-
56. ASEAN and the Southeast Asian Security Complex
- ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute
- Chapter
- Additional Information
ASEAN and the Southeast Asian Security Complex 273 By: ROS Size: 7.5" x 10.25" J/No: 03-14474 Fonts: New Baskerville 56. ASEAN AND THE SOUTHEAST ASIAN SECURITY COMPLEX YUEN FOONG KHONG Reprinted in abridged form from Yuen Foong Khong, “ASEAN and the Southeast Asian Security Complex”, in Regional Orders: Building Security in a New World, edited by David A. Lake and Patrick M. Morgan (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), pp. 318–39, by permission of the author and the publisher. In the aftermath of ASEAN’s success — no doubt aided by the end of the Cold War — in pressuring Vietnam to leave Cambodia and thereby making a solution to the Cambodian problem possible, some have predicted that ASEAN would lose its raison d’être and that its solidarity and cohesion would be weakened. Thai prime minister Chatichai Choonhavan’s eagerness to turn the “battlefields [of Indochina] into market places” and to promote Thailand as the gateway to that economic market seemed to confirm such predictions, since his policy could be interpreted as Thailand’s attempt to pursue an independent course once ASEAN’s utility had diminished. This led some observers to suggest that Thailand’s geopolitical interests lay with the Indochinese states and that ASEAN would splinter along ThailandIndochina and Malaysia-IndonesiaSingapore lines (Simon 1992, 112). The reverse happened. Chatichai’s unilateral pursuit of Thailand’s economic and security interests was an aberration. After Vietnam pulled out from Cambodia, ASEAN, instead of splintering, moved in the direction of deeper institutionalization and expansion on the security as well as economic fronts. Two concurrent developments have done much to redefine the nature of the Southeast Asian security complex, its relations with external actors, and its regional order. The first is the expansion of ASEAN. For twenty years, Vietnam had dismissed ASEAN as a SEATO in disguise or worse; in that sense Barry Buzan’s expectation of continued Vietnamese-ASEAN enmity as the defining characteristic of the complex had solid historical foundation. But the global strategic situation underwent such fundamental changes that by the 1990s Vietnam was ready to apply to join ASEAN. In July 1995, it was formally admitted as ASEAN’s seventh member. Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar are to become full members in 1997 or 1998. The Southeast Asian security complex of the late 1990s — the ASEAN-10 — is essentially ASEAN writ large over the 056 AR Ch 56 22/9/03, 12:51 PM 273 274 Yuen Foong Khong By: ROS Size: 7.5" x 10.25" J/No: 03-14474 Fonts: New Baskerville geographical expanse of what is commonly accepted as Southeast Asia. The amity that has characterized security relations between the original ASEAN-5 since the 1970s should spill over to the new members and continue to define the security dynamic of the enlarged complex. One would expect the Treaty of Amity and Co-operation norms and decision-making procedures that have governed interstate relations in ASEAN — and that have been instrumental in shaping regional peace and order — will continue to be observed. The second development that bears on the ASEAN-10 security complex and regional order is the advent of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). Building on and modeled after ASEAN’s postministerial conference (PMC), the ARF brings together the foreign ministers of ASEAN, ASEAN’s dialogue partners — the United States, Japan, Canada, the European Union, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand — and Russia, China, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Papua New Guinea for multilateral discussions of Asia-Pacific security issues.1 Three meetings have been held so far, each preceded by extensive staff work by senior officials. The actual ARF sessions have been informal, restricted to the top principals, with consultations and consensus building being very much the order of the day: in other words, they have been very “ASEAN.” Among the issues taken up are nuclear proliferation on the Korean peninsula, competing claims in the South China Sea, confidence-building measures (CBMs), and the exchange of defense white papers to increase military transparency in the region. In the second meeting in Brunei (1995), working groups on CBMs (chaired by Indonesia and Japan), peacekeeping (chaired by Malaysia and Canada), and search-andrescue cooperation (chaired by Singapore and the United States) were established. A concept paper, outlining the ARF’s future trajectory was also adopted. The paper envisaged security cooperation to unfold in three stages, beginning with CBMs, followed by the development of preventive diplomacy , and culminating in the elaboration of approaches to conflicts...