Asean Comes Back to the World Stage

By Bill Myers
The Cambodia Daily

Five years after the implosion of crony capitalism hobbled Asean, with pundits and politicians writing the region off, the regional bloc is re-emerging—and in some cases, breaking new ground—as a global player. But that doesn’t mean many of the issues that surfaced during the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis have gone away.

Often dismissed as nothing more than talk, Asean has, with its member states, crammed swift change and breakthroughs into a diplomatic winning streak.

Old enemies Thailand and Burma have moved closer than ever toward settling their border disputes. Indonesia replaced its ailing president and managed—albeit tenuously—to avoid general civil war while Malaysia has arranged for a peaceful end to its strongman’s rule. India is coming to town this week as a full participant in such a summit for the first time. And Asean recently signed an anti-terrorism pact with the US, the first regional bloc to do so.

But for Asean boosters, the regional security forum earlier this year was a triumph—especially the meeting between US Secretary of State Colin Powell and his North Korean counterpart—and offered final proof of the bloc’s rebirth.

In Brunei, Powell used the Asean forum as a diplomatic platform for backdoor talks with North and South Korea after a skirmish at sea threatened to derail peace efforts.

Some observers maintain that Asean has not seen a rebirth at all. But many of them still agree that the regional body has achieved some impressive diplomatic marks this year.

“As far as Asean meetings are concerned, those have never lost their luster for the major powers. And Colin Powell’s meeting over coffee with the North Koreans is a convenient picture that [shows that] Asean is still relevant,” one Asian diplomat said.

The Koreas could not have taken their first steps toward reconciliation without Asean, some observers say.

“What other forum are they engaged in?” the diplomat asked of the North Koreans.

This year’s breakthrough there is a feather in the cap not just for Asean, but for Cambodia, too, said Kao Kim Hourn, executive director for the Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace.

North Korea bothered with Asean in the first place because of its “special relationship” with Cambodia, particularly the old friendship between King Norodom Sihanouk and North Korea’s former president Kim Il Sung, said Kao Kim Hourn, who is also an adviser on Asean affairs to Cambodia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Now events in North Korea are moving in the most positive direction in decades, and Asean is basking in a new glow. In the months since the brief meeting with the US, North Korea has opened itself up to the world. It is planning a free trade zone, had talks with Japan, opened a rail link to Seoul and—in a move that stunned observers—apologized for the kidnappings of Japanese citizens.

“Asean got North Korea to the summit, and Cambodia persuaded North Korea to participate,” Kao Kim Hourn said. “I think now Asean is a major broker.”

Additionally, there is a growing sense that the region’s relations with the US have improved in a way unimaginable a few years ago.

“I detect a new readiness by the [US] administration to deal with Asean as a group compared to dealing with the Asean governments individually. This helps Asean cohesion and helps Asean-US relations,” Asean Secretary-General Rodolfo Severino said earlier this year.

The US now considers Southeast Asia a new front in its war on terrorism, which led to a precedent-setting agreement between the US and Asean.

“The agreement...has even had a slight proliferation effect: No sooner was it signed than Beijing proposed a similar arrangement for the Asean Plus Three group, which informally links Southeast Asia to China, South Korea and Japan,” the Brookings Institute said in an opinion piece.

Global diplomacy after the Sept 11, 2001, attacks on the US has changed.

Singapore, for instance, has been urging the US to get back in touch with the Indonesian military. Singapore’s Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong told reporters in July that if the US doesn’t get behind Indonesia’s military and Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri, “the country could well break up.”

Already, US soldiers have gone to the southern Philippines to help its former colony stamp out the Abu Sayyaf—nearly a decade after the US closed military bases in the Philippines.

Another shift has been in the tone of talks with the US. While the US has been seen as pushy for years, it has gone out of its way to show Asean it does not want to revive the bad old days.

Less than three decades ago, the US was at an undeclared but still devastating war with three future Asean members—Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos—and has fought for or supported dictatorships in several Asean countries. Perhaps with this in mind, the US has been careful to clarify its message and reassure its new partners they come in peace.

“US troops are in Asia, have been in Asia for many years now and I think we have been a stabilizing influence in Asia. And for that reason, US President George W Bush is determined to keep US troops in this region as friends, not as foes, not as aggressors, seeking nothing but to help our friends feel secure in their own countries,” Powell, who served in the war in Vietnam and has been accused of covering up the My Lai massacre there, told reporters in July.

Despite the rave reviews and praise surrounding Asean’s supposed resurrection, there are still major crises waiting to be addressed. Most of them lie within Asean’s makeup itself, and its chartered devotion to “sovereignty.” This devotion can be felt in a number of places in a number of ways. But the first and most important place this issue crops up in is the China question.

“Asean looks to China with a certain ambivalence,” Kao Kim Hourn said.
On the one hand, companies in Asean salivate at China’s entry into the World Trade Organization and the prospect of China developing its 1 billion people into a consumer market.

Already, China’s influence can be felt in the region.

In the year 2000 alone, China approved $108 million in investment in Asean, an increase of 50 percent from 1999, the Wall Street Journal reported.

“Actual Chinese investment is probably much higher; Chinese firms circumvent currency controls by investing through offshore entities,” the Journal wrote.

Country by country, China and its money are already well on their way toward changing the region’s relationships. Chinese textile companies dominate in Cambodia. In the Philippines, China’s demand for Filipino electronics products increased a hundred-fold between 1995 and 2001, Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was quoted as saying last May, as China and Asean continued discussions on a free trade zone.

“The Philippines regards China as the catalyst for rapid economic expansion in Asia,” Arroyo said.

So, too, do Asean’s other members, and those foreign investors with their eyes—if not their money—trained on the region.

Between 1998 and 2000, for instance, trade between China and Indonesia reached $7.5 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported, summing up the Asean-Chinese economic relationship with the following vistas:
“In Vietnam, motorcycles made in China or from Chinese parts have as much as 70 percent of the market. In Indonesia, long dominated by Japanese makes, one in eight new motorcycles is Chinese. On the road to downtown Jakarta, billboards once the preserve of Japanese and South Korean companies now advertise products of Chinese consumer-goods maker Haier Group, which has plants in Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia.”

The China syndrome can be overstated, some observers caution. According to a monthly report from Societe Generale France think-tank titled, “China, Japan and Asia: Between Integration and Rivalries,” even if China keeps up a 7 percent growth per year, it will still take 25 years to reach the size of Japan’s gross national income—and another 50 years before it approaches Japan’s per capita income.

But the “engagement” is already under way.

Some Asean countries and companies are horrified when they realize those 1 billion Chinese pre-consumers are now a teeming pool of cheap workers—with a brand new members’ card in the World Trade Organization—that is competing with Asean’s wage-laborers. Last year alone, before its formal entry into the WTO, companies invested more than $46 billion in China.

“This has come at the expense of Asean,” Kao Kim Hourn said.

Economics aside, Asean countries aren’t sure what to think about China’s political influence, either. This, Kao Kim Hourn said, has driven Asean diplomacy for the last five years. In the first place, China’s growing influence drove Asean to drop years of resistance and admit Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and even Burma as members.

“I think the turning point was when Asean realized they had to bring in new members or risk having China influence the prospective new members,” Kao Kim Hourn said. “It was a way of putting a check on Chinese influence. Certainly, Asean does not want to get sucked into Chinese control.”

Between 1999 and 2001, trade between Asean and India increased from $7.6 billion to $9.88 billion, according to figures from the Indian government. And India, which has gone to war with China and today still looks frostily upon its neighboring giant while engaging in a “look East” policy, is eager to do more.

To date, the policy of “engaging” with India has changed the way China looks at the region, Kao Kim Hourn said.

“China never wanted to engage Asean collectively, but China has changed its policy,” he said.

China stepped in and bailed out Thailand during the free-fall that so tarnished Asean’s image, and this was at least partially motivated as a gesture of goodwill toward the whole region, Kao Kim Hourn said. .

It has also changed the way India sees Asean.

“Yes, Asean has evolved. It is much stronger. As a group, they are much stronger,” the Indian official said.

Some observers and officials dispute claims that Asean is looking to India to balance Chinese influence, calling it an invention of the media.

Whatever their degree, the concerns over China’s influence have also created their own public-relations problems for Asean. By admitting Burma, which shares borders with China and India, Asean has subjected itself to continuing embarrassment as promises of “constructive engagement” have led to little real change.

The Burma question, in its turn, continues to throw up an issue made raw by the 1997-1998 financial crisis, particularly those raised to challenge the sanctity of “internal sovereignty.”

Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand originally came together to form Asean in 1967, four of those countries fresh from the experience of colonialism.

One of the main tenants of Asean since then has been the notion of “internal sovereignty,” where members have promised not to interfere in the other members’ domestic affairs. Boosters sometimes call it “the Asean way,” as a slight rebuke to the internationalist approach of the European Union.

While the measure—by whatever name—may have kept stronger nations from bullying weaker ones, it also, to many critics, kept them from banding together when the regional economy began to fold in the late 1990s.

It has also underwritten thuggery that has embarrassed the region, critics say.
Besides Burma’s rogue government, Asean has had little to no answer to Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s jailing of a popular opposition figure, Indonesia’s reign of terror in East Timor, Vietnam’s crackdown on the Montagnards, alleged kidnapping of dissidents on Cambodian soil, or the Philippines’ ongoing battle with Islamic terrorists.

Many of these issues have spilled across borders and put Asean nations at odds with one another, all while the regional bloc itself has sat quietly.

The issue is not likely to go away. As the region continues to develop, and countries begin to move toward more and more democratic forms of government, critics say Asean partners are going to face pressure from their own people and from international human rights groups to protect those gains.

Overall, critics say, the policy is handicapping Asean’s long-term diplomatic potential.

“Asean works exclusively on a consensus basis, and does not interfere in the domestic affairs of member states,” the Societe Generale France report states. “This seriously limits its ability to take the initiative and its responsiveness, particularly during times of crisis such as 1997.”

For Kao Kim Hourn, part of the problem is in the makeup of the organization itself.
“Asean is not together when it comes to international treaties. That’s why its important for Asean to coordinate its position,” he said.

Cambodia could have much to say about the internal sovereignty issue, even if its government won’t say it for itself. After all, it was the breaking of that rule that helped end three decades of civil war in this country.

In the 1980s, Indonesia broke with its Asean partners and began to push for a settlement between the Vietnamese-backed Heng Samrin government and the factions. Their efforts eventually led to Untac—to which Indonesia contributed the highest proportion of peacekeepers.

It was an example to some observers of how flawed the notion of Asean unity could be.

“Indonesia’s gradually assertive role in the Cambodian peace effort demonstrated that Jakarta was not entirely willing to place its commitment to Asean solidarity above its own national interests,” an analysis in the US Library of Congress states.

It’s not just in Burma and the financial crises that Asean’s non-interference policies complicate and sometimes confound progress. Nowhere is the nexus of past, present and future challenges to Asean’s diplomacy more pronounced than in the Spratly Islands.

The islands, which have a total land area of 5 km spread over 800,000 square km of the South China Sea, are the region’s main flashpoint. The islands are claimed, in parts or wholly, by Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and China.

All but Brunei have armed soldiers, sailors and marines stationed in the islands. Already, there have been pitched battles, both military and diplomatic, over the chain, which is believed to sit atop an estimated 17.7 billion tons of oil and gas and command the strategic sea lanes vital to running business between East and West.

While Asean ministers have drafted and are scheduled to sign a general statement on “a code of conduct” for the islands, members like Vietnam have said nothing short of a full treaty will settle the matter. And here again the China question comes roaring back.

“We all know it’s not solved,” one Asian observer said. “We’re dealing with China here. That’s the main ‘Other.’ There is no firm de jure [formalized legal] agreement.”

The Spratlys dispute opened its modern era in the 1970s and tensions have not let up since. It has several times led to violence, the most prominent being China’s 1988 naval battle with Vietnam that left at least 70 Vietnamese missing.

While matters have since settled into an uneasy stalemate, the question isn’t dead.

Nonetheless, some observers say, Asean has weathered the Spratlys storm well—which is further proof it should not cure itself of its “internal sovereignty” fetish.

“Asean has been discussing this for years and it has not stopped from getting other work done,” the Asian observer said, adding that the reform movement pushing for regional standards of conduct and changing the sovereignty plank has faded during Southeast Asia’s slow crawl out of its financial hole.

If true, that may be in part because critics of the sovereignty platform cannot overcome the pressure of political correctness. Much of the debate calling for rethinking intervention arose with the 1997 financial crisis, and much of it focused on what language to use.

Over the course of barely a year, the reformers’ phrase changed from “constructive intervention” to “flexible engagement” to “enhanced interaction.”
“The countries of Southeast Asia,” critic M Rajaretnam said in a 1998 speech, “are in a state of crisis. Currently, they face serious economic and political turmoil....[with] no parallel in its post-colonial history.”

The question of sovereignty is going to be especially crucial where Asean’s four newest—and poorest—members are concerned. The question is whether “non-interference” means every nation to itself, observers say.

“To be relevant, [the Asean Regional Forum] must look beyond being ‘a forum only for the exchange of views,’” a release from the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific was quoted in the Asian Wall Street Journal. “A more robust institutionalization is needed where problem-solving and measures to prevent—and possibly resolve—conflicts and disputes are a reality rather than abstract ideals.”

This is true of Cambodia, which more than any other Asean country is a tribute to the promise—and pitfalls—of intervention.

For many observers here, “non-interference” is stranding the nation just when a more concerted effort could bring it out of the wilderness it has been wandering for nearly three decades.

“I’ve got the feeling that the foreign policy of most countries is stability,” Cambodian democracy activist Lao Mong Hay said. “And if Cambodia is going to have democracy and development, it’s going to be up to the Cambodians themselves.”

Cambodia is itself an argument for intervention. For better or for worse, the country today is the product of foreign intervention, without which, as Lao Mong Hay likes to say, “We would have fought to the last Cambodian.”

But the country’s current stability should not become a reason for donors and other partners to leave.

To watch donors and “partners” scurry away from tough problems—all in the interests of Cambodia’s “sovereignty”—is disgusting, Lao Mong Hay says.

“Many people have got the feeling that, well, now the government has put an end to the Khmer Rouge and armed struggle—and that’s it,” he said. “It’s unfortunate donors cannot wait around a bit longer.”

This is a diplomatic lesson for Asean as well. During the 1980s, when the Vietnamese occupied Cambodia and kept the Khmer Rouge clustered in the jungle, Asean followed the US’ lead and refused to recognize the Hanoi-backed regime—instead recognizing as the rightful government the regime that had killed more than 1 million Cambodians.

Kao Kim Hourn, who long lobbied for Cambodia’s entry into, and engagement with, Asean, acknowledged that the group has much to make up for, saying Asean’s richer members should recommit to helping the poorer ones.

“Certainly, the old members should have been more forthcoming in helping the new members,” he said.

Nonetheless, even if the economic benefits of membership in Asean are a long way off, the diplomatic ones are worth their weight in gold, Kao Kim Hourn said.
“Before, Cambodia was completely isolated in the region. Now, we have more friends,” he said, adding that the symbolism of Cambodia’s chairing Asean and its meetings this year are priceless, too.

The entry of the newest members is perhaps on ongoing testimony to Asean diplomacy, Kao Kim Hourn said.

“Can you imagine Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia all getting along—ever?” he asked. “No way.”

And for some, the diplomatic gains of this year are not in spite of the ongoing obstacles to Asean’s success—but because of them.

Asean has fought back from its financial crisis, faced a new world cobbling itself together after Sept 11, embraced new members and now has a sharper, stronger sense of its mission than ever before.

“Asean has been around some good few years. It’s basically a group of moderate countries. We trade with everybody in the world,” one Asean diplomat said. “We want to make sure our citizens have a good life. That’s the common trend.”