Seeking Stability in Turbulent Times: Southeast Asia’s New Normal?

Political and security developments in Southeast Asia in 2014 reflect efforts on the part of Southeast Asian countries as well as ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) to adjust and adapt to the conditions and circumstances of a “new normal” in the wider Asia-Pacific region: a rapidly changing regional strategic environment where emerging powers display greater assertiveness and assurance of their newfound status, whilst established powers experience relative decline and seek to rebalance against the growing power and influence of their rivals. China’s rising power and influence appears to have grown from strength to strength, notwithstanding putative efforts by the United States, Japan and others to balance against it partly through rallying Southeast Asian partners in support of their cause. Adding to the growing prospect of regional instability and turbulence was Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March, which raised fears among some Southeast Asians over the prospective emulation of Russia’s action by more powerful claimant states over the South China Sea region.

At the same time within Southeast Asia, a number of states and societies underwent political transition. Indonesia conducted a successful presidential election in July which saw a popular non-establishment figure, the then Jakarta Governor Joko Widodo (or “Jokowi”), win the presidency. It remains unclear at this point what Jokowi’s foreign policy will look like. However, there are early hints that Indonesia might not be as fixated with ASEAN as in the past. Going beyond the “Indo-Pacific” idea advanced by the Yudhoyono administration, the Jokowi administration’s vision for Indonesia is as a global maritime fulcrum connecting the Indian and Pacific Oceans.¹ Known as “PACINDO”, the area of engagement envisioned here is ostensibly geographically more extensive than the Indo-Pacific region the Yudhoyono administration had in mind. To that end, India and the Gulf states have been identified as countries with whom Jokowi would engage more deeply. As a foreign policy adviser to Jokowi has declared: “We used to say ASEAN is the cornerstone of our foreign policy. Now we change it to a cornerstone of our foreign policy.”²

After considerable unrest in Thailand caused by the rift between the so-called “Red Shirts” and their “Yellow” rivals, senior officers of the Thai military launched a bloodless coup in May which brought temporary relief but left many questions unanswered. The coup appeared to sour relations between the new military regime and the Thai royalists that supported the coup, on one hand, and the United States on the other. With this downturn in Thai-U.S. relations and its potential ramifications for their security alliance — including the U.S. decision to scale back the Cobra Gold 2015 military exercise — there is growing concern over whether Thailand may seek to deepen further its already substantial ties with China — a step likely to worry Thailand’s ASEAN neighbours given their apprehensions over China’s actions in the South China Sea.³ On the other hand, Washington would presumably repair its ties with Bangkok so as not to push the latter into Beijing’s embrace.⁴

To be sure, post-colonial Southeast Asia is no stranger to turbulence, not least for a region born out of the Pacific War and forged in the furnace of great power collapse, war and political upheaval.⁵ That said, the current regional situation is unprecedented in that at no time in the region’s annals has there ever been the concomitant (albeit uneven) rise of three regional powers, China, Japan and India, and the complications that has posed to the post-World War Two hegemony long enjoyed by a United States. Of these, India remained the odd man out in 2014 in terms of involvement, although Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi took advantage of the East Asia Summit (EAS) in November to signal his intent to recast India’s decades-long “Look East” policy, defined mostly by missed opportunities, to an “Act East” policy under his premiership.⁶ The growing strategic competition and alignments among the...