At an international forum in Shanghai in May
2014, Chinese President Xi Jinping called for Asian security issues to be
handled by Asians.
While
few made the connection at the time, Xi’s appeal brings to mind the Indonesian
mantra, long held, of ‘regional solutions for regional problems’ (Leifer,
2000).
The notion
that Southeast Asians are best placed to manage their own challenges has long
captivated the regional imagination and, together with the Cold War concern
against interference in Southeast Asia by outside powers, has served as a basis
for treaties of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) such as the
Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality, and the Southeast Asia Nuclear Weapons
Free Zone.
On the
other hand, the facts on the ground underscore the gap between aspiration and
reality in Southeast Asia. Despite a nearly five-decade-long exercise in
confidence-building – ASEAN was established in 1967 – mutual distrust among
ASEAN member states has remained high, limiting the extent and depth of
intraregional cooperation.
Most
recently, the apparent failure by the relevant ASEAN countries to share
information they might have held concerning the Malaysian Airlines flight MH370
that went missing presumably reflected persistent worries among them about
revealing the extent of their respective surveillance capabilities – or lack of
– to one another (Lloyd, 2014). Be that as it may, analysts have also
identified the relative paucity among ASEAN states, with the exception of
Singapore, of national assets and resources which could be deployed in the
event of transnational crises that affect the region.
To be
sure, ASEAN states have historically cooperated among themselves, successfully
so, on political and security issues such as counterterrorism, maritime
security, and conflict management more broadly (Tan, 2009a). The rare skirmish
aside, ASEAN can rightly take pride that hitherto, no major war has broken out
among its member countries. However, while the Association is not without
formal instruments for conflict prevention and management – the Treaty of Amity
and Cooperation in Southeast Asia and its High Council and, more ambitiously,
the ASEAN Charter and its dispute settlement mechanism – there have been few
occasions, almost none, where its member countries actually appropriated those
provisions to manage, much less resolve, their mutual disputes. Indeed, that
the Association’s attempt to establish a political-security community among its
member nations is proceeding at a considerably slower pace than its concomitant
effort to form an economic community – whose progress has been hampered by
behind-the-border barriers – implies that ASEAN’s own vision of security
integration will unlikely be realized for some time, much less by its
self-declared deadline of 2015 (Kyodo News International, 2013).
To the
extent they have sought to handle problems they have with each other through
bilateral means, ASEAN states, hewing to the ‘ASEAN Way’ of consensus and
consultation, have relied on informal measures (Acharya, 1997). The good office
of the chairmanship of ASEAN, which rotates annually among member states, has
been used on occasion for the purpose of mediation; an illustration is the
effort by Indonesia, in its prerogative as ASEAN chair, to craft a modus
vivendi to deal with the border crisis between Cambodia and Thailand in 2011.
(Indonesia also exercised its de facto leadership in the Association to cobble
together the so-called ‘six point agreement’ in the wake of the ASEAN foreign
ministers’ failure to produce a joint communiqué – the first time ever in its history
– at their meeting in Phnom Penh in July 2012.)
On
their own, a number of ASEAN states have participated in peace support
operations in Southeast Asia under the United Nations and other international
auspices, and contributed to humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR)
missions in the region (Caballero-Anthony and Acharya, 2005). However, such
efforts have neither involved the use of ASEAN’s formal instruments nor been
conducted under the ASEAN aegis.
Rather
than managing their mutual disputes on an intramural basis, the preference of
ASEAN countries has been to look elsewhere for help. Hitherto, those who agreed
to submit their joint territorial disputes to third-party arbitration have
turned to the International Court of Justice, as did Indonesia, Malaysia, and
Singapore over their respective islands disputes with each other.
The
unilateral decision by the Philippines to bring its dispute with China over
Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea before the Hamburg-based International
Tribunal for the Law of the Sea underscored the Association’s evident disunity
and weakness in the face of Chinese assertiveness. ASEAN countries likewise
have relied on the World Trade Organization’s dispute settlement mechanism to
handle their trade disputes; the first dispute ever submitted to the WTO when
its dispute mechanism became operational in 1995 involved two ASEAN states,
Malaysia and Singapore.
ASEAN
has in fact institutionalized and deepened its dependence on outside powers
through its dialogue partner arrangements and the complex of regional
institutions which it carries or had a hand in forming. Institutions such as
the APEC, the ASEAN Regional Forum, and the East Asia Summit reflect not only
ASEAN’s preference for open regionalism, but, in a sense, are a tacit admission
of Southeast Asians’ inability to manage their growing host of complex
challenges on their own (Tan, 2009b).
In the
case of the ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting-Plus process, for instance, ASEAN
countries look to eight dialogue partners (America, Australia, China, India,
Japan, Korea, New Zealand, and Russia) for assistance to develop their national
and regional capacities in HADR, nuclear counter-proliferation, ensuring safety
and security in the maritime domain, counterterrorism, and the like (Tan,
2012).
Even
then, despite the enhanced focus paid to the development of ASEAN’s
capabilities in HADR, the organization’s relative inaction in response to
Typhoon Haiyan which struck the Philippines in November 2013 – individual ASEAN
states did respond on their own, however, though nowhere near what America and
Britain contributed – only served to underscore the extent and depth of their
dependence (Graham, 2013).
Needless
to say, reliance on outside powers entails its own challenges, particularly in
the present age of rising strategic rivalry between China and the United
States, and the polarizing effect that has had on ASEAN. Chinese assertiveness
and American rebalancing has made it more difficult for ASEAN countries to
hedge against and engage with all outside powers. Growing frustration among
non-ASEAN stakeholders in ASEAN-led institutions over the Association’s
perceived ineffectiveness as a regional leader has led many to question the
wisdom of ASEAN’s centrality in the regional architecture in Asia (Acharya,
2012). While such dynamics have no doubt complicated and strained the
Association’s dependence on outside powers, ASEAN states, for the reasons
highlighted above, are however more likely than not to keep looking outward
than in.
References:
·
Acharya,
Amitav (2012) ‘The end of ASEAN centrality?’, Asia Times Online,
August 8.
·
Acharya,
Amitav (1997) ‘Ideas, identity and institution-building: from the ‘ASEAN Way’
to the ‘Asia-Pacific Way’?’, The Pacific Review 10 (3),
319–346.
·
Caballero-Anthony,
Mely, and Amitav Acharya, eds. (2005): UN Peace Operations and Asian
Security. London: Routledge.
·
Graham,
Euan (2013) ‘Super-typhoon Haiyan: ASEAN’s Katrina Moment?’, PacNet 82,
November 20.
·
Kyodo
News International (2013) ‘ASEAN “highly unlikely” to meet 2015 targets to build
community: ADB’,Global Post, October 24.
·
Leifer,
Michael (2000) ‘Regional solutions to regional problems?’ in Gerald Segal and David
S.G. Goodman, eds., Towards Recovery in Pacific Asia. London:
Routledge: 108-118.
·
Lloyd,
Peter (2014) ‘MH370 rattles relationships in growing Asian bloc’, The
Drum, March 31.
·
Tan,
See Seng (2012) ‘“Talking Their Walk”? The Evolution of Defence Regionalism in
Southeast Asia’, Asian Security 8 (3), 232–250.
·
Tan,
See Seng, ed. (2009a) Regionalism in Asia, Vol. II: ASEAN and Regional
Security of Southeast Asia. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
·
Tan,
See Seng, ed. (2009b) Regionalism in Asia, Vol. III: Regional Order and
Architecture in Asia. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
About The Author (See
Seng Tan):
See Seng Tan is an associate
professor, deputy director of the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies,
and head of the Centre for Multilateralism Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School
of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
His latest book is The
Making of the Asia Pacific: Knowledge Brokers and the Politics of
Representation (Amsterdam University Press, 2013).
Business & Investment Opportunities
Saigon Business Corporation Pte Ltd (SBC) is incorporated
in Singapore since 1994.
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