ASEAN will hold its 43rd Foreign Ministers Meeting, as well as a series of related meetings of the Asean Regional Forum (ARF) and Asean+3 foreign ministers, in Hanoi from July 19 to July 23. These meetings are routine, but this year’s sessions will provide a challenge for Asean. Its model of community building through consensus has come under pressure from other approaches. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s proposal for an Asia-Pacific G-8 or G-10, which would serve as a concert of major and medium powers in the region, largely excluding smaller states, is one example. Former Japanese prime minister Yukio Hatoyama’s concept of an East Asian Community that would exclude the United States is another. Both these approaches would undermine Asean’s efforts to make itself the fulcrum of community building in East Asia. Asean needs to regain the initiative in Hanoi.
The proposal for an Asean+8 grouping, which was discussed at the Asean Summit in Hanoi in April, should be followed up. The US and Russia would join China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and India in meeting Asean leaders at the summit level whenever the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) Leaders Meeting is held in an Asian country. Asean may want to broaden the criteria so that these meetings can be held even when Apec leaders meet in a non-Asian state. This would cement the commitment of participating states to the new process.
Apec has 21 members, of which seven are Asean states, while India and Russia would be the only non-Apec members among the non-Asean participants in the proposed Asean+8.
Asean must ensure that this initiative has substance. The proposal that foreign and defence ministers of the new grouping should meet is a good start. Asean should put forward proposals for a new security agenda which looks at non-traditional security issues like energy security, pandemics, climate change, food security and transnational crime beside the more usual themes of confidence building and preventive diplomacy.
Confidence building and preventive diplomacy are already the focus of the ARF. However, the ARF is a foreign minister-led network. Its expansion has also resulted in an unwieldy institution.
But Asean will find it difficult to persuade ARF members – especially those like Bangladesh and Pakistan, which are not part of the other groupings – to agree to winding up the ARF. This highlights a problem in the structure of regional institutions. They are likely to continue even when the rationale for their existence has passed!
Another issue which will attract attention is the interest of Papua New Guinea and Timor Leste in becoming Asean members. They have been participating as observers at the annual Asean foreign ministers’ meeting. Asean may feel pressured to agree to their accession. But the new members are likely to find the large number of Asean meetings beyond the capacity of their bureaucracies to manage.
The larger problem for Asean is that expansion will dilute its coherence and shift its attention away from East Asia. It could be argued that the process of Asean’s expansion in the 1990s, with new members admitted without any conditionality, led to its effectiveness being undermined. Indeed, members such as Myanmar have been an albatross around Asean’s neck. The foreign ministers should resist the temptation to expand Asean.
It is inevitable that Myanmar will be discussed during the Hanoi meetings. Participants from the US and the European Union will probably refer to reports that Myanmar has embarked on a programme to develop nuclear weapons as well as ballistic missile capabilities. These reports are based on evidence provided by a defector and have been widely circulated. However, they should be examined closely and viewed sceptically.
The reports originated from exile groups critical of the Myanmar regime and appear to have been timed to coincide with the US attempt to impose United Nations Security Council sanctions on Iran.
The Myanmar government can be criticised for its attempts to control the electoral process in the country and for preventing Aung San Suu Kyi from competing in the elections planned for later this year. Nevertheless, the claim that it is developing nuclear weapons lacks credibility. Unlike North Korea, whose acquisition of nuclear weapons enables it to target Japan, South Korea and the US offshore presence, Myanmar has good relations with its nearest neighbours China, India and Thailand. None of them have participated in Western efforts to impose sanctions on the country. Myanmar would need to surpass North Korea’s ballistics missile capabilities to pose even a remote threat to US facilities.
Asean has always prided itself on its inclusive character. In the South-east Asian fashion, it has tended to be reluctant to give a negative response to initiatives from outside the region. The time has come for Asean to do so in Hanoi.
The writer is dean of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University. Think-tank is a weekly column rotated among eight leading figures in Singapore’s tertiary and research institutions.
