Insight: Asean Front & Center

 A. Lin Neumann | September 07, 2012 From left to right, Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa joins Kan Pharidh, a permanent representative of Cambodia, and Surin Pitsuwan, the secretary general of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, to release balloons at the 45th Asean Day ceremony in Jakarta on Aug. 8, 2012. (AFP Photo/ Bay Ismoyo)
 
It can still seem odd to think about, but Asean really matters these days. For much of its 45-year history, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations was an alliance that conjured images of sheer boredom and empty platitudes.

Begun in 1967, as communist armies were nearing victory in Indochina, Asean started as an alliance of right-wing states that were part of a broad US-backed anti-communist front. The five original members — Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand — were virtually all authoritarian states (the Philippines became a dictatorship in 1972).

The bloc has grown, of course, and new members have been added. There are now three fairly open democracies — Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand — while the rest are still basically authoritarian. But much has been accomplished. Territorial tensions among members states have largely been laid to rest, trade and investment within the bloc have grown markedly and great steps have been taken toward a unified economic community, which is to be in place by 2015.

But until fairly recently, outsiders — most anyone who isn’t a diplomat, a regional businessperson or an employee of Asean itself — have tended to view the body as one big talk shop. The addition of the Asean Plus 3 and Asian Plus 6 frameworks for various summits has made Asean a cool place for bigger powers to sit down for serious chats, but in terms of the realpolitik of big power diplomacy, Asean has been fairly immune — a fact that has worked in favor of building quiet consensus.

The current impasse over the South China Sea, however, has put the alliance at the center of one of the world’s most important big-power standoffs and given Indonesia an enormous task. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, during a stop in Jakarta this week, called on Asean to demonstrate a “show of unity” in seeking a settlement with China, which has declared that it owns virtually the entire South China Sea. When she went to Beijing this week, the official press sharply criticized the United States for interfering and China stuck to its position that it would only negotiate one-on-one with individual nations.

Potentially rich in oil and gas resources, bits of the sea are claimed by the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei and Malaysia. In July in Phnom Penh, for the first time in the body’s history, Asean foreign ministers could not reach a consensus on a communique because of the issue. Some members, chiefly the Philippines and Vietnam, side with the United States; others, principally the current chair of Asean, Cambodia, are clearly backing Beijing, presumably in exchange for billions of dollars in aid and investment. If the issue is not resolved before the annual summit in November, work toward integration could grind to a halt. The alliance’s fragile unity is under serious assault.

Senior diplomats in Jakarta see this as a major threat. But it is also a sure sign that Asean is no longer a club of insignificant nations whose leaders cross hands and grin at the camera once a year before disappearing into mind-numbing meetings. 

Asean is a player in major-power politics. To succeed the region must get its diplomatic act together and cope with Washington’s reassertion of influence in the region and China’s increasingly aggressive rise. The worry is that Asean lacks the diplomatic savvy to negotiate a way forward and keep its members from aligning with Beijing or Washington.

So it has fallen on Indonesia to take the lead to repair the damage done in Phnom Penh. Most observers agree that Indonesia has by far the most capable Foreign Ministry personnel in Asean and a long tradition of leadership that dates back to the 1955 Asia-Africa Conference in Bandung.

“Asean really counts now,” a senior Western diplomat said this week. “We have been trying to get people to take notice of that for years. Now that there is a real issue and the world is watching, I certainly hope they can get it done.

“It is up to Indonesia. No other [Asean] country has the skills or the resources.”

A. Lin Neumann is the host of the “Insight Indonesia” talk show on BeritaSatu TV and founding editor of the Jakarta Globe.