https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Z4Tu596WjxcjM-CY6XEVDdx1Hj8VMOrL8tjP9SHPyWI/edit
28/11/19
ASEAN: Towards a
Security Community?
KB Teo
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The 52nd ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting is underway in the Thai capital, Bangkok. Top officials from Southeast and East Asian nations, including China’s State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, are attending the five-day event. The South China Sea and free trade issues are on top of the agenda. What's next for China-ASEAN diplomacy? 31/7/19
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFV8BaTJq1w
Why is the ASEAN so important today?
ASEAN explained in 5 minutes
http://yalejournal.org/article_post/could-the-asean-community-bring-about-a-southeast-asian-identity/
Spring in the East?
Geopolitics of Southeast Asia
Karl Deutsch: definition
Members of an SC do not wage war against one another.
Is ASEAN an SC? Yes.
1 There have been no militarised conflicts among the ASEAN states since 1980. Before that, there were serious military conflicts between Thailand/Cambodia (Prear Vihear temple dispute 2008), Vietnam/Cambodia (Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh had dreams of creating an Indochinese Federation, to include Laos and Cambodia). The Prear Vihear temple dispute was peacefully resolved in 2018 with the ASEAN framework (award by the ICJ).
Indonesian President Sukarno's Krontasi Campaign 1963-66 against Malaysia and Singapore. Sukarno was discredited because of his close ties with the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI).
2 ASEAN's focus is on promoting national and regional resilience: political stability, economic growth, and prosperity.
ASEAN's average growth rate 2000 - 2017 was 5.7%, much higher compared with the US (1%), EU (1.8%) and Japan (1.2%).War is a sunset industry for the ASEAN states.
There are two schools of thought. The first school ('Aseanists' like Amitav Acharya) argued that ASEAN has grown into an SC ('community' and common identity).
The second school (e.g. Nicholas Khoo, University of Otago, New Zealand) disagrees.
ASEAN Regional Forum at 18: Dealing with regional flashpoints
Author: See Seng Tan, NTU
As the ASEAN Regional Forum meets in Bali, for the eighteenth time, it bears in the eyes of many few signs of institutional maturity.
None of its 27 participants has quite quit the forum yet, but discontent over the ARF’s perceived ineffectiveness in managing the region’s security has indubitably risen in recent years. The ARF — ‘Avoiding Regional Flashpoints’, if you will — has garnered a reputation for keeping hard security challenges off its agenda, and doing little when such issues happen to force their way in.
In functional terms, the 18th ARF meeting will likely produce few surprises. The ARF meeting in Hanoi last July produced a plan of action for implementing the ARF Vision Statement. The vision statement outlined goals for enhanced collaboration in a number of ‘areas of cooperation’, but little progress will be expected this year toward their anticipated completion in 2020. Opinion over the ARF’s ability to implement an ‘action-oriented’ agenda has been cautionary at best. Disputes over the South China Sea (SCS), and other diplomatic flare-ups in the region have made for a thorny run-up to the Forum. How the Forum operates in the context of these flashes, and whether it will be useful for teasing out these issues, will be an interesting test of its maturity.
Blame for the ARF’s inaction is usually placed on the big powers, particularly China, for their evident preference for treating such issues as bilateral rather than multilateral in nature, and smaller countries that might otherwise seek multilateral solutions eschew doing so for fear of angering Beijing. The US has gone some way to shaking up this dynamic. At the 2010 meeting in Hanoi, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took umbrage with alleged Chinese references to the SCS as part of China’s ‘core interests’ — a category normally reserved for Taiwan and Tibet — and urged the creation of a binding code of conduct for the six claimant countries (including China) as well as a ‘collaborative diplomatic process’ for resolving their claims. As Douglas Paal recently noted, Mrs Clinton’s comments implied that Beijing’s position on the Sea constituted a violation of the Declaration of the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC) of 2002.
On top of the SCS dispute, other diplomatic flare-ups have complicated the Forum’s context. In June, Vietnam accused China of harassing a Vietnamese seismic survey boat and damaging its research cable, while China demanded that Vietnam halt oil exploration activities in the area. Vietnam responded with a slew of nationalistic demonstrations and naval exercises. Later that month, following Mrs Clinton’s talks with Philippine counterpart Albert del Rosario, Mrs Clinton clarified that the US would not take sides in the SCS disputes. She also reaffirmed Washington’s commitment to the defence of the Philippines as part of their longstanding mutual alliance arrangement, amid rising tensions in the Sea. (Manila has complained of nine separate incursions by Chinese vessels into its territorial waters since late February.)
Despite these events, recent developments suggest the meeting in Bali could prove less volatile than last year’s. As part of their bilateral Strategic and Economic Dialogue, Beijing and Washington have taken to conducting ‘Asia Pacific consultations’, the first of which were held in Hawaii on 25 June. Although China went into the consultations holding firm to its inveterate view that countries should refrain from ‘internationalising’ the SCS disputes, its relative silence since those talks — and, as Paal has noted, its ‘increasingly UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea) observant approach to the issues’ — imply China could be seeking to preclude an escalation of tensions, at least for now. With non-claimants such as Singapore also calling on China to clarify its claims, the pressure on Beijing to rely less on nebulous ‘historical’ claims — as in the case of its nine-dotted U-shaped line covering virtually the entire expanse of the SCS — and more on narrower, UNCLOS-based rationalisations is rising.
The US also has an interest in managing tensions with China. Writing for The Washington Post, Fareed Zakaria has cautioned against his fellow pundits’ quest to find a new grand strategy in President Obama’s foreign policy, suggesting that ‘strategic restraint’ best explains the president’s non-doctrinarian approach to international affairs. For all its recent bad press, China is generally restraint-minded as well. As some Chinese analysts have implied, Beijing’s assertiveness towards Hanoi over the seismic boat incident could have been due to Chinese perceptions that Vietnam failed to reciprocate Beijing’s efforts to assuage Hanoi’s anger over joint Sino–US oil exploration in a disputed area near the Spratly islands during the early 1990s.
For all its faults, the ARF has done one thing well: bring big powers and regional countries together into regular dialogue with one another. While the vision of serious security discussions among and across all 27 participants is probably far fetched, the Forum could be a venue for focused dialogue on pressing political and strategic concerns, not least on the SCS, among interested parties, even if only on the Forum’s sidelines.
Should regional flashpoints enjoy airtime at the ASEAN Regional Forum, rather than be assiduously avoided, the ARF will accomplish a key objective even if no solutions are immediately apparent. The journey from talk-shop to workshop is long and winding, and success is far from assured. But it certainly helps to get the basics right.
3 Since 1979, the ASEAN states have not waged war against one another. In December 1978, Vietnam invaded Cambodia to remove the murderous Pol Pot regime. It was followed by China's attack against Vietnam in support of its Cambodian ally.
Singapore-Malaysia differences over water and territorial issues have been solved through peaceful negotiations. This could be seen in the 9th Singapore-Malaysia Leaders' Retreat held in Kuala Lumpur in early-April 2019. PM Lee Hsien Loong and PM Mahathir Mohamad had a good discussion to intensify mutually beneficial relations.
Singapore and Malaysia will begin negotiations on delimiting their maritime boundaries within a month, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said on April 9, 2019, a day after the two countries mutually suspended their overlapping port limits.
“We have made progress to de-escalate the situation at sea and avoid further incidents,” he told reporters at a joint press conference with his Malaysian counterpart Mahathir Mohamad, held in Kuala Lumpur.
On 26 April 2019, DPM Anwar Ibrahim said it was important for Malaysia and Singapore to be 'on the best of terms'.
Indonesia
Its main priority is internal growth and development. On 26 April 2019, DPM Anwar Ibrahim said it was important for Malaysia and Singapore to be 'on the best of terms'.
Malaysia's average growth rate 2000 - 2018 is 1.5%.
Indonesia
President Jokowi was elected to a second term of office in mid-April 2019.
Its average growth rate of 2000 - 2018 is 5.7%.
Singapore's relations with all the ASEAN states have continued to intensify.
Vietnam is a new "Asian tiger economy".
Singapore-Vietnam economic relations continue to soar.
Vietnam's growth rate of 2000 - 2018 is 6.5%.
Singapore's ties with Vietnam prospering: PM Lee Hsien Loong during his official visit in March 2017. There are more than 900 Singapore projects in Ho Chi Minh City alone.
Thailand's average growth rate of 2000 - 2018 is 3.8%.
Intra-region trade links in Asean closer than in EU
Asean's latest intra-regional trade intensity index reading was 3.54, compared to the EU's 2.04
(2016)
ASEAN has made tremendous
economic progress over the recent
decades. With current combined gross
domestic products (GDP) of almost
US$2.8 trillion in 2017, ASEAN is now
collectively ranked as the world 5th
largest and Asian 3rd largest economy. ASEAN’s real GDP growth rate has been consistently positive during 2000-2017. Following the economic recovery from the Asian financial crisis in 1998-1999 with a growth rate at 6.0% in 2000, ASEAN GDP then continued to grow steadily with the annual average rate at 5.3% until 2017.
ASEAN FREE TRADE AREA (AFTA)
The ASEAN Heads of State and Government decided to establish an ASEAN Free Trade Area or AFTA in 1992. The objective of AFTA is to increase the ASEAN region’s competitive advantage as a production base geared for the world market. AFTA was completed in 2002.
Ambassador-at-large Tommy Koh pointed out in January 2018 that Asean brings enormous benefits to Singapore.
It has a domestic market of 5.6 million consumers. Under the Asean Economic Community, the ambition is to integrate the 10 economies into a single market and production base. This means that our total domestic market is 630 million consumers. The Asean economy is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. It is currently the world's seventh-largest economy. By 2030, Asean could become the fourth-largest economy in the world.
Asean has a large and growing middle class.
Unlike the protectionist trend elsewhere, Asean remains committed to free trade, regional integration and open economies.
The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) would be one of the biggest free trade areas in the world.
ASEAN has free trade agreements with 6 partners, i.e. China, South Korea, Japan, India, Australia, and New Zealand.
ASEAN Security Community 'still a distant goal', Albert Lai 2004
Lack of unified voice on SCS dispute showed bloc still has some way to go.
“There is still a long way to go before we get to an ASEAN Political-Security Community,” said Mr Ong Keng Yong, former ASEAN Secretary-General in an interview with TODAY 2015.
ASEAN does not have a unified position on the South China Sea dispute. Hun Sen's Cambodia supports Beijing's position. Cambodia is a recipient of Chinese financial aid.
Kishore Mahbubani & Jeffrey Sng, The ASEAN Miracle. 2017
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