SIEM REAP, CAMBODIA — Thrown off balance by a cacophony of claims
in the South China Sea, Southeast Asia is struggling to cope with the “big and
heavy” presence of China and the United States in the region and needs to face
up to growing security and political challenges, the secretary general of a
regional group said in an interview.
Surin Pitsuwan was speaking
Monday after the start of a meeting of economic ministers from the Association
of Southeast Asian Nations in the Cambodian town of Siem Reap. It was the first
major gathering of regional officials since an acrimonious conclave last month
that highlighted deep divisions created by China’s increasingly assertive
territorial claims in the South China Sea and rhetorical blasts about the
waterway from Beijing and Washington.
At the earlier meeting, in the
Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, foreign ministers could not agree on the wording
of a final communique for the first time since the regional association’s
founding in 1967.
Pitsuwan, Thailand’s former foreign
minister and head of ASEAN’s secretariat since 2008, said in an interview that
he was surprised by the breakdown in Phnom Penh, where the group’s customary
low-key pursuit of compromise gave way to testy deadlock amid complaints of
microphones being abruptly disconnected and allegations of backstage meddling
by China.
The failure, Pitsuwan said , was
“a wake-up call that these [security] issues will occur and we should be
prepared to handle them.”
Cambodia, a close friend of China
and the current holder of ASEAN’s rotating chairmanship, refused during the
July gathering to accept pleas that the final communique include a mention of
recent flare-ups in the South China Sea between China and two ASEAN members,
the Philippines and Vietnam.
Manila and Hanoi accused Cambodia
of putting its allegiance to Beijing ahead of its obligations to its regional
partners and of pushing the 10-nation group to its most severe crisis in years.
Cambodia, although heavily dependent on Chinese aid and investment, angrily denied
acting on instructions from Beijing.
Tensions in the South China Sea,
where five ASEAN members have claims that brush up against those of Beijing,
are “becoming more and more of a stress on the system,” Pitsuwan said. That, he
added, underscores the urgent need to make progress toward a stalled code of
conduct for the disputed waters. The key, he said, is to “get around” questions
of sovereignty and focus instead on practical measures to curb the risk of
maritime clashes. But, he said, “this will take some time, because it is
emotionally charged and extremely volatile. Positions are far apart, but
eventually, we will get to a practical solution.”
Role as ‘insulation’
ASEAN, which is meeting near the
ancient temples of Angkor Wat under the slogan “one community, one destiny,”
has traditionally worked to paper over its differences. The risk of conflict in
the South China Sea, however, has exposed the shortcomings of that approach at
a time when China and the United States are stepping up their military and
diplomatic activities in the region.
Washington takes no position on
the territorial disputes. But the Obama administration, which has made a
foreign policy “pivot” to Asia, has voiced growing concern over the risks of
confrontation in the waterway. Th£e United States has stepped up security
cooperation with the Philippines, with which it has a 61-year-old mutual
defense treaty, and with Vietnam, which looks to America as a counterweight to
a rising China.
Jousting over the South China Sea
and over disputed islands to the north claimed by both Japan and China has
shadowed booming trade and investment ties across East Asia and added to
frictions between Beijing and Washington. The State Department this month
criticized China for setting up a military garrison on an island in the South
China Sea, accusing it of undermining diplomatic efforts to resolve disputes
peacefully. China lambasted the U.S. assertions, with the state-run Xinhua News
Agency dismissing them as “groundless and irresponsible” and urging Washington
to “draw back its meddling hand.”
The feuding has pushed ASEAN into
the uncomfortable role of acting as “insulation between China and the U.S.,”
said Carlyle A. Thayer, an Australian expert on regional security and the
author of a recent study of the group’s troubles over the South China Sea.
Originally set up in response to
fears of communist subversion in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, ASEAN
was long scorned by China as an instrument of the United States but has in
recent years been embraced by Beijing as a vehicle to boost economic ties.
At the same time, China has been
alarmed by ASEAN’s moves to become more involved in political and security
issues, with some Chinese foreign policy experts warning that the association
could go the way of the Arab League, a long-somnolent organization that,
reinvigorated by the Arab Spring, has been at odds with Beijing in recent
months over what to do in Syria and elsewhere.
China rejects any role for ASEAN
in resolving territorial disputes and insists that the ownership of islands and
reefs in the South China Sea can be addressed only through bilateral talks. But
it has expressed some readiness to discuss a code of conduct for the waterway.
“China wants ASEAN to be reasonably strong but also compliant,” Thayer said.
Wary of getting bogged down in
arcane but highly contentious maritime quarrels, ASEAN ministers meeting this
week are focusing on trade and other economic issues and want to stay clear of
the South China Sea. “I’m not going to touch it. This is strictly economic,”
said Gita Wirjawan, Indonesia’s trade minister.
Wealth gap a threat
In his opening address,
Cambodia’s prime minister, Hun Sen, made no mention of the maritime disputes
but instead spoke of the debt crisis in Europe, high oil prices and slowing
export growth, and he singled out the wealth gap between member states as “a great
threat” to the association’s future.
Pitsuwan, the secretary general,
said “political hiccups” over the South China Sea will not slow what he
described as an irreversible trend toward greater economic integration.
The association, which includes
some of the world’s most dynamic economies as well as some of its weaker ones,
such as Burma, Laos and Cambodia, is working to establish a single market in
2015, an important step toward regional integration akin to moves in Europe
that led to the creation of the European Union. But, Pitsuwan said, ASEAN has
no plans to set up a large central bureaucracy similar to the one in Brussels.
The association’s administrative headquarters in Jakarta has only about 200
employees, including clerical staff and drivers. The European Commission in
Brussels has more than 33,000.
ASEAN, he said, “needs a strong
central mechanism so that it can be a driving force, but that has implications
for sovereignty” that member states are not ready to accept.
At a time when Europe’s far more
advanced drive for integration has been stalled by the continent’s financial
turmoil and tensions between the E.U.’s richer and poorer member states,
Southeast Asia “has to be extremely careful,” Pitsuwan said. “Europe for us is
an inspiration, not a model.”
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