At the outset of beating the odds lies the courage to confront history. The EU has been courageous enough,  ASEAN has not.

The European Union (EU) won the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize. I think this bodes well. The question occupying my mind today is why ASEAN lost the Nobel Peace Prize to the EU. The EU is a union seeking to accomplish regional integration. ASEAN works for the same objective for the Asia-Pacific region. We also are going through a period in which the security focus of American documents has shifted from Europe and its surrounding region to the Asia-Pacific region. Then, why was the EU and not ASEAN awarded the Nobel Peace Prize? If you are curious why, please read on.

Recently, I attended a conference on regional integration in New Delhi. The theme was the regional integration across South and Southeast Asia. This involves India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, Nepal, and Bhutan. Each one of these has a political problem with another. Interregional trade constitutes less than 10 percent of the total trade of the countries of the region.

India, for instance, neighbors Pakistan. But, let alone doing trade with Pakistan, India puts blame on the Pakistani intelligence unit even if, let’s say, the annual monsoon rainfall on India increases in a specific year. The same applies for Pakistan, of course. As any two countries have historical problems to deal with collaboratively, they cannot even trade with each other. And entering into a corporate partnership is considered treason, may God forbid.

According to the World Trade Organization, inter-European trade constitutes more than 70 percent of the exports of European countries. The rate in Asia has reached 50 percent just recently. Did you not like the indicator on the share of interregional trade to total exports? Then, take the regional share in processed intermediate inputs in the manufacturing industry. This indicator in a way shows the extent to which countries of the same region are a part of a joint value chain.

For example, can partners from two different countries engage in the establishment of a joint company without being charged with treason? In the ASEAN region, 25 percent of the manufacturing industry inputs are imported within the region. The ratio for the EU region is around 70 percent. What does this mean? It means that across the EU, highly strong value chains are established and the EU’s strength stems from this.

Then, what is it the EU has that the ASEAN doesn’t? In Asia, China and Japan are still in a territorial dispute over some islands. Korea and Japan, too, are in a similar dispute. On the Korean Peninsula are two states, ready for a confrontation with each other. But France and Germany no longer go to war over the sovereignty of a territory.  At the heart of the EU process lies the fact that France and Germany have confronted and settled with their history, something that Japan, China and Korea have not been able to do.

The EU is enlarging by tying surrounding countries to the value chains it has established within its territory. It takes countries which previously value chains disdained to pass through and turns them into countries through which they passes. Becoming a country through which a global value chain passes is harder than becoming a country through which a petroleum pipeline does. At the outset of beating the odds lies the courage to confront history. The EU has been courageous enough, ASEAN has not.

A country that confronts rather than fears of its history shall become powerful. Let’s hope the same for Turkey.

This commentary was published in Radikal daily on 27.10.2012