BOOK REVIEW ASEAN in search of relevance Hard Choices edited by Donald K Emmerson
Reviewed by Michael Vatikiotis
In October 2008, I was sitting on a comfortable couch in the Indonesian Foreign
Ministry, waiting to see Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda, when I received a
call on my mobile phone from a politician friend in Bangkok.
"Thai and Cambodian troops are firing at each other along the border, what can
we do?" There were other calls, including one from Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN) secretary general Surin Pitsuwan, who swung into action
with appeals for calm, and a flurry of contacts with ministerial colleagues
around
the region. For one brief moment, it seemed war was imminent.
Tragedy was averted, apart from the two Cambodian soldiers killed and seven
Thai troops injured in the border skirmish. Within a matter of hours, local
commanders saw sense and pulled back, agreeing to joint patrols of the
contested land near the ancient Preah Vihear temple.
Like so many potential regional flashpoints, the instinctive avoidance of
conflict, which is deep-rooted in the region's cultural DNA, helped to defuse a
potential crisis without the need for high-level diplomacy or mediation. Yet
the incident served to remind of two crucial items.
First, the security of Southeast Asia cannot be taken for granted. Even with
the greater ease with which ASEAN leaders can and often do contact one another,
there remain a host of unresolved and potentially volatile issues of contested
sovereignty across the region. Second, there is no formal, high-level mechanism
in place for resolving such disputes should they spiral out of control, hence
the frantic scattershot of phone calls and ad hoc initiatives that ensue
whenever crisis looms.
Southeast Asia is a dynamic region that has managed a dramatic transformation
in recent decades from a loosely connected collection of rice-growing,
fish-consuming and superstitious communities into a dynamic, creative and
relatively prosperous collection of 10 nation states comprising more than half
a billion people.
The frustration for many is that they are still only loosely connected.
Sovereignty issues run deep in a part of the world where no capital city is
more than three hours away from any other by plane. The quest for community,
for shared values and a sense of common identity is one that lies at the heart
of the contemporary debate of where Southeast Asia may be headed in the 21st
century.
Sadly, there is neither intellectual accord nor an institutional framework to
help predict with confidence where that destination may be. Is ASEAN, one of
the world's more enduring regional organizations, evolving into a community? Or
will it remain little more than a confidence-building mechanism that steers
clear of initiatives and measures that might infringe on member states' sense
of sovereignty?
The debate has intensified as some of the region's political systems, though
certainly not all, have become more open and democratic. Academics ask whether
a more democratic ASEAN will evolve into a grouping in which universal norms
and values of peaceful co-existence, human rights and basic freedoms will be
advocated, applied and, more controversially, universally enforced.
Asian specialist and American academic Don Emmerson's skillfully conceived
compilation of essays attempts and reasonably succeeds at addressing these
issues. The book is aptly titled, for there are hard choices ahead for
Southeast Asian governments of all stripes. The volume tackles several critical
political issues confronting ASEAN in a refreshing way, involving a lively
discussion of the issues by noted experts. It ends with an argument between
proponents of radical transformation on the one hand, and more prudent, gradual
change of the association on the other.
Emmerson correctly identifies Myanmar as the most contentious challenge to
Southeast Asian regionalism. ASEAN's capacity to influence significant
political change in Myanmar is most frequently and adversely judged by the
international community, which often brands the organization as a powerless
talk shop. Yet Emmerson is right to identify ASEAN's groundbreaking role in
paving the way for international aid to reach the victims of Cyclone Nargis in
May 2008 as a tipping point for the grouping, one in which, as he puts it,
"words led to deeds".
But apart from much deserved praise for the individual political skills of
Surin, it is hard for any of the book's authors to see more than a minimal
shift in ASEAN's bedrock principal of respect for sovereignty and
non-interference in member states' internal affairs. "Southeast Asian
regionalism in the evangelical service of liberal democracy," Emmerson argues,
is "political science fiction".
Yet, even the small amount of liberal space created by the advance of political
openness leaves significant room for change, as many of the authors suggest.
The ASEAN charter is regarded as a vehicle for adapting rather than completely
changing the twin ASEAN traditions of consultation and consensus.
Indonesian analyst Rizal Sukma argues that the long-held ASEAN principle of
non-intervention "should be balanced with the fact of interdependence".
Expatriate Burmese academic Kyaw Yin Hlaing suggests that a great deal more
could be done for Myanmar in the practical mould of basic capacity-building in
development, governance and human security.
However, more should have been said in this otherwise comprehensive collection
of essays on the still glaring paucity of dispute-settlement mechanisms. Whilst
it is no doubt interesting from an academic perspective to debate the role of
democracy and security, and in this context consider the impact of modern
notions of human security and the responsibility to protect, a lot of security
issues actually require mundane and rather apolitical diplomacy.
Mediation is certainly provided for in the new ASEAN charter, but for the good
offices of the ASEAN chair and secretary general to be deployed effectively,
ASEAN's resource and institutional capacity needs strengthening. Is it really
adequate that a regional organization comprising almost 600 million people is
served by a secretariat with a mere 60 officers?
Mostly missing from the debate, with one singular exception, is the question of
alternatives to the ASEAN regional framework. Michael Malley's interesting
contribution on nuclear energy security points out how member states have
bypassed ASEAN to find more effective ways to regulate their nuclear needs. But
much more could have been said on the larger regional issue of ASEAN's still
poorly developed ties with the United Nations, a topic nowhere considered in
this volume.
Ultimately, this is a book for the times. For as ASEAN heads towards a half
century of existence and with greater economic integration, the rigid rejection
of intervention in the affairs of member states is becoming harder to justify.
Pluralist politics has taken root in many countries and democracy is clearly
not an alien import, as some once would have argued.
For when an Indonesian parliamentarian expresses concern about the detention of
a Burmese colleague, it is about basic human values and decency. When human
rights are abused in Thailand, it isn't any longer just the Western media but
journalists in neighboring Indonesia and Malaysia who shine the spotlight and
demand an official explanation.
As Surin writes in the book's foreword, "The days when domestic political
controversies could not be discussed in regional settings are over." It is
here, he writes, "in the cracks between sovereignties, the spaces between
states," that hard ASEAN choices are already being made.
Hard Choices: Security, Democracy and Regionalism in Southeast Asia edited
by Donald Emmerson. Walter H Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Stanford
University, June 2008. ISBN-13: 9781931368131. Price US$28.95, 320 pages.
Michael Vatikiotis is Asia Regional Director for the Geneva-based Centre
for Humanitarian Dialogue.
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