KAMPIAL, Indonesia - To the sounds of a
gamelan orchestra, white-dressed Balinese pay ritual homage to Saraswati, the
Hindu goddess of knowledge and learning.
The timing is apt as over a thousand
journalists and others try to divine the significance of a week of high-level
diplomacy held on the island, including the 6th East Asia Summit (EAS), the
19th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit, and other
ASEAN-linked events.
Declinism is in vogue in the United States, to
the point that the normally sober Foreign Affairs asks, tongue in cheek,
"Is America Over?" on the cover of its current issue. As a number of
Asian speakers have noted this week in Bali, their region is now the brightest
spot in a darkening world economy.
One might expect these Asians to think that
the West is toast - to relish their own risen profile with feelings of pride
tinged with Schadenfreude. The theme of this week's summitry - "ASEAN
Community in a Global Community of Nations" - purposely evokes the wider
role to which Southeast Asian leaders now aspire.
At a conference last week in Kuala Lumpur, a
Malaysian friend predicted Chinese supremacy in Asia. A few days later, a
Singaporean colleague warned me that the United States, dangerously in debt,
could ruin itself and the world by sheer selfishness and incompetence. Neither
of these informants felt satisfaction in the face of American decline, however,
and their opinions did not reflect the prevailing views at the summits in Bali.
Southeast Asians here have not written off the
United States. But they have, to a modest extent, written it down - and they
could, in future, depending on events, write it back up. Indeed that upward
tick may already have begun here in Bali with the first-ever presence of an
American president, Barack Obama, at the EAS.
The basis for this contingent and variable
view of the United States, on the downside and the upside alike, is partly of
Washington's own making. In shifting away from its predecessor's reputation for
unilateralism toward working more readily with other countries in multilateral
settings, the Obama administration has necessarily reduced its own relative
stature abroad. In a crowd, one stands out less.
At the same time, however, in pivoting away
from potentially failing experiments beyond the Atlantic - the euro, Iraq,
Afghanistan - and toward the increasingly Asian drivers of the world economy,
Obama's foreign-policy team has begun to reverse the erosion of American
standing here.
Pivoting does not mean turning completely
around, of course. Trans-Atlantic concerns and winding down wars, not to
mention domestic economic and political turmoil, are still on Washington's
screen. Nor is a pivot a full-scale embrace: US differences with ASEAN remain.
A case in point, it would seem, is the group's recent decision to allow Myanmar
to chair ASEAN in 2014.
Yes
you may, Myanmar
The Myanmar junta's repressive ways long made
it a pariah in American (and European) eyes. But ASEAN's customary alphabetic
rotation pegged the regime to lead the organization in 2006. Washington more or
less threatened to boycott meetings of the group if the junta chaired them, at
least the ones held inside Myanmar.
In mid-2005, under pressure from other ASEAN
states, the ruling generals "volunteered" to postpone their country's
turn. ASEAN accepted the junta's offer to stand aside, and Myanmar was removed
from the queue on the understanding that it could rejoin the rotation later on,
implicitly contingent on evidence of reform.
The evidence arrived. Myanmar's constrained
elections in November 2010 were followed by further loosening of the generals'
grip. Naypyidaw asked ASEAN for permission to get back in line to assume the
chair for 2014. American policymakers and politicians were troubled by this
prospect, not to mention activists for civil and human rights.
ASEAN could have postponed replying to
Myanmar's request, after all. There was no overriding need to decide the 2014
rotation in November 2011, more than two years in advance. A wait-and-see
attitude would have maintained pressure on Naypyidaw - no ongoing reform, no
chair.
On November 17, at their summit here in Bali,
ASEAN leaders chose otherwise. Myanmar would be allowed to take the chair for
2014. Reportedly, only two ASEAN members had significant doubts about the
wisdom of acceding to Naypyidaw's request. The Philippines wanted ASEAN to
retain leverage in the interest of democracy and civil rights, while Singapore
feared that Naypyidaw's chairmanship could prove to be a damaging distraction.
Singapore appears to have worried that,
between now and then, the Myanmar regime might reverse course and crack down.
Were that to occur, the ensuing political controversy could distract the ASEAN
states when they should be focused on erecting an ASEAN Economic Community in
time for its inauguration in 2015.
Singapore's technocracy also likely doubted
Myanmar's competence to lead anyone, let alone a grouping of 10 diverse and
sometimes contentious states. That skepticism was visible between the lines of
the quasi-official Straits Times' description of Myanmar as "beset by
grinding poverty and economic dysfunction", burdened with primitive
banking and judicial systems, and challenged by ethnic insurgents and criminals
trafficking in "vast quantities of heroin and methamphetamines sold across
Asia".
Whoever wins the 2012 American presidential
election will have to decide whether to attend ASEAN meetings chaired by
Myanmar in 2014. The conservative Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based
think-tank, has already advised against doing so. Provided Myanmar continues to
reform, however, the narrow difference between ASEAN's green light and
Washington's preference for an amber one need not disrupt US-ASEAN relations.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration has begun
to pivot in ASEAN's direction on Myanmar. Hillary Clinton will visit the
country on December 1-2, the first such trip by an American secretary of state
in some 50 years. That said, however, traveling to Myanmar and agreeing to be
led by it are two different things.
ASEAN's decision this week in Bali to welcome
Myanmar as its future chair on the day before it welcomed Obama to the EAS is a
useful reminder that the diminishing diplomatic distance between the United States
and ASEAN is no guarantee that they will ultimately converge, or stay, on the
same page.
Indeed, there is no assurance that the
distance will continue to diminish. In the packed schedule and celebratory mood
that pervaded the summitry in Bali, there was little time or inclination to
ponder the potentially controversial implications of the English alphabet as it
has been tweaked to determine the upcoming sequence of ASEAN chairs. In that
rotational context, at least two concerns could impact American cooperation
with Southeast Asia: democratic values and strategic alignment.
North-South
divide
The US-based Freedom House annually classifies
countries as "Free", "Partly Free" or "Not Free".
By its estimation, Indonesia, the outgoing (2011) chair of ASEAN, is the only
"Free" state in Southeast Asia. Every one of the next four heads of
ASEAN is presently "Not Free", namely, Cambodia, Brunei, Myanmar and
Laos - in that order from now through 2015. (In addition, it will be Vietnam's turn
to contribute a secretary general to administer ASEAN beginning on January 1,
2013.)
If the American pivot remains in place and
reforms in Myanmar stall or are reversed, Washington would be well advised to
prepare for a series of more or less authoritarian leaders as its leading
partners in Southeast Asia in the years ahead.
Related to democratic values is strategic
alignment. For decades analysts have distinguished inside Southeast Asia two
tiers of states: a continental set in the north and a maritime one in the
south. Geographically, the northern subgroup is closer to China (and less
democratic) than is the southern one.
Proximity need not engender deference. The
most obvious instance of that truth is Vietnam, whose location adjacent to
China has had, if anything, the opposite effect. Vietnam's distrust of its huge
northern neighbor, historically based in experiences of ancient domination and
modern incursion, is currently reflected in and reinforced by tensions between
Hanoi and Beijing over the South China Sea.
Vietnam aside, however, the other
northern-tier states - Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos - are more plausible
candidates for eventual absorption into a China-centered sphere than are their
fellow ASEAN members farther south.
On the last day of this week of summitry in
Bali, two things were said that the media overlooked but were likely important
for the future of America's ASEAN pivot. First, upon receiving the symbolic
gavel to begin Cambodia's year as ASEAN's chair starting on January 1, 2012,
Prime Minister Hun Sen announced his government's priorities for the group.
The one he stressed most was
"connectivity", which is ASEAN-speak for forging linkages of
infrastructure and communications. The complex and changing maps of such
connections - existing, underway and proposed - include grids and vectors of
traffic in people, goods and ideas running east-west and north-south across the
region.
Connectivity has two faces: internal and
external. Building and bettering infrastructural links can speed the internal
integration of Southeast Asia - a key condition for the success of the Economic
Community that ASEAN hopes to inaugurate in 2015. But connectivity can also
enhance the ability of outside states to penetrate Southeast Asia - trading,
investing, and thereby enhancing their relative clout in the region.
In principle, connectivity can involve and
benefit any of ASEAN's neighbors. But no non-regional state has a longer land
border with Southeast Asia than China. Beijing's support for north-south
connections across that lengthy boundary makes sense in this larger, political
context.
In championing connectivity, one could argue,
ASEAN's incoming Cambodian chair is facilitating the enlargement of Chinese
influence over the region - or at least over its northern tier. Phnom Penh
already has acquired something of a reputation inside ASEAN for being its most
"pro-Beijing" member.
The second bit of unreported news occurred
when Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was asked at a press
conference what could be done to sustain the momentum that ASEAN had acquired under
his country's leadership.
Yudhoyono remarked in reply that although
Indonesia was no longer in the chair, it would serve in 2012 on an ASEAN troika
made up of the 2011 (Indonesian), 2012 (Cambodian), and 2013 (Bruneian) chairs.
Although he did not openly say so, one could infer from his comment that
Yudhoyono was not wholly sanguine as to the direction in which Hun Sen might
try to take ASEAN in 2012.
This is not to predict that the American pivot
toward ASEAN will be rebuffed in the coming Cambodia-led year. But US-ASEAN
relations could get more not less interesting between now and the moment in
2015 when the small, dirt-poor, neo-Leninist, one-party state of Laos is slated
to host what ASEANists are hoping will be an impressively grand occasion: the
epochal birth of an ASEAN Community.
The island of Bali is a long way from
landlocked Laos. But in view of the successful diplomacy this past week in
Indonesia, and for the sake of balance in ASEAN's image and role in the larger
world, one can hope that the wisdom of the Hindu goddess Saraswati will inspire
the group's northern leaders as well.
Donald K emmerson
Asia Times
Donald K Emmerson heads the Southeast Asia
Forum at Stanford University. His writings include Asian Regionalism and US
Policy: The Case for Creative Adaptation (2010).
Business & Investment Opportunities
YourVietnamExpert is a division of Saigon Business Corporation Pte Ltd, Incorporated in Singapore since 1994. As Your Business Companion, we propose a range of services in Consulting, Investment and Management, focusing three main economic sectors: International PR; Healthcare & Wellness;and Tourism & Hospitality. We also propose Higher Education, as a bridge between educational structures and industries, by supporting international programs. Sign up with twitter to get news updates with @SaigonBusinessC. Thanks.
No comments:
Post a Comment