Aug 18th 2012 |
The Economist
JAKARTA, PHNOM PENH AND SINGAPORE | from the print edition
FOR decades the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) has
led a largely blameless existence, untroubled by the glare of publicity
as it gently sought to bring coherence to a region of enormous political
and economic differences. Not for ASEAN the highs and calamitous lows
of, for example, the European Union. All that has now suddenly changed.
On its 45th birthday newspapers and blogs are at last paying ASEAN
plenty of attention, though marked more by despair than praise. Some
even question its very survival.
The cause of the furore is the widening division in the ten-member
grouping over China’s maritime claims in the South China Sea. The
division was laid bare publicly at a meeting last month of ASEAN foreign
ministers in the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh. For the first time in
its history ASEAN failed to issue a joint communiqué. Its members could
not agree on what to say about China. Broadly, those members with claims
in the South China Sea themselves—Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia
and Brunei, supported by Singapore and Thailand—want ASEAN to register
serious concerns over what they see as China’s belligerent actions to
enforce its claims in the waters of the South China Sea and over the
Spratly, Paracel and other islands and atolls. However, non-claimants,
mainly Cambodia supported by Laos and perhaps Myanmar, are loth to
alienate China. They go along with China’s insistence on dealing with
the issue with each country in turn. This year Cambodia holds the
rotating chair of ASEAN.
Right after the Phnom Penh fiasco, Indonesia’s foreign minister,
Marty Natalegawa, in a vigorous exercise in diplomacy, tried hard to
paper over the cracks. Since then, however, there has been no let-up in
the unASEAN-like public rowing. Last week the Philippine government sent
the Cambodian ambassador packing. He had accused the Philippines and
Vietnam of playing “dirty politics” in their push to put the South China
Sea on ASEAN’s agenda. The regional press is full of articles and
letters lambasting Cambodia’s stance.
ASEAN members had hoped to get through this crisis by establishing a
“code of conduct” for the South China Sea, yet China refuses to discuss
this idea until, it says, “conditions are ripe”. Meanwhile, a mood of
gloom pervades preparations for the next full ASEAN summit, due in
November. This time round, the countries should be able to agree on a
common position for public consumption, avoiding another unseemly row.
But that still leaves plenty of scope for private grief.
In particular, some diplomats wonder whether Cambodia is now
irretrievably in the pocket of China. If so, it would be an end to the
famous “ASEAN consensus” by which the organisation makes decisions.
Cambodia relies more than most in the region on Chinese investment and
other blandishments. It is now expected to do Beijing’s bidding. A
Cambodian diplomat says that even his government was surprised by how
fast and strongly China pressed it to defend its position at the failed
summit. Tiny Laos also depends heavily on Chinese money and goodwill, as
does Myanmar. China, as one writer puts it, may have obtained an
“outsider’s veto” over ASEAN when its interests are threatened.
The grouping could thus become a victim of a new era of great-power
rivalry in the region. Until recently it had been making steady progress
in establishing itself as the main forum for pan-Asian dialogue and
discussion, hosting the East Asian Summit, for instance, among many
other talking shops. Yet now it seems to be caught between a rising
China on the one hand and a freshly engaged America, seeking to balance
against China, on the other.
In particular, the Philippines and Vietnam now look openly to America
for military and diplomatic support as they face up to an assertive
China in their sea of troubles. Though Cambodia and Laos have lined up
with China, and Myanmar may yet go the same way, Thailand and the
Philippines are treaty allies of America, which is also revving up its
military engagement with Singapore. The fear is that these allegiances
will trump the more abstract attractions of ASEAN, together with its
attempts to forge any closer union.
The most obvious potential casualty will be the push to create a
European-style single market, the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC),
scheduled to come into effect in just three years’ time. Ian Storey of
Singapore’s Institute for South-East Asian Studies points out that of
the 132 paragraphs of the unpublished Phnom Penh communiqué only four
concerned the wrangle over China’s territorial claims. Many of the rest
were about economic and commercial integration. All those have now been
lost. It is even less likely that the AEC will start on time, let alone
be effective. The wider ASEAN agenda is sinking into the South China
Sea.
Only Indonesia might be able to save the day. The regional behemoth
provides a home to the ASEAN secretariat in Jakarta, the capital. It
alone seems to feel the weight of responsibility to hold the
organisation together. Dewi Fortuna Anwar, a senior adviser on politics
and foreign affairs to the Indonesian government, argues that the row
over the South China Sea “is a good lesson for ASEAN, about living in
the real world, with big players and big issues. It’s part of growing
up.”
At the moment ASEAN is run on a shoestring. Its members pay paltry
sums to keep it pottering along, on the assumption that it would never
have to do much. Now, however, some Indonesian policymakers argue that,
with the whole notion of regional unity at stake, it is time to beef up
the organisation and provide it with the mechanisms, money and manpower
needed to argue more forcefully for regional interests. For as Ms Anwar
puts it, “if the member countries don’t care enough about ASEAN, why
should other powers defer to it?”
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