Divided or Together?: Southeast Asia in 2012

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The year 2012 has brought to the fore the difficult realities of a region adapting to a more competitive global environment. With intensifying great power rivalry in the region, continued global economic uncertainty and legitimacy challenges of Southeast Asian leaders, the strains of maintaining consensus within ASEAN, promoting shared economic opportunities and maintaining stability while meeting governance demands have become more prominent. While regional politics in the past year illustrated some of the serious obstacles the region as a whole faces in working collaboratively, developments also highlighted new initiatives that are being introduced to promote the welfare of Southeast Asians.

ASEAN under Strain: Cambodia’s Dismal Chairmanship

From a regionwide lens, the dominant story of the year was ASEAN. In this forty-fifth year of ASEAN’s founding, this was perhaps one anniversary best forgotten. The failure of the organization to sign a basic communiqué in the July meeting in Phnom Penh and the limited traction on the code of conduct agreement with China over the contentious South China Sea issue at the East Asia Summit in November showcased the divisions among member states rather than a strengthening regional architecture. The core members of the group, led by Indonesia, had to pick up the pieces to save the organization’s face and minimize the blame game that resulted from the annual July meeting. Diplomatic efforts by Indonesia led to the publication of “ASEAN”s Six Point Principles on the South China Sea” in the meeting’s aftermath, but the damage was already done. After the years during which ASEAN developed stronger regional ties and excelled itself on the international stage under the chairmanships of Indonesia and Vietnam, 2012 was a wake-up call of the hurdles ahead for ASEAN under comparatively weaker chairs of the region’s smaller countries. Under Cambodia’s chairmanship, the dominant mode was one of limited consensus, showcasing division rather than unity.

The primary source of division reflects divergent views of the role of China in the region. From 2008, China has become more assertive in its territorial claims in the South China Sea. Two months before the ASEAN meeting in July a stand-off between China and the Philippines occurred over the Scarborough Shoal. This continued to flare up after the meeting and was reinforced by other measures. China released the “nine-dash map” claiming the South China Sea, including this map in Chinese national passports. Then it formally appointed administrative responsibility over the Paracel Islands, Macclesfield Bank, and Spratly Islands to the newly created prefecture of Sansha. It also widened its presence in the area in escorting trawlers and, importantly, established a military garrison in the Sansha prefecture with the responsibility to cover two square miles of water.¹ China’s presence has extended economically as well, including stepping up efforts to control oil and gas production. In June 2012, nine offshore blocks were put up by the China National Offshore Oil Company (CNOOC), many overlapping with claims by Vietnam.² China has further focused more investment in the region, especially in its neighbours. China’s investment, for example, in Cambodia is reported to be US$2 billion, twice the combined value today of all the investment of ASEAN countries in Cambodia and ten times that of the United States.³ Differences between the South China Sea claimant Philippines and strong China-ally and this year’s ASEAN chair Cambodia in particular were quite pronounced, limiting the ability of member states to reach common ground. The year passed without the passage of a code of conduct after the ten-year period allocated to address this matter expired.

Part of this was due to developments outside of Southeast Asia. Both China and the United States consciously opted for a more competitive dynamic in their relations with the region. The United States set the course by deepening its “pivot” approach to Asia, renamed “rebalancing” at the June Shangri-La Dialogue.⁴ The United States increased their number of high-level visits and adopted a more assertive position on security with its allies...