Hopes for calmer times under this year’s new management
EVEN the most ardent supporters
of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) concede that last year
was a pretty disastrous one for the ten-country grouping. Replacing the
region’s usual mild-mannered consensus was an unprecedented eruption of rowing
and bickering, all on very public and humiliating display at its summit
meetings.
The root of it all was the
dispute over China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea. Cambodia,
closest to China in the grouping and the ASEAN chairman in 2012, tried to press
its ally’s claims. This provoked a heated reaction from some of ASEAN’s own
members, notably Vietnam and the Philippines, with claims of their own. For
several weeks last year the Philippine navy was involved in a tense stand-off
with Chinese ships near the disputed Scarborough shoal.
All the politicking over the
South China Sea has diverted political energy from ASEAN’s most pressing
internal task, which is to form a new EU-like economic community by 2015. At
the same time, the United States last year deepened its strategic ties with
Vietnam, the Philippines, Singapore and Indonesia as part of an “Asia pivot”.
All this has stoked fears that, in an era of rising great-power rivalry, ASEAN
might not be able to stick together.
Getting ASEAN back on track will
be hard, and much of the burden for doing so now falls on tiny Brunei. The
oil-rich sultanate, a dot on the coast of Borneo, is home to just 400,000 out
of ASEAN’s population of 600m. Brunei has taken over ASEAN’s annual rotating
chairmanship from Cambodia and will host this year’s summits. At the same time,
the organisation has acquired a new secretary-general. Le Luong Minh, a
Vietnamese former diplomat, has succeeded Thailand’s Surin Pitsuwan.
That the baton should pass to
ASEAN’s smallest member at this moment of almost existential crisis has caused
concern for some. Brunei has only 30-odd people working on the ASEAN brief in
its foreign ministry. And next year it will be followed as chairman by the
wholly untested and still controversial Myanmar.
Yet Lim Jock Seng, Brunei’s
deputy minister for foreign affairs, argues that these anxieties are misplaced.
For a start, apparent shortcomings can be turned to ASEAN’s advantage. Brunei
may be small, he says, but that also makes the country relatively
unthreatening, especially to China. Had the chair passed to Vietnam or the
Philippines at this point, all hell might have broken loose. Although Brunei is
also a country with an interest in the South China Sea that China contests, its
claim is the smallest—just one submerged reef. Last, being extremely rich puts
Brunei in the happy position of being free of a financial reason to kowtow to
China—or anyone for that matter. That was Cambodia’s undoing last year, and
could yet be Myanmar’s next.
Mr Lim believes that Brunei’s
relative obscurity should help it practise the “quiet diplomacy” that everyone
agrees is needed to repair the breach with China. He has already been to Beijing
to talk to Chinese officials and says that both sides agree that the
ASEAN-China relationship is “bigger than the South China Sea issue”.
Opportunities for joint economic development ought really to trump it.
The main sticking-point is that
although ASEAN is keen to implement a “code of conduct” covering the South
China Sea disputes, China refuses to acknowledge a collective position.
Instead, it prefers bilateral negotiations with each claimant country. Mr Lim,
however, hopes to start talks with China on the code of conduct and to have
something “concrete that we can sign” by the main ASEAN summit in October. If
so, that would be a coup, especially if China’s new leader, Xi Jinping, does
not signal a softer line in the meantime.
Vietnam’s Mr Minh will have much
to do as secretary-general. His country is overtly suspicious of Chinese
intentions, and he might face pressure to tilt the group further against China.
Until now, however, he has been impeccably diplomatic. He will probably focus
on completing the ASEAN economic community, which is exactly what most of ASEAN
wants him to do—so long as Brunei can successfully steer the grouping away from
the diplomatic reefs of the South China Sea.
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