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SOUTHEAST ASIA AND ASEAN Running in Place
Donald E. Weatherbee
When Indonesia took the reins of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as the grouping’s 2011 chair, expectations ran high that Jakarta would inject a new sense of urgency into the organization. Jakarta’s activist agenda was designed to push the organization faster and further towards the goal of achieving a prosperous, peaceful, just, and democratic ASEAN Community by 2015.1 Indonesia was going to lead ASEAN (if it could be led) out of the doldrums of Thailand’s 2009 chairmanship, crippled as it was by domestic political turmoil, followed in 2010 by status quo–oriented Vietnam. In the politesse of ASEAN discourse, Indonesia’s stewardship has been praised for leading ASEAN to meet the challenges presented by community building. Indonesia handed off ASEAN’s Chair for 2012 to Hun Sen’s Cambodia, which received essentially the same package of unresolved issues and problems that Indonesia had wrestled with. Indonesia’s major accomplishment was to keep the vision of community intact, although real community seems no closer today than it did when Indonesia assumed the chairmanship. The possible exception is political change in Myanmar. Indonesia’s hope to save ASEAN from itself was undone by the realities of ASEAN’s workings. Outside of its creeping, hesitant economic integration, a faltering ASEAN has not delivered the political and strategic coherence required for the unity of will and purpose necessary for it to be an effective actor in the regional international order. The “ASEAN way” has been a dead end in terms of ASEAN common policymaking. The grouping has not demonstrated the “organizational coherence and clarity of leadership” necessary, as Alice Ba wrote, to maintain its influence and claim to centrality in Asian regionalism.2
DONALD E. WEATHERBEE is Donald S. Russell Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of South Carolina, United States.
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Indonesia gave it a new best try with the “Bali Concord III”, which calls for coordinated, cohesive, and coherent common positions so that ASEAN can have a single international voice on matters of common interest.3 As long as ASEAN’s decision-making reflects controversy avoidance and lowest common denominator consensus on crucial issues of politics and security, the ASEAN voice will continue to be expressed through declaratory and platitudinous formulations rather than coordinated policy actions. It cannot really be expected that ASEAN’s immediate future leadership — in order, Cambodia, Brunei, Myanmar, and Laos — will do any better than Indonesia in giving coherence and clarity to the organization as it marches (or slouches) towards the 2015 culminating ASEAN Community. This is particularly true of the ASEAN Political-Security Community in which Indonesia’s democratic ethos is not widely shared by its fellow members. Clarity in action and purpose in Southeast Asia is found only in the individual ASEAN member states’ pursuit of national interests in the competition and conflicts in Southeast Asia’s international relations. At the three levels of state behaviour important to the ASEAN Political-Security Community — great-power politics, intra-ASEAN politics, and ASEAN domestic politics — Jakarta found that being ASEAN Chair, let alone Southeast Asia’s largest nation, was largely unavailing in terms of influencing outcomes. At the level of the high politics of the great powers, rather then Indonesia’s preference for a “dynamic equilibrium” (however that might be defined), great- power antagonism and tension increased. The playing out of contending interests in the South China Sea disputes became emblematic of the overarching contest between China and the United States for power and influence in the region. It is not beyond reason to fear the emergence of a classic security dilemma as the two powers face off. Within ASEAN, which conceives a balance of power as a condition of not being forced to choose sides, there will be increasing pressures to enhance security cooperation with the United States even as China looms ever larger as the regional economic engine. After the November 2011 round of ASEAN summitry in Bali, Donald Emmerson identified a tendency in Southeast Asia to think of China and the United States as playing specialized roles: “China the economic partner who facilitates prosperity, America the security provider who guards the peace”.4 In this dichotomous structuring of the Chinese and American roles in Southeast Asia, ASEAN (wishful?) thinking emphasizes ASEAN management of the complementary assets the two powers bring to the region. If in fact there is such a dichotomy, the line of division is becoming increasingly blurred. The United States sees China’s military build-up as a challenge to the American security guarantee. Conversely,
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China views the Obama administration’s international economic agenda as an effort to diminish the relevance of the China-dominated ASEAN Plus Three (APT). In the scramble to adjust to China-U.S. competition in the region, rather than an ASEAN response, it has been every Southeast Asian nation for itself in determining the priority of its economic and security interests in its great- power relations. American President Obama’s administration, looking at Iraq and Afghanistan through the rear-view mirror and with China looming ahead, has at every opportunity aggressively asserted America’s great-power role in the Asia- Pacific region. The American rhetorical determination to remain the guarantor of regional security was laid out in President Obama’s address to Australia’s parliament on the eve of the Bali East Asia Summit (EAS) meeting.5 In it, he underlined a “deliberate and strategic” intention to play a larger and long-term role in shaping the future of the region. In particular, he included an enhanced defence posture and presence in Southeast Asia. Matching words with action, Australia and the United States announced a plan to station a 2,500-man U.S. Marine task force in Darwin, which alarmed China and received a mixed reaction among the ASEAN states. Beijing’s perspective is that American words and actions undermine trust, peace, and stability and are contrary to regional interests. The much anticipated Sixth East Asia Summit (EAS) took place on 19 November, the first with Russian and American participation. In the run-up to the EAS, ASEAN was apprehensive that its claim to centrality in Asian regionalism might be eclipsed by the shadows thrown by the great powers. Even though Indonesia had pressed for more attention to security and political matters facing the region, the priorities were the usual EAS five: energy, finance, disaster management, education, and health. The question has been posed as to where the EAS fits into the regional architecture of East Asia beyond adding a new level of talk shop and photo ops. It was not designed to promote real regionalism. Its origin was in the desire of China-wary ASEAN members to dilute the political potency of the APT. However, the expansion of the EAS as a venue for great-power high politics may dilute ASEAN’s political relevance. In the 2010 Fifth EAS Chairman’s Statement, the leaders “reiterated our strong support for ASEAN’s central role in the EAS”. A straw in the wind may be the fact that the 2011 Chairman’s Statement did not mention a special role for ASEAN. Another question that faces ASEAN is whether generalized good feelings about an ASEAN-centric agenda that does not address real regional political and security issues that engage the non-ASEAN participants will be enough to bring the American President to the summit on an annual basis, if only to show up because the Chinese are there. The test will be the seventh EAS in 2012 hosted by Cambodia.
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Myanmar’s Turn About The problematic bright spot during the year was the quality of the government that emerged in Myanmar in February 2011. Rather than simply being a front man for the junta, to the surprise of many long-time Myanmar-watchers, President Thein Sein has undertaken policies that hold the promise of limited democratic reform and reconciliation. The gradual opening of democratic space in Myanmar has included outreach to the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) and the junta’s nemesis, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. In November 2011, the NLD announced it would re-register as a political party and participate in future elections. Aung San Suu Kyi herself is expected to stand in a by-election. Despite what seems to be progressive reform, the question still can be raised as to whether these actions are simply a product of cosmetic tinkering in an effort to normalize relations with its ASEAN partners and the Western democracies that have applied biting economic sanctions on Myanmar. After years of being rebuffed by the junta and internationally stained by its association with it, ASEAN has uncritically welcomed the changing political face of Myanmar, confidently considering it to be irreversible. To show its approbation, ASEAN rewarded Myanmar with the 2014 chairmanship of the grouping. This is a bit of a risk since no one really knows how long a leash Thein Sein is on in terms of both the rapidity and scope of political change in Myanmar. Any future effort to unseat Myanmar for backsliding would be strongly opposed by its traditional ASEAN allies, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. The United States and the European Union have cautiously welcomed the signs of change but remain to be fully convinced that the leopard has changed its spots. Both the European Union and the Obama administration have diplomatically engaged the new government. During the year, a parade of senior American diplomats paid official visits to Naypyidaw. After a phone conversation with Aung San Suu Kyi, President Obama dispatched Secretary of State Clinton to Myanmar in December. At her meetings with Thein Sein and Aung San Suu Kyi, Mrs Clinton outlined a series of democratizing and human rights actions Myanmar would have to take before U.S. sanctions would be lifted. The most important test she set was the unconditional release of prisoners of conscience. She stated that the United States was “prepared to walk the path of reform” with Myanmar if it kept moving in that direction, matching actions with actions.6 Certainly, by 2014, it should be clear what firm course Myanmar has taken, before the United States, the European Union, and other countries sanctioning Myanmar have to decide whether to sit down at the multiple ASEAN meetings and summits with Myanmar as the chair.
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It would be fantasy to believe that somehow Thein Sein and his fellow generals have experienced a democratic epiphany. Obviously, they felt there were material and political interests at stake. Instrumental in promoting the about-face was the international sanctions regime that has denied Myanmar and the leading members of the junta and their families access to resources that China cannot provide. The integration of Myanmar into the global economy with access to global markets, capital, and investment is the only way Myanmar can begin to lessen its growing dependence on China. There are signs of a rethink on the generals’ part about relations with China as anti-Chinese sentiment grows in the population. The Thein Sein government stunned and angered China in October 2011, when it unilaterally suspended the $3.6 billion Myitsone dam project that had been widely opposed in Myanmar and by global environmentalists. While attention-grabbing, the dam cancellation is only Myanmar’s latest and most blatant move towards a new China policy that veteran Myanmar-watcher Bertil Lintner dates back to 2004.7 The Chinese reaction to Myanmar’s turnabout has been muted. A gradual distancing from China as Myanmar resets its relations with ASEAN and the West is not a divorce. China, deeply embedded in Myanmar’s infrastructure and resource development, will remain an important partner to Naypyidaw. However, any downgrading of the Chinese connection is welcomed by ASEAN, India, and the United States given the fear that China’s goal in its relations with Myanmar has been to gain a strategic foothold on the Bay of Bengal.
ASEAN’s South China Sea Dilemma The Southeast Asian flashpoint in U.S.-China security relations is the contending territorial and jurisdictional conflicts stemming from China’s claim of sovereign jurisdiction over most of the South China Sea that denies the overlapping claims of Southeast Asian littoral states. A symbolic example of the competition is Vietnam’s use of the name East Sea for its claimed maritime space and the Philippines’ claims to its West Philippine Sea. At issue for the United States is whether the South China Sea is to become a Chinese mare clausum or to remain high seas with full freedom of navigation. For the Southeast Asian littoral states the stakes are control of their fisheries, exclusive economic zones (EEZ), and especially access for the exploitation of the potential hydrocarbon resources of their continental shelves. The linking of the American and Southeast Asian interests in rejecting the Chinese claims has led to spiralling tensions in which China seeks to exclude the United States as a regional actor and the maritime ASEAN states want to guarantee its presence.
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The diplomatic jousting has been over the appropriate framework for dispute resolution. China insists on a bilateral mode between China and a concerned state while ASEAN and Washington view conflict in the South China Sea as a regional issue requiring a multilateral approach. China adamantly refuses since in principle multilateralism implicitly denies China’s sovereignty and in practice it reduces the power asymmetry inherent in China–ASEAN state bilateralism. American insistence on its common interest with the ASEAN nations to equal and open access to the South China Sea and the extension of the American security guarantee to the South China Sea poses a dilemma for ASEAN. If deeper engagement, including new levels of limited security alignments with the United States, triggers more aggressive Chinese policies to defend what it identifies as “core interests”, will regional peace and stability follow? There is no unified ASEAN resolution of this security conundrum. The frontline ASEAN maritime states have embraced the heightened American posture and visibility. The continental states have shown little support for their ASEAN partners at the strategic frontier with China. For more than two decades ASEAN’s strategy has focused on drafting a code of conduct for the South China Sea. First mooted in ASEAN’s 1992 “Declaration on the South China Sea”, it was conceived by ASEAN as a legally binding agreement in which the parties commit not to use force in the disputed areas. It took a decade for ASEAN to negotiate China’s adherence to a 2002 non-binding “Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea” (DOC) calling for voluntary adherence to the principles of peace, self-restraint, functional cooperation, and consultation. The DOC reaffirmed that a code of conduct was the eventual goal. China did not give priority to the issue, and it was not until July 2011 that general draft guidelines on implementing the DOC were approved by the parties. From this new starting point, a next round of negotiations is expected to flesh out the details of the guidelines for the already decade-old DOC. Over that decade China’s aggressive pattern of harassment and intimidation of its rival Southeast Asian claimants of territory, EEZ, and shelf jurisdictions has not been restrained by the DOC. If anything, it has become more flagrant as China’s naval power increases. China’s new willingness to sign off on general non-binding behavioural guidelines — that do not address the disputed issues of sovereignty and jurisdictions — is a restatement that political regulation of the South China Sea is an ASEAN- China matter and is none of the United States’ business. It does not promise change in China’s maritime behaviour. As for the proposed code of conduct, President Yudhoyono’s 2011 ASEAN Summit Chairman’s Statement welcomed the “commencement of a discussion in ASEAN to identify the possible key elements of a code of conduct in the South China Sea and anticipate a future engagement
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with China on the matter with a view to its timely realization” [italics added]. Even if a code were negotiated, it would not be self-executing. ASEAN would still have the problem of how to enforce it. As the gap between Chinese and American naval capabilities in East Asia narrows in the years ahead, the Chinese positions may even harden. In preparation for the EAS, China, anticipating Obama’s intention to raise South China Sea issues, lobbied hard to keep it off the agenda. In the ASEAN–China Summit before the EAS, Premier Wen Jiabao restated China’s position that disputes in the South China Sea should be settled by the sovereign states concerned, adding “outside forces should not get involved under any excuse”.8 To China’s chagrin, the issue was broached by concerned ASEAN leaders. According to an American briefing, at the two-hour “leaders’ retreat” there was a “robust” discussion of maritime security and the South China Sea.9 Implicitly dismissing Chinese objections, President Yudhoyono, the chair, noted that a discussion of South China Sea issues was appropriate and important for the EAS. With Singapore, Vietnam, and the Philippines speaking first, the emphasis was on freedom of navigation, peaceful resolution of disputes, the need for a code of conduct, the rule of law and UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea), and multilateralism in dispute resolution. Only Cambodia and Myanmar had nothing to offer. The very raising of South China Sea issues at the EAS was a defeat for China’s diplomacy, which has vigorously opposed their airing in multinational fora outside of ASEAN itself. The willingness of a heretofore reluctant ASEAN to openly contradict China seems indicative of growing ASEAN frustration with China’s stonewalling. When it was Obama’s turn, next to last, he repeated that the United States had a “powerful stake in maritime security in general and in the resolution of the South China Sea issue specifically — as a resident Pacific power, as a maritime nation, as a trading nation and as a guarantor of security in the Asia Pacific”. Premier Wen, last to speak and perhaps feeling a little blindsided, contradicted the chair, stressing that the summit was not the right forum to discuss the South China Sea.10 In a veiled warning to some ASEAN countries he stated that “we hope relevant parties would take into concern the overall situation of regional peace and stability, and do something more conducive to mutual trust and cooperation”. Outside the EAS venue, the Chinese cautioned ASEAN states against U.S. manipulation of the issues. China is particularly vexed by Vietnam’s and the Philippines’ very public protests about China’s maritime intrusions and heavy-handed tactics. Beijing has not looked kindly at what it considers to be China-bashing. The two countries are at ASEAN’s strategic maritime frontier with China. Both countries have been disappointed by
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the reluctance of ASEAN to collectivize what they see as the China threat. This is an understandable reluctance which has two foundations: fear of retaliatory Chinese economic measures and uncertainty about American staying power. While highly critical of China’s actions in the South China Sea, Hanoi and Manila have avoided any major disruption in their bilateral relationships with China. At the conclusion of Vietnamese communist party leader Nguyen Phu Trong’s October 2011 visit to China, he and China’s President Hu Jintao signed a six-point agreement on the principles governing the settlement of maritime issues existing between the two countries.11 This was based on the 1993 Vietnam-China agreement on the principles for the resolution of territorial and border disputes. President Aquino had visited China in September. According to Aquino’s spokesperson, in his meeting wih Hu Jintao, Aquino reiterated the Philippines’ position that disputes in the West Philippine Sea were a regional issue that needed a regional solution.12 A lack of policy coordination between Vietnam and the Philippines was underscored by Manila’s criticism of the Vietnam-China six-point agreement as undercutting the preferred multilateral approach. In no uncertain terms, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson made it clear that the Vietnam-China accord had nothing to do with “the third party” and that “the third party” should respect the efforts of the concerned countries to resolve their dispute. He underlined this rebuke by reminding Manila that “China-Philippines maritime disputes can only be resolved by direct negotiations between China and the Philippines, a stance the Philippines is quite clear about.”13 Vietnam’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson defended the agreement in an ambiguous statement that said “disputes that are related to the two countries only will be solved bilaterally, while those concerned [sic] many countries will be discussed and solved multilaterally”.14 The difference in views between Manila and Hanoi was reconciled during Vietnamese president Truong Tan Sang’s state visit to the Philippines at the end of October. Agreements were signed to strengthen cooperation and information sharing between their respective navies.15 Vivid, but inaccurate, reporting has even termed the Vietnam-Philippines accord an “alliance”. In September, Vietnam and Indonesia also signed a bilateral maritime security agreement which provides for joint patrolling in the border regions, which are overlaid by China’s sovereign claims. The push for ASEAN enhancement of maritime defensive capabilities has accelerated as China’s presence in disputed waters has increased. All of the ASEAN contenders have embarked on military modernization and procurement programmes. The United States, through military assistance and joint bilateral and multilateral exercises, fosters close military-to-military relationships in the region. As new and heightened military relations with the United States on a state-to-state basis take
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shape, the lack of coherence and coordination in an ASEAN security policy is glaringly evident. China rails against American-ASEAN military collaboration at every turn. The fact remains that no matter how much countries like Indonesia, Vietnam, or other ASEAN states spend on defence, singly or collectively, they will never be a match with China. The question hanging in the air is, absent alliance, but with a rhetorical security guarantee, what the United States would do in the event of a decisive military clash between China and an ASEAN state. Nowhere is this a more real question than in Manila’s claimed West Philippine Sea. In the context of escalating incidents, President Aquino has used brave words to insist that the Philippines will not be bullied by China. In his August welcome of the Philippine Navy’s new flagship, the BRP Gregorio Del Pilar, Aquino boasted that the ship “symbolizes our newly acquired ability to guard, protect, and if necessary fight for the interests of our country”.16 The vessel is a former U.S. Coast Guard cutter that was laid down nearly half a century ago. China probably is not terribly impressed. An undercurrent in discussions of Philippines’ defence capabilities concerns the operation of its American military alliance. Although traditionally interpreted as covering only Philippines’ territory transferred from Spain to the United States, as tension mounted in 2011, ambiguities crept into the public discourse. Secretary of State Clinton’s November comments in Manila at the sixtieth anniversary of the United States–Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty have been closely parsed. She said that the United States was working to “support the Philippines particularly in the maritime domain as you move to improve your territorial defense and interdiction capabilities”.17 The Philippines was especially heartened when on the sidelines of the EAS, President Obama told Aquino that “we have a 60-year alliance that assures that we are looking out for each other when it comes to security”.18 While the question of what would trigger the bilateral defence alliance may have some deterrent affect, its operation, one way or the other, has implications for the validity and dangers of the American security guarantee to ASEAN.
Thai-Cambodia Conflict The long-simmering Thailand-Cambodia dispute over sovereignty in the border territory on which the ancient Khmer temple of Preah Vihear sits burst into armed conflict in February and April. Bellicose warnings of war from Bangkok and Phnom Penh presented an existential threat to the ASEAN Political-Security Community, which has as one of its propositions that no ASEAN state will use force against another. The current crisis began when in 2008 Cambodia applied to register Preah Vihear as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Thai political forces opposed to
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deposed Prime Minister Thaksin fanned the flames of nationalism to bring down the government of Samak Sundaravej, accused of being a Thaksin stooge who had treasonously betrayed the kingdom. Leader of the opposition Abhisit Vejjavija was prominent among the “defenders” of the motherland. New Prime Minister Abhisit was trapped in a negotiating cage he had helped build. For three years ASEAN stood back as the two countries threateningly militarized the border area. In the face of Thailand’s intransigency, Cambodia sought international intervention: ASEAN, the UN, and the International Court of Justice. Thailand under Abhisit did not budge from its position that the dispute was bilateral, where the cards were stacked in Bangkok’s favour. The question, as yet unresolved, is will Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s government be any more accommodating. The escalating clashes in February 2011 brought the crisis to a high level of international concern and action. External powers, including the United States and China, urged both sides to use restraint and avoid further military confrontations. ASEAN’s Secretary-General, former Thai Foreign Minister Surin Pitsuwan, called on the two sides to allow ASEAN to help them establish a temporary truce. Cambodia also asked ASEAN to send observers to the border to monitor the situation. Cambodia expressed willingness to negotiate, but only with third-party mediation. Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa worked diligently to bring about a truce even though Abhisit deemed ASEAN intervention unnecessary. Hun Sen, not willing to wait, made an urgent appeal to the UN Security Council (UNSC). He said that he told UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that “these are not armed clashes. This is war.”19 Bangkok opposed UNSC action. Rejecting Thai opposition, the Security Council seized the issue. Marty and his Thai and Cambodian counterparts met the Security Council on 14 February. Voicing “grave concern” the UNSC called for a permanent ceasefire and a peaceful resolution through effective dialogue. The Security Council expressed support for ASEAN’s active efforts and encouraged the parties to cooperate with the organization.20 Acting with an implicit UNSC mandate, Marty convened a special meeting of the ASEAN Foreign Ministers on 22 February, at which Thailand and Cambodia promised to avoid further violence and to resume their bilateral negotiations. Thailand grudgingly accepted a role for Indonesian truce observer teams, not peacekeepers, on both sides of the border and an observer role, not mediation, at negotiations. The implementation of the agreed-upon Indonesian role has not been worked out, largely due to Thai army reluctance to accept neutral observers, buttressed by Thai nationalist protests against Indonesian interference in Thai domestic affairs. By the end of 2011, there have been no Indonesian observers in place. The frailty of the Indonesian-brokered accord was soon apparent, with even more serious armed confrontations on the border in April displacing hundreds
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of villagers. In the heavy fighting, the Thai army introduced deadly cluster bombs into their border armoury. Indonesia’s hope that it could manage a troop withdrawal was dashed. On 28 April, Cambodia appealed to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for an interpretation of the first line of the ICJ’s 1962 decision awarding the temple to Cambodia, which stated that “the Temple of Preah Vihear is situated in territory under the sovereignty of Cambodia”. At the same time, Phnom Penh applied to the court for provisional measures to halt Thai attacks across the border. On 19 July, the court issued its order calling for the total withdrawal of all military forces from a provisional demilitarized zone and to refrain from any armed activity directed at the zone. It prohibited Thailand from obstructing free access to the temple or provision of fresh supplies to non-military personnel at the temple. The justices called for both parties to cooperate in allowing the appointed ASEAN observers (i.e., the Indonesians) to have access to the demilitarized zone and to refrain from aggravating the dispute.21 Thailand has basically ignored the court’s order, continuing to maintain that the issue of troop withdrawal and demilitarization is subject to Thai-Cambodian bilateral agreement. The bitterness between the combatants spilled over into the May ASEAN Summit. Hun Sen’s unscheduled harsh accusations of Thai aggression were met by his Thai counterpart’s retort and rebuke. Afterwards, President Yudhoyono met with the Prime Ministers, but without appreciable progress towards resolution of the dispute, which even Abhisit admitted threatened the credibility of ASEAN. The chair’s statement papered over the unseemly display by invoking the spirit of ASEAN solidarity. With Abhisit gone, hope was expressed that Yingluck’s new government could break the deadlock. Certainly the tone is different. Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty spoke of a “dynamic” new Thai Government and a new environment conducive to resolve the border issues, saying Indonesia was ready to send its observer teams.22 Yingluck travelled to Phnom Penh on 14 September to mend relations with Hun Sen and to begin a new discussion on joint exploitation of the oil and gas potential in the Thai-Cambodian seabed overlap in the Gulf of Thailand. It is clear that common interest and not Preah Vihear had priority. She made her ASEAN debut appearance as Prime Minister at the November ASEAN Summit. Rather than the nasty mutual Thai-Cambodian public recriminations that marred the May summit, the atmosphere was one of sympathy for and a desire to assist Thailand in meeting its enormous burden of flood relief. The summit’s chair’s statement welcomed the encouraging conditions for a peaceful settlement “through the fullest utilization of their existing bilateral mechanism with the appropriate engagement of the current
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Chair of ASEAN”. What is meant by “current chair” is unclear. Does it mean Indonesia after it has left the chair, or does it mean the chair at any future point of ASEAN engagement? If the former, ASEAN has broken new diplomatic ground. If the latter, looking at the succeeding chairs, particularly the now current chair, Cambodia, it is difficult to believe that Thailand will agree to an “appropriate engagement”. Although Prime Minister Yingluck does not carry the baggage in the Cambodian relationship that Abhisit has — a clean start so-to-say — she still has the same constraints of nationalism and military control of border affairs. The Thai supreme commander has said that withdrawal from the ICJ’s demilitarized zone “would mean that the country would practically lose its territory”.23 To this, the legal question of whether an agreement on withdrawal would require parliamentary approval has been added. Until there is a withdrawal, there can be no Indonesian observers to verify the demilitarization. Yingluck’s government appears to prefer the inaction of the status quo of a shaky truce rather than rattle the cages of an opposition unreconciled to her Thaksin connection. At the border, the truce depends on army will and discipline. One can only wonder what the reaction will be if the ICJ rules in favour of Cambodia. A close reading of the opinions on the “provisional measures” suggests that this is a very possible outcome. For ASEAN, the prolongation of the crisis into its fourth year shows how weak the diplomatic and institutional foundations of its Political- Security Community are.
Warfare at the Margins ASEAN’s charter invokes as its inspiration “we the peoples”; however, it is not the peoples of ASEAN, but the peoples of the member states, and they have no input into ASEAN’s operations. Although ASEAN in building its community claims to adhere to the principles of democracy, rule of law, protection of human rights, and fundamental freedoms, it is the non-accountable member states, not ASEAN, that are responsible for implementation of the principles. The human history of ASEAN is one of members’ egregious non-compliance with and abridgement of the ASEAN promised rights and freedoms. Peoples’ rights come second; states’ rights are first. This is the rule of the ASEAN way that was honoured (while ASEAN was dishonoured) as it stood by Myanmar as it became an international pariah state. Nothing has really changed. Since its own democratic transition, Indonesia has tried to inject some degree of accountability into ASEAN for human rights abuse. An ASEAN Intergovernmental
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Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) was promised in 2007 and created in 2009. To date, the AICHR is a powerless creature of the ASEAN governments tasked only with promoting, not protecting, human rights. With Indonesia’s 2011 chairmanship, Foreign Minister Marty had hoped that the AICHR would become more effective in fulfilling its mandate reflecting a real commitment of the ASEAN countries to respect human rights. If its meetings and reports in 2011 are any guide, the AICHR is no more effective as a human rights body now than it was when originally set up. The main effort has been to draft an ASEAN Human Rights Declaration. This has proved very difficult since, like every other ASEAN group document, it requires consensus and approval at all vetting levels up to the ASEAN Summit. A draft should be ready for the Cambodia-hosted May summit in 2012. Of course, a declaration of rights is not a guarantee of rights. Rights will either be protected or unprotected by the individual states with no prospect of AICHR oversight. The ASEAN peoples with the least rights protection are ethnic/religious minorities at the human margins of ASEAN states who have been trapped by accidents of history in political and cultural frameworks of the dominant ruling majorities whose rule they resist. The violence of ethnic insurgency and counter- insurgency persists as a bloody thread in the fabric of national lives in ASEAN states. The golden rule of non-interference prevents ASEAN from taking cognizance, let alone initiate humanitarian intervention. Indonesia’s 2005 success in peacefully resolving the three-decade long Aceh conflict has not been repeated regionally. Although the historical context was Indonesia-specific, the key political element in the settlement — a substantial degree of autonomy for Aceh — is a grant that leaders elsewhere in ASEAN are unwilling to consider, or even Indonesia itself with respect to Papua. In Myanmar, even as ASEAN celebrates the smiling face of a government that has ostensibly seen the democratic light, the vicious campaigns of its military, the Tatmadaw, continue in the border regions against ethnic insurgents still seeking relative autonomy in a federal state promised at independence. The systematic abuses and atrocities by the Tatmadaw against minority civilians are well documented. Peace and reconciliation with the ethnic minorities have been a condition for the lifting of the West’s sanctions. In Indonesia’s Papua provinces, there has been a sharp uptick in deadly force used by Indonesian police against indigenous Papuans still protesting after more than forty years their incorporation into Indonesia. This has brought renewed attention to the status of the Papuans overwhelmed by the political and economic dominance of the influx of transmigrated Muslim Indonesians. Papua is a blemish on Indonesia’s democratic image, and international sympathy for the Papuans’ plight has the potential to complicate Indonesia’s relations with
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the West. Although President Obama has reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to Indonesian territorial integrity, many U.S. congressmen who control foreign economic and military assistance budgets demand that the grievances of the Papuans be addressed. The Philippines and Thailand continue to face the challenge of internal wars by minority Muslim dissidents and separatists. There had been misplaced hopes that the recent changes in government in the two countries — the 2010 election of President Benigno Aquino III in the Philippines and the 2011 election of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra in Thailand — would lead to new initiatives to accommodate the aspirations of their Muslim citizens: the Bangsamoro (Moro peoples) in the Philippines and the Muslim Malays in Thailand’s “Deep South”. The results have been disappointing; not just to the affected minorities but to advocates of the principles that supposedly inform the building of the ASEAN Community. President Aquino, taking office in June 2010, committed to a comprehensive, just, and peaceful settlement of the decades-long conflict pitting the Philippine state against its Muslim minority’s demand for full autonomy in its “ancestral lands” in Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago. Aquino’s predecessor, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, had made the same commitment when she took office in 2001. Her efforts collapsed when the government’s proposed Bangsamoro Judicial Entity (BJE) failed to pass constitutional muster. From 2008, when large-scale fighting broke out between the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the 12,000–15,000 fighters of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), to the end of Arroyo’s term of office, there was little progress towards a solution. Aquino picked up the pieces of the negotiating process with new exploratory talks with the MILF’s bargaining team. Unless there is a major policy change in Manila, there is little reason to expect that Aquino’s government will be any more successful then Arroyo’s in satisfying the political demands presented by the MILF. Meanwhile, the human costs of the armed struggle mount up, already costing more than 150,000 lives and episodically displacing thousands of civilians. On 5 August 2011, it suddenly seemed that a breakthrough had been made when President Aquino secretly flew to Tokyo to meet with the MILF’s chair Al Haj Murad Ibrahim. This was the first time ever that a Philippines president had met with the “insurgent” adversary. The two agreed to “fast track” negotiations to conclude a lasting peace during Aquino’s term of office.24 Within three weeks, the negotiations jumped the track. At the first meeting of the negotiating teams in Kuala Lumpur after the Tokyo summit, the government proposed an expanded autonomy in a Bangsamoro region, promising generous economic and social
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assistance as well as a fair division of resources. The relationship between Manila and the Bangsamoro region would be a “partnership” to enhance the well-being of all the people of the region, not just the Muslims. It also called for the MILF’s disarmament.25 While perhaps different in detail, in conception it was not dissimilar from Arroyo’s BJE. Therefore, it is not surprising that it was flatly rejected by the MILF. The MILF’s minimum demand is the creation of a “sub-state” within the Republic of the Philippines that would be self-governing and in control of its own resources. This is unacceptable to Manila, not only for the constitutional reasons that junked the BJE, but also because the expansive Bangsamoro “sub-state” would incorporate Christian areas. Until the government modifies its proposals — i.e., accepts a version of a “sub-state” — from the MILF’s perspective the negotiations are “an exercise in futility”.26 A shaky ceasefire was broken in October when the AFP intruded into MILF territory in pursuit of what they called criminal elements of the MILF. In a clash with the MILF in Basilan, nineteen AFP soldiers were killed. As tensions escalated, the manoeuvring room for both Aquino and Murad seemed to be narrowing. Aquino is being portrayed as soft on the MILF. Some ranking politicians and rumbles from within the AFP have called for junking the ceasefire and pressing an all-out war. The MILF’s Murad is politically challenged by radical hardliners who repudiate the peace process. One of them is renegade commander Ameril Umbra Kato, who has calved off some 500–700 of the MILF’s fighters to create his own Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF). There will be no winners if the Philippines’ south should again be engulfed in wide-scale military counter-insurgency. A rising litany of AFP human rights violations against the Bangsamoro would force Manila’s Muslim ASEAN partners, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei, to reassess their relatively benign stance taken for the sake of ASEAN unity. It would also force the United States to review what alliance with the Philippines entails, especially the 600-person U.S. Special Forces task force in the south that has been supporting the AFP’s counterterrorist activities against Islamic radicals linked to the Abu Sayaff and Jemaah Islamiyah. In Thailand, the Muslim insurgency that broke out in 2004 in the southern provinces of Narathiwat, Patani, and Yala had through August 2011 inflicted more than 13,000 casualties, including more than 4,800 deaths, with a 60–40 percentage division of Muslim–Buddhist fatalities.27 The violence shows no sign of abatement. Bombings and shootings seem to take place on almost a daily basis even though the government has flooded the region with tens of thousands of soldiers and armed civilian militias. The insurgents’ attacks are becoming more aggressive and
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tactically sophisticated, including the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Government in the region has operated since 2005 under sequential three-month states of emergency which are routinely extended. The decrees give the security forces special powers and impunity for human rights abuse. Although successive Thai governments have made attempts to attack acknowledged social and economic roots of discontent, they have been politically unable or unwilling to address the bottom-line issue of autonomy as an alternative to separatism. The idea of a self-governing Muslim region is anathema to the military and Thai royalists loyal to the King. For example, during Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej’s 2008 government, his Interior Minister audaciously advanced the idea of a “special administrative zone” for the provinces. Samak immediately shot it down, telling him to keep his “half-baked opinions” to himself.28 Even so, as a military solution to the insurgency seems improbable, Duncan McCargo has argued that, while still controversial, there is a growing consensus among elements of the Thai bureaucratic and academic elites on the need for a political solution which would involve some form of autonomy.29 Such an outcome would require at least two conditions: a stable government in Bangkok and a credible Muslim negotiating partner that could deliver the goods. Neither is readily apparent. Abhisit’s Democrat Party–led government, a creature of the army and the royalists, gave low priority to the insurgency. As long as the military could contain the violence to the affected provinces, no dramatic initiatives were necessary or even desirable. Abhisit, under political siege from followers of deposed Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and embroiled at the border with Cambodia, was not going to ruffle nationalist and military feathers by departing from the policy status quo. What that meant was put starkly by the Thai army’s commander in March 2011: “No matter what, the three provinces cannot be separated or given self-rule because that would be against the constitution.”30 Violence in the Deep South was not a major national issue in the July 2011 election. Both Abhisit’s Democrats and Yingluck’s Thaksin-backed Pheu Thai Party (PTP) campaigned in the Deep South. Yingluck, in a swing through Narathiwat and Yala, tried to woo Muslim voters, pledging to tackle their problems by peaceful means. Most consequential was her promise to transform the three southern states into a special administrative area.31 Although winning the national election by a landslide, the PTP took a drubbing in the South where Muslim voters were mindful that it was Thaksin who unleashed the military on them. Once in office, Yingluck backed away from her campaign promise, stating in September that her government had no plan for a special status for the provinces. This turnabout was explained
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by the Thai analyst for the International Crisis Group (ICG) as partly because the PTP did not win a seat in the Deep South “and they probably don’t see any political points they would gain by pushing it”.32 The first state of emergency extension under Yingluck was imposed in September. Her government is neither strong nor stable. It has been weakened by first its concentration on repatriating Thaksin and then by criticism of its handling of the historic floods. Yingluck, like her predecessors, will leave the military in control in the Deep South, and the low-intensity war will take its human and economic toll indefinitely. In its foreign policy, Thailand tries to appease diplomatically external Islamic stakeholders in the fate of the Thai Muslims while brushing aside charges of human rights abuse by NGOs like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Bangkok has resisted internationalization of the conflict. Well behind the scenes, however, secretive informal efforts have been made for several years by Indonesian and Malaysian intelligence agencies to bring Thai officials into contact with the insurgents.33 To date, it is premature to even talk of a peace process, but rather of fitful and sporadic efforts to fashion some confidence-building measures (CBMs) as a foundation for neutral third-party brokered negotiations. A major problem for possible future peace talks is the splintered factionalism and decentralized field operations of the Muslim insurgents. For the purpose of external talks, five independent insurgent elements stand uneasily under the umbrella of the Patani Malay Liberation Movement (PMLM). The Patani United Liberation Organization (PULO), its president Kasturi Mahkota in Swedish exile, is the most internationally visible. The secretive National Revolutionary Front–Coordination (BRN-C, the Barisan Revolusi Nasional–Coordinasi) is the guerrilla backbone of the insurgency. It is unclear as to how firm, if any, a commitment the BRN-C has to a negotiated settlement that would offer less than full autonomy; and even that might not be satisfactory for separatist hardliners. There are major differences between the Philippines–MILF negotiations and the Thai–PMLM contacts. The former is relatively transparent, complete with duelling press releases. It has been internationalized with Malaysia as a facilitator and a small ceasefire international monitoring team (IMT) in place. The peace process itself has become part of the Philippines domestic political dialogue and has been backed by promises of development aid from Japan, Australia, and the United States. Bangkok’s contacts with the insurgents are opaque. They remain on the Thai side totally deniable in terms of government accountability. The question is whether if real negotiations became public they could survive the light of day glare in the absence of an existing national consensus on some form of autonomy for the Deep South.
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The almost romantic faith in the vision of an ASEAN Community is often tinged with hubris as its promoters dismiss the realities of national behaviour theoretically confined within the ASEAN normative framework. Many historical and current cases prove that ASEAN’s principles are violated with impunity. The Political-Security Community is particularly at risk because, on the singularly important regional politics and security issues, rather than solidarity, there is disunion, and rather than common action, national self-interest determines policy choices. In the Mekong basin, increasingly enthralled by Chinese economic interests, ASEAN connectivity means even tighter ties to China, not to the region. In maritime Southeast Asia, an informal American limited-alignments security community is being fashioned. Its glue is not just U.S. military assistance, but as well, interoperability over a wide range of military activities. Even the ASEAN Economic Community is threatened as the American-promoted Trans-Pacific Partnership picks off ASEAN members one by one. The TPP is the harbinger of an Asia-Pacific Free Trade Area that would significantly diminish the relevance of ASEAN’s economic arrangements In meeting its future challenges, ASEAN also faces the internal problem of keeping Indonesia engaged. The disconnect between Indonesia’s global ambitions and its inability to shape the kind of ASEAN promised in its charter was underlined in its 2011 chair role. It will be 2020 before Indonesia’s term comes around again. By then the political and security trends already evident, together with frustration at ASEAN’s dysfunctional intra-ASEAN relationships, could lead to a downgrade in the priority Indonesian foreign policy now assigns to the organization.
Notes 1. “Visi Indonesia sebagai Ketua ASEAN”,
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8. “Full text of Chinese Premier Wen’s statement at 14th China-ASEAN Summit”, Xinhuanet.com, 18 November 2011. 9. The discussion of the “leaders retreat” is based on “Background Briefing by a Senior Administration Official on the President’s Meetings at Asean and the East Asia Summit”
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27. The statistics are as given by Prince of Songkhla University’s “Deep South Watch” in Srisompob Jitpiromsri, “The “Protracted Violence amidst the Unstable Political Situation after 2011 Elections”
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