People-Centered ASEAN: Not Quite There By Hoang Thi Ha*

Posted by AsiaViews | Oct 9, 2017 | 0 |

Myanmar Times

Oct 5, 2017

ASEAN has come a long way since its founders signed the Bangkok Declaration half a century ago. Like any organic body, it has evolved and adapted to stay alive and relevant. The following is a broad summary of key transformations over the past five decades that help define ASEAN today.

Enlargement

ASEAN started as a sub-regional grouping among non-communist states, but its evolution has been driven more by pragmatism than ideology. The Bangkok Declaration confirmed that philosophy by opening membership to all South East Asian states subscribing to ASEAN’s purposes and principles. ASEAN nevertheless had to wait until the end of the Cold War to complete its South East Asian footprint, with the admission of Vietnam in 1995, Laos and Myanmar in 1997, and Cambodia in 1999.

Enlargement is perhaps the most consequential evolution of ASEAN, linking mainland to maritime Southeast Asia, overcoming ideological fault lines and connecting countries with diverse political systems, economies, cultures, ethnicities and religions. This process also consolidated the coming together of South East Asia as a nascent region, giving ASEAN countries a physical presence and a sense of regional identity distinct from their two towering neighbors and civilizations – China and India. Enlargement helped ASEAN unpack its historical baggage, and cast the ‘burden of diversity’ upon the now bigger organization. Consensus building, which never came easy among the original ASEAN five, has gotten even more daunting among its current 10 members.

Economic Integration

ASEAN’s embrace of deeper economic integration in the early 1990s was another important paradigm shift of the group. The forces of globalization unleashed by the end of the Cold War brought together hitherto different economic orientations and development patterns under the unifying banner of a market-driven and export-oriented philosophy. Economic cooperation injected a new sense of purpose for ASEAN, as manifested in 1988 when then-Prime Minister Chatichai Choonhavan of Thailand declared his goal of “turning Indochina from battlefields to marketplaces”.

This paved the way for the conclusion of the ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (AFTA) in 1992 aimed at eliminating all tariff lines in intra-regional trade. AFTA today may appear modest in scale and substance, but from a historical perspective, it was a crucial step in re-inventing ASEAN with economic integration to sustain its relevance. AFTA and subsequent ASEAN economic projects provided the building blocks for the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) launched in 2015. Still a work in progress, the AEC will very much define the success and sustainability of ASEAN in the future.

Insulation to Engagement

The early decades of ASEAN saw the pursuit of regional autonomy by Indonesia and Malaysia, largely driven by their nationalism and suspicions of big power machinations. This quest for “regional solutions to regional problems” culminated in the signing of the 1971 Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality. However, ZOPFAN still remains an aspiration rather than a reality, because all five ASEAN nations at the time, except for Indonesia, had some form of formal security cooperation or alliance with an external power. Fundamentally, South East Asia is at the crossroads of the strategic interests of major powers. This is both a geographic and historical reality, and any thought of breaking free from it is illusionary.

After the ineffectual ZOPFAN experiment, ASEAN transitioned in the 1990s from insulation to inclusiveness in its regional security outlook.

From a mindset of maintaining regional autonomy to stay away from Cold War entanglements, ASEAN has evolved to one of proactive engagement with all major powers to promote an open and inclusive regional architecture in which ASEAN is the hub. The notion of ASEAN centrality is most manifest in the fact that it is the architect of various regional frameworks, including the ASEAN Regional Forum, ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting-Plus, ASEAN Plus Three and East Asia Summit. The conundrum of engagement that ASEAN must tackle now is how to enmesh big powers with regional conventions and frameworks while at the same time guarding against entanglement in their unfolding power rivalries.

Going Rules-Based

Although ASEAN is traditionally known for its preference for informal arrangements, the organization has become more rules-based and institutionalized over the years. This is a natural and gradual evolution in response to integration and community-building needs, and a result of growing levels of comfort, trust and political maturity among its members. The drive to strengthen ASEAN institutions has gathered pace, especially since the advent of the ASEAN Charter in 2007, which codified a legal and institutional framework for the group.

From a minimal structure centred around annual meetings of ASEAN foreign ministers in its early years, ASEAN now encompasses hundreds of sectoral and coordination mechanisms across various political, security, and socioeconomic areas. ASEAN has also become more rules-based, with the number of ASEAN legal instruments, both in force and waiting for enactment, increasing from 32 in 1990 to 179 in 2017.

People-Centered?

This comes with a question mark because much more needs to be done to make it a reality. ASEAN by nature is intergovernmental, and is often criticized as being ‘elitist’ and ‘out of touch’ with ordinary people. Over the past decade, ASEAN has been trying to connect to the grassroots through consultation and engagement, especially with business people and civil society organisations, to get their views and feedback on making regional policy. However, many such consultations still focus more on form than substance. Despite many limitations and constraints, ASEAN cooperation projects are increasingly geared toward bringing more benefits to the people. These range from simple but visible ASEAN lanes at international airports in member states to more substantive initiatives like the ASEAN Single Window or ASEAN Open Skies, which aim for a freer flow of goods, services and people in the region.

After Brexit shook the European Union to its core last year, much has been said about ASEAN learning the lesson that region-building must enjoy broad public support to sustain itself. But that lesson was presciently coined four decades ago by then-Prime Minister Datuk Hussein Onn of Malaysia: “ASEAN is more than the sum total of governmental and bureaucratic interaction. It is ultimately all of the peoples in all of the countries.”

What is needed now is a sense of urgency and a culture of implementation to translate that aspiration into reality.

*Hoang Thi Ha is a lead researcher for political and security affairs at the ASEAN Studies Centre, ISEAS-Yusok Ishak Institute.

(https://www.mmtimes.com/news/people-centred-asean-not-quite-there.html)

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People-Centered ASEAN: Not Quite There By Hoang Thi Ha*