The ASEAN Regional Security Partnership

Strengths and Limits of a Cooperative System

Angela Pennisi di Floristella

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781137488589
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137488596
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Asian Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

ASEAN's role as a security provider remains largely a matter of scholarly debate. Through the lens of the concept of regional security partnership, this book uncovers a more nuanced understanding of ASEAN capacity, highlighting both its merits and fragilities in coping with traditional and emerging security problems.

1

Introduction

In its earliest manifestation, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was not a security project. The Bangkok Declaration, which came to be known as the ASEAN founding document, gives the impression that the Association was created largely to forge economic growth and social progress in the Southeast Asian region.¹ Looking back at ASEAN’s formative years, this is somewhat of a paradox. In fact, in 1967 security concerns were foremost in the minds of the five ASEAN founding fathers, foreign ministers Adam Malik of Indonesia, Narciso R. Ramos of the Philippines, Tun Abdul Razak of Malaysia, Sinnathamby Rajaratnam of Singapore and Thanat Khoman of Thailand, when they met informally at the quiet beach resort of Bang Saen in Thailand. On that occasion the idea of forming a regional grouping became a reality. It was later described in the memorable words of a British diplomatic telegram to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London using the expression sport-shirt diplomacy, as opposed to the more formal business-shirt diplomacy common in Western settings. However, no one could have imagined that in a few years this association would turn into one of the most suitable environments to facilitate interregional dialogue and new mechanisms of confidence building, designed to achieve peace and regional security.

Since its inception, in fact, ASEAN’s main business has been to provide a security function for its members, although not in a military sense. The creation and maintenance of regional peace and neutrality, amid external maneuvering has been a persistent and fundamental ambition of the ASEAN project. Its original members, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, followed by Brunei in 1984, soon leaned towards cooperative efforts, not only in economic and political areas but also in the security sphere, concerned with overcoming their own rivalries and disputes, such as those between Indonesia and Malaysia and between Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore. There was a pressing need to stabilize the region in order to increase the level of foreign investment, improve economic growth and ensure the wellbeing of the people; which was intensified with the eruption of bloody new conflicts, such as the Cambodian crisis and the consequent negative spillover effects to neighboring countries.

Yet, as long as the bipolar conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States was playing out, the region was heavily penetrated by the two major powers and influenced by the oscillating role of China. Consequently, in practical terms, concern for security was mostly a response to the need to maintain the East–West political and military balance. In fact, as the former Indonesian Prime Minister, Ali Alatas pointed out: ‘regional security requires an equilibrium between the major powers, and between them and Southeast Asia.’²

In the wake of the Cold War, however, the shift in the geopolitical security environment challenged the traditional balance of power perspective and brought new opportunities for increasing regional security cooperation. In the vacuum left by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the decreased military presence of the United States, security was formally placed on the agenda at ASEAN’s fourth summit in 1992, and the region experienced a proliferation of multilateral institutions, such as the formation of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the institutionalization of the ASEAN Plus Three (also comprising the People’s Republic of China, or PRC, Japan and the Republic of Korea) and the expansion of ASEAN membership with the accession of the former Indochinese states of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, and of Myanmar. These new multilateral institutions became vital instruments for seeking security through the development of common norms and mechanisms. Of no less significance was the changing nature of contemporary threats and the emergence of transnational challenges (what the former Indonesian Foreign Minister Wirajuda called intermestic threats³), that is to say threats which largely surpass the capacity of nation states to efficiently perform their traditional task of providing security to their citizens, which provided a new impetus towards the development of multilateral action. This has increasingly been deemed to be the most effective way to deal with insecurity arising primarily from non military sources, such as terrorism, piracy, natural disasters, climate change, infectious diseases, organized crime and illegal immigration. Against the backdrop of these circumstances, the new post-Cold War era has proven to be a decade of great change for Asian international institutions in general, and for ASEAN in particular. Thus, although the Association is basically a product of the Cold War, it did not come to an end in the 1990s. On the contrary, in such a new context not only did ASEAN survive⁴ but it also took on new initiatives to slowly reinvent itself and revitalize Southeast Asian regionalism. It started to reassess its raison d’être and to promote new forms of regional cooperation to overcome problems of collective action, advance new mechanisms to respond to contemporary threats, and take control of political, economic and environmental challenges that easily bypassed the authority and reach of the nation states.⁵

Among other things, the decline of the existing balance of power and the novel fluidity provided by the new international environment, opened a window of opportunity for ASEAN to autonomously pursue economic and security goals and become an essential part of regionalism in East Asia. This holds true in spite of the emergence of bigger neighbors, such as China assuming the role of the new regional hegemon, and India which has turned into the new superpower of the 21st century. Both developments increasingly call into question ASEAN’s attempt to take the lead in regional Asian institutions. Indeed, fears of the regional grouping drifting apart and losing its regional credibility at home and abroad, acted as a stimulus for a resurgent ASEAN regionalism.⁶ In the security realm, ASEAN has taken up new responsibilities, and its task of working towards a secure environment is no longer confined to traditional military threats, relating to territorial security and the survival of national states, but has expanded in scope to include non military sources of insecurity. With the ASEAN Charter, the Association acquired a legal personality, and during the Seventh Summit in Bali (2003) it embarked on new projects, such as the construction of the three ASEAN Communities. Its international presence and recognition have been growing incrementally. In 2006, ASEAN obtained observer status at the United Nations (UN). In the last ten years, it has signed free trade agreements and formed comprehensive partnerships dealing with political security (for instance, to combat international terrorism), including social cultural issues and development cooperation with a large number of industrialized countries, like Canada, Australia, the EU, Japan, New Zealand and Russia. Its international prominence is also increasingly demonstrated by the United States’ interest in engaging with the Association, as shown during Obama’s and Clinton’s official trips to Southeast Asia, the first US–ASEAN Summit held in Singapore (2009) and the second US–ASEAN Summit in New York (2010).⁷ Obama’s post-election visit to Cambodia, Myanmar and Thailand, is also not to be underestimated, as it shows the US’s intent to develop a more granular and in-depth set of relationships with ASEAN countries. Also, US Secretary of State John Kerry’s participation in the US–ASEAN Ministerial Meeting (2013) reveals that engagement in Southeast Asia, established during President Barack Obama’s first administration is of the highest importance. The invitation by former US Defense Secretary General Hagel, extended to the ten ASEAN Ministers of Defense in Honolulu, on the 1–2 April 2014, further establishes that ASEAN has now become one of the centerpieces of Obama’s policy in Asia. As noted by Bower and Arbis (2013) ‘ASEAN is the core of newly developing Asian architectures designed to provide a balance between security and economic engagement, and create a broader regional context designed to convince China to promote its interests by making and then abiding by regional and international rules.’⁸

In summary, over the last two decades the development of the Association demonstrates ASEAN’s effort to maintain its regional centrality through a progressive redefinition of its goals and the adoption of new political, economic and security instruments. Of no less significance is the gradual expansion of the ASEAN centered community building process for external partners by offering them membership to new multilateral frameworks of economic, political and social dialogue, which suggests the promise of ASEAN as a rising regional player. Suffice it to say that ASEAN has started to engage China actively in international institutions, most importantly through the ARF, and that at the same time ASEAN members have ensured a constant relationship with the United States.

To be sure, the wide array of new policies on which the Association has embarked requires a greater capacity, new norms and operational mechanisms to implement the newly outlined measures. This is a major challenge to the organization, due to the wide political, economic, cultural and security diversity of its members. Above all, the grouping’s continuous emphasis on consensual decision making makes it clear that in the absence of the necessary internal cohesion it will be difficult for ASEAN to achieve effective mechanisms of security governance. From this perspective, the risk of widening the ASEAN agenda without deepening it or, to make use of Hill’s influential expression, the risk of a capability–expectation gap, could become a major problem, especially if the Association is not capable of putting into practice the mechanisms that have been sketched out in the three ASEAN Community Blueprints.

The need for another book on ASEAN security

The central theme of this monograph is ASEAN’s work on the establishment of regional security. But is another book on ASEAN security needed? What are the reasons for writing this book? Although several scholars have already written about ASEAN security and examined the mechanisms used to respond to crises, the ASEAN contribution in this domain remains largely a matter of scholarly debate. There are, in fact, still relevant questions pending, which need to be answered in a more comprehensive and systematic manner, to trace and assess the degree to which the Southeast Asian regional grouping can deliver security.

On a theoretical level, how can one explain ASEAN’s role and influence in the Southeast Asian region? And empirically, is ASEAN a provider of regional security? To what extent and through which tools has ASEAN contributed to enhancing regional security and turning conflicting relations into cooperative behavior? What is ASEAN’s role and which instruments does the Association have at its disposal to avoid instability and prevent existing disputes from escalating into wars? Has the change of the world security system into a post-Westphalian system and the emergence of new unpredictable threats somehow conditioned ASEAN’s policies? And consequently, has ASEAN enlarged its security agenda and developed new mechanisms for facing contemporary, non traditional security challenges (NTS), which mostly go beyond the external dimension of security, and pertain to the internal sphere of activity? And finally, to what extent has the Association been able to develop new capabilities to respond to, and better provide, security?

The nexus between ASEAN and the making of regional security, that is to say the concrete contribution and credibility of the Association with regard to the attainment of a more secure regional environment, has been the object of a long running scholarly debate, mostly divided into two fronts (see Chapter 2). The first front encompasses proponents of the school of realism (and of the neorealist variation). These scholars tend to view ASEAN as a weak organization that lacks the means, capacity and internal cohesion to compel its members to comply with its own rules. They highlight the ineffectiveness of multilateral undertakings, emphasizing considerations of power, defined primarily in military terms, and nation state interests. In their view, the ‘anarchical nature of the international society characterized by military competition could not be addressed on a cooperative basis or through multinational diplomacy.’⁹ It depends instead on ‘great power politicking and military maneuvering to create a stable regional balance of power.’¹⁰ As a result, self-help and power politics are the only game in town. These analyses have undoubtedly several merits that will be more thoroughly discussed in the subsequent chapter but, firstly, it is not clear through which causal mechanisms the balance of power has contributed to stability in the Southeast Asian region since a number of conflicts, including those in Vietnam and Cambodia, are examples of proxy wars between the US (with its Western allies), and the Soviet Union and China. Secondly, by putting emphasis only on the importance of the structural properties of the international system, realist accounts fully downplay the role of other relevant forces, like institutions, common practices of cooperation, domestic politics and economic growth as factors bolstering stability. This also signifies that they disregard the fact that since ‘the Bali Summit in 1976, when tensions subsided, that there was a greater will to cooperate’ and ‘political cooperation was formally recognized by ASEAN.’¹¹ Thirdly, realist approaches are unable to explain why regional cooperation under the ASEAN aegis has expanded over the years, and are ill equipped to elucidate the new NTS problems, which go beyond physical threats to the political independence and territorial integrity of states, as well as the human rights concerns challenging the region, let alone prescribe adequate policy responses to these challenges.

On the second front, constructivists do not see political–military strategy as the only option; by contrast they have accorded ASEAN a greater significance in the regional security architecture, maintaining that the regional group has contributed to the creation of the regional order by articulating regulative and constitutive norms of interstate behaviors. Unlike realist scholars that attribute stability only to exogenous factors, and particularly to the military posture of the United States, constructivists highlight the relevance of endogenous attributes, which go beyond material forces, including ideas, norms, identities, values, history and language. In particular, with the prominent study of Amitav Acharya (2009), they have mostly tried to explain ASEAN as the nucleus of Karl Deutsch’s emerging security community, capable of shaping the regional security environment.¹² In so doing, this scholarship has injected into the Deutschian literature a clear focus on the transformative power of cultural norms and emerging identity, the so-called we feeling.¹³

At a conceptual level, this study distances itself from both the realist and constructivist accounts and proposes Attinà’s (2001, 2006, 2007) regional security partnership (RSP) theory¹⁴ as the means to understand and capture the features of current regional cooperation processes that are taking place in Southeast Asia under ASEAN. The concept of RSP, which can be found within an institutionalist understanding of interstate cooperation, does not dismiss the importance of power and interests (as realists do) but refuses the logic that conflict is a permanent condition, and that multilateral cooperation is impossible. Unlike realist approaches, the concept of RSP embraces the idea that, in order to overcome their collective action problem, states tend to cooperate with each other (Chapter 2). Accordingly, cooperation is not rare and superficial, but countries have an interest in building arrangements at a regional level, including mechanisms and instruments to accommodate their interstate interactions, and to regulate crises and manage common problems. This assumes that governments (even those of small- and middle-sized countries) come to develop common codes of conduct through the awareness of reciprocal interdependence and a common exposure to transnational problems. Inevitably, geographic proximity renders the security of some states more interdependent than others. For this reason, problems caused by interconnection are increasingly put on the agenda of regional organizations as the objects of programs and common actions. Remarkably, since problems tend to change ove...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Introduction
• 2  Theories on ASEAN Security
• 3  ASEAN Task of Prevention
• 4  ASEAN Task of Protection
• 5  ASEAN Task of Assurance
• 6  Assessment of the ASEAN RSP
• Notes
• References
• Index