I assumed that referencing Edmund Burke (pictured), the father of modern conservatism, might have protected me from suggestions of 'Kumbaya-ism' and Kantian idealism. Evidently not, so let me explain my position.
Hugh White is quite right to say that it is unrealistic to expect the great powers to abandon strategic competition in order to make a Concert of Asia work. Hugh describes the concert as a way to 'manage' competition, and while that's perfectly true, I don't think it exhausts the topic. What the Concert of Europe example suggests is that, for a Concert of Asia to work, strategic competition needs not just to be managed but to be tamed or sublimated.
Let me burnish my anti-Kumbaya credentials here by borrowing the words of another conservative, Roger Scruton. What the concert should aim for is to become an institution in which the power relations between its members no longer stand naked, but where that power is instead 'clothed in constitution, operating always through an adequate system of law, so that it's movement seems never barbarous or oppressive, but always controlled and inevitable, an expression of the civilized vitality through which allegiance is inspired.'
Scruton was writing about the state, but the description can apply in somewhat diluted form to international institutions. The allegiance and authority inspired by international institutions is bound to be weak, owing to the inherent anarchy of the international realm. Nevertheless, there is such a thing as an international society, and it can support institutions which its members deem to be authoritative, and to which they show allegiance.
Within the state, allegiance and authority tend to be inspired by institutions which are very old. People seem to instinctively like the idea of being associated with something that came before them, and which will outlive them — as Burke said, society is a contract between the living, the dead and those yet to be born.
Which brings me back to the closing point of my earlier post. Authority and allegiance to a Concert of Asia cannot easily be conjured up and will be weak if based solely on the realist logic that a concert is ultimately in the self-interest of its members. That is why, rather than building a new body, it might be preferable to draw on existing regional institutions, which may already carry that sense of authority and allegiance.
Image courtesy of Wikipedia.
