SEOUL -- Another APEC summit has come and gone but has anything really changed? The question that needs to be asked is whether the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum is still relevant? No one attending the recent APEC summit in Bangkok really wanted to leave -- especially after the magnificence of the royal barge procession -- but was APEC itself left stronger or weaker as a result?
Politics is at the heart of the matter and, in particular, APEC's apolitical bias. Its original goal was to combine the efforts of government and business in furthering trade and investment liberalization, and facilitation, as well as capacity building through economic and technical projects building on the diversity of its members. Politics was squeezed out of APEC at a time when globalization was purely an economic phenomenon. But that time is long past.
Not only has globalization become politicized but a whole new dimension has been added to the APEC agenda, most recently security concerns in the form of combating the terrorist threat. While APEC needs to stay focused on economic issues, it cannot avoid taking into account the political and security dimensions that impact on its goals. Overall, however, the results of the Bangkok meeting showed that APEC could stay on message vis a vis trade, instructing ministers to take concrete steps to make its trade agenda more supportive of the work of the World Trade Organization, while countering the security threat by committing itself to dismantle transnational terrorist groups through APEC's Counter-Terrorism Task Force and to take appropriate measures against proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.