ASEAN’s Strength and Continued Relevance in Asia Pacific
This article is published as part of Fridays With MUNPlanetand its special series dedicated to world politics. The aim of this series is to bring you the analysis of global affairs by the established and upcoming scholars, decision-makers and policy analysts from various world regions. This week, Dylan Loh Ming Hui (University of Cambridge) writes about the relevance of ASEAN as a regional organization and its ability to “embed itself within the wider Asia-Pacific context”. While outlining the challenges for ASEAN, the author argues that one of the greatest advantages of this particular form of regionalism “builds norms and brings major powers into the ASEAN fold by providing an important yet unthreatening environment.”
On February 15th to 16th, U.S President Barack Obama hosted the first U.S-ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Summit in Sunnylands, California. The summit marks a remarkable ascent for ASEAN considering how it has been and continues to be derided as ‘weak’ and dismissed as a ‘talk shop’. The year of 2016 also marks a major milestone for ASEAN as 1st January was the date that the ASEAN Economic Community was realized and came into effect. Most significantly, however, is that ASEAN has, thus far, achieved one of its primarily goals which is to ‘to promote regional peace and stability’ — its raison d’etre.In its short 49 years of existence, ASEAN has managed to preserve peace within Southeast Asia in a geopolitical domain that has a less than peaceful history and, in recent times, proceeded to take on a more prominent role in East Asia.
Strength from weakness
Ironically though (and this should be of interest for institutionalization scholars) its achievement is down mainly to its very loose and weak institutionalization. This looseness create a setting where major powers are comfortable with engaging ASEAN and all the overlapping ASEAN fora as long as these instruments prove useful and as long as it, as one senior diplomat from Singapore observed, “does not frustrate their most vital interests”. This relative weakness ensures that major powers, here referring mainly to the United States and China, remain engaged to the point where they perceive that they can exert considerable influence but also not be influenced unduly by these institutions. This is not to understate the inherent attractiveness of ASEAN, as some have done, for surely there is some quality within ASEAN — economically, geopolitically and culturally, to be an end in itself. But equally important, one must be clear-eyed on the strategic intent of major powers cultivating ASEAN. Here, the ASEAN-led institutions of the East Asia Summit (EAS) and the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) amongst many others have had some success. The ARF, for instance, is an annual event that draws in 27 countries in the Asia Pacific and has become an important venue for security dialogue. The East Asia Summit involves all ten ASEAN countries together with South Korea, China, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, Russia, the United States and India.
The ability of ASEAN to embed itself within the wider Asia-Pacific context and bring others into the ASEAN fold is an important accomplishment and is critical to its continued relevance. The overlapping ambit of the many summits and fora is not, from ASEAN’s point of view, mere bureaucratic inefficiency but a rather clever way to have multiple points of engagement with major powers and to maintain visibility and relevance. Additionally, the intersecting and loose structure of ASEAN and ASEAN-led institutions provides many opportunities for sensitive topics that could not be undertaken bilaterally to be aired. The Japanese Foreign Minister, for instance, held a rare high level side-line meeting with his North Korean counterpart at the ARF in 2014 as this is one of the only international multilateral forums the North Korean Minister attends. That is why critics saying that the overlapping institutions of the EAS or the ARFcontribute nothingto security in the region does not have a good intellectual grasp of ASEAN and are missing the point entirely. It is precisely because of the dialogic, consensual and ‘relaxed’ nature of ASEAN and its steered institutions that does not require a great deal of political and diplomatic investment that makes it a convenient and useful fora for security and economic issues.
More work to be done
The woes of the EU today should be a clear sign that deeper, stronger integration does not necessarily make an inter-governmental organization more robust. Indeed, as argued here and in many other places, it is the looseness of ASEAN that gives it strength. This nebulousness affords leaders in mainly illiberal democratic Southeast Asia the flexibility and political space to, firstly and primarily, concentrate on nation-building and in securing domestic legitimacy and, secondly, to integrate into ASEAN without compromising its autonomy and sovereignty.
The challenges facing ASEAN, whilst not in danger of having any country leaving (whether voluntary or otherwise) are formidable. Here, I will highlight two.
You can read the full article on MUNPlanet.
Cover Image: 10th East Asia Summit, Kuala Lumpur 22 November 2015 (via ASEAN official website).
This article was originally published on MUNPlanet on February 19, 2016.
