Asean 50: Regional Security Cooperation Through Selected Documents

Regional Security Cooperation through Selected Documents

Daniel Chua, Eddie Lim;;;

• Publisher: WSPC
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9789813221154
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: National Security
• Index: Politics & International Relations

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ASEAN 50: Regional Security Cooperation through Selected Documents curates key official documents that establish ASEAN as the foundation of Southeast Asia's peace and security. Since 1967, ASEAN has played the crucial role of managing conflicts and maintaining stability in a region shaped by diverse political, economic and socio-cultural dynamics. During the Cold War, ASEAN's ability to keep major power rivalries and intra-mural disputes in check provided the conditions for economic growth in the region. Yet the extent of ASEAN's contributions to the security of Southeast Asia have not been systematically presented.

This compendium of official ASEAN declarations, statements, treaties, conventions and workplans demonstrates the activism and innovation of ASEAN member countries in their management of regional security for the past five decades. ASEAN 50: Regional Security Cooperation through Selected Documents provides answers to how ASEAN remains a cohesive organisation through periods of regional conflict, how ASEAN unity thrives despite seemingly insurmountable differences among the ten members, and how ASEAN centrality is resilient against pressure arising from great power influences in Southeast Asia.

--> Contents:

• Preface
• Foreword
• Introduction
• The Formation of a Southeast Asian Association
• ZOPFAN, ASEAN Concord, and the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation
• ASEAN and the Vietnam-Cambodia Conflict
• After the Cold War: ASEAN Expansion and Engagement with Dialogue Partners
• The ASEAN Charter
• ASEAN Regional Forum and the Defence Ministers' Meetings
• ASEAN, China, and the South China Sea
• ASEAN and Non-Traditional Security
• Closing Thoughts
• Selected Abbreviations
• Selected Bibliography
• About the Authors
• Index

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--> Readership: University and graduate level students and professionals specialising in ASEAN. -->
Keywords:ASEAN;Security;Political Security;Southeast Asia;ASEAN Economic Community;Cold War;Political ScienceReview: Key Features:

• This book is the first major attempt at compiling primary sources for research about ASEAN's development as a security community. A previous version of the project by Eddie Lim and Ang Cheng Guan includes documents from 1967 to 1999 but remains unpublished
• The book provides students and researchers with access to the most critical documents to commence their study on ASEAN's role in Southeast Asian security. A list of suggested further readings will guide readers to other secondary sources
• This book has the potential to be prescribed reading for students and scholars working on ASEAN and Southeast Asia, diplomats and foreign service officers, and general readers

CHAPTER ONE

The Formation of a Southeast Asian Association

The first step towards an appreciation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) must begin with an understanding of its origins. Despite the fact that so much have been written about this Association since its establishment on 8 August 1967, the specific circumstances and decision-making leading to its formation have been less known. This chapter seeks to address this by covering the events leading up to the informal talks at Bangsaen, Thailand, in early August 1967.

When reconstructing the beginnings of ASEAN, it is important to highlight two related points. First, ASEAN was the latest in a series of unsuccessful attempts at regional cooperation among different Southeast Asian states in the 1960s, of which its most direct precursor was the Association of Southeast Asia (ASA) formed on 31 July 1961, comprising Malaya (later Malaysia), the Philippines, and Thailand. ASA was superseded by ASEAN in 1967. Second, ASEAN could not have been successfully formed before the official end of Konfrontasi, the Indonesian Confrontation against the formation of Malaysia, with the signing of the peace treaty between Indonesia and Malaysia on 12 August 1966.

In a 1981 speech, Tan Sri M. Ghazali Shafie, who was a Malaysian senior official closely associated with the formation of ASEAN, recalled that he and Ali Moertopo met in Kuala Lumpur in late May 1966 to explore the possibility of establishing a wider framework of regional cooperation.¹ Tasked by their respective leaders, Indonesia’s President Suharto and Malaysia’s Deputy Prime Minister Tun Razak, both men met to discuss ways to extend the “Indonesia–Malaysia reconciliation” to other regional nations and consider the formation of “an association of countries of Southeast Asia”.² Such an organisation would aim to enhance regional stability so that they “would not be pitted by external powers to fight one another”.³ Both men were aware of the limitations of ASA and Maphilindo, an association comprising Malaya, the Philippines, and Indonesia, as attempts at establishing Southeast Asian regional institutions. Ghazali recounted that he and Ali were both “conscious of the fact that as fore-runners of such an organ, ASA ... and Maphilindo ... ha[d] not succeeded on account of their narrow political objectives”.⁴

Thanat Khoman, who was then the Foreign Minister of Thailand and one of the five founding fathers of ASEAN, described how ASEAN was eventually formed. The banquet referred to by Thanat would have taken place betwen 29 May and 1 June 1966 when Bangkok hosted the Indonesia–Malaysia talks, where Indonesian Foreign Minister Adam Malik and Tun Razak met to bring about an end to Konfrontasi. Thanat recalls:

At the banquet marking the reconciliation between the three disputants, I broached the idea of forming another organization for regional cooperation with Adam Malik. Malik agreed without hesitation but asked for time to talk with his government and also to normalize relations with Malaysia now that the confrontation was over. Meanwhile, the Thai Foreign Office prepared a draft charter of the new institution. Within a few months, everything was ready. I therefore invited the two former members of the Association for Southeast Asia (ASA), Malaysia and the Philippines, and Indonesia, a key member, to a meeting in Bangkok. In addition, Singapore sent S. Rajaratnam, then Foreign Minister, to see me about joining the new set-up. Although the new organization was planned to comprise only the ASA members plus Indonesia, Singapore’s request was favorably considered.⁵

Interestingly, declassified diplomatic records from the US archives reveal that Thanat would change his mind about an enlarged ASA by the end of June 1966. As recorded in the documents:

Thanat said he hoped for the time being to keep ASA confined to Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines. He said working parties were now heavily engaged in preparing for the forthcoming Ministerial Meeting and he hoped that a start could be made in removing as many obstacles as possible to the fullest economic, social, and cultural cooperation between the three countries. Here again, Thanat said, Adam Malik had expressed a desire for Indonesian participation but Thanat thought this could more usefully come a little later after the Indonesians had gone a bit farther in their “tidying up” process.⁶

Months later, however, American diplomats in Bangkok reported to Washington that Thanat had acknowledged during an interview on 11 April 1967 that discussions with Adam Malik regarding a new regional organisation “had been going on for several months” and that the new organisation would be initiated “definitely within the present year”.⁷ Thanat also said that the organisation would be “open to all interested countries” with the intention “to cooperate for the common good of all peoples of the region”.⁸

Nevertheless, Malaysian Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman voiced his opposition for an enlarged ASA two days after Thanat’s interview. The Tunku felt that there was “no need to establish another organization to replace ASA”.⁹ In his view, “ASA cannot be destroyed because much effort and money have been put up by all three member countries. After all only Indonesia is willing to participate in this (new) organization”.¹⁰ His sentiment is not surprising given the fact that he played a prominent role in the formation of ASA. Indeed, he held the view that he was the one who had planted the seed for its formation in Baguio in 1960. Even after the formation of ASEAN, he continued to regard ASEAN as ASA expanded by another name. However, Kuala Lumpur’s position regarding the formation of a new regional organisation was apparently still not crystallised in April 1967 when the Tunku made his remarks.

Listening at the sidelines, Singapore refrained from making public statements regarding the regional organisation. In private, another ASEAN founder, S. Rajaratnam, who was Singapore’s Foreign Minister from 1965 to 1980, told US Embassy officials that:

Tunku’s position illustrated why Singapore must refrain from associating itself with ASA, SEAARC, or similar schemes unless and until both Indonesia and Malaysia agreed. Above all, Singapore could not afford to be placed in position belonging to organization disfavoured by Tunku. Tunku obviously had paternal pride in ASA, Indonesians wanted achieve [sic] founding father status. Singapore has no such ambition, Rajaratnam indicated, and would be happy to join organization founded by others “when time came”.¹¹

Adam Malik, in his public remarks, had spoken of a regional grouping that might possibly include Burma (later Myanmar) and Cambodia as well. No one really expected Burma to join because of its strict policy of neutrality. Cambodia publicly, if not officially, stated that it would not join.¹² Meanwhile, Souvanna Phouma, the Laotian Prime Minister, was keen but was apparently not asked.¹³ Ceylon (later Sri Lanka) had also applied to join. However, according to observations by American diplomats, the founding members “did not feel that Ceylon merited the privilege of being a charter member and therefore action on Ceylon’s application had been delayed”.¹⁴

One critical aspect of ASEAN’s founding was the absence of western influence in the process. Thanat told the US Secretary of State not to “bestow the kiss of death [to ASEAN] by too close an embrace”.¹⁵ This distance was essential for the survival and credibility of the organisation as a non-aligned regional grouping, designed for intraregional development. It was important that this new organisation did not share the ‘overt’ posture of organisations like the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO).

Washington would stand to benefit from any kind of cooperation among non-communist countries if ASEAN was preserved as a Southeast Asian initiative. In March 1967, William Bundy from the US Department of State spoke with Malaysia’s Finance Minister Tan Siew Sin in Kuala Lumpur, emphasising that the US “was not taking a position on specifics of an organization in this area of the world” and also “not suggesting or recommending to anyone that they should create or become a member of any regional grouping”.¹⁶

In an interview conducted on 30 November 1985, Singapore’s Foreign Minister S. Rajaratnam was asked “which of the original five ASEAN countries felt the need for this regional grouping first?” In response, Rajaratnam made the following recollection:

Initially, it was Mr Thanat Khoman of Thailand and Mr Adam Malik of Indonesia. The Thais were the nearest to Indo-China. The Thais, as you know, had been involved in Indo-China and had been very pro-American. Indonesians were concerned that if the Vietnamese won, they would become the proxy of either the Chinese or the Russians or both ... Singapore was responsive to the concept of ASEAN because it saw merit in it, provided it was not a resurrection of SEATO or ASA, or an anti-communist or pro-American outfit, because then we would be repeating an error. We stressed that ASEAN should be a regional organisation for economic, political, and cultural cooperation ... I don’t know what private thoughts prompted Filipinos to join ASEAN because until then they were not deeply involved in the mainstream of Southeast Asian politics. But they were brought in because they partnered Indonesia in confronting the newly-formed Malaysia which included Singapore. The Thais came in because they were fearful of Vietnamese vengeance and of communist China. So, you see, each of us had our own private reasons for joining ASEAN apart from the principal object of reversing the domino theory which many, including communists, predicted would follow a Vietnamese victory in Southeast Asia.¹⁷

Once it was clear that the new regional organisation was a Southeast Asian initiative, what followed was the eventual formation of ASEAN in August 1967.

The Formation of ASEAN

ASEAN was formally established during the meeting at Bangsaen in early August 1967 where the draft of the joint Declaration on the Formation of ASEAN, prepared by the Thai Foreign Ministry, was discussed and subsequently proclaimed on 8 August as the Bangkok Declaration. Unfortunately, there is not very much information on what transpired before the finalised version of the document was accepted. Thanat Khoman’s recollection provides a glimpse:

And so in early August 1967, the five Foreign Ministers spent four days in the relative isolation of a beach resort in Bangsaen, a coastal town less than a hundred kilometers southeast of Bangkok. There they negotiated over that document in a decidedly informal manner which they would later delight in describing as “sports-shirt diplomacy.” Yet it was by no means an easy process: each man brought into the deliberations a historical and political perspective that had no resemblance to that of any of the others. But with goodwill and good humor, as often as they huddled at the negotiating table, they finessed their way through their differences as they lined up their shots on the golf course and traded wisecracks on one another’s game, a style of deliberation which would eventually become the ASEAN ministerial tradition.¹⁸

The manner in which issues are discussed, differences negotiated and decisions made, as described by Thanat, would become known as the ASEAN Way. This manner of diplomacy was characterised by informal discussions, corridor chats, and golf-game decisions. The point to note here is that this informal way of decision-making, especially in the early years, makes it very difficult for historians to document A...