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Southeast Asian Affairs 2012 01a Donald.indd 1 4/11/12 10:48:02 AM Southeast Asian Affairs 2012 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. 01a Donald.indd 3 4/11/12 10:48:03 AM 4 Donald E. Weatherbee 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, 01a Donald.indd 4 4/11/12 10:48:03 AM Southeast Asia and ASEAN: Running in Place 5 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. 01a Donald.indd 5 4/11/12 10:48:03 AM 6 Donald E. Weatherbee 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.
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