Forging a regional security community a study of the driving forces behind ASEAN and east asian regionalism 5

Broadly, this study analyzes the main driving forces behind the rise of East Asian security regionalism, especially since the early-1990s.. The growing scholarly and policymaking interes

‘ASEAN Way’ of cooperative security has played the major role in shaping the rise of security regionalism in post-Cold War Northeast Asia The first question is important for a number of reasons If it is true that ASEAN is a nascent security community, it would imply that there are little or no serious intra-ASEAN tensions and conflicts, and that we can be quite confident that ASEAN is on the path to further consolidation and full political integration into a security community An integrated ASEAN security community would also imply that democracy and democratic norms would not be a major determinant in the emergence of a security community, opening the possibility of a non-Western International Relations theory Under such a scenario, the outlook for ASEAN and regional order in Southeast Asia would be optimistic However, if ASEAN is something much less than a security community like only a

‘security regime’ then the threat and use of force (war) in intra-ASEAN relations remains thinkable Under this scenario, the prospects for East Asian peace, stability, and security would be more pessimistic

The second question matters because the ‘ASEAN Way’ could be one of the major determinants of regional order or disorder in Northeast Asia ‘ASEANists’ argue that the peaceful norms of the ASEAN Way are helping to socialize the Great Powers, especially a rising China, into a cooperative regional partner Moreover, Southeast Asia cannot be insulated from the competitive power dynamics affecting

Broadly, this study analyzes the main driving forces behind the rise of East Asian security regionalism, especially since the early-1990s The ‘Security Community’ (SC) concept can be viewed as having two dimensions: as an intellectual discourse and its application to national and regional policymaking This chapter will first focus on the main findings — factual and conceptual — of the dissertation, that

is, the significance of the Security Community concept, and the main driving forces behind post-World War Two West European integration Secondly, this chapter will focus on the pattern behind the rise of Southeast and Northeast Asian regionalism It will then be followed by a section on the contributions and significance of this study The study will conclude with some suggestions for future research

The Security Community (SC) Concept

The central aim of a security community is to eliminate war The security community idea is important because it offers a hopeful pathway, in contrast to the fatalism of realism, to forging a ‘stable peace’ in inter-state relations, especially in geographical regions which have suffered from destructive wars, as in Europe and East Asia The notion of ‘security community’ assumes that national elites find it desirable and feasible to turn away from war towards mutually beneficial regional economic cooperation and political integration In a security community, war among its

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members becomes unthinkable Members of a security community have become integrated, culturally, economically, and politically, such that there are ‘dependable expectations of peaceful change’ Inter-state disputes and conflicts are invariably settled in a peaceful manner, with no resort to the use of force or armed violence The emergence of durable and integrated security communities would also lend theoretical support for the liberal and constructivist approaches to International Relations Theory, especially of the non-Western variety, in contrast to the pessimism of realism The growing scholarly and policymaking interest in security communities is a reflection of the revival of post-Cold War interest in regional economic and political integration and ‘regional governance’ as a complement to the quest for a stable international order

The four main conceptual elements of a security community are ‘security’,

‘community’, ‘integration’, and ‘dependable expectations of peaceful change’ In the scholarly literature, the meaning and definition of a security community is steadily undergoing change Christopher Roberts argues, in contrast to Adler-Barnett, that a

‘security community’ should be more comprehensively defined as a ‘transnational

community of two or more states whose sovereignty is increasingly amalgamated and

whose people maintain dependable expectations of peaceful change’.1 To Roberts, a security community ‘does not require the existence of a geographical region, but rather, it can exist between just two or more states’ Such examples would include Australia-New Zealand, Singapore-Brunei, and the US-Canada.2

1 Christopher B Roberts, ASEAN’s Myanmar Crisis: Challenges to the Pursuit of a

Security Community Singapore: ISEAS, 2010, p 4

I will stick with the basic Deutschian conception of a pluralistic security community, in which there is no

2 Ibid., p.4

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requirement for its members to become ‘increasingly amalgamated’ The two core features of a Deutschian security community are a ‘we-feeling’ and ‘non-war’ community A ‘we-feeling’ community has a number of components: overall state of bilateral relations, ranging from ‘very bad’ to ‘very warm’; the degree of regional economic integration; the extent of shared political values (democracy); a ‘regional’ versus a ‘national’ mindset; the extent of identification as an ‘ASEAN citizen’; and the degree of affinity and trust among its members The main indicators of a ‘non-war’ community are no preparations or contingency plans for military mobilization against its neighbours (that is, there no no official war plans against neighbours) and

no regional arms races (a symptom of underlying insecurity)

The main driving forces behind West European integration

Western Europe is generally regarded by the scholarly community as having the best example of a contemporary regional security community (Chapter Two) This major European achievement is the result of several driving forces, that is, ‘critical junctures’ like the devastation of World Wars I and II and a new determination to turn away from wars to mutually beneficial regional political integration; serious threats to national survival, like the ‘Soviet Threat’; the role of a hegemon (strong US economic and political support for a ‘Free Europe’ to counter-balance the Soviet Bloc); and the existence of group of remarkable, visionary European leaders like Monnet, Schuman, and Adenauer

Amid the Cold War antagonisms in the 1950s and 1960s, the security community concept of Deutsch and his associates is an intellectually courageous and pioneering way of thinking about war-avoidance and regional community-building and identity Unfortunately, the promises of Deutschian security community

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theorizing made little or no headway throughout the Cold War era, which was dominated by the zero-sum thinking of realism But this does not diminish the relevance of intellectual thinking about new pathways to inter-state peace and to reduce the danger of war in the nuclear age Indeed, it makes the security community concept even more important in the nuclear age A Third World War is likely to involve the use of nuclear weapons and other Weapons of Mass Destruction, like chemical and biological warfare So the Deutschian security community concept is an innovative way of finding a new pathway to mitigate the security dilemma facing states in an anarchical international system An interesting challenge has to do with examining whether the security community concept is applicable to the non-Western world East Asia is one of those regions

At the conceptual level, this study found that a useful way to conceptualize a regional security community is to combine the powerful insights of both the Deutschian and Constructivist perspectives On their own, each of these two theoretical frameworks presents only a partial view of the regional integration phenomenon The Deutschian approach focuses on factors like the socio-economic transactions and interactions that can make positive contributions to greater mutual understanding and sentiments among neighbours Deutsch’s approach contains a powerful logic: the underlying assumption is that it is both desirable and feasible to forge a regional security community to make war among its members unthinkable and thereby work towards a zone of stable peace which benefits all its members The process of forging a security community involves an aspiration, a very worthwhile one But a limitation of the Deutschian approach is its implicit assumption that enhanced inter-state socio-economic interactions and transactions would logically spillover into greater trust The latter can be one result, but it may not necessarily

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occur Increased inter-state economic transactions may be a necessary but not a sufficient condition for greater friendship, neighbourliness, and mutual trust among states Similarly, greater economic interdependence, especially of the symmetrical variety, can lead to warmer inter-state relations and greater mutual trust, but it is not inevitable Over the past decade, Sino-Japanese economic and trade relations have soared; China is today Japan’s number one trading partner, surpassing the US But Sino-Japanese political relations remain bedeviled by the ‘history’ problem and the danger of a clash of increasingly assertive Chinese and Japanese nationalisms

The two core features of a security community are the presence of a feeling’ community, and that of a ‘non-war’ community Such a theoretically-eclectic approach, pioneered by Peter Katzenstein,3

‘we-Taken as a whole, these four basic elements of ‘we-feeling’ may enable us to form reliable indicators of the development of a strong and positive sense of regional identity and solidarity From a Katzensteinian perspective, a ‘non-war’ community would involve examining the existence of contingency military planning and rapid military mobilization against potential neighbouring enemies, and scrutinizing the pattern of regional arms acquisitions to determine whether it is dominated by a quest for offensive, power-projection and war-fighting capabilities against military-security

enables us to synthesize a ‘we-feeling’ community into four basic components, that is, the extent of shared political values like democracy and respect for human rights, the degree of economic-political integration, the prevalence of ‘national versus regional mindsets’, and the degree of regional affinity and trust among the potential members of a security community

3 Peter J Katzenstein, A World of Regions: Asia and Europe in the American

Imperium, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005 Katzenstein and Nobuo Okawara,

“Japan, Asia-Pacific Security, and the Case for Analytical Eclecticism”,

International Security 26 (3) Winter 2001-2002: 153-185

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threats These basic elements of a security community can serve as a useful research template to analyze the possible emergence of security communities in the non-Western world

The dependent variable in this study is the emergence of a ‘security community’ The independent variables which may have a major impact on the rise

of a security community are: a set of compatible political values (for example, democracy and democratic norms of peaceful change); visionary political leadership

by a group of remarkable leaders and officials; critical junctures and events which changes the underlying complexion of international relations like the end of the Cold War and the onset of the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-98; perceptions of external threats, for example, the threat of Soviet communism; and the strong political support

of a hegemonic Great Power (that is, the US) for regional integration and the rise of a security community

Overall, the significance of these driving forces behind European security regionalism highlights a number of points Both material and ideational factors in the rise of a regional security community are important None of the theoretical approaches should try to claim a monopoly of the truth Scholars should build on the strengths of each theoretical paradigm, so as to enhance our understanding of a complex phenomenon like regionalism and the forging of a regional security community Another critical determinant is the occurrence of ‘critical junctures’ in helping to shape the priorities of national elites and states The nature of the global-systemic configuration of power also needs to be considered

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Driving forces behind ASEAN and East Asian regionalism

The two major driving forces behind the formation of ASEAN in 1967 were the strong desire for political reconciliation among Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines, and the fear of the expansion of revolutionary communism arising from the geopolitical conflict in Vietnam Historically, Southeast Asia had been the victim of Great Power interventions as they compete for influence The post-World War Two ASEAN elites were determined to forge regional unity as a bulwark against unwanted interference This is the significance of the quest of the ASEAN Founding Fathers for ‘One Southeast Asia’ and ‘regional solutions for regional problems’ The ASEAN elites are acutely aware that a disunited Southeast Asia, for example, over the Myanmar issue, would again fall prey to unwanted interference Seen in this context,

it is highly likely that the ASEAN elites would continue to rely on diplomatic persuasion and not put too much pressure against the Myanmar regime

In the post-Cold War era, a major driving force behind the accelerated pace of ASEAN regionalism was the ‘critical juncture’ represented by the outbreak of the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-98 This factor is closely linked to the regime interests

of the ASEAN states Amitav Acharya has cogently described the critical impact of the AFC on the accelerated pace of East Asian regionalism in the following manner:

One result of the Asian crisis was the revival of the moribund East Asian

regionalism The crisis sparked regional disappointment and anger toward

the United States, even among its allies, including Thailand and Japan

Washington’s generous support for Mexico in dealing with the Peso crisis

was contrasted with its relative apathy toward Thailand facing the baht

collapse Moreover, the abrupt and total manner in which Washington

rejected Japan’s proposal for an Asian Monetary Fund as a bulwark

against future crises antagonized opinion leaders of the region The crisis

spurred new regional processes, known as the ASEAN Plus Three (APT)

The APT focused particularly on regional financial cooperation, which

had not been undertaken within the APEC framework.4

4 Amitav Acharya, Whose Ideas Matter? Agency and Power in Asian regionalism

Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2009, p 157

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This study found that based on the available evidence, it can be argued that while ASEAN has made good progress in steadily building a sense of regional community since 1967, there are strong doubts that it has become integrated into a regional security community ASEAN does not appear to have fulfilled the two core criteria of having established a ‘we-feeling’ and ‘non-war’ community With regard to the ‘we-feeling’ criterion, the ASEAN states do not share the common values of democracy and a strong respect for human rights The liberal democracies of Western Europe share a common Christian heritage Democracy and liberal-democratic beliefs and norms appear to be a necessary condition for the rise of a security community The socio-cultural, economic and political diversity among the ASEAN states is therefore very much greater compared with Western Europe ASEAN’s great political diversity ranges from emerging democracies, soft authoritarian regimes, monarchy, communist dictatorships, authoritarian regimes, to a brutal military dictatorship The ASEAN states are also at different levels of economic development ASEAN states like Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia, and Thailand have built up strong and robust economies, and therefore have more economic and financial resources for internal economic and political consolidation into ‘strong states’, even though they continue to face challenges like nation-building and building communal-ethnic trust among different races Clearly, weak states suffering from internal economic mismanagement and multi-ethnic conflicts will not have the resources and time to actively promote regional community building.5

In the scholarly literature, it is not fully clear to what extent ‘democracy’ is a pre-condition for the rise of a regional security community Most Western scholarship appears to imply that liberal-democratic values are a pre-condition The

5 Christopher Roberts 2010 op cit., pp 34-42

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existence of regional security communities in the liberal democracies of the Western world suggests that it plays an important role At the very least, it can be argued that democracy is a necessary, although not a sufficient condition, for the evolution of a regional security community Insecure and authoritarian states, like Myanmar and North Korea, are likely to find the task of building affinity and trust with their neighbours a truly difficult challenge After forty-three years, the degree of economic-political integration in ASEAN is still relatively low Intra-ASEAN trade was only about seventeen percent of total ASEAN trade in 1995, and has stagnated at about 23 percent over the past five years, way below that of the EU and NAFTA (Chapter Three) ASEAN has a rather poor record of implementing regional economic agreements and joint projects mainly because of the voluntary nature of ASEAN membership, and the presence of economic-nationalist sentiments among its members The reality is that only about thirty per cent of the joint economic agreements among the ASEAN states have been implemented.6 The goal of establishing an EU-style ASEAN Free Trade Area by 2015 also seems rather ambitious.7

6 This point was made by Professor Tommy Koh See Grace Ng, “ASEAN urged to do

more to cut trade tariffs, unify markets” Straits Times, 15 April 2008, p H18 See

also Dennis Hew, Roadmap to an ASEAN Economic Community, Singapore: ISEAS,

2005 See also Wong Poh Kim, “Slow progress cost ASEAN a decade”, The Straits Times, 5 February 2010, p A22 In his study, Wong (an NUS economist) found that

“Throughout the last decade, intra-ASEAN trade has been at or below one quarter of total ASEAN trade, much less than the case for the EU (about two-thirds among its member-states) and the North American Free Trade Agreement group (over 40 per cent)

7 Carlos Conde, “An EU-like pact for ASEAN: A distant dream?” New York Times, 28

January 2007 See also John Ravenhill, ASEAN Regionalism: Much Ado about Nothing? Department of International Relations, The Australian National University

Working Paper 2008/3, December 2008

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Most, if not all, of the ASEAN states remain stuck with a nationalist mindset instead of a ‘regional mindset’ which is a pre-requisite for continuing progress towards the achievement of a genuine regional security community Members of a real security community need to be very alert to the legitimate economic and political interests of other states, and share common strategic priorities and perspectives, including about the roles of external Great Powers In particular, the larger and more powerful states need to be very sensitive about the vulnerabilities felt by the weaker and smaller member-states (Singapore and Brunei within ASEAN) The persistence

of the regional haze issue (1997 till now) arising from jungle fires in Indonesia’s Kalimantan province would appear to be an example of Jakarta’s lack of capacity and sensitivity to the legitimate interests of its neighbours.8

8 ASEAN signed the Agreement on Transboundary Haze and Pollution, which came

into force at the end of 2003 The terrible fires of 2006 in Indonesia forced President Yudhoyono to apologize and promise action But Jakarta has not yet ratified the Haze Agreement See William Cole and Erik Jensen, “Norms and Regional Architecture: Multilateral Institution Building in Asia and its Impact on Governance

and Democracy”, in Michael Green and Bates Gill eds Asia’s New Multilateralism,

NY: Columbia University Press, 2009: 250-251

The ASEAN states have different strategic priorities and perspectives regarding the role of external powers like the US and China in Southeast Asia Thailand and the Philippines are treaty allies of the US As a small, vulnerable state, Singapore has built up strong military bonds with Washington as a form of ‘insurance’ policy against the danger of aggressive local powers like Sukarno’s Indonesia in the early-1960s Up till the late-1980s, Indonesia and to a lesser extent Malaysia clearly preferred a locally-based regional balance of power, which would be to their national advantage Today, Indonesia and Malaysia have cordial and growing military relationships with the US With regard to the PRC, the ASEAN states have adopted a hedging strategy of exploiting the booming Chinese market for their national economic advantage, but

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maintaining vigilance in case the PRC turns out to be aggressive and expansionist Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Cambodia have built up strong economic links with China Myanmar, because of Western sanctions arising from its poor human rights record, has developed close strategic links with Beijing and New Delhi But Vietnam and the Philippines appear to be wary of Chinese strategic intentions in the region Vietnam fought a bitter border war with China in 1979, while aggressive Chinese naval action during the 1995 Mischief Reef incident alarmed the Philippines Due to these strategic differences, the ASEAN states do not have a common, coordinated policy towards the US and China Importantly, these intra-ASEAN strategic differences act as a constraint and set limits on the depth and extent of regional political-security integration within ASEAN.9

A critical feature of a security community is the strong level of affinity and trust among its members, at both elite and grassroots levels Photo-opportunities showing ASEAN camaraderie during official summit meetings may not fully convey the dynamics of intra-ASEAN problems and relations In terms of the criterion of the degree of regional affinity and trust, a recent study by Christopher Roberts found that more than fifty per cent of the elites and masses surveyed can envisage situations where ASEAN states will actually use force against one another (Chapter Three) Equally important, more than half of these respondents do not have positive sentiments of citizens of other ASEAN states Even though regional tourism traffic within the ASEAN states has increased among their citizens, they do not seem to have

9 At the 17th ARF meeting in Hanoi in July 2010, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated that the

US had ‘a national interest’ in freedom of navigation, open access to Asia’s maritime commons and respect for international law in the South China Sea Mark Landler, “Offering to aid talks, US

challenges China on disputed islands”, New York Times 23 July 2010 “US involvement only

complicates South China Sea issue”, China Daily 27 July 2010 “US to facilitate East Sea

negotiations”, Thanh Nien News (Vietnam) 23 July 2010 “Vietnam hedges its China risk”, Asia Times, 30 July 2010

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become more comfortable with one another On this issue, there are both pessimists and optimists among scholars and policy-makers As recently as May 2006, Lee Kuan Yew said during a visit to Japan that ‘it would be difficult for Asia to be one community like the EU because the countries of Asia are not as ‘comfortable’ with one another as are the nations of Europe: “To have one currency, a borderless community, I don’t see that Not yet Maybe after 50, 70, 80 years, we can look at the matter again.”10 But ASEANists, like the ex-ASEAN Secretary General Rodolfo Severino, are more optimistic They believe that over the past four decades, ASEAN has already made remarkable progress compared to the pre-1967 era.11

While the levels of regional trust are of course higher compared to the

pre-1967 period, the current levels of regional trust do not give us great confidence to be able to argue that ASEAN has become integrated into a regional security community

It can of course be argued that over time, the levels of mutual trust among the ASEAN states should continue to strengthen as the member-states intensify their efforts at regional community-building as envisaged under the Bali Concord II declaration of 2003.12

With regard to the criterion of a ‘non-war’ community, the study found that ASEAN seems to be a long way from it Among the three core ASEAN states of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, the study found the existence of contingency military planning for rapid mobilization of troops against each other In this specific

10 Straits Times, 26 May 2006; cited in Jorgen Orstrom Moller and Rodolfo C

Severino, “EU’s lessons for East Asian Integration”, Straits Times, 30 May 2006

11 Author’s interview with Severino on 22 October 2009 at ISEAS Severino was

cautiously optimistic that ASEAN will continue to make incremental progress into a more cohesive regional community

12 This point was emphasized by ex-ASEAN Secretary-General Rodolfo Severino in an

interview with the author on 22 October 2009

of contingency military planning and the rapid mobilization of armed forces against their neighbours to be a matter of the utmost secrecy, so as not to create a dangerous self-fulfilling prophecy However, the specific case of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore would suggest that where there remain mutual suspicions, rivalries and tensions, the existence of similar contingency military plans among the militaries of other ASEAN states cannot be ruled out with a high degree of confidence Another example would be the border fighting between Thai and Cambodian military forces since mid-2007 over the disputed 800-year old Hindu Preah Vihear temple Over the past decade, there have also been a number of militarized naval confrontations among the ASEAN states Hence, if this assumption is valid, it would appear to rule out ASEAN, as it is currently constituted, as a regional security community

The pattern of arms acquisitions by ASEAN states over the past decade would suggest, on balance, a focus on offensive weapons, and the building up of power-projection and conventional war-fighting capabilities Military weaponry, by its very nature, has both defensive and offensive characteristics With advances in military technology, there is a continuing rise in the degree of weapons lethality There is continuing debate over whether there is a regional arms race within Southeast Asia

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To be sure, there is no necessary and direct correlation between increases in a state’s military expenditures and more aggressive and expansionist behavior towards its neighbours States have various motivations for building up their military forces, ranging from legitimate self-defense, internal security requirements, the need to safeguard waterways and meet potential external threats, and aspirations to play the role of regional or global actors To be sure, increases in military spending do not necessarily imply aggressive or expansionist intent In an increasingly interdependent and globalized world, the contest among nations is now mainly in the economic field For a regional grouping of small and medium-sized states, the ability of each ASEAN member-state to stay internationally competitive and attract much-needed foreign investment is critical to their national survival and regional well-being Hence the great interest among the ASEAN states to forge bilateral and regional FTAs Inter-state war in the nuclear age is simply national suicide as there are unlikely to be any victors It is in this sense that interstate warfare in the contemporary world may be regarded as a sunset industry There is some truth in this argument But the continuing acquisition of more lethal and advanced weaponry like submarines, warplanes and warships by the ASEAN militaries should be regarded as a cause for serious concern Singapore, for example, being the smallest ASEAN state, has continued to systematically enhance its military modernization, especially the Republic of Singapore Air Force’s (RSAF) capability to fight modern wars under high-tech conditions The RSAF trains its fighter pilots in the US states of Texas and Arizona The SAF has also fostered close ties with France and Australia.13

13 Singapore Ministry of Defence, “President Nathan confers top military award on

French Armed Forces Chief of the Defence Staff”, 26 November 2009 (

The

www.mindef.gov.sg/mindef/news_and_events/nr/2009/nov/26nov09_nnhtml )

Sherlyn Quek, “Singapore, Australia to expand defence cooperation”, 12 August