2017 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the year when President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, President Suharto of Indonesia, Prime Minister Thanat Khoman of Thailand, Prime Minister Tun Abdul Razak of Malaysia, Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore and the Sultan of Brunei Darussalam signed the documents that established the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). This year has seen the holding of a number of high-profile events, the most important of which will be next week’s Summit meeting, which will bring together ASEAN’s leaders and the leaders of the Association’s dialogue partners. As chairman during ASEAN’s golden anniversary year, the Philippines has been presiding over the events.
The history books will record that ASEAN started life as The Three (Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia), then became The Six with the addition of Thailand, Singapore and Brunei. In time The Six became The Ten with the inclusion of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos upon the termination of the Vietnam War and of Myanmar upon the loosening of the Myanmarese military’s grip on power in that country.
In geographic terms today’s ASEAN is a highly significant entity. The Association’s territory stretches from the Andaman Sea in the west to Australia’s northeastern waters in the east and from the Philippines and Vietnamese seas in the north to the Indian Ocean in the south. The applications for membership received from Timor Leste (the former Indonesian province of East Timor) and Papua New Guinea, if approved, would further increase ASEAN’s territorial coverage.
Like any major milestone in the life of an institution, 2017 has been a time for reviewing the accomplishments notched and the challenges faced by ASEAN. It also has been an occasion for looking forward and determining where ASEAN should and can go during the next fifty years.
ASEAN’s greatest accomplishments undoubtedly have been in the arena of economics. This is to be expected, considering that the Association was founded with economic and social, not political, objectives in mind. The establishment of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) and the creation of the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) have been ASEAN’s crowning economic achievements during its first half-century of existence. Much, also, has been achieved by the Association in bringing its ten members together socially and culturally.
The international community – and especially the Great Powers – welcomed the establishment of a grouping that sought to bring cohesion and cooperation to the countries of Southeast Asia, which for centuries was the focus of rivalry among Spain, Portugal, Britain, France and, later, the United States and Japan. Peace and stability in the region would, in their view, have better chances of being achieved with the existence of an entity like ASEAN.
The erstwhile colonial and ideological masters have sought to maintain the closest of ties with their former colonies. So successful have their efforts been that inability to achieve regional policy solidarity at all times has been the greatest challenge faced by ASEAN during its first fifty years. The most worrisome manifestation of this challenge was ASEAN’s failure to reach agreement on a communique at the close of its 2015 Summit, which was presided over by Cambodia, a known close ally of China. The issue that caused the failure, which was unprecedented in ASEAN’s history, was the insistence of the Philippines and Vietnam on the inclusion in the communique of wording regarding the two countries’ claim against China over parts of the South China Sea.
There ASEAN stands as it begins its second half-century of existence.
Anyone who thinks seriously about the state and prospects of Southeast Asia’s regional organization needs to ask himself or herself these questions. The first is, has ASEAN reached a position of real influence in the world? The second is, would ASEAN’s next half century be better served by the maintenance of its present governance arrangements – dialogues, consultative meetings and an annual summit meeting – than by a governance structure akin to that of the European Union (EU)?
If the truth must be told, ASEAN still does not cut a formidable figure on the world geopolitical stage. This is unfortunate and sad, considering ASEAN’s half-billion population – including two of the world’s biggest national populations – its vast territory, its having a First World member (Singapore) and its being a major producer of oil (Indonesia and Brunei), rubber (Malaysia) and rice (Philippines and Malaysia). True, ASEAN’s ten members are important when it comes to vote-tallying in the General Assembly of the UN, but as a bloc ASEAN is not regarded as a heavyweight.
For this state of affairs the Association has only itself to blame.
Regional groupings like ASEAN and the EU are powerful only to the extent that their members speak with one voice after having harmonized their positions on significant issues. Because of ASEAN’s policy of non-interference in other members’ internal affairs, ASEAN does not speak with one voice. Two instances quickly come to mind as examples of this, namely, the Philippines-Vietnamese-Brunei claims against China regarding the South China Sea and the Myanmar government’s oppression of its Rohingya citizens. When countries can play off its members against one another, a grouping or organization cannot be considered influential.
Could ASEAN, which was established principally as an economic-social-cultural grouping, have accomplished more for the regional economy during the period 1967-2017? The answer is a decided Yes. True, the fact that ASEAN’s members have similar productive structures has operated to hinder regional economic integration, but one gets the feeling that the regional governments have not gone all-out to explore and exploit the available production, trade and investment opportunities in the region. The ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), expected with so much anticipation, has not really gotten very far after two years of operations. More resolve and more application of the whip are needed.
The conclusion of its first half-century of existence, and its embarking upon the next half-century, is a good time for the governments of the ten ASEAN member-governments to consider far-reaching changes in the Association’s governance arrangements from the easygoing, loose, harmony-at-all-cost way of dealing with the region’s challenges and opportunities to a less structured, more results-driven approach to them. One of the main reasons why the US has gone very far is its well-structured governance. The opposite is true of ASEAN.
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