Reassessing ASEAN

Jeannie Henderson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781136061165
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

With the accession of Cambodia in April 1999, the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) finally achieved its founding vision: the incorporation of all ten South-east Asian states. However, ASEAN-10 faces an unprecedented series of challenges, stemming from the organization's rapid enlargement since 1995, economic crisis among key members, and political upheavals in Indonesia, its largest and most important member. ASEAN in 1999 is a pale imitation of the more confident organization which emerged from the end of the Cold War as one of the world's most successful experiments in regionalism. This paper asks whether ASEAN can remain relevant to the management of regional problems.

1 ASEAN's Record

10.4324/9781315000978-2

ASEAN and the Cold War

ASEAN was formed on 8 August 1967 by Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Its aim was to reduce tensions between South-east Asia's non-communist states, thereby freeing their weak post-colonial governments to tackle internal communist challenges, and to address development priorities. ¹ Decolonisation had left a number of territorial disputes behind. The most serious demonstration of tension was the undeclared war — the konfrontasi or Confrontation — waged by President Sukarno's Indonesia against the new Federation of Malaysia between 1963 and 1966. Rather than an expansionist war, the Confrontation was intended to destabilise Malaysia through limited military action, economic sanctions and propaganda. It was pursued largely for domestic political reasons, and ended with Lieutenant-General Suharto's ousting of Sukarno.

ASEAN was an attempt to institutionalise the rapprochement between Malaysia and Indonesia, and to create a framework to build certainty and trust into relations within South-east Asia — but its founders had no clear programme for achieving this aim. The Association's founding document, the Bangkok Declaration, claimed for the countries of South-east Asia ‘a primary responsibility for strengthening the economic and social stability of the region and ensuring their peaceful and progressive national development’, and stated that ‘they are determined to ensure their stability and security from external interference’. ² This statement's political intent was not reflected in ASEAN's aims and purposes, which merely called for cooperation in ‘economic, social, cultural, technical, scientific and administrative fields’.

While anti-communism united the Association's members, its founders defined the organisation in more conventional regional terms. The Declaration stated that ASEAN was open to all Southeast Asian states subscribing to the Association's principles and goals — essentially appeals for good neighbourliness. Burma (now Myanmar) and Cambodia were asked to join, but declined on the basis that ASEAN's perceived pro-US sympathies were incompatible with their declared neutrality. The Declaration did not define Southeast Asia's geographical limits, and a membership application from Ceylon (modern-day Sri Lanka) was strongly supported by Indonesia and Malaysia. It was nonetheless ultimately turned down.

In its first decade, ASEAN played a confidence-building role, opening new channels of communication between countries whose relations had been marked by ‘mutual ignorance, isolation and conflict’. ³ ASEAN's more substantive claim was to have provided an incentive for South-east Asia's non-communist states to manage their differences without resorting to armed conflict. Less than a year after ASEAN's formation, Malaysia and the Philippines suspended diplomatic relations over their respective claims to Sabah. ⁴ When they agreed to restore relations in the following year, both countries cited the value they placed on ASEAN. But ASEAN's founders did not create the Association as a mechanism for resolving disputes between countries. From its formation, it operated on the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of South-east Asian countries, a position formalised in the 1976 Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC). The TAC created a ‘high council’ for formal dispute-resolution, but this has never taken place.

The non-interference principle became a guiding tenet of ASEAN for three reasons:

• first, its members feared external support for their domestic communist insurgencies; ⁵
• second, ASEAN's ethnic, religious, political and economic diversity risked irreconcilable differences between its members unless these aspects of national life were excluded from discussions; and
• third, the Association's governments were unwilling to cede their new-found sovereignty, either to a supranational body, or by allowing members to comment on each other's internal affairs.

To preserve the sovereignty of its members, ASEAN's decisionmaking was based on consultation and consensus; issues that could not be resolved in this way were set aside. The ASEAN Secretariat, formed in 1976, was given no supranational authority.

ASEAN's guiding principles bore the strong imprint of Indonesia. Jakarta's influence stemmed from many sources, including the country's size, its large population, which was greater than that of the other ASEAN countries combined, and the legacy of konfrontasi, which had intimidated its neighbours. Indonesia did not openly claim a leadership role, but rather approached ASEAN according to the Javanese concept of ‘leading from behind’. ⁶ The country's foreign policy under Suharto's New Order was low-key and developmentoriented, and sought to repair the damage done by Sukarno's adventurism by subordinating its natural dominance to the interests of the region. ⁷ Indonesia made ASEAN the anchor of its foreign policy.

ASEAN was ‘guided from behind’ by Indonesia

While ASEAN claimed responsibility for maintaining the region's stability and security free from external interference, it rejected military means to achieve this end. Instead, its approach was encapsulated in the Indonesian concept of ‘regional resilience’, which would stem from ‘national resilience’ based on political and economic development, and on national defence. Ostensibly, ASEAN avoided a defence pact on the grounds that it would be provocative to those countries, implicitly Vietnam, which would be excluded. In fact, inter-state suspicion, differing threat perceptions and the focus on internal security challenges in ASEAN's early years made such a pact impossible. All ASEAN members except Indonesia — which saw its non-aligned status as a defining element of its foreign policy — had formal defence arrangements with external powers. The Philippines and Thailand were alliance partners of the US, and Malaysia and Singapore were members of the Five Powers Defence Arrangements (FPDA) with the UK, Australia and New Zealand.

ASEAN's states were divided over the practical implications of the Bangkok Declaration's proscription against external interference in managing regional affairs. In 1970, Malaysia proposed that South-east Asia should be ‘neutralised’ under the guarantee of the major powers. The proposal was rejected by Indonesia because neutrality at the ‘diktat’ of the major powers ran contrary to its concept of regional resilience, and was met with concern by both the Philippines and Singapore since it could prejudice Washington's regional presence. The resulting compromise, the Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality (ZOPFAN) of 1971, committed ASEAN's states ‘to exert initially necessary efforts to secure the recognition of, and respect for, South-East Asia as a Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality, free from any form or manner of interference by outside Powers’ — another expression of Indonesia's ‘regional resilience’ concept. ⁸ Given the differing views of neutrality's merits, no programme of implementation for ZOPFAN was developed.

Despite ZOPFAN's rhetoric, the West welcomed ASEAN's formation, and nurtured the organisation as a means of strengthening non-communist South-east Asia. From 1974, ASEAN established a series of dialogue relationships with external players, including Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Canada, the European Economic Community (EEC) and the US. Through these relationships, the West tried to encourage regionalism and a habit of consultation in South-east Asian countries. Development assistance was channelled through ASEAN, as well as through bilateral aid programmes, as a way of promoting the organisation.

ASEAN and Indochina

The communist victories in Indochina in 1975 marked a turningpoint for ASEAN. In response to the changed security environment following the end of the Vietnam War, Suharto hosted the Association's first summit in February 1976, which established the TAC. Although, as an overture to Hanoi, the Treaty was ‘open for accession by other states in Southeast Asia’, opinion was divided in ASEAN as to whether reunified Vietnam represented a security threat, or should, as Jakarta believed, be engaged as a bulwark against China. Indonesia had broken off diplomatic relations with Beijing in 1967 in retaliation for China's alleged involvement in Indonesia's domestic affairs through the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), and through its possessive attitude towards the country's ethnic-Chinese community. Divided opinion over Vietnam meant that ASEAN's efforts to engage Hanoi between the 1976 summit and the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia (then Kampuchea) in 1978 fell short of a push to secure its membership in the Association.

The installation of a pro-Hanoi regime in Phnom Penh prompted a more coherent ASEAN response. The Association waged a concerted diplomatic campaign, including in the UN, to deny the regime legitimacy, and to impose sanctions and an aid blockade in a bid to bring Hanoi to the negotiating table. Consensus over Cambodia was not, however, automatic. As a ‘front-line state’, Thailand demanded that ASEAN mobilise against Vietnam, while Indonesia continued to regard Hanoi as a counterweight to China. ⁹ ASEAN's success in denying the regime in Phnom Penh international legitimacy was due largely to the fact that both Washington and Beijing opposed Vietnam's invasion. It was therefore in the interests of both China and the US for ASEAN to mobilise international pressure. ¹⁰

With the Soviet Union's decision to disengage from regional conflicts in the late 1980s, Vietnam was left bereft of material and diplomatic support for its Cambodian venture. ¹¹ Following Hanoi's announcement of its military withdrawal from Cambodia, the interested parties in the conflict, including the UN Security Council's Permanent Members, were brought together in the International Conference on Cambodia in July–August 1989, co-chaired by France and Indonesia. Although the conference failed to find a settlement, the peace process was able to move forward. In October 1991, the Paris Peace Accords were concluded with an agreement that democratic elections would be held in Cambodia under UN auspices.

Cambodia helps ASEAN come of age

Although ASEAN played its role over Cambodia at the convenience of the US and China, the Association nonetheless emerged from the process as ‘the third world's most successful experiment in regionalism’, and a diplomatic player capable of intervening on a major issue of regional security. ¹² This was a marked change from its first decade, when its voice was heard principally on issues such as trade and aid. On the one hand, the Association's experience over Cambodia laid the foundations for the greater diplomatic role it would seek following the end of the Cold War. On the other, however, the Paris Accords, which were fashioned between the major powers, demonstrated that ASEAN's claim to manage regional order free from external interference had not been upheld. ¹³

Opportunities and Challenges after the Cold War

The Soviet Union's disintegration presented ASEAN with challenges, as well as opportunities. The Association emerged from the Cold War as South-east Asia's pre-eminent institution, in a position to contemplate enlargement on its own terms. It could boast over two decades of peace among its members, accompanied by increasingly strong economic performance. The overall security environment had dramatically improved with the disappearance of Sino-Soviet rivalry. In 1989, China had clarified its position on ethnic Chinese in South-east Asia, accepting their local citizenship and removing an important block in relations, particularly with Jakarta. By 1991, Indonesia, Singapore and Brunei had become the last ASEAN countries to normalise relations with China.

At the same time, the Cold War's end threatened ASEAN's cohesion and its diplomatic aspirations. For Singaporean Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, the post-Cold War challenge was to ‘keep ASEAN relevant and sought after in a situation where the great powers no longer need to compete for ASEAN's support and the European Community and North America are forming economic blocs’. ¹⁴ The positive developments in relations with China were accompanied by concerns over the country's growing might, which now went unchecked by the Soviet Union. Washington's announcement in November 1991 that it would withdraw from its military bases in the Philippines heightened ASEAN's apprehension. While US withdrawal was consistent with the Association's 1967 declaration on the temporary nature of foreign bases, members nonetheless sought reassurance that the base closures did not signify a decline in US strategic commitments.

ASEAN leaders held their first post-Cold War summit in Singapore in January 1992, from which a range of initiatives emerged. Leaders sought to bolster ‘regional resilience’ by deepening cooperation between their countries, and by laying the groundwork for the Association to absorb the remaining South-east Asian states. They indicated their increased commitment to ASEAN, and agreed that formal summits would be held every three years, rather than on an ad hoc basis, with the provision for informal ones in intervening years. The Association's leaders also decided that, for the first time, the annual ministerial-level meeting with dialogue partners could deal with security issues. This reflected a desire to underpin US engagement and encourage China's participation as a responsible power. Immediately after the summit, concerns about China were reinforced when it formalised its claim to the islands of the South China Sea by promulgating a law on territorial waters. China's claims put it in dispute with Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam, all of which claimed parts or all of the Spratly Islands and surrounding maritime areas.

While ASEAN contemplated its new agenda, its members fully intended to keep to the founding principle of non-interference in each other's internal affairs. The Association had not commented on Indonesia's annexation of East Timor in 1976, and its members voted against UN resolutions criticising Jakarta over the territory. Only rarely had it deviated from this practice. In 1986, it issued a modest statement calling for ‘a peaceful solution to the crisis’ in the Philippines between President Ferdinand Marcos and pro-democracy leader Corazon Aquino. ¹⁵ Also in 1986, Malaysia strongly criticised Singapore's hosting of a state visit by then Israeli President Chaim Herzog. ¹⁶ These exceptions to the rule illustrate the defining impact that non-interference has had on the conduct of diplomacy between ASEAN's members, both multilaterally and bilaterally.

Deepening Cooperation

The 1992 Singapore ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Map
• Glossary
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 ASEAN's Record
• Chapter 2 ASEAN's Challenges
• Chapter 3 ASEAN and the Asia-Pacific
• Conclusion
• Notes