Cambodia's chance for summit
success By Gregory Poling and
Alexandra Sander
Cambodia will fulfill its
last major obligation as this year's Association
of Southeast Asian Nations chair from November
18-20 when it hosts the annual ASEAN Summit and
seventh East Asia Summit (EAS). The EAS in
particular will provide Cambodia with the
opportunity to restore some of its credibility
after the public embarrassment of the ASEAN
Ministerial Meeting (AMM) in July. On that
occasion, Cambodia used its prerogative as ASEAN
chair to block the inclusion of any mention of the
South China Sea maritime disputes in the joint
communiqu้ at the end of the meeting, resulting in
the organization's first-ever failure to release
such a document.
That failure cast
significant doubt on ASEAN's ability to evolve
and tackle tough issues.
It also caused troubling allegations, especially
from Vietnam and the Philippines, that Cambodia
had placed its close relationship with China above
the interests of its fellow ASEAN members. All the
damage wrought in July will not be fixed in three
days in November. But if the EAS goes demonstrably
better than the AMM did, Cambodia's image will
have a chance to recover and some of the ASEAN
skeptics will be quieted. A successful EAS, and by
extension a stronger regional framework in the
Asia Pacific, is in the interests of all EAS
members, including the United States. The key will
be supporting Cambodia as an effective chair.
The EAS was only established in 2005, but
its membership and mission are already of great
significance for regional architecture.
Encompassing all 10 ASEAN members plus Australia,
New Zealand, India, China, South Korea, Japan,
Russia, and the United States, the EAS boasts the
most effective membership of any Asia-Pacific
organization. It does not split ASEAN as APEC
does, or exclude major powers as ASEAN+3 does, or
contain too many disparate members to be
effective, like the ASEAN Regional Forum.
Leaders at this year's EAS will likely
find common ground on green growth, the adoption
of a Declaration on Resistance to Antimalarial
Medicines, and various means of boosting ASEAN
connectivity. Cambodia is eager to see its
chairmanship accomplish these and other relatively
easily achievable goals. However, its tenure as
chair will be judged not on laudable but
non-contentious deliverables. Instead, it will be
judged on how willing and able it is to oversee an
honest, balanced, and productive discussion on the
tough issues that divide members.
The 2012
EAS agenda will include a number of such topics.
Foremost among these will be maritime security and
the ongoing disputes in the South and East China
Seas. Some members would rather avoid these
topics, which have turned contentious at nearly
every major ASEAN-led meeting in the last three
years. But Vietnam, the Philippines, and Japan are
almost certain to raise them, and others, the
United States included, will not keep quiet once
the issues are tabled.
The summit will
also include side meetings on two different
visions for economic integration - the Regional
Comprehensive Economic Partnership favored by
China and the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Even if demonstrable progress on these key issues
proves elusive, fostering an honest and
substantive dialogue will show Cambodia to be the
responsible chair it claimed to be early in the
year.
Strong Cambodian leadership and a
flexible, effective response to any lack of
consensus on key issues will alleviate doubts
about ASEAN unity and efficacy. That will allow
the organization to cement its place at the center
of regional political, security, and economic
structures. Cambodia occupies the chairmanship
during an important juncture in ASEAN's evolution
and is therefore saddled with the difficult task,
but also the opportunity, of steering it through
these thorny issues.
Cambodia should seek
to leverage the expected accomplishments of the
EAS in order to mitigate the damage from any
points of contention. The most important role of
the chair is the prerogative to set the agenda at
the summit. Cambodia cannot prevent the
Philippines or Vietnam from raising the South
China Sea issue, for instance, but it can take the
initiative and place that discussion where it will
be most effective.
Where that is, whether
at the end of discussions, after the low-hanging
fruit have created an environment of mutual trust
and understanding, or sandwiched between expected
accomplishments to soften the blow, will be up to
Cambodia. But what it cannot attempt is a repeat
of its behavior at the AMM, where it refused to
include any of the tough issues on the agenda and
became upset when its counterparts refused to play
along. The role of the chair must be to guide
discussions, not to block or react to them.
Cambodia follows the groundbreaking
chairmanships of Vietnam in 2010 and Indonesia in
2011. Those two countries made a successful ASEAN
year a hallmark of their foreign policy and a
coming-out party for their role on the regional
and global stage. The unfortunate side-effect of
such successes, which pushed the bounds of ASEAN
norms and sought to bring the organization closer
to its potential place as regional fulcrum, is
that the bar seems a bit too high for those that
follow. Brunei is set to take over the
chairmanship in 2013, followed by Myanmar in 2014
and Laos in 2015.
Cambodia's performance
at the AMM cemented the perceptions of those who
said fecklessness and division were the inevitable
outcomes of ASEAN's smaller and less developed
members occupying the chair. This is certainly not
inevitable - as Cambodia can prove with a
successful chairmanship of the ASEAN Summit and
EAS. It is crucial that Cambodia set a precedent
for how the upcoming chairs can engage contentious
issues and manage tensions between the region's
larger players.
This is especially true of
Cambodia's handling of China. Cambodia, like
Myanmar and Laos, is heavily dependent on Chinese
aid and investment. And, like them, it lacks a
deep strategic relationship with the United States
to help balance its dependence on Beijing. The
result is that Cambodia is more prone to Chinese
pressure than are most ASEAN members. One possible
result was on display at the AMM, when China
leveraged its relationship with Cambodia to crack
ASEAN unity and protect its interests. A repeat at
the upcoming summits could be devastating,
supporting those in Beijing who argue that China's
interests are better served by a divided ASEAN and
sending a message to the organization's other
susceptible members that sacrificing ASEAN unity
to please China is acceptable.
Instead,
Cambodia must communicate to China, by words and
actions, that it cannot manipulate the ASEAN chair
into over representing Chinese interests. This
will be a tall order, particularly as the EAS will
take place amid a highly sensitive leadership
transition in Beijing. Cambodia will have to allow
its neighbors to discuss the contentious issues
important to them, regardless of Chinese
objections, in an honest and transparent manner.
But it will also have to guide the discussion to
avoid provoking China unnecessarily. Placing
difficult issues like the South China Sea squarely
on the agenda ahead of time will be critical;
these issues will be raised regardless, and
leaving China feeling ambushed serves no one's
purposes.
Ensuring that all parties have a
say in crafting the joint communiqu้ following the
meetings - and there must be one - will also be
important. Equally important will be clear
messaging, in advance, that any attempts to
unilaterally filibuster the statement or
discussions are unacceptable. If successful, a
strong Cambodian chairmanship will be a vital
first step toward convincing China to work within
existing regional structures like the EAS, and to
do so transparently, rather than trying to exploit
its bilateral relationships to undermine ASEAN
unity.
The United States and its partners
can play a supportive role in this effort. They
must state their positions on issues of
contention, especially the importance of
international law and peaceful resolution to
maritime disputes, but must at the same time not
be seen as attempting to ostracize China at the
summits. For instance, the United States must
reiterate its neutrality on all territorial
disputes, in both the South and East China Seas.
It is also important that the United
States continue to argue for the value of the
Trans-Pacific Partnership, but not in opposition
to the Regional Comprehensive Economic
Partnership. Such an effort would be futile and
would only promote an unhelpful zero-sum
mentality. The overall goals of the United States
and all EAS members must be to voice their
positions openly and honestly, support Cambodia as
the chair, and not force it into a position of
choosing between China and the rest.
A
successful Cambodian leadership in November could
have a significant impact on the effectiveness of
ASEAN for years to come. If the summits were to
face difficult issues honestly and yield
measurable progress toward regional goals, the
debacle at the AMM would become a footnote.
Cambodia would help restore confidence in ASEAN's
effectiveness and centrality to regional
architecture.
Just as important, it would
set the stage for Brunei, Myanmar, and Laos to
oversee their own successful years as chair. The
next few years could prove a watershed for ASEAN
in its quest for centrality in regional
architecture. It is the best chance for a
multilateral vehicle to promote peace, stability,
and continued economic development in the region.
All members of the EAS, China and the United
States most of all, should welcome this goal and
support Cambodia in its efforts to bring it a step
closer to reality.
Gregory
Poling (gpoling@csis.org) is research
associate with the Chair for Southeast Asia
Studies at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies in Washington, DC. Alexandra
Sander (asander@csis.org) is a researcher
with the Chair for Southeast Asia Studies. PacNet
commentaries and responses represent the views of
the respective authors.
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