Since the end of the Cold War, the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN) has engaged the outside world to play an active security role
within greater East Asia.
In 1994, ASEAN created the ASEAN
Regional Forum (ARF), at which regional powers such as the United States,
Japan, and China meet annually to discuss security issues in the region and
beyond.
In 1997, ASEAN+3 was created in
order to manage regional issues, especially economics. In 2005, the East Asia
Summit (EAS) was established by inviting Australia, India and New Zealand in
addition to the ASEAN+3 member states. In 2011, the summit's membership was
expanded to the US and Russia.
In 2010, the ASEAN Defense
Ministers Meeting (ADMM) expanded its membership to include all members from
EAS to form ADMM Plus. By inviting the region's great powers, ASEAN had two
objectives: (1) to maintain the constant attention of the great powers to ASEAN
and (2) to avoid political marginalization from them.
To this end, ASEAN has attempted
to maintain its post-Cold War fundamental principle of regional
multilateralism: "ASEAN Centrality". This principle derives from the
10-member grouping's negative experience in the late 1980s with the
establishment of the rival Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum.
APEC was initiated by Australia
and Japan and was strongly supported by the US. However, it quickly became an
institutional threat to ASEAN as it became relied upon by the region's great
powers to shape regional economics and marginalized ASEAN's political raison
d'être in East Asia.
In response, in 1990 ASEAN
created the "Kuching Consensus", which aimed to limit APEC to "a
consultative forum on economic issues," and attempted to prevent formal
institutionalization of APEC by constraining its functional expansion. This
negative experience led ASEAN to seek ways to prevent political marginalization
from the great powers.
During the same post-Cold War
period, ASEAN was also concerned about the future of great power politics in
Southeast Asia. As US-Soviet tensions eased and Soviet Union forces withdrew
from the Asia-Pacific, the US also began to disengage militarily from the
region. China and Japan, meanwhile, began to play more active political and
military roles.
Strategic uncertainties created momentum
for ASEAN to establish ARF, which initially aimed to build confidence among
regional great powers. At the same time, ASEAN advanced the notion of
"ASEAN Centrality" in hopes of avoiding political marginalization
from these powers, in part by assuring they would chair or co-chair meetings
and maintain influence over their agenda and procedure.
This principle worked well due to
two main political conditions. First, there was a significant measure of
strategic uncertainty in East Asia. The US's political and military commitment
to the region became unclear beginning in the early 1990s.
The uncertainty was driven by the
1992 collapse of the Soviet Union, Washington's failure to bail out the
region's economies after the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis and the post-9/11
wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that led the US to focus more on the Middle East.
In this context, ASEAN has been a
useful framework to help fill Southeast Asia's power vacuum. In addition, ASEAN
became a forum for shaping the region's political outlook instead of only
balancing and counterbalancing political power among member states.
Second, the Sino-Japanese
political rivalry in East Asia created a better stage for "ASEAN
Centrality". Because it would be difficult for either China or Japan to
lead without creating regional blocs, ASEAN could utilize this rivalry to lead
East Asian multilateralism.
With the establishment of
ASEAN+3, Japan, the existing great economic power in Asia, and China, the
potential future economic leader in the region and beyond, often had political
disputes over the development of economic, political, and security multilateral
frameworks.
The 2005 establishment of the EAS
was a case in point. China strongly supported Malaysia's initiative to create a
strong political regional framework through EAS by including only ASEAN+3
member states. On the other hand, Japan vigorously backed Indonesia's separate
initiative to include other democratic states such as Australia, India, and New
Zealand. As such, the region's great powers evaded direct confrontation by
positioning ASEAN in the middle.
Strategic middleman
"ASEAN Centrality"
functions with the understanding that there are certain political tensions
among regional powers. In this competitive state, gaining support from ASEAN's
10 members means regional powers can dramatically increase their political
leverage over rivals, thus making ASEAN a subject of their interest and
attention.
Nevertheless, this trend has
gradually shifted. Regional powers are now overhauling their strategy from
vying for the balance of influence to competing for the balance of power in the
region. The East Asian security environment began to change in 2009 when China
and other regional states intensified their territorial disputes with each
other in the South China Sea.
This intensification was
triggered at the international level with China's official claim to the entire
South China Sea, as indicated in its controversial "nine dash line"
map. Beijing submitted its expansive maritime claim to the United Nations on
May 7, 2009.
That claim was made in response
to a Malaysia-Vietnam joint submission on their sovereignty to certain South
China Sea areas on May 6, 2009, a move which was highly criticized at the time
by China and the Philippines. China's counter-claim also invited severe
criticism from other Southeast Asian states, including Indonesia, Malaysia, the
Philippines and Vietnam.
More recently, China and Japan
have intensified their dispute over the contested Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. This
began in September 2010 when a Chinese fishing boat collided with a Japanese
Coast Guard vessel. The incident sparked nationalistic demonstrations in both
China and Japan, further bilateral relations.
The confrontations are still
ongoing and have heightened diplomatic and military tensions between China and
other claimant states in both the East China Sea and South China Sea. Southeast
Asian claimant states have recently shifted their defense doctrines and sought
bilateral defense linkages with outside powers to counter China's perceived
assertiveness.
For example, Japan issued a new
National Defense Program Guideline in 2010 which asserted the necessity for
Japan to "cautiously watch" China's growing military capabilities.
Japan also aimed to strengthen bilateral strategic linkages, including the
US-Japan alliance, a strategic partnership with India, and trilateral dialogues
with US-Australia and US-India.
The Philippines, meanwhile, has
sought public reassurance of its mutual defense treaty with the US and
developed other defense linkages, including maritime cooperation with India and
Japan. Manila's drive for more great power linkages came after the 2011 Reed
Bank and 2012 Scarborough Reef incidents with China. Vietnam has also
strengthened bilateral security ties, as seen in its 2012 US-Vietnam defense
memorandum of understanding (MOU).
All of these maneuvers indicate
that the behavior of regional powers is ultimately based on balance of power
logic that reaches beyond ASEAN's institutional frameworks. At the same time,
ASEAN faces significant internal divisions among members with different
opportunity-threat perceptions of China.
ASEAN has faced this difficulty
since its inception in 1967 as a bulwark against the spread of regional
communism. The expansion of the grouping's membership from six to ten members
in the 1990s has made it more difficult to reach a consensus, particularly on
security issues where China has a competing interest.
As regional power rivalry rises,
states are increasingly choosing to bypass ASEAN and individually engage its
member states on a bilateral basis in order to strengthen their balancing or
counterbalancing strategies. This "divide and rule" strategy will
likely further weaken ASEAN solidarity, a key component of "ASEAN
Centrality".
This trend towards fragmentation
was illustrated at the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting in July 2012, when ASEAN
failed for the first time to issue a joint communiqué due to disagreements
between China ally Cambodia and rival claimant the Philippines over whether to
refer to the South China Sea in the statement. In this sense, "ASEAN
Centrality" is now under pressure both externally and internally.
So, what can ASEAN do to maintain
its centrality? Without economic and military capabilities to match regional
powers, ASEAN cannot flex its muscles to pursue power politics. Instead, ASEAN
could focus on redefining its affiliated EAS, ADMM Plus and expanded ASEAN
Maritime Forum (AMF). In fact, ASEAN has not yet lost its comparative
advantages in shaping the East Asian security environment and still appeals to
several great powers.
Japan's recent diplomatic
maneuver illustrates this point. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe advocated in his
December 2012 article "Asia's Democratic Security Diamond" that Japan
should create strategic linkages among "Australia, India, Japan, and the
US state of Hawaii" to "form a diamond to safeguard the maritime
commons stretching from the Indian Ocean region to the western Pacific."
Though Abe's article did not
mention ASEAN as a part of Japan's "security diamond" strategy, some
sensed that shifted when he visited four ASEAN states as part of the 40th
anniversary of ASEAN-Japan relations in January 2013. His "The Bounty of
the Open Seas" speech outlined five key principles for Japanese diplomacy:
democratic values, rule of laws, open economies, cultural exchanges and human
exchanges.
In the same speech, Abe referred
to ASEAN as "a supremely vital linchpin in terms of its importance to our
diplomatic strategy." Moreover, ASEAN and India recently elevated their
relations to "strategic partnership" and issued a "Vision
Statement" in December 2012 which further incorporated issues of maritime
security and freedom of navigation.
These overtures and initiatives
indicate that ASEAN and its affiliated institutions still have a comparative
advantage in shaping and influencing East Asia's security landscape and could
play a key role in maintaining regional maritime stability. ASEAN would be wise
to go beyond staging fora for talks discussions among member states and move to
establish a monitoring mechanism to maintain the maritime status quo, as
territorial disputes are likely to intensify among claimant states.
Such a mechanism would require an
institutional emphasis on preventing threats or use of force over territorial
disputes. Coordinating the existing frameworks of the EAS, ADMM Plus and
expanded AMF could buttress such a mechanism by weaving together
functionalities at various government levels.
It is time for ASEAN to seriously
consider this enhanced role if it aims to maintain "ASEAN Centrality"
in East Asian multilateralism.
Kei Koga
Business & Investment Opportunities
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