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COMMENT
ASEAN on the
edge
By Phar Kim Beng
HONG
KONG - How many lives does ASEAN have? Of the proverbial
nine lives, it appears that the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations has used up three of them over the past
five years alone. And it is still using them after its
Eighth Summit in Phnom Penh.
ASEAN's failure in
responding to the economic crisis, the environmental
hazard caused by haze and the rampage in East Timor have
all done severe damage to ASEAN in the past, this
despite the organization's reputation as one of the most
successful regional outfits, second to European Union.
Pundits who once lauded ASEAN's accomplishments
have since spoken alarmingly of its decline. If one were
to add terrorism, a problem forcefully brought to bear
in the Kuta bombing on October 12, ASEAN is now facing
another difficult, if not lethal, challenge. And, this
time, any failure to address it could well be ASEAN's
kiss of death, well before the final count of nine is
up.
Yet the institutional survival of ASEAN has
been remarkable to say the least. It has been a story of
tenacity over extreme odds. This is because despite the
original pledge of its founding fathers to foster
economic cooperation - not integration - what are left
in the trails of ASEAN have been numerous failed
projects and industrial schemes.
Indeed, not
only did ASEAN persist in living up to its floundering
projects, but in 1992 it adopted the ambitious ASEAN
Free Trade Area (AFTA) as a blueprint and imprimatur for
the next phase in regionalism. It was attempting a
takeoff when all its previous initiatives had failed.
AFTA has since become more ambitious, with the timetable
for Cambodia to liberalize its trade set at 2010.
The puzzle of ASEAN is therefore this: How did
ASEAN become a fixture in the region despite its
haphazard record in economic cooperation? Even more
important: How did ASEAN travel so far when its overall
performance has been so weak?
As Hadi Soesastro
of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in
Jakarta wrote: "The remarkable economic performance of
the ASEAN countries could not be attributed to any ASEAN
Economic Cooperation (AEC) schemes. It resulted mainly
from ASEAN's trade and investment links with the outside
world. Perhaps it was the disappointment and
embarrassment, and frustration with those AEC schemes
that led the ASEAN leaders to decide in 1992 to embark
on AFTA, the 'bold' decision that was considered
necessary to maintain ASEAN's vitality and relevance."
ASEAN's cohesiveness, therefore, comes forth not
from the spillover effects of functional cooperation,
but from diplomatic rapport fostered by the need to
contain possible Vietnamese expansionism.
That
this was the case had never been more obvious, as it
took ASEAN nine more years before holding its first
summit in 1976 in Bali. And it was convened in the
aftermath of the US withdrawal from Vietnam.
But
the institutional problems of ASEAN had always been
around - they did not suddenly crop up. In 1982, ASEAN
established a task force to review the working machinery
of ASEAN. Four years later, the ASEAN Chambers of
Commerce and Industry (ASEAN-CCI) established the Group
of Fourteen with the endorsement of the ASEAN foreign
ministers.
In its report, titled "ASEAN: The Way
Forward", the G-14 made a number of recommendations
regarding the restructuring of the ASEAN machinery. In
the early 1990s, another attempt was again made to
improve ASEAN. In what is known as the Group of Five
report, it was maintained that ASEAN was heading toward
a "crisis". It was recommended that ASEAN had to revamp
itself, starting by empowering the secretary general of
ASEAN with ministerial rank.
Irrespective of the
recommendations, it was obvious that ASEAN was acutely
aware of its problems, both within and without,
especially its engagement with the international
community.
In 1992, prompted by Japanese foreign
minister Taro Nakayama's advice, it was decided that
ASEAN's annual post-ministerial conference could be used
as a platform to discuss political and security issues
openly. This was ASEAN's first attempt to rejuvenate
itself in the post-Cold War era.
ASEAN has since
tried to re-engineer itself on two fronts: to maintain
regional economic cooperation guided by AFTA, while at
the same time fostering security cooperation based on
the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). On both tracks, China's
presence and participation loom large in ASEAN's mind.
At the Eighth Summit in Cambodia this week,
ASEAN took to inviting China to sign a Declaration on
the South China Sea. It stated that the governments of
ASEAN and China are committed to resolving the disputes
over islands in that sea through "friendly consultations
and negotiations, in accordance with universally
recognized principles".
At the same summit,
ASEAN and China also agreed to establish the ASEAN-China
Free Trade Agreement, which will open up a market of 1.7
billion consumers with a combined gross domestic product
of US$1.5 trillion to US$2 trillion and annual two-way
trade of US$1.2 trillion.
To inject even greater
relevance, ASEAN also produced another declaration
against terrorism, stating the determination of the
group to root out the problem. That such is the
intention of ASEAN ought not to be underestimated.
On November 5, 2001, the ASEAN Declaration on
Joint Action to Counter Terrorism appeared. On May
20-21, 2002, a Joint Communique from the Special ASEAN
Ministerial Meeting on Terrorism was issued. On August
1, 2002, the US-ASEAN Joint Declaration Against
Terrorism was released.
Be that as it may,
despite such measures, ASEAN's inability to deal with
problems head-on has served to discount much of its
effectiveness. Policy behavior has often been at odds
with policy rhetoric.
Invariably, the death
knell of ASEAN has gained in saliency. And its warnings
should not be too quickly dismissed. In terms of
organizational strategy, ASEAN's collective instinct is
to ride on the emergence of China first, rather than to
generate internal dynamism. ASEAN, in other words, has
caved into the bandwagon dynamic, that is by joining an
actor that is growing in power, this despite the fact
that China's growth may not necessarily be a boon as
ASEAN still struggles with it on various security
issues.
As Shaun Narine, a post-doctoral fellow
at the University of British Columbia and an adjunct
professor at the University of Alberta, wrote: "ASEAN is
likely to continue to exist for the foreseeable future;
it has become a symbol of regional stability. However,
ASEAN does not control its own destiny."
N
Ganesan, a senior lecturer at the National University of
Singapore, further affirmed: "The ARF, even if
successful, will undercut ASEAN's utility as a security
regime by introducing more states, and powerful ones at
that. This will in turn lead to a reordering of
organizational dynamics. For example, Indonesia, which
is at present regarded as primus inter pares in
ASEAN, will be relegated to fifth place, after China,
Japan, Russia and the United States".
Nor has
ASEAN found strength in numbers. Having expanded into
ASEAN 10 in conformity to the vision of the founding
fathers, ASEAN now finds itself hampered by its lopsided
membership, where some are more developed than others,
causing the inability to move forward in unison.
If ASEAN wishes to succeed on its own account,
it must do more to re-examine some of the principles and
strategies that have guided its existence so far.
Creating ambitious projects alone, or latching on to
China, could in the long run prove counter-productive,
as ASEAN could be easily absorbed by others.
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights
reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
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