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Myanmar: ASEAN's thorn in the
flesh
By Phar
Kim Beng
HONG KONG - Even Mahathir Mohamad has
lost patience with the generals in Yangon. But the
Malaysian prime minister's warning that the Association
of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) might have to give
Myanmar the boot is not likely to worry the junta much.
Of all the moves ASEAN has made over the years to
make itself stronger, admitting Myanmar has been a
decision the association has grown to regret the most.
In fact, talk of Myanmar being expelled has become rife
since the junta's detention of democracy activist Aung
San Suu Kyi at the end of May. If Yangon continues to
defy world pressure to release her, "in the end it may
have to be that way", affirmed Mohamad, hitherto a
strong supporter of Myanmar's ASEAN membership.
Although Mahathir's remarks were later softened
by his foreign minister, Syed Hamid Albar, who explained
that "just as the decision to admit Myanmar was reached
through consensus, the expulsion of Myanmar has to be
done in a similar manner", the pressure on Myanmar is
clearly growing. And Yangon has tried to ward off the
pressure by releasing some 91 democracy activists
arrested on May 30.
The threat of expulsion from
ASEAN, however, is unlikely to become reality.
Over the past decade, ASEAN has tried to
strengthen itself with four different approaches. The
first entailed membership enlargement. In July 1995,
Vietnam was admitted as the seventh member of ASEAN.
Laos and Myanmar became full members in July 1997, and
Cambodia did so in December 1998. ASEAN made the
decision to expand in the hope that size would
eventually equal strength.
The second approach
involved the creation of the ASEAN Free Trade Area
(AFTA) in 1993 to promote economic cooperation among its
member states. The goal was to make the region congruent
to the forces of globalization, where free trade and
open competition were becoming the norm. AFTA served to
become the regional embodiment of what was ultimately a
global reality.
The third approach involved the
creation of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in 1994.
Although widely considered an oddity, in that ARF was
composed of a collection of small and middle powers
whose ability to shepherd the great powers into
agreement was highly questionable, the creation of ARF
nevertheless indicated an ambitious step forward. ARF
sought to include all major powers, especially the
United States, China, Japan, South Korea and Russia, in
the deliberation of Asian affairs. ARF was further
premised on the belief that since the Cold War rivalry
was over, all powers would be sufficiently motivated by
their economic interests alone to seek greater
convergence in their foreign policies.
The
fourth approach came in the form of ASEAN and China
mutually agreeing to create a common free-trade area by
2015. Popularly known as CAFTA, or ASEAN Plus 1, the
arrangement originated from the suggestion of then
Chinese premier Zhu Rongji in November 2001 to transform
the area occupying China and Southeast Asia into a
complete free-trade area. The gesture also marked
Beijing's effort to assuage the worries of ASEAN that
the emergence of China would necessarily shut its member
states out both economically and politically.
Myanmar's misbehavior, however, has become a
thorn in ASEAN's flesh. As recently as this week, senior
officials from Europe insisted on inclusion of the
Myanmar issue on the agenda of the Asia Europe Meeting,
which kicked off Wednesday on the Indonesian resort
island of Bali.
But the expulsion of Myanmar is
not likely unless Thailand, the frontline ASEAN state,
changes its policy toward Myanmar. Indeed, ASEAN's
Myanmar policy is deeply entwined with that of Thailand.
ASEAN's policy on Myanmar was first derived from
the policy of "constructive engagement" initiated in
1991 by the Thai government of prime minister Anand
Panyarachun. This policy was later regionalized as an
ASEAN policy. ASEAN's Myanmar policy, in other words, is
a policy of Thailand.
For Thailand, the
reasoning that led to the formulation of the
constructive-engagement policy was based upon both
realities and aspirations, according to its former
deputy foreign minister, Sukhumband Paribatra: "Myanmar
and Thailand [have] been permanent neighbors, sharing a
2,400-kilometer-long border. Most of this border has not
been demarcated and passes through difficult mountainous
and jungle terrain, inhabited by common ethnic groups,
which historically both governments have not found it
easy to rule." The border of the two countries is also
porous, with more than 70 passes, mostly in remote
areas. Therefore events in Myanmar often have
repercussions on Thailand.
Events have since
shown that admitting Myanmar to ASEAN was a mistake. The
move not only impaired ASEAN's external links with the
world, but it also resulted in bringing an extremely
controversial actor from the periphery to the very
center of the association's decision-making.
Even Japan has become wary of its links with
Myanmar. Since the latest detention of Suu Kyi, which
invited a global uproar, Tokyo has decided to suspend
its development aid to Myanmar. Being one of the few
developed countries in direct talks with the military
government in Yangon, Tokyo gave it $78 million in
fiscal year 2001, the latest year for which figures are
available. Before 1988, Japan's grants to Myanmar made
up 60 percent of all foreign aid and grants to the
country.
But even Japan's move, coupled with
ASEAN's threat of expulsion, is not enough to force
Myanmar to make sweeping and systemic changes. Indeed,
the mere closure of the aid spigot, the current tactic
of Japan, will prove futile as long as China maintains
its current trade policies: Myanmar's bilateral trade
with China improved by 10 times in the last decade to
reach $500 million by 1999, a figure some believe to be
a low estimate.
Furthermore, it is not at all
clear that other ASEAN members want to expel Myanmar.
Vietnam, a target of sanction and colonial intervention
in the past, is said to be sympathetic to the country.
In any event, the obligation to press for change
in Myanmar is now on ASEAN, not the world. And it has to
learn how to do so quickly. In 2006, Myanmar is
scheduled to be the chair of ARF. If Myanmar remains
defiant and recalcitrant, its chairmanship of ARF will
invite a great deal of opposition and criticism from
many of ASEAN's powerful dialogue partners.
And
such opposition would be justified, since the Yangon
junta is an illegitimate regime that is in power in
defiance of the clear-cut results of a democratic
election in 1988.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times
Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
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