REUTERS: ASEAN SEEKS TO CREATE ONE BIG VILLAGE

A pink dragon-like alien from outerspace (who for some odd reason is called “Blue”) is driving through space one day when he gets into a traffic accident with some space debris and falls to earth. The creature lands in Southeast Asia (where bizarre traffic accidents are commonplace) in a place called “ASEAN Village”.  It is here, waiting for his spaceship to be fixed, where Blue learns about ASEAN and its acheivements over the past 40 years, and its aspiration to become one big happy ASEAN Community.  This is the storyline from a new comic book and animated cartoon for schoolchildren that the ASEAN Secretariat has commissioned to propagate the idea of an ASEAN Community, one not so unlike the European Community, which the leaders of today are hoping to bequeath the children of tomorrow.

This weekend’s meeting in Pattaya, Thailand will try to find common ground in dealing with the financial crisis, which has begun to pinch Asia’s largely export-dependent economies. The leaders will sign agreements on energy, climate change, food security. They will be filled with important sounding acronyms and they will be legally pretty much worthless.

If the leaders ever begin to talk seriously, say about a single currency or monetary union as Europe did a quarter-century or so ago, then they can truly start being a community. Until that happens, ASEAN is a caucus without much focus.

Question to the Blogosphere:  What do you think are the barriers to discovering common ground in the ASEAN region?  Why has it been so hard to create something similar to the EU in Asia?  What do you think is the significance of the story being told to Asian children about “Blue” and the “ASEAN Village”?