Kevin Rudd's proposal for an Asia-Pacific regional security community is a worthy idea with a discouraging history in modern Australian diplomacy. The fate of a similar initiative fourteen years ago by foreign minister Gareth Evans when the ASEAN regional form (ARF) was being established shows how difficult it is to move regional leaders towards even minimal security cooperation.

This history should not, of course, deter the prime minister from making the effort. Regional political, economic and military developments provide compelling arguments for greater regional security cooperation and Rudd’s proposal is a fitting prelude to his current trip to Japan and Indonesia.

In 1993 ASEAN officials asked Evans for a draft paper on practical proposals for security cooperation when they were setting up the ARF. Evans commissioned a paper by Professor Paul Dibb which set out easier, more difficult and unlikely areas for security cooperation among the ASEAN nations. The following year the ARF met in Bangkok with high hopes for regional security co-operation based on the Australian paper. In November Evans hosted a Canberra seminar on building trust and confidence and trust in the Asia-Pacific.

Fourteen years later there has been no observable progress. The ASEANs could not even embrace the initial easy steps towards security cooperation which included limited exchanges of military information, a regional security studies centre and observers at military exercises.

Rudd’s proposal lacks the specificity of the Dibb paper. In fact it is not entirely clear what he is proposing. After raising the example of the European Union, he immediately says Europe “does not represent an identikit model” but that we need to capture its “spirit” in the region. Then he acknowledges that levels of development, religious beliefs, languages and cultures are far more diverse in the Asia Pacific region than in Europe.

Given these ambiguities, Rudd was wise to hire the vastly experienced Dick Woolcott to act as Australia’s envoy to the region - a role he originally played when Prime Minister Bob Hawke was pushing to establish the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) grouping.

To many observers it is deeply discouraging that the ASEANS should not have been able to embrace at least the easier trust-building measures set out by Dibb. They might subsequently have been able to embrace more difficult measures including maritime cooperation, a regional arms register, notification of major military deployments and a multilateral agreement on the avoidance of naval incidents.

Compared with the powerhouse countries of North Asia - notably China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan - the ASEANs have a generally less dramatic history of abiding antagonisms, mistrust and conflict. Nor do they have the military muscle, including the weapons of mass destruction, that make North Asia a world flashpoint.

But the ASEANs apparently decided they did not want to take even minimal initiatives that might have offered a regional example and perhaps lead to others towards security cooperation. Instead they took refuge in their pusillanimous principle of non-interference and their vacuous treaty of amity and cooperation. Together these deny them any serious regional strategic weight and renders them impotent even in the face of the appalling behavior by ASEAN members like the dreadful Burmese military regime.

If the ASEANs cannot embrace regional security cooperation it is difficult to see the North Asians doing so. Yet the case for security cooperation is stronger now than it was when Gareth Evans declared optimistically that the region was well placed to ensure a cooperative security environment which would guarantee peace and stability.

The political, economic and security environment in what these days is called Australia’s paramount region of strategic interest currently looks benign. There are no wars in the Asia-Pacific region. But the region, including Australia, is undergoing major inter-related transitions that will significantly reshape the regional order and power relationships within it. Five features stand out.

First, political transitions. All significant powers, and some less significant, are in political transitions of varying degrees of intensity.

Australia itself has a new national government headed by a mandarin-speaking policy wonk deeply interested in foreign and defence issues. The new government has ordered a new defence white paper, a new national security statement, and an inquiry into defence procurement and sustainment. All neighbors will be watching the evolution of Australian policy as closely as Australia watches regional developments.

Australia’s traditional ally, the United States, is six months out from an election which will see the end of the Bush era. Whoever forms the next US administration, there seems little doubt that US-Australia relations will be much less intimate and less personal than they became in the Bush-Howard era. The alliance will inevitably change.

China, now Australia’s largest trading partner and the source of current Australian prosperity, has long abandoned Maoist Marxism for a political system based on market economics, intense nationalism and brutal authoritarianism. India is the new power militarily and economically.

Indonesia, Australia’s largest and closest foreign neighbor, and the world’s largest Islamic country, is trying in hugely difficult circumstances to come to terms with political democracy under President Yudhoyono. It remains to be seen how the Indonesian political transition will look when it matures further.

Russia, the heartland of the old Soviet enemy, is back as a hard-headed world player under an intensely authoritarian and nationalist regime fuelled by booming gas and oil revenues. It is well to remember that Russia has always aspired to be a great Pacific power.

Some of the political verities of postwar Japan are changing as the former North Asian powerhouse considers its constitution and the effectiveness of LDP rule. Given Japan’s close security and economic relations with Canberra and Washington, and its mature if idiosyncratic democracy, the evolution of Japan is of intense interest to the region, including to Australia and the US. At the same time there are ongoing strains between India and neighboring Pakistan, two nuclear powers with a history of conflict.

Second, economic transitions. Economic growth throughout the region ranges from spectacular to flat and the relative economic weight of main players is changing. The big stories are China and India. They are growing fast and their appetite is huge for the mineral and energy resources with which Australia is endowed. It will not be long before the Chinese economy is bigger than the currently flat US economy. Japan too is sluggish; Russia is booming; Indonesia is struggling, although growth is recovering. And the Australia economy remains strong, although patchy and vulnerable to external forces over which it has no control.

Third, military budget transitions. All regional countries are spending hugely on military modernisation as their economies prosper. Australia is embarked on a $100 billion ten-year program to acquire new fighter jets and warships and to modernise its army. China, Japan, South Korea and India top a regional defence spend not much short of $US300 billion a year - excluding the huge US budget. If what is happening is not a regional arms race, it certainly bears a striking resemblance to an arms race and Australia’s technological edge is being eroded.

Fourthly, unresolved issues. The region contains some of the world’s most intractable military flashpoints: the Taiwan traits, the Korean peninsula, India-Pakistan, India-China, China-Japan. It cannot be assumed that these and other multiple unresolved issues will remain dormant permanently.

Fifthly, the region is a particularly fertile setting for transitions to what has become known as the “new security agenda.” This is generally taken to include possible consequences of global warming, terrorism, pandemic disease, people and drug smuggling, money laundering and other criminal activities. It seems prudent to pursue regional cooperation in any activities designed to ensure that these issues do not become full-blown national security threats rather than unpleasant inconveniences that might emerge with varying degrees of seriousness.

Against this background, it is remarkable and unsettling that the region lacks security architecture. There is little in the way of regional arms control, confidence-building measures or crisis management machinery in the region. Regional bodies like the ARF, ASEAN, APEC and the East Asian Summit have proved impotent in this respect. There is no Asian NATO or EU equivalent but rather a collection of strong and growing states actively pursuing their own interests in an essentially anarchic regional order that might or might not prove economically and militarily sustainable.

These realities are the ultimate justification for Rudd’s initiative. We should hope for the best, but history suggests our expectations should not be high.