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81. ASEAN’s Engagement with the U.S. in the 21st Century
- ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
- Chapter
- Additional Information
ASEAN’s Engagement with the U.S. in the 21st Century 403 By: ROS Size: 7.5" x 10.25" J/No: 03-14474 Fonts: New Baskerville 81. ASEAN’S ENGAGEMENT WITH THE U.S. IN THE 21ST CENTURY CHIN KIN WAH Reprinted in abridged form from Chin Kin Wah, “ASEAN’s Engagement with the EU and the US in the 21st Century: Political and Strategic Dimensions”, in The European Union, United States and ASEAN: Challenges and Prospects for Cooperative Engagement in the 21st Century, edited by K. S. Nathan (London: ASEAN Academic Press and the Malaysian Association for Academic Studies, 2002), pp. 69–98, by permission of the author and copyright holder (MAAS). ENGAGING THE US There is a general recognition in post-Cold War Southeast Asia that the United States as a benign superpower or least unacceptable external power (depending on one’s perspective ) has a crucial strategic role in maintaining a favourable balance of power and external influence in the wider AsiaPacific region, the stability of which is equally important to the security ambience of Asean. Indeed, in the years since the American military disengagement from mainland Southeast Asia with the end of the Vietnam war in 1975, and again, following the closure of Clark air base in June 1991 and the transfer to the Philippines government of Subic Bay naval base in September 1992, the regional concern has been to keep the US which has higher strategic priorities elsewhere beyond Southeast Asia, strategically engaged. An Asean background document of the Asean-US dialogue notes that it “has also focused more and more on political and security discussions over the years, particularly with the end of the Cold War. The principal (sic) focus of the Asean-US security dialogue has been the role of the US in maintaining stability in the region”.1 The US is valued as a stabilising factor in the wider Pacific Asia where the rise of China with much enhanced capacity for force projection in the coming century, will have a major impact on the regional equation offerees. The American strategic presence also makes any rise in the military profile of Japan less politically unpalatable to regional states. Hence while there is an expectation that the sharing of burdens will change within the US-Japan security relationship, the hope remains that the US-Japan alliance (more so than perhaps the US-Korea alliance) will endure and continue to play an underpinning role in Pacific Asia. 081a AR Ch 81 22/9/03, 12:57 PM 403 404 Chin Kin Wah By: ROS Size: 7.5" x 10.25" J/No: 03-14474 Fonts: New Baskerville Within Asean, there is a view most consistently articulated by Singapore’s political leadership that a smooth management of the US-Japan-China triangular relationship is critical to wider regional peace. In an interview published in May 1999, Singapore ’s Senior Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, expressed the opinion that peace in East Asia in the new millennium will depend “primarily on relations between the US, Japan and China. If the relationship is stable, there will be a measure of calm. If there is competition for support on various issues between the US and Japan on one side, and China on the other, there could be greater friction. It’s really a question of whether the relationship has its main emphasis on economic development and cooperation, or whether, underlying that, the competition is for political influence, or as the Chinese would call it, hegemony.”2 Such a regional perspective leaves much room in the new century for an American military presence and political role in the region. This presence is further underlined by the reality of very substantial American economic stakes therein. All the old Asean states (namely, Singapore , the Philippines, Thailand, Brunei, Indonesia and even Malaysia despite the occasional anti-American rhetoric) have in their own ways, sought to keep the US strategically engaged in the region well into the new century. Many of them, less unobtrusively in the case of Singapore and the Philippines, have entered into military and naval access arrangements with the US. As former US Secretary of Defense, William Cohen, observed in early 1998, most of the regional countries, which already had a military relationship with the US, wanted to expand the links. He added, “We’ve a great deal of cooperation, joint exercises, training, sharing of military doctrine, techniques , technology”.3 A vocal advocate of continued US military presence in Asia, Singapore has...