When APEC was born in 1989, it was more than another acronym. It was a moment of triumph for middle powers — Australia, Canada, South Korea, and others — asserting that the post-Cold War world could be shaped not just by the great powers but by those who knew how to manage co-operation.

It was pragmatic, elegant, and deeply functional. It promised a region connected by openness rather than divided by ideology. For a fleeting decade, APEC was the exemplar of middle-power diplomacy: agile, inventive and confident enough to believe that globalisation could be guided rather than merely endured.

More than that, it was colourful! It was the fruit yoghurt of multilateralism. An unnatural panoply of fruits from across the region – summits, declarations, handshakes and hesitatingly hilarious national costume photo shoots.

Yet, like any unnatural mix of exotic fruit and milky proteins, its time in the sun left the colour but soured the taste. Its shelf life expired, and its ingredients — dialogue, openness, flexibility — have turned rotten. The post–Cold War order, in which APEC thrived, has passed. Without reform, so too will APEC.

APEC’s achievements

To appreciate what will be lost, it’s worth recalling how extraordinary APEC once was. In an era defined by great-power institutions — NATO, the UN Security Council, the G7 — APEC emerged as something else entirely: a network of economies, not states, united less by shared ideology than by shared geography and commercial logic. It embodied “open regionalism”, a concept as subtle as it was radical. Instead of excluding outsiders, it encouraged members to liberalise trade among themselves in ways that would ultimately benefit all.

APEC was the height of post-Cold War middle-power diplomacy and ticked off all of its criteria: active diplomacy, niche diplomacy, good international citizenship and coalition building. Indeed, so successful was the coalition building that when you ask around for long enough, you discover as many “inventors” of APEC as there were at the first meeting!

Academics will tell you that academics created APEC – the result of new levels of academic-diplomatic co-operation, inspired by Track-2 and Track 1.5 initiatives, and built upon the Pacific Economic Co-operation Council. Diplomats will tell you that it was diplomatic innovation – the result of the largest foreign affairs budgets in a generation. Australians will surely tell you it was an Australian invention, South Koreans will tell you it was a Korean invention, Indonesians will tell you it was an Indonesian invention – and Paul Keating will tell you it was his invention.

All that can be said; APEC was the result of some pretty smooth diplomatic and political coalition building.

And for a while, it worked.

It established a framework for engagement that softened hierarchies. For business, it meant fewer barriers. For bureaucrats, it meant dialogue towards reform. For scholars, it was a living experiment in functional multilateralism.

With time, the results highlighted the success: tariffs fell, investment grew and Asia-Pacific integration became the story of the 1990s. Leaders met annually, economies co-ordinated and the APEC spirit — technocratic, incremental and resolutely co-operative — seemed to capture the essence of the post-Cold War order.

What went wrong?

APEC was the institutional reflection of its time: optimistic about liberal order, confident in American leadership and trusting in the idea that prosperity would bind nations more tightly than politics could divide them. Its success depended on three conditions: a relatively stable unipolar system, shared faith in globalisation and the willingness of middle powers to mediate rather than challenge.

These conditions no longer exist. The unipolar world is gone. Globalisation has fractured into rival standards and contested supply chains. Middle powers — once the balancers — are increasingly caught between strategic dependence and domestic fragmentation.

The result is that APEC’s format now feels almost quaint. Its communiqués read like relics, its agendas recycled like the most awkward Asian national costumes worn by the sweatiest overweight Western leaders after APEC conferences. It still convenes, still publishes, still talks about “facilitation”. But the energy is performative. The language of co-operation remains, but the logic that sustained it has evaporated.

Is change possible?

Institutional transformation between eras is possible — but only for those institutions that serve clear, durable functions. The International Telecommunication Union, founded in 1865, persists because it manages something concrete: technical co-ordination. The Inter-Parliamentary Union, born in the 1880s, still convenes legislators because its purpose — dialogue between parliaments — transcends geopolitics. The Universal Postal Union is another: it endures because mail must move, regardless of the century.

These organisations outlived their origins because they do things. They deliver, regulate or arbitrate something tangible. What, by contrast, does APEC do?

That question reveals the problem. Was APEC about open regionalism – a strategic move by Australia to dilute exclusive Asian blocs? Was it about trade facilitation – a way for governments to streamline business co-operation? Or was it simply about middle-power diplomacy – an attempt to contain major powers within a framework of dialogue and consensus?

Whichever purpose one chooses, it was bound to expire. Open regionalism faded once the WTO stalled and bilateral deals took over. Trade facilitation moved to more formal, enforceable agreements like the CPTPP and RCEP. And middle-power diplomacy found new homes in G20 and ASEAN+ frameworks. APEC, lacking both the hard edge of trade law and the emotional pull of regional identity, simply drifted.

Can APEC be reformed?

APEC’s inertia is not unique. The difficulty of transforming institutions between eras is one of the great recurring themes of international relations. Once created, bureaucracies resist reinvention. They are designed for stability, not for imagination. There are exceptions – but whether APEC, South Korea and reform are a neat bundle, is a difficult question.

South Korea prides itself on being a model middle power – dynamic, globally connected and committed to multilateralism. But that reputation masks a deeper weakness: its diplomatic institutions are trained for adaptation, not for innovation. South Korea was a post post-Cold War middle power.

Seoul never demonstrated the sustained diplomatic creativity required to establish an institution like APEC. And before you say “what about MIKTA?” or “what about the GGGI?”, remember their current status.

MIKTA started with fanfare, holding leaders meetings and gala dinners. It is now an affair for local junior diplomats with boxed lunches on the side of more important meetings. The GGGI? It’s a multilaterally funded retirement village for former South Korean ministers and diplomats, staffed by a bevy of outsiders shuffling paper to show legitimacy.

If any country in the Asia-Pacific were to attempt a reinvention of APEC’s purpose, Korea should be well placed. It straddles North and South, East and West, developed and developing. It understands both the vulnerabilities of middle powers and the ambitions of great ones.

Yet, its foreign ministry culture — hierarchical, legalistic and risk-averse — remains ill-suited to the kind of creative diplomacy that institutional transformation requires. The ministry excels at implementing the agendas of others, not at inventing new sustainable frameworks on their own. Don’t expect APEC to be ready for a new era after Gyeongju.

APEC may have been the fruit yoghurt of post-Cold War multilateralism – colourful, sweet and healthy. It was an inspired concoction of diplomacy and optimism, blending incompatible ingredients into something surprisingly palatable. But for institutions, just as for yoghurt, preservation should never be the goal. Renewal should be the goal. The question is whether those who follow Gyeongju will have the courage to start mixing again.

Republished from Junotane, 23 October 2025

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.