ASEAN

ASEAN

ASEAN i

The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) wasestablished as an autonomous organization in 1968. It is a regionalcentre dedicated to the study of socio-political, security andeconomic trends and developments in Southeast Asia and its widergeostrategic and economic environment. The Institute’s research programmes are the Regional EconomicStudies (RES, including ASEAN and APEC), Regional Strategic andPolitical Studies (RSPS), and Regional Social and Cultural Studies(RSCS).ISEAS Publications, an established academic press, has issuedmore than 1,000 books and journals. It is the largest scholarlypublisher of research about Southeast Asia from within the region.ISEAS Publications works with many other academic and tradepublishers and distributors to disseminate important research andanalyses from and about Southeast Asia to the rest of the world.The Southeast Asia Background Series is a major componentof the Public Outreach objective of ISEAS in promoting abetter awareness among the general public about trends anddevelopments in Southeast Asia. The books published in the Southeast Asia Background Seriesare made possible by a generous grant from the K.S. SandhuMemorial Fund.

ASEAN

First published in Singapore in 2008 byISEAS PublicationsInstitute of Southeast Asian Studies30 Heng Mui Keng Terrace, Pasir PanjangSingapore 119614E-mail: [email protected] • Website: bookshop.iseas.edu.sgAll rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by anymeans, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast AsianStudies.© 2008 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, SingaporeThe responsibility for facts and opinions in this publication restsexclusively with the author and his interpretations do not necessarilyreflect the views or the policy of the publisher or its supporters.ISEAS Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataSeverino, Rodolfo C.ASEAN.(Southeast Asia Background Series)1. ASEAN.2. Regionalism—Southeast Asia.3. Regionalism (International organization)I. TitleJZ5333.5 A9S491 2008ISBN 978-981-230-750-7 (hardcover)Typeset by International Typesetters Pte LtdPrinted in Singapore by Seng Lee Press Pte Ltd

Contents vi 1 About the Author 111 Beginnings and Expansion 412 ASEAN and Regional Security 593 ASEAN and the Regional Economy 794 Working Together for the Common Good 1035 Relations with the Rest of the World 1116 Building a Community Referencesv

About the AuthorRodolfo C. Severino is a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at theInstitute of Southeast Asian Studies, where he completed thebook Southeast Asia in Search of an ASEAN Community. Publishedby ISEAS, the book is animated by the insights gained bythe author when he was ASEAN Secretary-General in 1998–2002 and from his years as ASEAN Senior Official for thePhilippines. His last position in the Philippine Governmentwas that of Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs, 1992–97. He hadbeen Philippine Ambassador to Malaysia, among other assign-ments in the Philippine Foreign Service, which includedpostings in Washington, D. C., and Beijing. He is a graduateof the Ateneo de Manila University and of the Johns HopkinsUniversity School of Advanced International Studies.

Chapter 1Beginnings andExpansionOn 8 August 1967, five men representing five Southeast Asiancountries signed in the Thai capital of Bangkok a declarationestablishing a new regional association — the Association ofSoutheast Asian Nations. The five men were Adam Malik,Presidium Minister for Political Affairs and Minister for ForeignAffairs of Indonesia; Tun Abdul Razak, Deputy Prime Minister,Minister for Defence and Minister for National Developmentof Malaysia; Narciso Ramos, Secretary of Foreign Affairs ofthe Philippines; S. Rajaratnam, Minister for Foreign Affairs ofSingapore; and Thanat Khoman, Minister for Foreign Affairsof Thailand. The document that they signed, entitled the ASEAN Declara-tion and thereafter also known as the Bangkok Declaration, hadfive preambular and five operative paragraphs. It pledged theirgovernments to seven “aims and purposes”:• Economic growth, social progress and cultural development;• Regional peace and stability;• Economic, social, cultural, technical, scientific and adminis- trative collaboration;• Mutual assistance in training and research; 1

2 ASEAN• Collaboration in agriculture and industry, trade, transporta- tion and communications, and the improvement of living standards;• Promotion of Southeast Asian studies; and• Cooperation with regional and international organizations.Underlying these objectives was the common determination ofthe five countries to live in peace with one another, to settletheir disputes peacefully rather than by force, and to cooperatewith one another for common purposes. Proclaiming itself inthe Bangkok Declaration to be “open for participation to allStates in the South-East Asian Region subscribing to (its) aims,principles and purposes”, the new association was the first toseek to bring all of Southeast Asia — the area between theSouth Asian sub-continent in the west and the Pacific Oceanin the east and between China, Japan and Korea in the northand Australia in the south — into one inter-governmentalorganization. To be sure, there were existing regional inter-state organiza-tions in Southeast Asia. One was the MAPHILINDO of Malaysia,the Philippines and Indonesia. The other was the Associationof Southeast Asia (ASA) among Malaysia, the Philippines andThailand. However, these were narrow in purpose and limitedin base and scope. MAPHILINDO consisted of the three Malay-based populations of Southeast Asia and sought to subsumetheir conflicting territorial claims and ideological differences.ASA confined itself to economic and cultural purposes andexcluded the largest country in the region, Indonesia, andthe states of mainland Southeast Asia other than Thailand.Both had rather short lives. MAPHILINDO lasted only from1963 until ASEAN superseded it in 1967. ASA existed for-mally from 1961 to 1967, closing down shortly after ASEANwas formed.

Beginnings and Expansion 3 On the other hand, ASEAN imposed no limits on itsambitions and goals as a regional entity and set for itself acomprehensive array of objectives for regional cooperation. Asnoted above, ASEAN explicitly pronounced itself open to mem-bership to all Southeast Asian nations. Indeed, the ministersof ASEAN’s founding nations had sought the inclusion ofBurma and Cambodia as original members. However, bothcountries turned down the invitations, being anxious to preservetheir status as resolutely non-aligned nations and were suspiciousof the orientation of the new association in the Cold War, whichwas then at its height. Subsequently, after the unification ofVietnam and the consolidation of Laos under a new regime in1975, ASEAN reached out to the Indochinese states, a processcut short by the Vietnamese entry into Cambodia towards theend of 1978. After the settlement of the Cambodian conflict in1991–93, ASEAN did so again. By 1999, ASEAN had embracedall of Southeast Asia (until the emergence in 2002 of the newnation of Timor-Leste, which has expressed its desire to joinASEAN eventually). Despite periodic predictions of its demise, notonly has ASEAN remained alive for more than 40 years; it hasconstantly adjusted to changing times — albeit not sufficiently,according to its critics — and has served as the hub and managerof a growing number of broad regional enterprises. The majorpowers, as well as the United Nations and its agencies, have,in a continuing process, sought to broaden and deepen theirassociation with it. UNPROMISING CIRCUMSTANCESASEAN was born in the most unpromising circumstances. Tobegin with, the founding nations were marked by great diver-sity. The people of Indonesia were overwhelmingly Muslim

4 ASEANin religion but blessed with a wide variety of cultural traits.Malaysia was made up of the Malay sultanates and the StraitSettlements (Singapore having broken off in 1965) on the MalayPeninsula and Sabah and Sarawak across the South China Sea.It was politically controlled by Malay Muslims but economicallydominated by Chinese Malaysians. Thailand was predominantlyTheravada Buddhist, and the Philippines Christian. Singaporewas a multi-ethnic society built on racial and religious toleranceand equilibrium. The Philippines, Singapore and Thailand hadsignificant Muslim minorities. Not least, ethnic and religiousgroups straddled national boundaries. The ebb and flow of migrants and traders throughout mari-time Southeast Asia had been interrupted by colonial rule — theBritish in Malaysia and Singapore, the Dutch in Indonesia,and the Spanish and then the Americans in the Philippines.Only Thailand escaped Western colonial rule (but not Westernpressure) by dint of astute Thai diplomacy and the unresolvedstalemate between the British and the French on mainlandSoutheast Asia. Their different colonial legacies had drawncurtains of ignorance and separation between the nations ofSoutheast Asia, cut off thitherto flourishing contacts among theirpeoples, and established new patterns of trade. Those legaciesbrought forth a variety of national experiences and producedupon independence a diversity of national institutions. Theyalso shaped divergent strategic outlooks. Malaysia and Singaporehad joined Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdomin the Five-Power Defence Arrangement. The Philippines wasformally allied with the United States. Thailand had a defencecommitment from the U.S. Indonesia remained non-aligned. From colonial rule and the subsequent formation ofnew states had emerged a number of territorial and otherpolitical disputes among the maritime states of Southeast Asia

Beginnings and Expansion 5— between Malaysia and Indonesia, between Malaysia andSingapore, between Malaysia and the Philippines. Indonesia hadjust abandoned its policy of “confrontation” against Malaysiaand Singapore. Malaysia and Singapore had undergone anacrimonious separation. The Philippines continued to lay claimto the North Borneo territory that had joined Malaysia as thestate of Sabah. In the broader region of Southeast Asia, the Vietnamconflict was raging, dragging in Cambodia and Laos, threateningThailand, and upsetting the stability of the region as a whole.Feeling besieged by the Soviet Union in the north and theUnited States in the south, China was explicitly hostile to theSoutheast Asian states, including post-Sukarno Indonesia, andto the alliances that most of them had with the West. Theexcesses of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in Chinahad spilled over to its south, exacerbating the mutual hostilitybetween China and ASEAN’s founding nations, which, moreover,felt threatened by communist insurgencies and subversion. TheCold War was at peak intensity. It was in these unpromising circumstances that ASEAN wasborn. Paradoxically enough, it was also these circumstancesthat impelled the founding states, in their wisdom, to establishASEAN. They did so in order to be able to manage their disputesamicably and prevent them from developing into conflict. Itwas to transcend their ethnic, cultural and religious differencesin the pursuit of their common interests. It was to bridge thegaps of ignorance and alienation between them. It was todissipate the mutual suspicions among them. It was also tokeep Southeast Asia from being an arena for the quarrels ofthe strong. At the same time, there was hope — vague at thetime — that regional cooperation, as well as regional stability,would help in advancing national development.

6 ASEAN ASEAN was to be the venue and process in which commoninterests would be identified and pursued in cooperative ways.One interest was in the peaceful management of disputes andproblems between Southeast Asian countries. This was to beensured by developing networks of leaders, ministers and officialsand a culture and habits of consultation and dialogue. Anotherinterest was in insulating the region, to the extent possible,from the conflicts and tensions of the Cold War. At the sametime, ASEAN was to engage the major powers in benign andconstructive ways in the affairs of the region — first in itseconomic development and, eventually, in consultations anddialogue on regional security and stability. Another interestwas in healing the divisions of Southeast Asia when globaland regional conditions permitted it. Another was the mutualreassurance that no member-state would interfere in another’sdomestic affairs, such as, for example, by exploiting ethnic,racial and religious divisions and other problems within itsneighbours in order to advance its own national agenda.Another would be in the cooperative development of theregional economy. Underlying all this would be the cultivationof national and personal stakes among the states and peoplesof Southeast Asia in regional cooperation and consensus. THE FIRST SUMMITAfter nine years of feeling their way in regional cooperationand building relationships, ASEAN’s founding states took amajor step forward by holding its first summit meeting inBali in February 1976. At that first summit, the ASEAN leaders— Soeharto of Indonesia, Hussein Onn of Malaysia, FerdinandMarcos of the Philippines, Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore, andKukrit Pramoj of Thailand — codified the regional norms for

Beginnings and Expansion 7inter-state relations in the region. As laid down in the Treaty ofAmity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia, these norms were:• Respect for the independence, sovereignty, equality, territorial integrity and national identity of all nations;• Freedom from external interference, subversion or coercion;• Non-interference in the internal affairs of one another;• The peaceful settlement of disputes;• Renunciation of the threat or use of force; and• Effective cooperation among themselves.Fourteen nations outside ASEAN have subsequently acceded tothe treaty. The summit also established a rudimentary central secre-tariat and formalized the ministerial forum for economic co-operation. HEALING THE DIVIDEFrom the beginning, ASEAN’s founding nations envisioned allof Southeast Asia within the association, the region’s Cold-Warand Vietnam-War divisions healed. Accordingly, ASEAN reachedout to a unified Vietnam and a consolidated Laos after theIndochina conflict had come to an end. However, this processwas interrupted when Vietnam invaded Cambodia and, at thebeginning of 1979, seized Phnom Penh. Although the purposeof the action was to overthrow the genocidal Khmer Rougeregime in Cambodia and to end its depredations against theVietnamese communities in the Vietnam-Cambodia border areas,ASEAN resisted it, feeling threatened by a perceived Vietnameseexpansionism and concerned over the possible spread of Sovietpower, the Soviet Union being perceived as Vietnam’s principalsupporter.

8 ASEAN Meanwhile, Brunei Darussalam had joined ASEAN on 7January 1984, six days after achieving independent nationhood. After the withdrawal of Vietnamese forces from Cambodiain 1989, the 1991 Paris settlement of the Cambodian problem,and the establishment of an elected Cambodian government in1993, the way was clear for the membership of Vietnam, Laosand Cambodia, as well as of Myanmar (as Burma had beenin the meantime renamed). The only conditions were thatthe prospective members were to adhere to ASEAN’s “aims,principles and purposes” and that they would accede to allASEAN agreements. Thus, after a brief period as observer, Vietnam was admittedinto ASEAN on 28 July 1995. Laos and Myanmar followed on23 July 1997. Cambodia was to have been admitted on the sameoccasion. However, factional fighting within the Cambodiangovernment earlier in July delayed its ASEAN membership.Following the agreed redistribution of political power inPhnom Penh, Cambodia finally gained admission into ASEANon 30 April 1999. With that, all of Southeast Asia had comeinto the ASEAN family, closing the divisions between ASEANand non-ASEAN and between maritime and mainland South-east Asia. This has since been regarded as a major contribution toregional peace and stability. Regional peace and stability, thecalculation goes, would be better served by a Southeast Asiatogether within ASEAN than by a region split into ASEAN andnon-ASEAN. To be sure, the entry of four new members increased bothASEAN’s political, economic, cultural and historical diversityand the complexity of ASEAN’s decision-making processes.Moreover, all four were making transitions, each in its own way,from centrally planned to market economies and were suffering

Beginnings and Expansion 9from shortages of human skills and institutional weaknesses.Yet, this diversity and the new members’ needs had made itall the more necessary to bring the entirety of Southeast Asiainto ASEAN, with all countries in Southeast Asia taking partin the regional consensus, having a stake in regional peace,stability and solidarity, and benefiting from regional economicand social cooperation.

Chapter 2ASEAN and RegionalSecurityOf the ASEAN Declaration’s seven “aims and purposes”, onlyone refers to regional peace and security. The rest have to dowith economic, social, cultural, training, technical and scientificcooperation, and the promotion of Southeast Asian studies. Thedownplaying of political and security matters was deliberate.ASEAN’s founders wished to avoid the impression that the newassociation would serve as a defence pact or military allianceor that it would favour one side or the other in the Cold War.They did not want ASEAN to be perceived as a threat to anyoneor to continue being an arena — actual or potential — for thequarrels of the strong. Yet, it is clear that, from the beginning, ASEAN’s largerpurposes had to do mainly with regional peace and security— although, emphatically, solely through the use of non-militarymeans. In The ASEAN Reader (K. S. Sandhu et al, compilers,Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1992), ThanatKhoman, who, as Thailand’s foreign minister, was one of thesignatories to the Declaration that established ASEAN, lookedback to the association’s founding and wrote: But why did this region need an organization for co- operation? 11

12 ASEAN The reasons were numerous. The most important of them was the fact that, with the withdrawal of the colonial powers, there would have been a power vacuum which could have attracted outsiders to step in for political gains. As the colonial masters had discouraged any form of intra- regional contact, the idea of neighbors working together in a joint effort was thus to be encouraged. Secondly, as many of us knew from experience, especially with the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization or SEATO, co-operation among disparate members located in distant lands could be ineffective. We had therefore to strive to build co-operation among those who lived close to one another and shared common interests. Thirdly, the need to join forces became imperative for the Southeast Asian countries in order to be heard and to be effective. This was the truth that we sadly had to learn. The motivation for our efforts to band together was thus to strengthen our position and protect ourselves against Big Power rivalry. In the first place, ASEAN was conceived to ensure that themany disputes between Southeast Asian countries would beresolved by peaceful means. This, in turn, would create theenvironment for the development of the nations in the area. Thechange of regime in Indonesia in the mid-1960s, from Sukarnoto Soeharto, had led to a sharp break with the policies of thepast — to the end of economic neglect at home and theabandonment of “confrontation” abroad. ASEAN would lockin Indonesia’s new policies of accommodation and cooperationwith Jakarta’s neighbours. The Southeast Asian countries wouldhave such deep stakes in ASEAN that they would not allowtheir disputes, like the Philippines’ claim to Sabah, to erupt intoviolent conflict. They rejected outside attempts to interfere intheir affairs, as some former colonial powers had tried to do in

ASEAN and Regional Security 13the early years of the Southeast Asian countries’ independenceand as China was perceived as doing. Nevertheless, it wasmade clear that the association and its members were open toconstructive relations with the rest of the world; indeed, theywould actively seek the engagement of countries importantto them. At the same time, ASEAN members gave mutualreassurance that they would not interfere in one another’sinternal affairs or threaten or use force against one another.They committed themselves to the peaceful management andsettlement of disputes between them. Not least, they madeit clear that the association was open to membership of allcountries in Southeast Asia, signifying their commitment toreconciliation and eventual solidarity among them all. Addressing a seminar on ASEAN in Jakarta in August 1996,Ali Alatas, Indonesia’s long-time foreign minister, declared: (I)t was undeniably the convergence in political outlook among the five original members, their shared convictions on national priority objectives and on how best to serve these objectives in the evolving strategic environment in East Asia, which impelled them to form ASEAN. THE ZONE OF PEACE, FREEDOM AND NEUTRALITYIn November 1971, ASEAN had issued a declaration proclaimingSoutheast Asia as “a Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality,free from any form or manner of interference by outsidePowers”. With the Cold War having ended, the reference to“neutrality” in the ZOPFAN Declaration may seem outdatedand irrelevant today. However, it continues to be valid if it isregarded as a commitment by ASEAN to seek friendship withall and to be hostile to none, a commitment that has since

14 ASEANcharacterized ASEAN’s stance towards the rest of the world,even as it continues to reject “interference by outside Powers”in its affairs. THE SOUTHEAST ASIA NUCLEAR WEAPONS-FREE ZONEAn “essential component” of ZOPFAN has been the treaty onthe Southeast Asia Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone (SEANWFZ). Inthat treaty, the regional states reassure one another that theywill not “develop, manufacture or otherwise acquire, possessor have control over nuclear weapons; station or transportnuclear weapons by any means; or test or use nuclearweapons” in the region. They also undertake not to allow anyother state to do any of those things except for the matterof transport, an exception that was a concession to thosewith military or ship-servicing arrangements with nuclear-weapon states, specifically the United States. Through thetreaty, the Southeast Asian states seek to prevent the intro-duction of nuclear arms into the region. Signed by the leadersof Southeast Asia in 1995 and having entered into force inMarch 1997, the SEANWFZ treaty is ASEAN’s contribution tothe global nuclear non-proliferation regime. It is one of severalsuch nuclear weapons-free zones in the world, the others beingin Antarctica, Latin America and the Caribbean, the SouthPacific, and Africa. ASEAN is currently negotiating with four of the fiverecognized nuclear-weapon states — France, Russia, the UnitedKingdom and the United States — the terms of the protocolthrough which those states would respect the provisions ofthe SEANWFZ treaty. China has expressed its readiness to signthe protocol.

ASEAN and Regional Security 15 In the face of looming energy shortages and rising energycosts, heightened consideration is now being given to nuclearpower as a source of electricity in the future. Indications ofthis are media reports about plans by Indonesia, Malaysia,Thailand and Vietnam to harness nuclear energy for thegeneration of electricity. In this light, beyond abjuringnuclear weapons ASEAN must pay attention to the possiblediversion of enriched uranium or plutonium to militarypurposes, the safety of nuclear facilities, and the disposal ofnuclear waste. ASEAN would also do well to look beyond nuclearweaponry to other weapons of mass destruction, specifically,biological and chemical arms. TREATY OF AMITY AND COOPERATIONOn 24 February 1976, the Presidents or Prime Ministers ofthe then-five ASEAN countries signed the Treaty of Amity andCooperation in Southeast Asia. In the treaty, ASEAN laid downits norms for inter-state relations:• Respect for the independence, sovereignty, equality, territorial integrity and national identity of all nations;• Freedom from external interference, subversion or coercion;• Non-interference in the internal affairs of one another;• The peaceful settlement of disputes;• Renunciation of the threat or use of force; and• Effective cooperation among themselves.Each party pledged to refrain from participating “in anyactivity which shall constitute a threat to the political andeconomic stability, sovereignty, or territorial integrity” ofanother.

16 ASEAN The ASEAN countries’ adherence to these norms, togetherwith the network of personal relationships that ASEAN hasfostered, has helped to stabilize the relations among them andreduce the possibility of violent conflict between any two ofthem. The treaty also provides for a ministerial-level High Councilthat would “take cognizance of the existence of disputes orsituations likely to disturb regional peace and harmony” shouldthe parties directly concerned be unable to resolve a disputethrough negotiations. If necessary, the High Council would“recommend appropriate measures for the prevention of adeterioration of the dispute or the situation”. Thus, contrary tothe belief of many, the High Council is not a dispute-settlementmechanism in the sense of having the authority to issuebinding decisions. Even this limited role of the High Councilhas not been activated, with ASEAN countries preferring tosubmit their legal disputes to the International Court of Justicein The Hague or to the International Tribunal for the Law ofthe Sea in Hamburg. Indeed, ASEAN apparently did not expectthe High Council to be used soon after its establishment, asthe ASEAN foreign ministers did not adopt its rules ofprocedure until July 2001. However, the very existence andavailability of the High Council, as well as ASEAN countries’willingness to submit their legal disputes to internationaladjudication, underscore ASEAN’s commitment to the peacefulsettlement of disputes. Brunei Darussalam acceded to the treaty in June 1987. InDecember of that year, the treaty was amended to allowaccession by non-regional states. A non-regional party tothe treaty can participate in the High Council only if it is“directly involved in the dispute to be settled through theregional processes”.

ASEAN and Regional Security 17 Subsequently, Southeast Asian countries seeking admissioninto ASEAN first acceded to the treaty, just as they had to signon to other, mostly economic, ASEAN agreements. Papua NewGuinea, an observer in ASEAN, signed the treaty in 1989 asa non-regional state. More recently, after ASEAN adopted theHigh Council’s rules of procedure in 2001, other non-regionalstates acceded to it: China and India in October 2003, Japanand Pakistan in July 2004, the Republic of Korea and Russiain November 2004, Mongolia and New Zealand in July 2005,Australia in December 2005, and Timor-Leste in January 2007.With President Jacques Chirac having personally signed theinstrument, France completed the formalities of her accessionin the January 2007 ceremony at which the Timor-Leste foreignminister signed his country’s instrument of accession. Accessionwas particularly critical for Australia, which had been reluctantto join the treaty. However, Canberra had to sign on afterASEAN made accession to the treaty one of three requirementsfor participation in the East Asia Summit, convened for the firsttime in December 2005. Sri Lanka and Bangladesh acceded tothe treaty in August 2007. Thus, an ever-widening circle of countries has been adoptingASEAN’s norms for inter-state relations both as an expressionof policy and as a way of linking themselves more closely toASEAN. The European Union has apparently decided to seekaccession to the treaty as a group. The United Kingdom hasindicated its intention to accede to the treaty. Despite somemisgivings, the United States is reported to be consideringdoing so. The norms for inter-state relations codified in the Treatyof Amity and Cooperation have served as ASEAN’s guidingprinciples in the political and security sphere. Not only haveASEAN countries refrained from the use or threat of force

18 ASEANagainst one another, they have also stood together in upholdingthose norms with respect to the actions of others within theregion. SOLIDARITY ON THE CAMBODIAN PROBLEMASEAN gained international prominence when it led thediplomatic resistance to Vietnam’s incursion into Cambodia inthe late 1970s and its subsequent occupation of that countryfor almost all of the 1980s. Although the Vietnamese actionoverthrew the murderous Khmer Rouge and sent them fleeingout of Phnom Penh and other heavily populated areas of thecountry, ASEAN, flexing the diplomatic muscle of its politicalsolidarity, opposed it on the ground that changing anothercountry’s regime by force was unacceptable. The strategicconsideration underpinning the application of this ASEANprinciple was the notion that Vietnam’s westward militarymove threatened Thailand and the region’s power balance.There was also the perception that Vietnam’s advance wouldenlarge the influence of the Soviet Union, Vietnam’s principalbacker at the time, and thus upset the regional balance. Inthis, ASEAN had the support of China, the United States,Japan, most of Western Europe, and the majority at the UnitedNations General Assembly, where ASEAN led the campaign tokeep Cambodia’s UN seat for the Coalition Government ofDemocratic Kampuchea, the resistance coalition against theVietnamese-installed regime in Phnom Penh. At the sametime, ASEAN led the search for a political settlement of theCambodian problem, which involved the participation of allthe contending factions in Cambodia and eventually of the fivepermanent members of the UN Security Council. A settlementwas finally arrived at in 1991 through a series of conferences

ASEAN and Regional Security 19in Paris following ASEAN-brokered and Indonesia-led meetingsamong the Cambodian parties. THE ASYLUM SEEKERSA problem arising from the turmoil in Indochina was thatof the “asylum-seekers”, the hundreds of thousands of Viet-amese who, by sea or on land, fled Vietnam after its re-unification in 1975 or were forced out by the authorities there.A similar exodus took place of Cambodians escaping fromthe atrocities of the Khmer Rouge and, on a smaller scale, oftribal minorities who had fought on the American side inLaos. The massive numbers of refugees fleeing across landboundaries to the border areas of Thailand, as well as China, orlanding in rickety vessels on the shores of Malaysia, Indonesia,the Philippines and Singapore, as well as Hong Kong, werelooked upon by those countries and by ASEAN as a securityproblem. The arrival of enormous numbers of refugees disruptedthe lives of communities in which they landed, even as inter-national aid often raised the living standards of the asylum-seekers above those of the indigenous population, thuscreating social tensions. The need to support the arrivals placeda heavy strain on the resources of the reluctant ASEAN hosts.In some cases, the influx of refugees — many of those fromVietnam were ethnic Chinese — threatened the delicate racialbalance of the affected communities. It also raised the possibilityof government agents being infiltrated among the arrivals. Atthe same time, there was the concern over possible actionstaken by the arrivals against the governments of the countriesthat they had fled. The whole issue further strained relationsbetween Vietnam and ASEAN countries.

20 ASEAN Acting in solidarity, ASEAN took a common position onthe refugee problem. While the countries of first asylumtolerated the temporary stay of the refugees, they insistedon two things. One was that the developed countries shouldtake in qualified refugees for permanent settlement. The otherwas that the countries of origin should agree to take backthe rest. Meanwhile, the international community — that is,the developed countries and the UN — should shoulder thebulk of the burden of supporting the refugees in the first-asylum camps. Eventually, ASEAN was to call for the expansionand acceleration of the Orderly Departure Programme, inwhich Vietnam, the resettlement countries and the UN HighCommissioner for Refugees had agreed, in 1979, to enableVietnamese who wanted to do so to emigrate in orderlyfashion, without having to undergo the hardships and dangersof escape. In the end, what resolved the refugee problem werethe stabilization of the domestic situations in Vietnam andLaos and the settlement of the Cambodian issue. Malaysia,the Philippines and Thailand, as well as, above all, China,voluntarily agreed to accept varying numbers of asylum-seekersfor permanent settlement. THE SOUTH CHINA SEAASEAN also brought regional solidarity to bear in dealing withChina on the complex situation in the South China Sea. (TheChinese do not call the area the South China Sea, but the SouthSea, while the Vietnamese refer to it as the Eastern Sea.) Foryears, China had refused to talk about the South China Sea withASEAN as a group or in any other multilateral forum, preferringto hold discussions with individual Southeast Asian claimants.In 1992, ASEAN, under the Philippines’ chairmanship, issued

ASEAN and Regional Security 21the Manila Declaration on the South China Sea calling for thepeaceful resolution of jurisdictional issues, the exercise of self-restraint in the area, and cooperation on a range of commonmaritime problems. The Chinese declined ASEAN’s invitationto sign the declaration. However, although only four ASEAN countries hadjurisdictional claims to parts of the South China Sea — indeed,those claims were in conflict among themselves — ASEAN, actingin solidarity, eventually got China to deal with the problem inan ASEAN-China context. ASEAN solidarity on the issue hadbeen given expression and impetus when the other ASEANgovernments provided strong backing for the Philippines afterthe latter discovered, in February 1995, Chinese installations onMischief Reef, a submerged feature just a little over one hundredkilometers from the Philippine archipelago. The stealthy Chinesemove was regarded as threatening to regional stability as wellas to Philippine security. Ultimately, the multilateral process that subsequentlydeveloped brought forth the Declaration on the Conduct ofParties in the South China Sea. Signed by the ASEAN andChinese foreign ministers on the day of the ASEAN-Chinasummit meeting in Phnom Penh in December 2002, thedeclaration committed the parties to the peaceful settlement ofdisputes in the area, to freedom of navigation and overflightthere, to “self-restraint” and refraining from “inhabiting”unoccupied land features, and to building mutual confidencethrough certain specific measures. The parties also pledgedto cooperate in environmental protection, scientific research,safety of navigation and communication, search and rescue,and the fight against transnational crime in the South ChinaSea. The ASEAN countries, together and individually, havebeen working with China on implementing the declaration. The

22 ASEANconclusion of the declaration, made possible both by ASEAN’scollective persistence and China’s eventual flexibility, has calmedthe situation in the South China Sea, a major step in preservingthe peace and stability of the region. Nevertheless, becausethe jurisdictional issues remain unresolved, the maritime areasemi-enclosed by Chinese and Southeast Asian territory con-tinues to be a potential source of contention, albeit less sothan in the recent past. THE QUESTION OF NON-INTERFERENCEA measure of regional stability is fostered by the ASEANcountries’ adherence to the universal principle of mutualnon-interference in the domestic affairs of nations. Contraryto the impression given by much media commentary, theprinciple is neither the invention nor the monopoly ofASEAN; rather, it dates back at least to the emergence of theconcept of the sovereignty of nations, commonly attributedto the Peace of Westphalia of 1648, which put an end toboth the Thirty Years’ War and the Eighty Years’ War andupheld the European nations’ sovereignty and freedom fromthe Holy Roman Empire. Without the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of nations, the entireinter-state system would collapse. Catastrophic wars haveresulted from attempts by states to interfere in the affairs ofothers. In the case of Southeast Asia, the particularly tenaciousemphasis on state sovereignty arises from the regional states’recent experience with colonialism and with attempts by theformer colonial powers to hold sway over them even aftertheir independence. Most felt threatened by the spasms ofChina’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, with China-inspired riots and strident rhetoric. They saw the Chinese hand

ASEAN and Regional Security 23in the communist insurgencies and subversion that they hadto struggle against. Southeast Asia’s attachment to the prin-ciple of non-interference also stems fundamentally from thegreat diversity among and within the nations of SoutheastAsia, from which arises the need for them to reassure oneanother that none would exploit that diversity for nationalpurposes. The absence of such mutual reassurance would tendto destabilize the region, if not threaten the security of thenations in it. Nevertheless, the definition of interference and the appli-cation of the principle have to adjust to changing times. Theglobal economy has become much more integrated than it hasever been since before the outbreak of World War I and hasinvolved a much larger expanse of the world. What happensin one economy often affects others, if not the global economyas a whole. The spread of information in all fields of humanendeavour has accelerated to the degree of being largelyinstantaneous, enabling people in one spot on earth to knowimmediately the details of what happens elsewhere. Humancontacts, no longer limited by geography, have expanded andintensified as a result of revolutionary advances in transporta-tion and information and communications technology, leadingto the convergence — or the collision — of cultures andvalues. In East Asia, the experience of the 1997–98 financialcrisis hammered home the recognition of how interlinkedthe national economies had become. ASEAN, subsequentlyjoined by China, Japan and Korea, launched a process forthe review and surveillance of national economies, as well asthe regional economy, and began to explore mechanisms forthe coordination of exchange rates, with their implicationsfor national monetary policy. These entail a certain measure

24 ASEANof intrusion in the domestic economies of nations, but theycould not be construed as interference. The disastrous effects of the burning of forests and peatland in Indonesia on neighbouring countries opened thesubject of Indonesia’s environmental and development policiesto regional discussion — with Jakarta’s participation. ASEAN’sRegional Haze Action Plan and the 2002 ASEAN Agreementon Transboundary Haze Pollution, which Indonesia signedbut, as of 2007, has not yet ratified, commit Jakarta toavoid acts in its territory that would cause harm beyond itsnational jurisdiction. ASEAN’s ultimately successful cooperativeresponse to the 2003 SARS crisis entailed actions at thenational level, regionally agreed upon, to stem the spread ofthe disease. In February 1986, the ASEAN foreign ministers issued astatement expressing ASEAN’s concern about the politicalturmoil in the Philippines and calling for its peaceful resolution.For several years now, ASEAN has been raising the domesticsituation in Myanmar with the Myanmar authorities, calling,among other things, for the release of leaders of the NationalLeague for Democracy from detention and a faster “transitionto democracy”. In September 2007, ASEAN used unusuallystrong language in declaring itself “appalled” by reportsof Myanmar security forces employing automatic firearmsagainst demonstrators and in conveying their “revulsion”to Myanmar officials. They “demanded that the Myanmargovernment immediately desist from the use of violenceagainst demonstrators”. At the same time, ASEAN hasexpressed its opposition to political and economic sanctionson Myanmar, not because of its adherence to some “doctrine”but because of geo-strategic considerations and the counter-productive nature of such sanctions.

ASEAN and Regional Security 25ENGAGING THE POWERSASEAN has sought to foster regional security and stability notby closing itself off to the world in a Fortress ASEAN but, onthe contrary, by seeking the engagement of the major powerswith Southeast Asia. ASEAN’s first initiative in this regard wasthe establishment of the system of Dialogue Partnerships.Starting cautiously with what was then called the EuropeanEconomic Community in 1972 (a partnership formalized in1977), ASEAN built the Dialogue system, engaging Japan in1973, Australia in 1974, New Zealand in 1975, and Canadaand the United States in 1977. Although they were initiallydriven by economic motives, the Dialogue Partnerships havehad a significant political and security dimension. ASEANleaders have cited the Dialogue system as a manifestation ofthe international community’s regard for ASEAN’s political andstrategic importance and its viability as a regional institution.It is because of this, as well as for economic reasons, that agrowing number of countries have sought Dialogue Partner-ships with ASEAN. China, India and Russia became DialoguePartners in 1996. The ASEAN foreign ministers’ annual “post-ministerialconferences” with their Dialogue Partners had turned froma preoccupation with economic concerns to political issues,especially after Vietnam’s incursion into Cambodia and withthe growing problem of the asylum-seekers arising out ofVietnam’s reunification, the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror, andthe Cambodian conflict. By 1992, Vietnam had been stabilized,the Cambodian problem had been settled, China’s politicaland economic reforms were taking hold, and the Cold Warhad ended. With a new configuration of power emerging inEast Asia and in the world at large, the January 1992 ASEAN

26 ASEANSummit directed that the Post-Ministerial Conferences be usedfor the intensification of political and security dialogues amongASEAN and its Dialogue Partners. When the officials of thosecountries met the next year in Singapore to consider thismandate, it became immediately clear that regional peace andsecurity could not be usefully discussed without the participa-tion of China, Russia and Vietnam. It was subsequently agreedthat a new, expanded forum should be set up, to be named theASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) and to include not only Chinaand Russia, but also the ASEAN observers at the time — PapuaNew Guinea, Vietnam and Laos. Since its initial ministerialmeeting in Bangkok in 1994, the ARF has expanded to includeCambodia and Myanmar when they became ASEAN observersin 1995 and 1996, respectively; India, when it was admitted asan ASEAN Dialogue Partner in 1996; Mongolia in 1999; NorthKorea in 2000; Pakistan in 2004; Timor-Leste in 2005; andBangladesh and Sri Lanka in 2007. The centrepiece of the ARF is the meeting of foreignministers, which is held on the occasion of the annual ASEANMinisterial Meeting and deals with outstanding regional securityissues and with the nature and processes of the forum. Nationalsecurity, defence, military and intelligence officials also attendit. The ARF senior officials meet earlier in the year to preparefor the ministerial meeting and discuss substantive issues ontheir own. Unfortunately, public attention is drawn to the ARF onlyon the occasion of the annual ministerial meetings, becauseof the presence on those occasions of personalities who areattractive to the media. However, many activities take placethroughout the year under ARF auspices that serve to buildmutual confidence, develop useful networks, promote thecapacity to cooperate on common problems, and foster mutual

ASEAN and Regional Security 27learning. The areas in which such activities are conductedhave included search and rescue, disaster relief, the detectionand removal of landmines, the prevention of the diversionof nuclear materials for weapons purposes, transnationalcrime, terrorism, maritime security, and small arms and lightweapons. Senior defence officials have met with increasingfrequency, and defence colleges have formed their ownnetwork. Since 1994, the ARF has served as the only Asia-Pacific-wide forum in which powers great and small discuss regionalsecurity issues in a comprehensive manner — a fact of nosmall importance. For example, at the 2 August 2007 ARFministerial meeting, if its Chairman’s Statement is to be anindication, discussions took place on the nuclear situation onthe Korean peninsula, Myanmar, Timor-Leste, Thailand, theSouth China Sea, the Israel-Palestine conflict, Iran’s nuclearactivities, Iraq and Afghanistan, arms-trafficking, the NuclearNon-proliferation Treaty, terrorism, and maritime security. Thediscussions clarify national positions; on certain issues, theylead to regional consensus. They encourage cooperation in agrowing number of practical areas. Through such discussionsand cooperative activities, mutual confidence is built. TheARF process — the ministerial and senior-official securitydiscussions and the security-related cooperative activities— provides a valuable venue for protagonists in contentiousissues to meet informally in those many instances in whichquiet diplomacy, rather than formal, public gatherings, is calledfor. Yet, media commentators often deride the ARF as anineffectual “talk shop” that has little impact on importantsecurity issues. This is largely because the forum has not beendirectly involved in dealing substantively with the prominent,

28 ASEANmedia-attractive security “flashpoints” in East Asia — NorthKorea, Taiwan and the South China Sea — although it mustbe said that the ARF does provide a platform for clarifyingnational positions on these issues. The nuclear problem in North Korea is being dealt with inthe Six-Party Talks, which seem to be making progress. Chinaconsiders Taiwan to be its internal affair and refuses to discussit in a multilateral setting. ASEAN and China are working outthe issues related to the South China Sea by themselves. Whilea larger forum like the ARF would be too broad to be able tosort out these complex problems in practical ways, the ARFmight usefully continue to discuss them. The year after its inaugural ministerial meeting, the ARFadopted a “concept paper” that laid down three stages for theforum’s development. The first would be the building of mutualconfidence. The second would be “preventive diplomacy”, that is,preventing conflict through diplomatic means. The third wouldhave been “Development of Conflict-Resolution Mechanisms”but was watered down to “elaboration of approaches toconflicts”. The ARF has of late been struggling to find ways of movingthe forum from confidence building alone to preventivediplomacy. The steps agreed upon so far have been limitedto devising institutional mechanisms. A small ARF Unit hasbeen set up in the ASEAN Secretariat. A register of “expertsand eminent persons” has been put together, with theexperts and eminent persons having met twice, in 2006 and2007. The terms of reference for the “Friends of the Chair”have been approved. The Inter-sessional Support Group (ISG)on Confidence Building Measures, pursuant to a decision bythe ministers in July 2005, has been expanded and renamedthe ISG on Confidence Building Measures and Preventive

ASEAN and Regional Security 29Diplomacy. Seminars have been held and studies producedon the subject. However, the ARF has been unable to developeffective mechanisms or adopt a mandate for itself or for thechair, by himself or with the help of the Friends of the Chair,to undertake actual preventive diplomacy, that is, to seek bydiplomatic means to prevent specific disputes from turning intoviolent conflict. One problem is that some ARF participantsare wary of preventive diplomacy being used by other ARFparticipants as a pretext for interfering in their internal affairs.China, for one, rejects any possibility that, in the name ofpreventive diplomacy, the ARF would intervene in the Taiwansituation or that ARF participants outside of ASEAN andChina would get involved in the South China Sea disputes. The question, then, in the face of these positions, is whatpotential conflict the ARF would seek to prevent from happeningas it moves into the preventive-diplomacy phase. The answerthat more and more ARF participants are embracing is thatpreventive diplomacy by the ARF would be most effective anduseful if applied to non-military threats, to what many refer toas “non-traditional” security issues, which all ARF participantscan regard as common threats. These might include natural or man-made disasters,transboundary environmental pollution, energy security, issuesarising from the civilian use of nuclear power, internationalterrorism, drug-trafficking and other transnational crime, andcommunicable diseases. These issues would be susceptible totreatment and cooperation in a broad multilateral setting.However, some observers point out that applying preventivediplomacy mainly to “non-traditional”, that is, non-military,threats would divert the ARF from its original purpose. In any case, it must be borne in mind that confidencebuilding, which is the ARF’s main function at this time, is itself

30 ASEANa means of conflict prevention. This is why it is generally agreedthat the confidence-building and preventive-diplomacy phaseshave to proceed simultaneously and in tandem. It is commonly acknowledged that, under present circum-stances and for the foreseeable future, there is no alternativeto the ARF, the only Asia-Pacific-wide forum dealing withregional security at a high political level. As such, it isentirely unprecedented. Nor is there any alternative to ASEANleadership of the ARF forum and process. Leadership by anyof the non-ASEAN ARF participants would be unacceptableto others. Accordingly, ASEAN has always insisted on being inthe “driver’s seat” of the ARF, as well as of the PMC, process.Not only do the ARF ministerial meetings take place onthe occasion of the annual ASEAN Ministerial Meeting; theyare also presided over by the ASEAN chair. The other par-ticipants have accepted this arrangement as the most practicalalternative. However, ARF participants are increasingly frustrated bythe ARF’s lack of direction even as a discussion forum. Indeed,some fear that the ARF is being marginalized or at least publiclyovershadowed by other security forums that have emergedin the region. Among these are the Shanghai CooperationOrganization of China, Russia and four Central Asian republics.The SCO has been undertaking joint military exercises. Anotheris the Shangri-la Dialogue, a largely public forum of Asia-Pacificdefence ministers and others involved in security policy making.It convenes annually in the Shangri-la Hotel in Singaporeunder the sponsorship of the United Kingdom’s InternationalInstitute for Strategic Studies and Singapore’s Rajaratnam Schoolof International Studies. In addition, there is talk of convertingthe Six-Party Talks on the nuclear problem on the KoreanPeninsula into a permanent security forum for Northeast Asia,

ASEAN and Regional Security 31something, however, on which no firm consensus has beenarrived at among the six parties. Several things could be done to invigorate the ARF andmake it more effective. As noted above, one way is favouredby a number of ARF participants, and that is for the ARF togo into the preventive-diplomacy phase but apply it to theso-called “non-traditional” security threats. The ministerialmeetings should focus on only one or two subjects with aview to deeper and more thorough discussions and, if possible,specific outcomes and collective decisions. This would meanthat ASEAN, as chair and “driver” of the ARF process, has todo a better job of agenda setting and, in general, of intellectualleadership of the forum. Here, the ASEAN Secretariat, witha strengthened ARF Unit, could help the ARF chair and its“friends” develop, with clarity and depth, the agenda for eachministerial meeting. The chair should then seek to keep thediscussions within the bounds of the agenda instead of allowingit to sprawl in all directions. It would also help if the occasion of the annual ARFministerial meeting could provide a public platform for theforeign ministers most substantially concerned with the subjector subjects of the year to discuss his or her country’s views andpositions for the benefit of the media and the public. Hitherto,ARF discussions have been conducted behind closed doors. Itwould improve public understanding of the security issues ofthe day and raise public awareness of the ARF itself if some ofthose discussions were brought out into the open. There havealso been suggestions for the periodic holding of ARF summitmeetings. ASEAN has given special importance and focus to itsengagement with its neighbours in Northeast Asia — China,Japan and South Korea — through the ASEAN Plus Three

32 ASEANprocess. ASEAN Plus Three derives its value most prominentlyfrom the economic and financial cooperation that animates it— the concrete projects and the high-profile initiatives like freetrade areas, economic partnership agreements, and financialarrangements. However, its significance arises no less from itspolitical and strategic value. The ASEAN Plus Three process,launched with its first summit meeting in 1997, links NortheastAsia to Southeast Asia ever more closely. ASEAN’s norms ofnon-resort to force and non-interference in internal affairshave gained at least formal adherence throughout East Asia.Not least, the ASEAN Plus Three forum has provided an addi-tional venue for China, Japan and Korea, at several levels, todiscuss and sort out their often-troubled relations amongthemselves. As India has risen in strategic as well as economic im-portance, ASEAN has drawn New Delhi’s political engagement,an engagement that India itself, for strategic as well as economicreasons, has sought not only with ASEAN but also with EastAsia as a whole. To be sure, India has been building directpolitical and economic bridges to China and Japan, but bothIndia and ASEAN also have a deep interest in India’s participa-tion in the regional arrangements of which ASEAN is the hub— the Dialogues, the ARF, the stand-alone ASEAN-India Summit,and now the East Asia Summit (EAS), which gathers the ASEANleaders together with those of Australia, China, India, Japan,Korea, and New Zealand. The most recent of the regional forums, the EAS has beenconvened three times — on the occasions of the ASEAN Sum-mits in Kuala Lumpur in December 2005, Cebu, the Philippines,in January 2007, and Singapore in November 2007. Thefirst meeting was concerned with a possible avian influenzapandemic, and the second was on energy security. The Singapore

ASEAN and Regional Security 33EAS emphasized “Energy, Environment, Climate Change andSustainable Development”. In all cases, the EAS served as avenue for top-level discussions on broad strategic political andeconomic issues. Thus, the EAS involves important actors inan ASEAN-centred circle that is larger than ASEAN Plus Threebut smaller than the ARF or APEC. It gives the regional processa certain balance — not in the sense of containing or off-setting China, as some regard it in oversimplified fashion, butby way of broadening the regional consensus. THE CHANGING FACE OF SECURITYA regime of inter-state peace and relative stability has settledon Southeast Asia. This can be attributed to a number offactors, including the transformation of the region’s strategicconfiguration after the settlement of the Indochina conflicts,the end of the Cold War and the growing economic integrationof East Asia. Not least is the existence of ASEAN itself. Thus,security threats to Southeast Asian nations from the policiesand actions of states have greatly diminished. However, threatsto their security and stability remain, but in other forms. Current security threats come in the shape of transnationalproblems that endanger the people of two or more countriesor the region as a whole. These are mainly transnationalcrime, international terrorism, environmental degradation, andcommunicable diseases. All these are susceptible to — indeed,require — regional cooperation. The ASEAN ministers dealing with transnational crime firstmet in December 1997. The ASEAN Ministerial Meeting onTransnational Crime and its senior-officials counterpart havesince then become regular ASEAN forums encompassing suchbodies as the ASEAN Senior Officials on Drugs and officials

34 ASEANdealing with immigration, certain aspects of customs, consularmatters, and domestic security. The ASEAN Senior Officialson Drugs is one of the oldest ASEAN platforms for regionalcooperation in dealing with regional problems. It focuses onprevention and rehabilitation, education and public awareness,and law enforcement. There is also an association of ASEANpolice forces called ASEANAPOL, which, however, is outsidethe formal ASEAN framework. These bodies share information,intelligence and databases and otherwise cooperate at theoperational level. In November 2004, the ASEAN Ministers ofJustice or Law or Attorneys General signed a Treaty on MutualLegal Assistance in Criminal Matters. Some acts of terrorism in Southeast Asia have beenmotivated by domestic political or social grievances andaspirations. Others are inspired and driven by causes thattranscend national boundaries or ethnic divisions and receivesupport from like-minded cohorts from outside the country.The latter kind, the international kind of terrorism, can bedealt with only through international cooperation. At theregional level, ASEAN countries have cooperated in combatinginternational terrorism, by themselves or with others. As early as 1997, the ASEAN ministers dealing with trans-national crime designated terrorism as one of the crimes onwhich they would cooperate. After the 11 September 2001attacks on the United States and the subsequent terrorist actsor threats in some other places, including a number of ASEANcountries, ASEAN stepped up its anti-terrorist cooperation.Operational collaboration among law-enforcement agencies inthe ASEAN countries involved has resulted in numerous arrestsof actual or would-be terrorists and the foiling of terroristplots. Some of these efforts have received the support of othercountries, notably Australia and the United States. The ASEAN

ASEAN and Regional Security 35Regional Forum has organized workshops to improve Asia-Pacific cooperation in specific components of counter-terrorism— terrorist financing, border security, transport security, themovement of goods and people, document security andidentity fraud, and the management of the consequences ofterrorist attacks. Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore cooperateon maritime security in the Straits of Malacca, dealing notonly with piracy but also with potential maritime terrorism. Counter-terrorism cooperation on the ground receivesASEAN-wide political backing in the form of declarations andstatements from leaders and ministers repeatedly condemningterrorism and calling for closer collaboration to counter it,even as they urge that terrorism not be identified with anyreligion, sect, culture or nationality. ASEAN has issued jointstatements with Australia, China, the European Union, India,Japan, New Zealand, Pakistan, and the United States, state-ments that express in no uncertain terms the revulsion ofASEAN and its partners towards terrorism and provide apolitical mandate for close cooperation between them incombating it. At their summit in January 2007, the ASEAN leaders signedthe ASEAN Convention on Counter Terrorism. This conventiondoes a number of things. It adopts the definition of terrorismin any of the 13 listed anti-terrorism conventions and treatiesof the United Nations. It clarifies the national jurisdictionover terrorist crimes. It specifies the areas in which ASEAN isto cooperate in combating terrorism. Not least, it mandatesmeasures to ensure the fair treatment of persons detained ongrounds of terrorism. The worsening degradation of the environment in SoutheastAsia constitutes a growing threat to human security. So dodangers arising from communicable diseases. Catastrophes

36 ASEANcommonly referred to as “natural disasters” arise from withinindividual countries and normally affect the people living inthem. However, regional solidarity and good neighbourlinesscall for assistance from fellow-ASEAN members in relief,reconstruction and rehabilitation, the prevention of disasterswhere possible, and the mitigation of their impact. These willbe dealt with in Chapter 4. THE ASEAN SECURITY COMMUNITYASEAN has made explicit the coherence of its efforts in thepursuit of the association’s political and security purposes. Ithas done so through the concept of the ASEAN SecurityCommunity, which constitutes one of the three componentsof the envisioned ASEAN Community, the other two being theASEAN Economic Community and the ASEAN Socio-CulturalCommunity. In a very real sense, ASEAN is already a security community.It has developed networks for peaceful contact and habits ofcooperation, which have made recourse to inter-state violenceall but unthinkable. It has evolved informal processes forregional problems to be worked out in non-violent ways. It hasprovided a regional context within which peaceful negotiationson bilateral disputes are conducted. Because of ASEAN, thedivisions of Southeast Asia have been healed much faster thanthey could otherwise have been. ASEAN has laid down normsfor inter-state relations in the region, which constitute a mutualreassurance of peaceful intentions. Not only has its membersadhered to these norms; ASEAN has gotten important non-regional states to accede to them. ASEAN members have movedin solidarity on such issues as the Cambodian problem, theasylum-seekers, international terrorism, and the South China

ASEAN and Regional Security 37Sea. They have proclaimed the region as off limits to nuclearweapons. More broadly, through a number of forums andprocesses, ASEAN has engaged the major outside powers withinterests in Southeast Asian affairs and of strategic importanceto the region. Nevertheless, ASEAN has found it necessary to define thenature of the ASEAN Security Community that it is seekingto build and strengthen, chart the course of security coopera-tion in Southeast Asia, and agree on specific measures toadvance it further. The Declaration of ASEAN Concord II,which the ASEAN leaders issued in Bali in October 2003,reaffirmed the ASEAN countries’ common interest in regionalsecurity and in the peaceful settlement of “intra-regionaldifferences”, even as it again made clear that ASEAN had nointention of setting up “a defence pact, (a) military allianceor a joint foreign policy”. The ASEAN countries reiteratedtheir resolve to be free from “outside interference in theirinternal affairs”. The declaration characterized the ASEANSecurity Community as “open and outward looking” and theASEAN Regional Forum as the “main forum for regional securitydialogue”. The Vientiane Action Programme (VAP) of November 2004prescribed specific measures for carrying out the Declarationof ASEAN Concord II. After laying down the “goals andstrategies” for pursuing the ASEAN Community, the VAP listedthe measures to be undertaken. In the case of the ASEANSecurity Community, some of the measures, in fact, had alreadybeen or were being carried out when the VAP was signed. Non-regional states had been acceding to the Treaty of Amity andCooperation in Southeast Asia — China and India in 2003,Japan and Pakistan in July 2004, and the Republic of Koreaand Russia in November 2004. Consultations were being

38 ASEANundertaken on the protocol under which the nuclear-weaponstates would respect the provisions of the treaty on the South-east Asia Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone. Exchanges between mili-tary officials had been going on, albeit on an informal basis.Consultations and projects were being carried out to imple-ment the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the SouthChina Sea. Existing human rights mechanisms in ASEAN hadbeen in contact with one another. On the very day when theVAP was signed in Vientiane, ASEAN ministers and officialswere in Kuala Lumpur concluding the Treaty on Mutual LegalAssistance in Criminal Matters. Since the VAP was issued, some other measures prescribedin it have been carried out. More countries have acceded to theTreaty of Amity and Cooperation — Mongolia, New Zealand,Australia, France, Timor-Leste, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Asthe VAP called for, the ASEAN Declaration on the Protectionand Promotion of the Rights of Migrant Workers and theASEAN Convention on Counter Terrorism were signed at theASEAN Summit in Cebu in January 2007. The ASEAN Charterenvisioned in the VAP was signed at the November 2007 Summitin Singapore. The work programme on combating transnationalcrime has been revised, as the VAP also urged. The ASEANDefence Ministers convened their inaugural formal meeting inMay 2006, subsequent to the suggestion in the VAP. Other measures in the VAP have not been carried out,such as the promotion of education on and public awarenessof human rights and the publication of an annual regionalsecurity outlook. Needless to say, these two commitments haveto entail more than lip-service and be invested with seriousnessand substance. There are other measures that may have to bestrengthened or added. One of them might be the declarationof Southeast Asia as a zone free from chemical and biological

ASEAN and Regional Security 39weapons in the same vein as the Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone.Another might be the exchange not only of more substantivestrategic outlooks but also of energy policies and strategies.Norms for the domestic behaviour of states could be moretrenchant and commitments to uphold them more firm. In any event, ASEAN can be said to be already a securitycommunity insofar as inter-state relations are concerned. Itcan now build on this and broaden it, as envisioned by its ownleaders and as called for by the times.

Chapter 3ASEAN and the RegionalEconomyAlthough ASEAN was founded primarily for political and securitypurposes, the ASEAN Declaration of 8 August 1967 placed“Economic growth, social progress and cultural development”at the top of the new association’s seven “aims and purposes”,which also included:• “Economic, social, cultural, technical, scientific and admin- istrative collaboration;• “Mutual assistance in training and research;• “Collaboration in agriculture and industry, trade, transporta- tion and communications, and the improvement of living standards.”There were three reasons for this public emphasis on the eco-nomic dimension of the new association. One was to dispelany notion that ASEAN would be some kind of defencearrangement, as Beijing and Moscow would charge and asHanoi suspected. Another was publicly to underscore themember-states’ strong commitment to economic development.The third was to persuade Southeast Asia’s people that theimprovement of their lives was uppermost in their governments’minds. 41

42 ASEAN True to their word, the year after ASEAN’s founding, theASEAN foreign ministers agreed to set up permanent committeeson food, civil aviation, communications, air traffic services andmeteorology, and shipping. These were areas that clearly calledfor and required regional cooperation. The next year, 1969, theforeign ministers created more permanent committees, those onfinance, commerce and industry, tourism, and transportation andcommunications. They also approved no less than 99 projectrecommendations pertaining to commerce and industry, tourism,shipping, civil aviation, air traffic services and meteorology,transportation and communications, finance and food, as wellas mass media and cultural activities. By the fourth ASEANMinisterial Meeting, in 1971, the recommended projects hadincreased to 121. The ministers signed a multilateral agreementon non-scheduled air services. The next year, the number ofprojects had grown to 215, of which 48 were reported to havebeen implemented. At this time, a United Nations team hadcompleted its study on ASEAN economic cooperation. Significantly, in opening the 1972 ASEAN Ministerial Meet-ing, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, according to thejoint communiqué of that meeting, pointed out that “ASEANdid not for the present aim at integrating a regional economy”.The watchword then was economic cooperation rather thanintegration, a term that ASEAN at the time was meticulouslyavoiding. Nevertheless, as early as 1974, the foreign ministerswere able to refer to the “good progress” made in “liberalizingtrade in selected food products”, partly foreshadowing theattempt 30 years later to integrate ASEAN economically byproduct groups. The primacy of political and security considerations inASEAN’s early years was reflected in the fact that the ASEANEconomic Ministers forum was not formally established until

ASEAN and the Regional Economy 43the first ASEAN Summit in 1976. Until then, the foreign ministershad been in almost complete control of the ASEAN process,including making decisions on economic matters as well asformally concluding economic agreements. At their first summit, in Bali in February 1976, the ASEANleaders were quite specific in their mandate for the economicministers: they were to meet in Kuala Lumpur the next month,in March, to consider measures to implement the top-leveldecisions on economic cooperation. The leaders even prescribedthe inaugural meeting’s agenda:• Giving priority to ASEAN member-countries in the supply of food and energy products in “critical circumstances”;• Cooperation in the production of basic commodities, particularly of food and energy;• The establishment of “large-scale” industrial projects;• Preferential trading arrangements for basic commodities, especially food and energy, and the products of the ASEAN industrial projects.Of course, the economic ministers themselves had recom-mended these details. The year before, Indonesia’s Minister forEconomic, Financial and Industrial Affairs, Widjojo Nitisastro,and Minister for Trade, Radius Prawiro had gone around ASEANto solicit support for an ASEAN economic ministers’ forum.In November 1975, the economic ministers met informally inIndonesia to iron out the economic contents of the Declarationof ASEAN Concord that was to be issued in Bali three monthslater. At that time, ASEAN attention to economic matters wasgaining urgency in the light of the energy crisis of 1972–73, thePhilippines and Thailand being large-scale importers of energy,and the continuing vulnerability to food (meaning mainlyrice) shortages of Indonesia and, sporadically, the Philippines.

44 ASEAN THE EARLY STAGE OF ECONOMIC COOPERATIONIn 1975, the ASEAN foreign ministers had called on the perma-nent committees to give priority to “selective trade liberaliza-tion and industrial complementation”. These largely took theform, respectively, of the Preferential Trading Arrangementsand the ASEAN Industrial Projects (AIP). Under the AIP scheme, the ASEAN states sought to allocatelarge-scale industrial projects among themselves. Each of themwas to contribute to the equity of each project. The projects’products were to be protected from competition and guaranteeda monopoly of the regional market. Initially, urea fertilizer wasallocated to Indonesia and Malaysia, superphosphates to thePhilippines, diesel engines to Singapore and soda ash to Thailand.Ultimately, only the urea plants in Aceh, Indonesia, and Bintulu,Malaysia, have survived. The other proposals were plagued byseveral changes in projects, clashes of national interests, andSingapore’s antagonism to state-directed industrial policies andto uncompetitive economic practices. More fundamentally,the system collapsed as it collided with the region’s shift fromimport-substitution, autarkic policies to export-oriented, market-opening economic strategies. ASEAN sought to liberalize intra-ASEAN trade throughthe Preferential Trading Arrangements (PTA). Agreed upon in1977, the PTA envisioned granting “margins of preference”to intra-ASEAN trade in food and energy, the products of theASEAN Industrial Projects, and negotiated lists of other goods.Although the lists progressively lengthened and the margin ofpreference became larger, the PTA failed substantially to freeup and increase intra-ASEAN trade. Tariffs were not broughtdown to absolute levels but were merely accorded margins ofpreference. This meant that, since tariffs were cut by a certain