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

C H A PT E R F I V E C ONC L USI ON The main aim of this dissertation was to examine two inter-related research questions. The first question concerns the validity of the claim that ASEAN is a nascent security community or is already one. The second question focuses on the claim that the ‘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 245 the Northeast Asian region. Both sub-regions constitute a form of ‘security symbiosis’ or security-interdependence. The peace and prosperity of Southeast Asia is closely linked to the prospects of war or peace in the Northeast Asian region, as the latter contains some of the potential hotspots in the world, that is, the Taiwan Issue, Korean re-unification and nuclear proliferation, Sino-Japanese rivalry, and territorial disputes in the South China Sea (Spratlys and the Paracels). 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 246 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’. 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. I will stick with the basic Deutschian conception of a pluralistic security community, in which there is no Christopher B. Roberts, ASEAN’s Myanmar Crisis: Challenges to the Pursuit of a Security Community. Singapore: ISEAS, 2010, p. 4. Ibid., p.4. 247 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 ‘nonwar’ 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 248 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 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 249 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 ‘wefeeling’ community, and that of a ‘non-war’ community. Such a theoretically-eclectic approach, pioneered by Peter Katzenstein, 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. 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 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. 250 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 nonWestern 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 globalsystemic configuration of power also needs to be considered. 251 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 Amitav Acharya, Whose Ideas Matter? Agency and Power in Asian regionalism. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2009, p. 157. 252 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 ‘wefeeling’ criterion, the ASEAN states 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. 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 Christopher Roberts 2010 op cit., pp. 34-42. 253 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. The goal of establishing an EU-style ASEAN Free Trade Area by 2015 also seems rather ambitious. This point was made by Professor Tommy Koh. See Grace Ng, “ASEAN urged to 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, 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). 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. 254 RSAF has an Advanced Jet Training detachment in Cazaux, France. Indonesia’s military cooperation relationships with the US were severely hampered by the Indonesian Armed forces’ serious violations of human rights, especially in East Timor conflict throughout the 1990s. Under the Presidency of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (since October 2004), the US has lifted its sanctions against Indonesia and resumed bilateral military cooperation. Most of the ASEAN militaries know that the quality of their armed forces can be significantly improved with close relations with the US. Unlike Western Europe, Southeast Asia is still faced with a regional security dilemma. ASEAN states’ inability to transcend the security dilemma means that they remain essentially Westphalian states, where the concern with protecting national sovereignty remains paramount. At the conceptual level, the study found that a major driving force behind ASEAN regionalism, unlike the case of Western Europe, is the obsession with the protection of national interest and sovereignty and nationalistic mindsets. The state remains the primary actor in East Asian international relations. The progress made by ASEAN has been the main result of a series of inter-governmental bargains. There are no signs that the ASEAN states are ready for any movement into supranationalism. Regime-interests have been a major driving force in the evolution of East Asian security regionalism, and are likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. That is, security regionalism in Southeast Asia has been driven at the state level since the formation of ASEAN in 1967. The evolution of ASEAN regionalism has been eminently political; it was at the initiative of the governments of the ASEAN 2008, Cyberpioneer. Web publication of the SAF. The SAF regularly conducts training at facilities such as Shoal Water Bay Training Area and the RAAF Base Pearce in Australia. 260 member-states. 14 Until now, intra-ASEAN regionalism has been essentially driven by inter-governmentalism. Supra-nationalism remains anathema to the “ASEAN Way”, and is likely to remain so. This should not be a surprise, given the historical background of Western colonialism and persistence of animosities and economic rivalries. As a grouping of small and medium-sized states, ASEAN’s 1967 Founding Declaration focused on the promotion of ‘national and regional resilience’ given the sub-region’s history of conflicts and animosities. Historically, the Great Powers have often interfered in the internal affairs of the Southeast Asian region. To reduce the danger of Great Power interference, the ASEAN states since 1967 have committed themselves to building up ‘One Southeast Asia’. This goal was achieved with Cambodia’s membership in 1999. In the context of US dominance and the growing influence of China, ASEAN is concerned with maintaining its unity and solidarity to ensure regional autonomy and remaining an active player in the management of regional order in Southeast Asia and East Asia generally. But with the rise of China and India in the 1990s and Japan’s own great-power ambitions, ASEAN’s objective of staying in the ‘driver’s seat’ of East Asian regionalism is likely to get tougher. Hence, the ASEAN elites know the importance of continuing to solidify ASEAN community building and regional cohesion, especially the task of bringing Myanmar into the ASEAN mainstream. 14 A united ASEAN is critical to ensuring that it will See Evelyn Goh, “Hegemony, hierarchy and order”, in William Tow ed. Security Politics in the Asia-Pacific: A Regional-Global Nexus?, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009: 105. Goh posits that East Asian definitions of regional security have had two main characteristics. First, Asian states subscribe to a comprehensive view of national security that aims not only at preventing external military hostility, but also at fostering socio-economic development to ensure internal ‘resilience’. Thus, they share a strong conviction that economic growth is a critical means of ensuring regime legitimacy and fostering regional security through national development and regional interdependence. Second, they have developed regional norms on security cooperation that stem from the legacy of decolonization, and are targeted at safeguarding sovereign identity and prerogatives within a common understood territorial frame of reference. 261 remain relevant in the face of rapid globalization and enhanced international economic competition, and the perennial Great Power maneuvers for regional influence and dominance. For the foreseeable future, there is likely to be little or no prospect for any form of EU-style supra-nationalism within Southeast Asia. Key political decisions are likely to remain in the hands of the national leaders of each ASEAN memberstate. Thus, the process of ASEAN regionalism is likely to focus on the protection of national sovereignty for the short and medium-term. This means that ASEAN is likely to focus greater attention on expanding cooperation on non-military matters as the latter not involve ceding political sovereignty to the ASEAN organization. In a June 2010 study, Geoffrey Cockerham concluded that the “state preferences (of ASEAN) will continue to be adverse to strong (political) supranationalism. As a result, integration in the (ASEAN) region should continue to be beneficial, but not optimal. Support exists for improving economies, democracy, and human rights in the region. The dynamics of the political process, however, will limit ASEAN’s effect on economic growth, and greatly constrain influence that it can have on democratization and human rights.” 15 Unlike the EU, the ASEAN states have the more modest goal of promoting greater intra-regional understanding and economic cooperation, but no common aspiration to develop into a global political actor. There are no ASEAN public declarations to this effect. The ASEAN Founding Fathers were realistic in this regard. Their two key aims are the promotion of greater intra-regional political reconciliation given their past history of tensions and conflicts, and to prevent Great Power interference in Southeast Asian affairs. An approach combining 15 Geoffrey Cockerham, “Regional integration in ASEAN: Institutional Design and the ASEAN Way”, East Asia: An International Quarterly 27 (2) July 2010: 164-185. 262 the insights of realism and constructivism, would enable us to gain a better understanding of the characteristics and the specific nature of both the strengths and limitations of ASEAN regionalism. A great strength of the ASEAN Way of cooperative security is that steady progress can be achieved through patient dialogue, and consultative diplomacy. At the same time, this strength of patient ASEAN-style diplomacy is also its limitation: critics have pointed to ASEAN’s glacier-paced progress and of being a mere ‘talk shop’. This is also partly the result of ASEAN states’ obsession with political-sovereignty and a nationalist mindset. Hence, one implication here is that the ‘spillover’ effect of neo-functionalist theory is likely to take place at a very much slower pace among the ASEAN states, compared with Western Europe. But progress towards greater ASEAN community-building is steadily taking place, which is not a bad thing at all, compared to the animosities in the pre-1967 era in Southeast Asian history. Despite criticisms that ASEAN is merely a ‘talk-shop’, regional elites know that ASEAN matters. Another conceptual finding is that as things stand now, ASEAN should be regarded as at best a ‘security regime’ and not as a regional security community. This means that war within Southeast Asia remains thinkable but may be highly unlikely. Unlike the EU states, practically all ASEAN states are multi-ethnic and are still engaged in the delicate task of state-building and nation-building. This point is important because, as argued by Benjamin Miller, the extent of “state-to-nation congruence” and of state strength affect a state’s “war-propensity”. 16 The pace of economic growth and development within ASEAN is very uneven. Even among the original core ASEAN states, poverty and a big urban-rural divide, a shaky sense of 16 Benjamin Miller, “Between the revisionist state and the frontier state: regional variations in state war-propensity”, in Rick Fawn ed. Globalising the Regional, Regionalizing the Global, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009: 85-119. 263 national unity and poor governance remain serious developmental challenges for the incumbent regimes. Many ASEAN states today are still ranked internationally by Transparency International as among some of the most corrupt and least transparent states in the world (Chapter Three). 17 At the conceptual level, ASEAN’s viability lends support to the (realist) theory of Inter-Governmentalism. The steady institutional evolution of ASEAN (that is, the ARF, APT, CMI, the expanded powers of the ASEAN Secretariat since the 2003 Bali Summit, EAS, and the ASEAN Charter of 2008) highlights the fact that the core political decisions are still made by the individual ASEAN governments. ASEAN’s inter-governmental nature is set to continue for the foreseeable future until such time when there are much higher levels of regional affinity and trust. As discussed in Chapter Four, post-Cold War Northeast Asia appears to be developing, contrary to the pessimistic claims of realists, into a ‘zone of peace’, whether fragile, uneasy, or stable. Except perhaps for North Korea and Myanmar, the incentives for forging greater regional cooperation and integration clearly outweighs the costs. The study found that the ‘ASEAN Way’ of cooperation security has made a useful contribution to the rise of greater regionalism in post-Cold War Northeast Asia. In particular, the ARF has played a number of useful roles. The Northeast Asian states see ASEAN as an honest broker and the ‘ASEAN Way’ as ‘non-threatening’. 17 Corruption is a major ASEAN weakness. Six of the 10 ASEAN countries — Laos, Vietnam, the Philippines, Cambodia, Indonesia and Myanmar — are among the 50 most corrupt states in the world, according to the 2006 Corruption Perceptions index compiled by the corruption watchdog Transparency International, which surveyed 163 countries. http://www.transparency.org. See Conde 2007, op cit. See also Razeen Sally, “Regional economic integration in Asia: The Track record and Prospects”. Paper presented at the PAFTAD 33 Conference, Taipei, October 2009, pp. 1-28. (www.ecipe.org/people/razeen-sally.) Sally is the Co-Director of the European Centre for International Political Economy. 264 ASEAN has built up its regional credibility as an impartial and honest broker, especially in promoting political reconciliation among China, Japan, and South Korea. China-Japan relations hit record lows during the administration of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi (2001-2006) due to the latter’s annual visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, seen as a symbol of Japanese militarism. These two East Asian giants have had a roller-coaster relationship, given their history of war, aggression, atrocities, and contemporary regional leadership rivalry and conflicts over territory (Diaoyutai dispute) and natural resources like oil and gas in the East China Sea. But the norms of the ASEAN Way are not unique in that they are enshrined in the UN Charter. The peaceful norms of the ASEAN Way are also fully in line with China’s Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence of 1954. A major example of the extension of the peaceful norms of the ASEAN Way to regional security is the ARF, established in 1994. The ARF provides a neutral ground and a mechanism for the Northeast Asian states to meet and build up confidence building without having to take the first steps themselves. Since its founding in 1994, the ARF agenda has expanded to include meetings of regional Defence Ministers which enable the latter to establish personal networks of greater cooperation and mutual trust. Importantly, the ARF helps to keep regional channels of official communications open. This function of the ARF should not be underestimated as it prevents misunderstandings and disputes from hardening into inflexible positions and escalating into more serious conflicts. The ASEAN Way and the ARF have continued to make useful and incremental progress in the promotion of greater regional stability and integration in East Asia. 18 18 Rodolfo C. Severino, The ASEAN Regional Forum, Singapore: ISEAS, 2009. In a recent study, Jurgen Haacke found that over the past few years, the ARF has moved 265 But this study found that there are other equally important driving forces behind growing Northeast Asian regionalism. Another important driving force is the rise of China and its focus on internal modernization. This 1978 Chinese decision was the outcome of internal Chinese political processes, which have little to with the norms of the ASEAN Way. This finding is important because it means that there is nothing that the outside world, especially the US, can to stop China’s quest for modernization and Great Power status. It also means that it is in the national interests of both the US and China, and for the world generally, that these two giants focus on sensitively managing China’s peaceful rise and integration into the global balance of power. The third major driving force behind post-Cold War regionalism in Northeast Asia is Japan’s quest for ‘normal country’ status and its strong support for East Asian multilateralism. As the world’s second strongest economic power, Japan’s elites have aspirations to restore Tokyo’s pre-World War Two status as a global actor. This can be seen in Japan’s ambitions to gain permanent membership of the UN Security Council. The perceived decline in US dominance in East Asia and China’s growing regional influence has led to growing public questioning of Japan’s (and South Korea’s) dependence on the US military umbrella. The newly-elected DPJ government of Prime Minister Hatoyama wants an ‘equal partnership’ with the US, not as a junior surrogate of the US, as was the case of the previous LDP administrations for the past six decades. To achieve its goal of Great Power status, Japan has to come out of the long shadow of American power and dominance. Japan beyond dialogue towards more practical cooperation in the areas of terrorism, maritime security and disaster relief. See Haacke, “The ASEAN Regional Forum: from dialogue to practical security cooperation”, Cambridge Review of International Affairs 22 (3) September 2009: 427-450. 266 would also have to learn to live with the reality of China’s growing power and influence in East Asia. Hence, Japan is staking a strong claim for regional leadership through Hatoyama’s most recent proposal in September 2009 for an ‘East Asian Community’. Japan knows that the APT will be China-centered. The Hatoyama proposal is deliberately vague regarding the potential US role in the region. Japan is understandably cautious that its growing foreign policy assertiveness not be perceived by Washington to imply a weakening of their bilateral political-security relationship. China’s response so far to the Hatoyama proposal has been non-committal. Beijing is unlikely to publicly oppose the Hatoyama proposal. The China-Japan regional leadership rivalry will be a major determinant of the shape of East Asian regional integration. ASEAN’s response has been quite straightforward: its main concern is that such a proposal will not undermine ASEAN’s major role in being the ‘driver’ of regional integration. Another important driving force is the steady but growing US recognition, especially by the new Obama administration, that Washington does not want to be left out of the growing momentum in East Asian multilateral regional integration. Unlike the unilateralism of the George W. Bush administration, President Obama has decided that Washington would become actively engaged with the rising states of East Asia. Bush’s obsession with Afghanistan and Iraq had opened the way for greater Chinese influence with the ASEAN states. The basic US preference to maintain its Cold War era bilateral ‘hub-and-spokes’ alliances with its East Asian allies is still there. This US goal is compatible with strong engagement with growing East Asian multilateralism. A good sign is President Obama’s decision to hold a second US- 267 ASEAN Summit at the next APEC Summit in Tokyo in late-2010, following fruitful discussions at the APEC Summit in Singapore in November 2009. 19 The Obama administration’s strong support for East Asian multilateralism is also influenced by China’s ‘charm offensive’ in Southeast Asia since the trauma of the AFC a decade ago. China’s innovative ‘charm offensive’ is gaining Beijing great influence throughout East Asia at the expense of the US. In the 21st century, the contest for regional and global leadership is in the economic arena. The nuclear age has made interstate war, especially among the Great Powers, both too costly and too dangerous. The elites of the US, China, Japan, and South Korea, understand this danger. The people of China, having suffered greatly during the political upheavals of the Maoist era, are hungry for peace, stability, and prosperity. This factor alone is a major stabilizing force in Northeast Asian affairs. The corollary argument is that, contrary to the claims of realists, Northeast Asia has been steadily transformed into a ‘regional zone of peace’: it is not ‘ripe for conflict’. This finding also lends strong support to the arguments of Liberalism and Constructivism. The strength of the Liberal paradigm’s argument about the pacific effects of growing interdependence is seen in the growth of ASEAN’s economic ties with all the Northeast Asian economies. The strength of the Constructivist argument is seen in the re-orientation of US policy towards East Asia by the Obama administration that the rise of China is not a threat to the US, that the US and China are not pre-destined to be adversaries, and that it is a positive development for global peace, security and prosperity. 20 19 20 Ravi Velloor, “Closer ASEAN-US ties with historic summit”, Straits Times, 16 November 2009, p. A1. Since mid-2010, the Obama administration appears to have decided to adopt a tougher policy towards China, seen in US arms sales to Taiwan and on the South China Sea issue. See Gordon G. Chang, “Hillary Clinton changes America’s China policy”, Forbes 28 July 2010. Sim Chi Yin, “Obama sets cordial tone in Shanghai”, Straits Times 17 November 2009, p. A10. 268 Significance and Contributions of this Dissertation First, at the conceptual level, we found that the conceptualization of a regional security community is better understood by combining the useful insights of the realist, Deutschian and Constructivist perspectives. On their own, each of these theoretical perspectives presents only a partial view of reality. An analytically- eclectic approach has the great advantage of using the strengths of the realist, Deutschian and Constructivist paradigms. 21 The realist perspective highlights the importance of material factors like ‘state interests’ in understanding state’s responses to changes and threats in the external environment. The Deutschian assumption that growing socio-economic transactions among states can spillover into more pacific habits of peaceful interstate cooperation and integration remains useful. Similarly, the two basic Deutschian criteria of a ‘we-feeling’ and ‘non-war’ community remains the core template for the study of security communities. The ideational socialization processes of the Constructivist perspective add to our understanding of the making of a state’s foreign policy towards the issue of forging closer regional economic cooperation, and political-security integration. But Constructivists should not overstate their case: inter-subjective ideas and norms are important; but material capabilities still matter. The usefulness of the Constructivist approach is that it highlights other dimensions within which national policymaking decisions on foreign policy take place: ideational norms arising from regular interactions among national leaders can have a positive socializing effect in shaping the formation of cooperative and peaceful attitudes and common identities towards one’s neighbours. Shared norms of peaceful inter-state behavior can positively affect the re-formulation of state 21 Peter Katzenstein and Nobuo Okawara, “Japan, Asia-Pacific Security, and the case for Analytical Eclecticism”, International Security 26 (3) Winter 2001-02; 153-185. 269 identity and interests. The Constructivist approach is useful, but only up to a point. This is because ideational and inter-subjective feelings and the rise of norms not take place in a vacuum. They take place in an environment based very much on a state’s calculations of national material capabilities, of their own state and that of potential rivals or enemies. States’ calculation of their power and those of potential rivals remain important. Indeed, the spread of ideational norms of peaceful inter-state conduct not exists in a vacuum: they depend to a great extent on a conducive environment engendered by states’ perceptions of a stable regional balance of power and policy preferences based on mutual trust and respect, and mutually-beneficial relations. Second, this study sought to discover more detailed, comprehensive and new insights into the contested claim that ASEAN is a regional security community. A controversy centres on the role of democratic values, including the rule of law and political accountability. The rise of a West European security community, in which all its members are democracies, would appear to indicate that democracy is at least a necessary condition. The record of ASEAN’s evolution over the past two decades would appear to lend some support here. Recent democratic transitions in the Philippines (the People Power revolution against President Marcos in the 1980s), Thailand (in the early 1990s except for the military coup of September 2006) and Indonesia (with the ouster of President Suharto in May 1998) accelerated ASEAN’s growth into a more rules-based organization. This study came out with the core elements of examining the establishment of a ‘we-feeling’ community by using an eclectic approach, that is, the use of four basic components: degree of shared political values like democracy and respect for human rights; the extent of regional economic cooperation; existence of a ‘national versus regional mindset’; and the degree of 270 regional affinity and trust among elites and the mass publics. This can serve as a useful, parsimonious, and convenient template for analysis. Similarly, the use of the two core components of a ‘non-war’ community, that is, existence of contingency military planning for the sudden and rapid mobilization of armed forces against neighbours, and the pattern of regional arms acquisitions, can also serve a parsimonious purpose of analysis. We have identified the important variables in the quest to forge a durable East Asian security community. This is also linked to my conceptualization of a security community. This study found that an understanding of the critical driving forces in the rise of a security community must bear in mind the following considerations. At the individual level, the quality of political leadership is clearly very important. The important variables are the personality and character of the state’s top leaders (belligerent and bellicose). At the domestic-national level, the important variables are the types of political system and a state’s level of economic development. The nature of domestic politics was found to be a critical variable affecting a state’s ability to contribute to the process of regional community-building. Fragile, quasi-states, faced with severe internal challenges of poverty, ethnic-communal tensions, and poor governance, are unlikely to have the time and resources for such an arduous undertaking. At the regional level, the important variables are the types and quality of regional interactions, and their perceptions of one another (‘friendly’ or suspicious and hostile). Hence, the degree of regional affinity and trust was found to be an important variable in the forging of a regional security community. At the global level, the important variables are the international constellation/balance of power, and the nature of Great Power relations, especially whether there are life-and-death ideological struggles like the Cold War. It was only in the post-Cold War era that 271 more peaceful norms of inter-state interactions and cooperation had a chance to take root. This variable has a great impact on the attractiveness and feasibility of applying the Deutschian security community concept to the non-Western world. In the postCold War era, benign US hegemony and its active promotion of liberal democratic values contributed to the expansion of the world economy and US military power has enhanced peace and security in many regions of the world, including in East Asia. For many East Asian states, especially the smaller ones, the US has played an important stabilizing role as the major ‘security-guarantor’ against potentially predatory local powers. This is a great strength of realist theory, which highlights that material power capabilities are still important, given the security dilemma facing almost all states in an anarchical world. Second, we assessed the question of whether ASEAN is truly a regional security community. This question is important because if ASEAN is truly a security community, we would expect to see many similarities between ASEAN and the EU as international political actors in their own right, especially in terms of regional economic synergy, the amount of intra-regional trade and investment, and ASEAN acting cohesively as an international actor. On this score, ASEAN has a mixed record. There are several reasons. ASEAN has made commendable progress in terms of promoting greater regional economic and monetary cooperation, especially in the post-Cold War era. In recent years, ASEAN is seeking to set clear targets and goals in terms of a regional free trade area, a self-help regional mechanism against the threat of global financial speculative forces. Due to the growing pressures and challenges posed by globalization and the competitive threats posed by the rise of China and India, ASEAN is also trying hard to enhance its attractiveness to foreign investors, move beyond sovereignty and promote the rule of law and greater political 272 accountability. But, as pointed out by Douglas Webber, in the area of ASEAN political integration, there is little or no progress at all. 22 The signing of a more rules-based ASEAN Charter at the Singapore Summit in November 2007 is a big step in the right direction. The ASEAN Charter, although much watered down, was ratified by all member states by December 2008. Greater regional economic and political cooperation, however, is not the same as closer ‘regional integration’ or ‘regional community-building’. The latter involves the much more complex task of forging strong psychological bonds among governments and their peoples, as befitting a real ‘regional family’, or to paraphrase Hedley Bull, to forge a ‘regional society of sovereign states’, governed by mutually-beneficial rules and norms of peaceful interactions. 23 The lack of implementation of democratic values and the emergence of strong civil society organizations can plausibly be argued to act as a constraint on ASEAN’s ability to continue to grow into an integrated security community. Finally, this study’s conclusion that ASEAN has not become integrated into a security community should be a cause for deeper reflection, and to guard against complacency. From a policymaking viewpoint, the finding means that it is important that we realize that much work remains to be done in the difficult and uncertain quest to forge an East Asian security community. 22 23 Douglas Webber, “The regional integration that didn’t happen: cooperation without integration in twenty-first century East Asia”, Pacific Review 23 (3) July 2010: 313-333. Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: Study of Order in World Politics. New York: Columbia University Press, 1977, 2nd edition. 273 Suggestions for Future Research With the benefit of hindsight, one suggestion is to fine-tune the two core components of a Deutschian security community. Based on my reading of the existing literature, I summarized the four basic components of a ‘we-feeling’ community. By its very nature, the idea of a ‘we-feeling’ community is quite elusive. It is not easy to fully capture this idea. 24 From a qualitative analysis viewpoint, I wrestled with the question of whether these four components indeed accurately portray such a subjective and abstract notion. Second, I think that the core components of a ‘nonwar’ community can be improved upon to enhance its robustness. Perhaps, more opinion polls or regional-level surveys of the thinking among academic and defencesecurity community could be conducted, given the time constraints. But the results of such surveys should be interpreted very carefully because of its very sensitive nature and the fact that respondents may only give ‘politically-correct” responses, and not what they hold deeply in their hearts. By its very nature, the type of questions on such a controversial topic as the potential use of force against one’s neighbours and rivals has also the ‘self-fulfilling prophecy” effect to consider. Third, there could be more studies on the critical driving forces behind the rise of a security community, especially in the non-Western world. They can then be used for deeper research on comparative regionalism in different parts of the world. 25 The fourth and final suggestion has to with further academic research on the growing number of proposals for the establishment of an ‘East Asian Community’ or an ‘Asia Pacific 24 25 According to Christopher Roberts, the three characteristics of a ‘Community’ are: collective identity formation; multifaceted, direct and indirect interaction; and the existence of reciprocity whereby there is a degree of long-term interest. See his ASEAN’s Myanmar Crisis, 2010, op cit., p. 5. Amitav Acharya and Alastair Iain Johnston. Crafting Cooperation: regional institutions in comparative perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Philippe De Lombaerde, Fredrik Soderbaum, Luk Van Lagenhove, and Francis Bert, “The problem of comparison in comparative regionalism”, Review of International Studies 36 (3) July 2010: 731-753. 274 Community’. This topic is likely to grow in importance as the pace of regional community-building and economic interdependence in East Asia accelerates. At one level of analysis, the growing debate on the evolution of East Asian regionalism testifies to the vibrancy of intellectual debate on this subject. At another level of analysis, it highlights the fact that the forging of an East Asian security community has important policymaking implications for governments and for war and peace in East Asia. 26 26 A useful intellectual website devoted to discussions on the topic of an East Asian community can be found at the East Asia Forum. Its editors are from the Australian National University: www.eastasiaforum.org. 275 [...]... with maintaining its unity and solidarity to ensure regional autonomy and remaining an active player in the management of regional order in Southeast Asia and East Asia generally But with the rise of China and India in the 1990s and Japan’s own great-power ambitions, ASEAN s objective of staying in the ‘driver’s seat’ of East Asian regionalism is likely to get tougher Hence, the ASEAN elites know the. .. Southeast Asian history Despite criticisms that ASEAN is merely a ‘talk-shop’, regional elites know that ASEAN matters Another conceptual finding is that as things stand now, ASEAN should be regarded as at best a security regime’ and not as a regional security community This means that war within Southeast Asia remains thinkable but may be highly unlikely Unlike the EU states, practically all ASEAN states... series of inter-governmental bargains There are no signs that the ASEAN states are ready for any movement into supranationalism Regime-interests have been a major driving force in the evolution of East Asian security regionalism, and are likely to remain so for the foreseeable future That is, security regionalism in Southeast Asia has been driven at the state level since the formation of ASEAN in 1967 The. .. Great Power interference in Southeast Asian affairs An approach combining 15 Geoffrey Cockerham, Regional integration in ASEAN: Institutional Design and the ASEAN Way”, East Asia: An International Quarterly 27 (2) July 2010: 164-1 85 262 the insights of realism and constructivism, would enable us to gain a better understanding of the characteristics and the specific nature of both the strengths and. .. evolution of ASEAN regionalism has been eminently political; it was at the initiative of the governments of the ASEAN 2008, Cyberpioneer Web publication of the SAF The SAF regularly conducts training at facilities such as Shoal Water Bay Training Area and the RAAF Base Pearce in Australia 260 member-states 14 Until now, intra -ASEAN regionalism has been essentially driven by inter-governmentalism Supra-nationalism... limitations of ASEAN regionalism A great strength of the ASEAN Way of cooperative security is that steady progress can be achieved through patient dialogue, and consultative diplomacy At the same time, this strength of patient ASEAN- style diplomacy is also its limitation: critics have pointed to ASEAN s glacier-paced progress and of being a mere ‘talk shop’ This is also partly the result of ASEAN states’... protecting national sovereignty remains paramount At the conceptual level, the study found that a major driving force behind ASEAN regionalism, unlike the case of Western Europe, is the obsession with the protection of national interest and sovereignty and nationalistic mindsets The state remains the primary actor in East Asian international relations The progress made by ASEAN has been the main result of a. .. variables are the types and quality of regional interactions, and their perceptions of one another (‘friendly’ or suspicious and hostile) Hence, the degree of regional affinity and trust was found to be an important variable in the forging of a regional security community At the global level, the important variables are the international constellation/balance of power, and the nature of Great Power relations,... analysis, it highlights the fact that the forging of an East Asian security community has important policymaking implications for governments and for war and peace in East Asia 26 26 A useful intellectual website devoted to discussions on the topic of an East Asian community can be found at the East Asia Forum Its editors are from the Australian National University: www.eastasiaforum.org 2 75 ... claims of realists, into a ‘zone of peace’, whether fragile, uneasy, or stable Except perhaps for North Korea and Myanmar, the incentives for forging greater regional cooperation and integration clearly outweighs the costs The study found that the ASEAN Way’ of cooperation security has made a useful contribution to the rise of greater regionalism in post-Cold War Northeast Asia In particular, the ARF . and remaining an active player in the management of regional order in Southeast Asia and East Asia generally. But with the rise of China and India in the 1990s and Japan’s own great-power ambitions,. 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. ‘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