By 2000 south-east Asia will be a geographic, economic, and political regional power. The ten countries that make up the region will be members of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), one of the world's most effective regional organisations.
The association was formed in 1967 as a loose grouping by Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Thailand. Brunei became the sixth member in 1984 and Vietnam the seventh in 1995.
Membership of ASEAN requires that, apart from geographic location, a prospective member must have acceded to the ASEAN Treaty of Amity and Co-operation (signed in 1976), meets certain trade liberalisation requirements and wins consensus approval for admission from all ASEAN members.
The intermediate step of observer status allows a country to attend meetings, such as the ASEAN Ministerial Conference, the ASEAN Regional Forum and the Post-Ministerial Conference. Burma (Myanmar) was granted observer status in 1996, joining Cambodia, Laos and Papua New Guinea.
Besides these two categories, countries outside the immediate region with significant interests in south-east Asia can become dialogue partners. ASEAN's relevance is reflected in the number of countries anxious to engage in dialogue. China, Russia and India became dialogue partners in 1996, joining the US, Canada, the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. Dialogue partners participate in the Post-Ministerial Conference and the ASEAN Regional Forum.
1996 marked an important watershed in ASEAN's maturation as a viable political grouping. During the Ministerial Conference, hosted in Jakarta in July, its political leaders declared for the first time that all south-east Asia countries would be members of the organisation by the year 2000. This public declaration has important implications because it demonstrates official acceptance of the economic and political challenges inherent in adding the remaining south-east Asian countries to ASEAN membership.
When Vietnam became the seventh member in 1995, it added the new complication of economic disparity to the cohesiveness of the organisation. After the economic advances of the past 15 years, many ASEAN countries' economies were among the fastest growing in the world. Until Vietnam's accession to membership, ASEAN had enjoyed a considerable degree of economic parity. The economies of Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia are among the most powerful in the world; Indonesia, after several years of impressive economic development, is the largest market in the region; the Philippines is growing rapidly after several years of moribund growth; and Brunei's oil wealth puts it in a category of its own.
| ASEAN MEMBERSHIP CATEGORIES | |
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FULL MEMBERS: Brunei Indonesia Malaysia The Philippines Singapore Thailand Vietnam OBSERVERS: Burma (Myanmar) Cambodia Laos Papua New Guinea |
DIALOGUE PARTNERS:
Australia Canada China European Community India Japan New Zealand Russia South Korea United States ASEAN REGIONAL FORUM: All 2l of the countries listed |
But the addition of Vietnam, and the prospect of Burma, Cambodia and Laos becoming ASEAN members by 2000, brings a definitive second tier of developing economies into the organisation, requiring adjustment in policies and a new set of guidelines for these lesser-developed economic systems. The organisation's trade-liberalisation requirements, for example, already are being adjusted to assist Vietnam. Similar adjustments to these and other financial, trade, and economic rules will have to be made to accommodate the weak economies of Burma, Cambodia and Laos.
| Vietnam |
When the organisation's members shared healthy economic parity, major trade and economic decisions were palatable to all. But when the struggling economies of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and the woeful Burmese enter ASEAN, disparities in economic development and the contrast between market and managed economic systems will bring significant challenges to the organisation's economic co-operation network.
There is no apparent resistance within the organisation to adding Burma, Cambodia, and Laos to ASEAN. Laos and Cambodia are expected to gain full membership status in 1997 and within weeks of gaining official observer status, Burma's military junta leader submitted the country's formal application for full membership.
Ironically, the linking of all south-east Asian countries within ASEAN, regardless of political and economic policies, brings ASEAN full circle because a major reason for its formation was to unite against the threat of communism in China and the three Indo China countries.
Other major hurdles, including a variety of political systems and human-rights practices, were jumped long ago when ASEAN was formed. Its member countries agreed from the start that internal political conditions and a degree of democracy were not criteria for membership. For it to be otherwise ASEAN never would have been formed.
| Indonesia. Can ASEAN successfully adapt to great ranges in economic and trade issues? |
ASEAN's flexibility towards the political systems of its members allowed it to weather the startling changes that transformed the Philippines in the mid-l980s from corrupt dictatorship to democracy, the wanderings between military and civilian rule in Thailand, and the addition of the communist states of Indo China.
Today's members display political systems spanning the political spectrum. They include the wide-open political democracy of the Philippines and to a lesser extent Thailand, the autocracies or plutocracies of Indonesia and Malaysia, the communist dictatorship in Vietnam and the absolute monarchy of Brunei. The addition of Cambodia would add a badly fractured pseudo-democracy; that of Laos another communist dictatorship; and Burma one of the world's most repressive military dictatorships. The problem of Burma is a very real one for ASEAN. Its leaders constantly emphasise the political tolerance of ASEAN towards its member states. But ASEAN leaders were visibly annoyed during the July 1996 meetings when one after another of its western dialogue partners repeatedly criticised Burma's egregious human-rights record and collusive stance toward major drug trafficking. ASEAN will have to consider the image and international reputation of the organisation should it first admit Burma and then fail to push for political change in a country many major trading countries consider an illegitimate outlaw regime.
Throughout its first 20 years ASEAN stressed economic, cultural and social co-operation rather than political and security issues. Only in the past five years or so have political and security issues assumed greater formal priority.
The ASEAN regional forum (ARF) that was created in 1993 and had its first formal meeting in July 1994, is a multi-lateral consultative forum to promote preventive diplomacy, transparency in defence matters and confidence-building in the region and to address ASEAN's commitment to co-operative regional security. ARF is the largest of ASEAN's components, 2l nations were present at the 1996 meeting.
Regional security previously was down-played because of individual and collective fears of antagonising China that, it was thought, would view formal discussions on regional security issues as being aimed at Chinese policies toward the region. But while a confident ASEAN no longer fears open discussion of Chinese geo-political challenges in the region, the organisation has little real power to influence Chinese policy.
Although the primary concern of ARF is regional security co-operation and consultation, there is little probability that ASEAN will become a military pact. Almost all its members oppose a formal military commitment for ASEAN and feel that the best format for regional military co-operation lies in a web of bilateral military co-operative ties among pairs of states.
| MILITARY STRENGTH OF ASEAN MEMBERS | |||
| COUNTRY | POPULATION | ARMED FORCES STRENGTH | |
| Brunei | 295,000 | 4,900 | |
| Indonesia | 193,000,000 | 274,500 | |
| Malaysia | 20,000,000 | 114,500 | |
| Philippines | 69,500,000 | 106,000 | |
| Singapore | 3,000,000 | 53,900 | |
| Thailand | 60,500,000 | 259,000 | |
| Vietnam | 74,200,000 | 572,000 | |
| Sub-total: | 420,495,000 | 1,384,800 | |
| Burma* | 47,000,000 | 310,000 | |
| Cambodia* | 9,800,000 | 88,500 | |
| Laos* | 4,800,000 | 37,000 | |
| Sub-total: | 60,800,000 | 435,500 | |
| TOTAL | 48l,295,000 | 1,820,300 | |
| * Membership expected before 2000 Source: The Military Balance, International Institute for Strategic Studies, London, October 1995. | |||
With the exception of Vietnam, the other Asian countries have an interlocking series of bilateral military relations ranging from senior-level meetings to full-scale, multi-service military exercises. Several also participate in bilateral military exercises with Australia and the US. All have military contacts short of exercises with a plethora of countries, including exchange training programmes and attendance of officers and non-commissioned officers at formal school courses. Such programmes promote transparency within the region and contribute to greater professionalism and understanding.
While ASEAN is not likely to form a formal military pact, its individual and collective military power is increasing. But although Vietnam has one of the largest armed forces in the world, most ASEAN countries have relatively small armed forces for the size of their populations.
As their individual economies improve, most countries are upgrading their military systems through selective purchases of new equipment. However, there is no sense of a regional arms race because such purchases replace ageing and obsolete weaponry rather than increase capabilities at the expense of neighbours.
Several ASEAN countries have plans for significant upgrades to their major weapons systems, but in most cases the plans are on hold pending national-level budget decisions. Brunei and the Philippines are in this category. Indonesia has been asked by the US to purchase the F-16 inventory bought by Pakistan but then frozen by US legislative action. Indonesia would be most interested in buying nine of the aircraft, that would bring its inventory to 20.
| The founder members of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) |
Among major purchases announced or under negotiation, Thailand has a contract for the purchase of up to eight KC-135B tanker/transports to add to five already in its inventory. This gives Thailand the strongest strategic flight-refuelling capability in the region. Malaysia is negotiating a major purchase of armoured fighting vehicles from Turkey, although final details have not been made public. Malaysia, Vietnam and Brunei are said to be close to announcements on purchases of patrol craft from a variety of sources.
ASEAN's greater cohesiveness will not mean immediate dialogue on many of the region's contentious issues. ASEAN partners' high priority on consensus and quiet discussion of contentious bilateral issues will be required as the region faces up to many difficult problems ranging from perceived security threats to sophisticated economic and trade challenges.
Some of these are direct ramifications of ASEAN's expanded formal discussions with extra-regional countries through ARF and dialogue-partner discussions. For example, ASEAN was discomfited during its 1996 meetings because the most publicised issue was the issue of human rights in Burma. ASEAN leaders hoped its western partners would let the issue lie and were annoyed that each one raised the issue. ASEAN wanted to concentrate on economic and trade issues, particularly those relating to World Trade Organisation (WTO) discussions and opposition to adding non-trade issues to the WTO agenda. Although ASEAN follows a policy of constructive engagement toward human-rights issues, it will have to contend with criticism of the slow pace of political moderation by its members. While the 1996 meetings were successful in rebuffing western concerns over human rights in Burma, the organisation demonstrated that it is not yet capable of dealing with all the problems it faces.
| Brunei became the sixth member of ASEAN in 1984 |
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A major security concern is Chinese claims of sovereignty over much of the South China Sea, including the Spratly Islands that have oil and natural-gas reserves. Parts of the islands also are claimed by Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines.
Indonesia, that has no claims in the Spratlys, has hosted informal meetings designed to stress joint economic development of the region rather than individual claims of political sovereignty. As an example they use the Indonesia-Australia agreement for joint development of the Timor Gap, an area in the Torres Strait claimed by both countries. Indonesia hopes that reaching agreement on the Spratly Islands will help deflect Chinese claims to parts of the waters north of Indonesia's Natuna Island where development of petroleum resources has been licensed to the US firm Exxon among others. Indonesia held its largest-ever joint military exercises in those waters during September 1996 to emphasise to China that Indonesia firmly rejects any outside claims to Natuna waters.
Another potentially contentious issue that ASEAN must address is tariff reduction schedules required to implement ASEAN and Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) forum free-trade initiatives. ASEAN's 1996 final communique left this issue unconcluded. This two-tier approach to trade could become an impediment to full implementation of trade and tariff agreements.
One issue that received considerable attention at the 1996 ASEAN ministerial conference was nuclear disarmament. A major ASEAN baseline concept is the south-east Asia nuclear-weapons- free zone (SEANWFZ) that all ASEAN countries signed in 1995. The 1996 ministerial conference communique called on non-Asian nuclear powers to endorse the treaty.
| Vietnam, the most recent member of ASEAN |
ASEAN has become an important regional grouping in political and economic affairs and has evolved in major ways from its beginnings as a social-cultural and trade co-operation entity. By the 2lst century it will speak for almost half a billion people as one of the world's most dynamic economic regions and a major trading partner with the rest of the world. Its combined military strength of almost two million means it will be able to defend its security interests in the region and that it will be an imps security interests in the region and that it will be an important strategic partner in the Asia-Pacific region.
