-Pacific heads of government—sitting together in a group consensus similar to what the Indonesians call musjawarah. Bandung should be a good site, on the fortieth anniversary in 1995 of its landmark conference in 1955. A new spirit of consensus and common action should bring us all together to address totally the problems of regionalism and globalism.

Toward greater freedom

In closing, let me sum up my message to this council:

Nationalism conventionally regards one’s own country as the center of the universe.

Our individual countries must now begin to shift their reference point from its traditional location in the nation-state to the Asia-Pacific region as a whole—and from there to this planet we share.

The ideal of one world is an old one because of the universal recognition of earth’s survival as our ultimate interest. But only now is it really within man’s grasp because of the potential economic power that we can cooperatively generate to make it attainable.

In our time the spirit of enterprise has created a vast supranational economy—whose immense power has turned even the most autarkic economies outward—toward participation in the shared adventure of development.

And development should result not merely in more consumer goods but also in greater human freedom. Economic growth is important not only because it enables men to accumulate material goods, but because it also frees societies from the bondage of poverty and enables ordinary people to enjoy the full possibilities of their lives.

As you begin this conference, keep in mind that it is for this—for human freedom—that we are striving, and not just for ourselves but also for those who will come after us.