US and China tug at ASEAN
unity By Michael Vatikiotis
SINGAPORE - Something has changed in
Southeast Asia, and no one seems to want to talk
about it.
Over the past 40 years,
countries of the region have fostered a tradition
of loose but often effective multilateral
cooperation in the shape of the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations. Of late, however, the
ASEAN spirit of consultation and consensus appears
to be fading. In part that's because ASEAN has
grown, now comprising 10 members instead of six.
And the expansion, pulling in economic laggards
Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and
Myanmar, has understandably
diluted the old bonhomie among the original six
members - Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia,
Singapore, Brunei and the Philippines.
But
the grouping is also being fragmented by
intensifying US-China competition for regional
influence, which is putting a premium on
bilateralism with the big powers at the expense of
ASEAN's ambition toward more regional
multilateralism.
The framework for
regional cooperation among the original six
members expanded as economies boomed in the 1990s.
Dialogue partners were taken on, and larger East
Asian and South Asian neighbors were brought into
the circle. Now, however, the global focus of
attention has swung away from economic growth in
ASEAN toward growth in China, which has weakened
considerably ASEAN's incentive to bond as a
region.
The result has been a return to
reflexive bilateral engagement. Witness the recent
signing in Bali of a bilateral extradition treaty
and defense-cooperation agreement between
Singapore and Indonesia. Both these landmark deals
were tough to negotiate and brought the two sides
into a degree of friction with one another. The
question arises: Where was ASEAN in all this?
Why hasn't the organization crafted a
regional mechanism to ensure that ill-gotten gains
squirreled away from one country can be traced and
recovered in a neighboring one? The question can
equally be asked: What do Singapore and Indonesia
need a bilateral defense agreement for in an era
when regional security cooperation should be the
goal? Indonesia has proposed an ASEAN security
community, but the idea has languished near the
bottom of official agendas at recent ASEAN
meetings.
In the 1990s, Indonesia,
Malaysia and Singapore frequently met at a high
level in a more explicitly multilateral context.
There were optimistic joint declarations to create
zones of joint economic development, such as
Sijori (Singapore, Johore and Riau) and the
Northern Growth Triangle encompassing North
Sumatra, the Malaysian island of Penang, and
southern Thailand.
Nothing came of these
projects because, while the leadership may have
been willing to invest in joint development,
little effort was made to break down political and
bureaucratic barriers among the countries
involved. More is the pity, since a regional
framework like the Indonesia-Malaysia-Thailand
Growth Triangle, if seriously implemented, might
well have dampened conflicts in Aceh and southern
Thailand by providing local people with higher
levels of economic growth and fostering a benign
sense of regional identity that didn't threaten
individual countries' sovereignty. In both cases,
economic marginalization has fueled historical
nationalist sentiment.
But nationalism at
the state level remains as strong a political
impulse today as it was half a century ago, and
there is little sign of regional borders
dissolving. Today, wealthy Singapore says it is
different from other countries; Indonesia now
thinks it is more democratic than others; and
Thailand is looking inward as it confronts
prolonged political crisis. Vietnam goes its own
way, and Myanmar is drifting further apart from
the rest of Southeast Asia.
Fading
multilateralism In other words, ASEAN
nowadays is suffering from a lack of firm
commitment to multilateral cooperation.
To
be sure, a multitude of meetings are still held:
ASEAN exists as a complex matrix of official
meetings on one subject or another. However, this
is also part of the problem: ASEAN has been
delegated by the leadership, which turns up once a
year to preside over summits that are increasingly
venues for bilateral engagement on the sidelines
rather than multilateral agreement at the main
event. The recent announcement of an ASEAN
bilateral summit with the United States to be held
in Singapore in September will no doubt serve as a
case in point.
Lately, ASEAN has been
hijacked by bigger geopolitical forces. As China,
the US and to a lesser degree India vie for
regional influence, the arena of cooperation and
integration has been greatly expanded. And ASEAN
is arguably now part of a greater East Asian
whole.
Some of the more interesting
regional discussions are now held under an ASEAN
Plus Three umbrella that includes China, Japan and
South Korea, including this weekend's multilateral
meeting in Japan to discuss the creation of a
regional bond market and pooling part of the
region's collective US$2.7 trillion in foreign
reserves to shield regional currencies against
financial speculation.
Such initiatives
signal the changing power dynamic in the region
being driven in large part by China's recent
economic emergence. So long as China lacked the
confidence to flex its diplomatic muscle, Beijing
hid behind ASEAN's preceding familiarity and
credibility with big Western trading partners.
This started to change after 2003, when China
harnessed ASEAN to its own notion of a regional
framework, one that is less dependent on the West.
Much hope is now pinned on a new ASEAN
charter due to be unveiled in Singapore at the end
of this year. The document, once approved, is
expected to reinvigorate ASEAN, endow its moribund
secretariat with new powers and breathe new life
into the notion of a single community. A more
empowered secretary general will aim to restore
some luster to this once-respected vehicle for
regional diplomacy.
But perhaps the
problem is not one of internal dynamics. Perhaps
instead ASEAN is less a victim of its own weakness
than a hostage to the new global order - one in
which multilateral bodies have been damaged or
weakened by the clumsy unilateralism of big
powers, principally the US and China.
The
United States, for example, insists on negotiating
free-trade agreements bilaterally rather than with
ASEAN as a whole, a deal that might have
accelerated ASEAN's own incarnation as a
free-trade area. Whenever ASEAN has floated
notions of stronger regional management of the
financial or security environment, such
institutions as the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund have expressed fears
about losing supervisory control.
On the
security front, the US has always been concerned
about the ASEAN Regional Forum established in 1994
with ASEAN as convener and chairman. The idea of a
security forum in which the United States is not
in a dominant position simply wasn't acceptable to
Washington, which has mostly characterized the
forum as toothless.
The so-called "global
war on terror" since 2001 has further weakened
ASEAN's autonomy over security concerns, with the
US linking its own concerns to bilateral trade and
aid. No doubt this security priority will be front
and center at the commemorative bilateral ASEAN
summit in September.
ASEAN enjoyed the
peak of its success at the end of the Cold War,
when superpower rivalry was at its nadir. This
allowed ASEAN to steer its own economic and
security policies and get a feel for real regional
cooperation.
Now the cycle is reversing
itself as US-China rivalry for regional influence
intensifies and individual ASEAN member states
need to demonstrate strong bilateral ties with
both Washington and Beijing to benefit from access
to preferential trade and security agreements.
Today, the leaders of Southeast Asia are
forced to keep busy burnishing ties with the major
powers as well as each of their neighbors - which
are often likewise striking bilateral deals -
rather than relying on their foreign ministers to
sort things out collectively over a few cold
drinks after a round of golf at one of those
old-fashioned ASEAN meetings.
For all
these reasons, just as individual countries pay
less heed to the United Nations these days, so
ASEAN as a grouping no longer invites the
scrutiny, analysis and respect that it once did.
Michael Vatikiotis is the
regional representative of the Center for
Humanitarian Dialogue based in Singapore.
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