Events & Issues
New Delhi, 13 March 2009
ASEAN Credibility
ON THE EDGE OF CHANGE?
By G V C Naidu
The Association of South East Asian
Nations has witnessed a historic moment with the signing of an agreement to
create an ASEAN Economic Community by 2015 and attempt to fundamentally
transform the association in a variety of ways. Called the Cha-am Hua Hin Declaration following the ASEAN summit
meeting held in Thailand, it purports to make ASEAN chart a new course for
itself, not just in terms of enhanced economic cooperation and integration but
to increase its political weight considerably as well.
By adopting a Charter, whose
progress needs to be watched, ASEAN now has become a rules-based regional
multilateral organization. True, ASEAN, comprising the 10 countries of South East Asia- Indonesia,
Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and
Myanmar- has come a long way since its founding in 1967, in creating a sense of
purpose and belonging and to an extent political and economic cooperation.
However, its comparison with the EU is
far-fetched and unrealistic given the two entirely contrasting contexts--
historically, politically, religiously and socially. Yet, the year was
significant for ASEAN in many ways and that may set the tone in deciding its future
as a regional organisation in terms of its ability to play a key role not just
in South East Asia but across the entire East
Asian region. It could do so in promoting regional economic cooperation and,
more importantly, integration, and simultaneously play a key political role in
the management of regional security.
The two key decisions, taken in 2007
to create a common market and a charter that are being implemented now in a way
also reflect the kind of challenges ASEAN is confronted with at this critical
juncture where the entire East Asian region is undergoing a major
politico-economic transformation.
Founded in 1967 after a couple of
failed attempts, although with the ostensible objectives of promoting greater
economic and cultural cooperation among the members, it has never been a secret
that ASEAN was a cold war creation and anti-communism was clearly its
ideological orientation. Despite some initial attempts, for a variety of
reasons economic cooperation failed to take off, and so-called cultural
cooperation never had much resonance anyway because the member states, with the
exception of Indonesia and Malaysia, were simply too disparate.
Indeed, many of the objectives that
ASEAN had set out were realised much later: political cooperation during the
Cambodian crisis after the Vietnamese military intervention in late 1970s and
economic cooperation starting from the early 1990s along with East Asian
economic dynamism.
That today South
East Asia has managed to acquire a distinct political identity
especially after ASEAN’s expansion is perhaps its singular contribution. The
political leaders of ASEAN have bragged how different they were and their
unique way of conducting business -- a typical “Southeast Asian way” - to drive
home the point of their distinctness. Thanks once again mostly to ASEAN, South East Asia has emerged one of the most politically
stable and economically vibrant regions in the world, and the regional
organisation has become a role model for others in the developing world.
In the immediate post-cold war
period, while ASEAN thought it would take advantage of political vacuum and
fluidity to position itself to emerge as an autonomous power, soon, however,
realities started setting in. Two significant developments among others sorely
exposed ASEAN’s own weaknesses and limitations. One, the dynamics of great
powers relations started undergoing major shifts with the rise of first China and later India.
This coincided with a general
decline of Japan as an
economic power and America’s
preoccupation with war on counter-terrorism and later military intervention in Iraq. As a
result, much of the attention that was riveted on South East Asia began to get
deflected to China and India. These
two in particular were emerging as major economic powerhouses undermining South East Asia.
Further, political and security
interest in the ASEAN region also began to wane with more serious security
challenges developing in North East Asia and the Indian
Ocean region. The North Korean nuclear issue, intensifying
Japan-China rivalry, Taiwan issue, uncertainties about American military
commitments, and Pak-Afghan region as epicenter of global terrorism emerged as
focal point, diverting great power attention away from South East Asia. Two,
more devastating that badly battered ASEAN’s image was the 1997-98 financial
crisis. It for the first time thoroughly exposed, on one hand, the serious
weaknesses of the economies of ASEAN member states, and more importantly,
ASEAN’s utter helplessness in dealing with the crisis.
Yet another issue that has raised
some doubts about ASEAN’s overall political ability to manage regional affairs
was the large number of regional multilateral mechanism that have been created,
such as APEC, the ASEAN Regional Forum, East Asia Summit, etc., which have
become more of talk shops than tangible contributors either to economic
cooperation or to security management.
Nevertheless, ASEAN has
since recovered from the financial crisis and most of its economies had been
doing fairly well till the current global economic crisis hit. Singapore is
into recession and most other economies are expected to shrink drastically.
While this is a serious short-term issue (unless it lingers on much longer),
from a longer-term perspective, ASEAN has to find ways to showcase the economic
attractiveness of South East Asia.
And, it is felt that the
best way to do it to integrate their economies as quickly as possible and
present a common market of nearly 570 people. It purports to remove all barriers so that free
movement of goods, services and people can take place, similar to the one by
the European Union, which is an ambitious goal though.
The other prominent
issue at the summit meeting was the ASEAN Charter. It has come under criticism
because of its ineffectiveness to deal with serious human rights violations
among member States. Whereas it is imprudent to interfere in internal affairs,
ASEAN’s global credibility will be at stake if it cannot address this issue. At
this meeting, for instance, both Myanmar and Cambodia barred two
representatives of civil society attending the first ever face-to-face meeting
with ASEAN leaders creating considerable discomfort.
Political compatibility
and comfort certainly are major issues but so also are the vast economic and
other disparities among the ASEAN members which will need to be dealt with in
the coming years. From an Indian viewpoint, a strong ASEAN contributes to
regional stability and prosperity and New Delhi should do whatever it does in
making it possible.--INFA
(Copyright, India News
and Feature Alliance)
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