Understanding ASEAN’s Role in Asia-Pacific Order

Robert Yates

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9783030128982
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030128999
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Asian Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book assesses the important role of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in the management of regional political, security and economic relations. The author argues that ASEAN's prominent role in the region, spanning 50 years, is largely due to the acquiescence of the great powers who endorsed ASEAN, accepted its regional position and accorded the institution a legitimacy and durability that, otherwise, it would not have. This text offers a key intervention into the debate regarding ASEAN and regional order by showing how ASEAN's contribution to order management is part of a negotiated division of labour with the great powers. The author applies an innovative social roles analysis, which captures the dynamic interactions between ASEAN and the great powers from the Cold War to the present day. 

© The Author(s) 2019

R. YatesUnderstanding ASEAN’s Role in Asia-Pacific OrderCritical Studies of the Asia-Pacifichttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12899-9_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Robert Yates¹

(1)

University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

Robert Yates

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has played a prominent part in negotiating and managing order in Southeast Asia and the Asia-Pacific. It has done so during times of stability and during times of transition and crisis when we would expect the great powers exclusively to play the leading role. What is interesting about ASEAN’s contribution to order is that, rather than being a by-product of either the regional balance of power or the region’s unique normative structure, it instead appears to constitute part of a division of labour negotiated with the great powers.

At the height of the Cold War in the 1950s and 1960s, the US tried to impose its vision for an anti-communist regional order in Southeast Asia. It sought to legitimise its unilateral and interventionist management of order through the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) . The US’ efforts were resisted not only by communist groups but also nationalist social forces that resented foreign involvement in regional affairs. Order in mainland and maritime Southeast Asia was unstable. War raged in Vietnam and Indonesia pursued its Confrontation against the newly formed Malaysia . When the anti-communist military took power in Indonesia , after mass killings of leftist social forces, the weak non-communist Southeast Asian states came together to form ASEAN . ASEAN’s formation was crucial for negotiating order in Southeast Asia. Through ASEAN these states developed a framework for managing their relations, avoiding conflict and disputes and cooperating to promote economic development and ‘regional resilience’ . ASEAN developed a norm of non-interference, establishing that inter-state relations within Southeast Asia would be norm-governed. In the context of US disengagement from Vietnam , ASEAN played a key part in legitimising the US’ continued provision of security club goods from an offshore position. The ASEAN states eschewed taking on any security functions at a regional level leaving individual states to maintain bilateral security arrangements with the US. ASEAN’s front-line diplomatic activism complimented the US’ offshore stationing of its capabilities and provision of aid and assistance. The US’ and ASEAN’s performance of these functions were complementary in that they were both aimed towards embedding a stable non-communist social order in the region that would facilitate the further integration of Southeast Asia into global circuits of capital accumulation and neutralise the perceived threat from Vietnam . The ASEAN states’ regionalism enabled its members to demonstrate regional autonomy and the US’ distance from direct military involvement in Southeast Asia satisfied a domestic population critical of its costly intervention in Vietnam. Although not necessarily intentional, this reflected a clear division of labour.

When Vietnam occupied Cambodia from 1978 to 1989, ASEAN was highly active diplomatically in opposing the occupation. ASEAN successfully thwarted a Vietnamese challenge to the credentials of the ousted Khmer Rouge (KR) , prevented the acceptance of the Vietnamese-backed People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) within the United Nations (UN) and regularly promoted resolutions in the UN condemning the occupation. ASEAN was able to contain the conflict, keep the issue on the international agenda and ensure international estrangement of Vietnam because it successfully framed the issue as a violation of the norm of non-intervention and consequently a violation of the rule-governed interaction between states. ASEAN was unable to resolve the conflict alone. It aligned with China which provided the material capabilities to resist Vietnam through sustained military pressure on Vietnam’s northern border and assistance to KR rebels. This reinforced the great power-ASEAN division the labour developed between ASEAN and the US. ASEAN provided a diplomatic vanguard to delegitimise Vietnam’s actions, whilst China threatened Vietnam and tied it down within Cambodia by aiding Cambodian rebels. The US acquiesced to China’s invasion of Vietnam in 1979 and continued to provide support to the coalition from a distance. Moreover, by securing agreement from China for a neutral Cambodia after Vietnamese withdrawal, ASEAN asserted the salience of its norms and processes over Cambodia. This ensured that after the conflict ASEAN would take primary responsibility for managing order in mainland as well as maritime Southeast Asia. By 1999 all the mainland Southeast Asian states had joined ASEAN.

Immediately after the end of the Cold War, there was great strategic uncertainty within the Asia-Pacific. The Soviet collapse led to fears within the region of US retrenchment, a potentially resurgent Japan and a rising China . Such fears reflected uncertainty over the foundations of regional order. At this time of transition and uncertainty ASEAN took the initiative to develop the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) , which brought together all the great powers and major players in the region. Other states such as the Soviet Union , Canada , Japan and Australia had tried to promote regional security dialogue but had failed. Through hosting the ARF, ASEAN provided a regular site for communication and engagement between states wary of each other’s strategic priorities. The ARF brought the great powers together with a commitment to engagement over regional issues and an acknowledgement that interactions within the Asia-Pacific would be rule-governed. ASEAN’s Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC) was accepted as a code of conduct by ARF members. ASEAN has since built up a network of overlapping institutions with varying memberships such as the ASEAN Plus Three (APT) , East Asia Summit (EAS) and the ASEAN Defence Minister’s Meeting Plus (ADMM-Plus) . It has maintained its centrality within these institutions two decades after the initial establishment of the ARF, and in each the great powers have committed to ASEAN’s leadership. All the great powers have now signed the TAC, one of the criteria for membership in the EAS , demonstrating a formal acknowledgement of the norms it embodies. In the context of continued uncertainty about the material and normative foundations of regional order, the promotion of TAC and the acknowledgement of its norms represent a working agreement on the regulatory norms states can agree on. ASEAN’s diplomatic leadership in providing forums for inclusive engagement and a minimalist normative framework complements the US’ continued provision of security club goods through its bilateral and mini-lateral alliance network and China’s increasing provision of economic club goods through the Belt Road Initiative .

All three of these examples highlight how ASEAN has been highly active in negotiating the normative and institutional frameworks for sustaining rule-governed interaction in Southeast and East Asia at times of strategic transition or crisis. However, it has done so within a division of labour with the great powers. This book analyses the historical development of the ASEAN-great power division of labour and what this means for ASEAN’s role today.

Debating ASEAN’s Role

For many years ASEAN’s role was understood through an implicitly realist lens. Leifer captured well the nature of ASEAN’s role as a moderately successful regional manager within its own subregion and a diplomatic community that could act collectively beyond its subregion (Leifer 1989). However, realists considered ASEAN’s role contingent on the balance of power between the great powers. Any regional division of labour would therefore reflect how power was balanced within the region and whether the great powers had an interest in granting ASEAN a role, or whether their disinterest essentially left ASEAN to its own devises. It was the latter that led to ASEAN taking up its regional management role as Britain and the US drew down their military commitments in Southeast Asia, leaving ASEAN states to take responsibility for managing their own relations and prevent a vacuum being filled by other external powers. The communist victories in Indochina boosted ASEAN’s internal managerial role but its external diplomatic role was only boosted after Vietnam’s intervention in Cambodia drew the interests of China and the US back into Southeast Asia making ASEAN a partner in balancing against Vietnam . ASEAN then found space to extend its regional management into the Asia-Pacific by forming the ARF because of the strategic uncertainty immediately after the Cold War and because no great power individually or collectively was willing or able to provide leadership in creating a regional security organisation. As long as great power rivalry continued then the great powers had an interest in passing the buck of regional institution-building to ASEAN and ASEAN’s promotion of consultation and conflict avoidance could enjoy limited success (Leifer 1996; Emmers 2003). This analysis is reinforced and expanded from a critical realist perspective, which argues that ASEAN’s role is dependent not just on geopolitics but also the structural dynamics of the regional political-economy. The rhetoric of ASEAN’s normative contribution to order is overplayed and hides the reality of these underlying structures. As the structures shift along with the rise of China , ASEAN will have to move with them rather than play any role in shaping them. Indeed, ASEAN has already proved ineffective in trying to constrain China in the South China Sea , instead opening itself up to division by China’s actions (Beeson 2013, 2017).

Constructivists challenged this approach, arguing that ASEAN could actively shape great power interests in maintaining its prominence by acting as a norm entrepreneur and socialiser (Johnston 2008; Acharya 2009, 2014). ASEAN was continuing a tradition of Asian actors localising external norms and creating indigenous norms. These formed a normative structure which determined what was appropriate for different types of powers to do in the region and thereby accounted for the region’s division of labour. ASEAN’s success in establishing the ARF reflected the embeddedness of sovereignty and anti-colonialism in the normative structure; non-hierarchical cooperative security led by small powers was more appropriate than great power-led collective security (Acharya 2009). ASEAN’s informal forums offered conducive environments for socialising wary great powers into accepting and internalising these norms. China’s increasing comfort with multilateralism and moves towards a benign good neighbour policy in the early 2000s were seen as reflecting such internalisation (Johnston 2008). However, China’s recent assertive turn has challenged this argument and there remains the outstanding question of why bilateral great power–small power security ties, where domination is more acute, were considered appropriate wit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. World-System, International Order and Social Roles
• 3. Role Redefinition: The US and Southeast Asia 1954–1975
• 4. Role-Taking: China, ASEAN and the Third Indochina Conflict
• 5. Role Creation: ASEAN and Post-Cold War Asia-Pacific
• 6. Conclusion
• Back Matter