Piracy, Maritime Terrorism and Securing the Malacca Straits

8. Unilateralism and Regionalism: Working Together and Alone in the Malacca Straits

134 J.N. Mak 8 Unilateralism and Regionalism: Working Together and Alone in the Malacca Straits J.N. Mak Introduction The leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) declared categorically in 2003 that, “maritime cooperation between and among ASEAN member countries shall contribute to the evolution of the ASEAN Security Community”.1 This perception of the key role that maritime cooperation would play in ASEAN security was re-emphasized by the association’s foreign ministers in Jakarta in June 2004 when they reiterated, “maritime cooperation is vital to the evolution of the ASEAN Security Community” and agreed to explore the possibility of establishing a maritime forum.2 However, if maritime cooperation is seen as the key to the establishment of the ASEAN Security Community, then the voyage will be a long and arduous one. Maritime issues, more often than not, are given low priority in Southeast Asia, relegated to the realm of functional cooperation and low politics. More importantly, contending interests are likely to make cooperation over maritime issues problematic. In fact, the little maritime cooperation 08 PMaritime Terrorism Ch 8 9/28/06, 2:25 PM 134 Unilateralism and Regionalism 135 that has taken place in the past in the ASEAN region has been marked by contention, dissension and contestation. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Straits of Malacca and Singapore, which has witnessed more than sixteen years of contestation between littoral states and user states between 1965 and 1982, first over the nature of passage through the Straits and then over the regulation of maritime traffic. The Malacca Straits is currently witnessing a third “battle” over how best to safeguard the waterway against pirates and terrorists. One aim of this chapter is to analyse why the Straits of Malacca has been the subject of great controversy rather than cooperation, and to derive from it insights into how and under what circumstances cooperation takes place in the Malacca Straits, as well as the constraints and obstacles to cooperation. There have been three initiatives to establish regimes to govern the use of the Malacca Straits and to ensure its safety.3 Two of these initiatives were closely intertwined — the attempt to emplace a legal regime governing passage through the Straits, and the concomitant effort to establish a navigational safety regime. Both these international processes began in the late 1960s, and were largely completed and accepted by all parties involved by the late 1970s and early 1980s. The latest attempt at cooperation in the Straits of Malacca is the current initiative to secure the Straits against attacks by pirates and terrorists, a process which began at the end of 2003 and which is ongoing. As the present controversy over securing the Malacca Straits against possible terrorist attacks indicates, getting states to work towards what appears to be an obvious common good, or objective, is difficult. As for the past initiatives, major accommodations had to be made before an acceptable legal regime governing transit through the Straits as well as a feasible navigational safety regime was put in place, which involved years of negotiations and horse-trading. Why is cooperation so difficult to achieve in the Straits of Malacca and Singapore? The primary and overarching problem was the clash of interests between the key littoral states of Malaysia and Indonesia, which are essentially coastal states with coastal interests on the one hand, and the international users of the Straits on the other hand, in particular the major maritime nations. Singapore occupies a unique position in Straits cooperation, being geographically a littoral state, but in terms of interests and perceptions, more inclined to adopt the worldview of a maritime state. These different perceptions of the utility of the seas and oceans, that is, the clash of interests between the coastal states and the maritime nations that use the Straits of Malacca, was the primary reason why the safety and security of the waterway became contentious issues. Moreover, 08 PMaritime Terrorism Ch 8 9/28/06, 2:25 PM 135 136 J.N. Mak the Malacca Straits was not the only concern of Indonesia and Malaysia, since they had other, much larger sea areas and maritime boundaries to worry about. The maritime users of the states, in contrast, looked on the Malacca Straits as one key link in the global sea lines of communications. From their perspective, the Straits’ greatest, and perhaps only, utility is that of a...