Yet, Vietnamese career diplomat Le Luong Minh, who took
over the leadership of ASEAN last year, couldn’t help but disappoint
them because in many ways he represents much of what’s wrong with ASEAN
today.
ASEAN Secretary-General Minh opened with a speech that did
little to excite the audience. He focused on ASEAN’s 6 pillars when it
was formed in 1967 and its most ambitious project since then – creating
one regional economic grouping, the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC)
slated to come together by December 2015.
Someone asked about tensions between Australia and
Indonesia, ASEAN’s largest member, over asylum seekers and recent
wiretapping charges from NSA classified documents.
“I hope these bilateral issues can be resolved amicably,”
said ASEAN’s leader. “We have not seen any negative impact of that
bilateral relationship on the ASEAN-Australian partnership.”
On ASEAN’s most contentious issue – the conflict between
China and many ASEAN member countries in the South China Sea, Minh said,
“ASEAN is of the view that it needs to be resolved, but it can only be
resolved, and it should only be resolved, between the parties
concerned.”
Minh was safe, uninspiring and bureaucratic. ASEAN
insiders say it’s the luck of the draw, and that the rotating head of
ASEAN moves from a politician like former Thai Foreign Minister Surin
Pitsuwan, who can inspire outside interest, to a bureaucrat who can set
the ASEAN house in order like Minh. From 2004-2011, Minh was Vietnam’s
Permanent Representative to the United Nations while at times
concurrently his country's Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs.
Unfortunately, he's also ASEAN's least likely salesman.
Dynamic time
Yet, it’s an exciting and dynamic time when a single,
liberalized ASEAN could boost investments significantly. There’s also an
opportunity for ASEAN to provide much needed leadership at a time of
shifting geo-political power.
ASEAN is at a crossroads. Created at a time of global
dominance by the United States, times have changed - with economic power
shifting to China. Instead of taking leadership, ASEAN is in danger of
becoming a low-intensity proxy battlefield.
Nations like the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia are
unprepared for open conflict with China or even for negotiating with
China over the South China Sea. Many ASEAN nations turn to the United
States for defense support. At the same time, ASEAN’s poorer nations,
Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, have become so dependent on China that
analysts call them “client states of Beijing.”
This leaves an opening for Australia, ASEAN’s 1st dialogue partner.
“ASEAN does have an
identity in Australian diplomacy, and it’s a positive one,” said Senator
Brett Mason, the Parliament Secretary to the Minister for Foreign
Affairs, who acknowledged the changing global power structures and
Australia’s shifting focus to Asia. “It’s a forum that could be used
more creatively and more fully, but I don’t think it’s ineffective.”
I’ve been reporting on ASEAN since 1987. I was there in
the late 1990s when Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Myanmar were admitted in
the grouping, creating a three-tiered system because these economies
lagged far behind original members Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, the
Philippines and even more affluent Brunei and Singapore.
Like many Asians, I hoped constructive engagement would be
a different way to push reforms, more effective than the
confrontational push from the West, but decades later, constructive
engagement remains an excuse – a failure of leadership. Reforms in
Myanmar, which was the main focus of constructive engagement, were
fueled by an internal process - with little help from ASEAN.
During the financial crisis of 1997, which started in
Thailand and spread to Indonesia, the nations turned, not to ASEAN, but
to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). When smog and haze from forest
fires in Indonesia that same year engulfed cities in Malaysia and
Singapore, ASEAN proved incapable of working together to prevent this
near-annual event that continues to plague the region today.
In 1999, ASEAN was criticized for failing to hold
Indonesia accountable for what was effectively a scorched earth policy
in East Timor. Leadership then came from Australia, which led INTERFET,
an international non-UN peacekeeping force.
In the late 2000s under pressure from some members, ASEAN
formed a human rights body that’s stayed largely silent on ongoing human
rights violations within ASEAN, like in Vietnam or the Rohingyas in
Myanmar.
Fissures over China
Dealing with China clearly shows the fissures inside
ASEAN. At the July, 2012 meeting in Cambodia, conflict erupted openly.
For the first time ever, the foreign ministers failed to agree on a
joint statement - with Filipino officials storming out of the meeting.
Other ASEAN states accused host Cambodia of working against ASEAN
interests by protecting China, Cambodia’s largest trading partner. Two
months later, Cambodia announced $500 million in new assistance from
China.
While largest nation and founding member Indonesia tried
to use shuttle diplomacy for a satisfactory agreement, ASEAN again fell
short of leadership.
Still, Australian officials seem optimistic.
On March 19, Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop
hosted ASEAN’s Secretary-General Minh for the 40th anniversary of a
partnership she says now prioritizes trade, investment, regional
security and education.
40 YEARS. ASEAN Sec Gen Le Luong Minh with Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop
“The extent of government contact – economic, financial –
really is at a much higher level now than a decade before that,” a
senior foreign affairs official told me. “Building ties just below the
political level, senior level official contact, over the last decade has
given our relationship a lot more ballast than ever before.”
The problem lies in two
areas: ASEAN makes decisions based on consensus, unwieldy in today’s
fast-moving world and in an organization that spans a wealth gap from
Singapore to Laos; and that wealth gap leads to differences in
leadership experience and style.
Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Myanmar tend to have fewer
officials capable of participating fully in meetings held in English.
The most progressive of these nations, Vietnam, used government money to
train a new generation of foreign service diplomats like Minh.
Consensus not enough
Still, the skills needed for consensus building are not
enough to inspire faith in the ASEAN way, and senior officials who have
led ASEAN, with few exceptions, have not had the charisma or status to
demand necessary meetings with heads of states.
In order to effectively push forward an ambitious ASEAN
agenda of one market, ASEAN must move faster, and its leader must lead –
not just within ASEAN but among its dialogue partners and potential
investors.
“While there’s so much criticism about ASEAN in terms of
leadership, ASEAN is all we have to work with,” said Deakin University’s
Dr. Sally Wood. “I don’t know if they ever really expected that they
would reach this level of centrality. There are so many contending
national interests in the region. So that makes it very challenging for
ASEAN to be able to speak with one voice.”
ASEAN Sec-Gen Minh is trying to fill a tall order, and
insiders say his experience is helping build the organization behind the
scenes. At ANU, he said he’s optimistic that the economic integration
of ASEAN, which promises a single market and a highly competitive
region, will happen as scheduled on December, 2015.
“ASEAN has implemented about 80% of all the measures,” he told the audience at ANU.
Not all agree.
“We’ve got to be realistic. I cannot see that this is
going to happen,” said Professor Andrew Walker, Acting Dean of ANU
College of Asia and the Pacific.
“It looks unlikely that AEC 2015 will be met,” added Wood.
“Perhaps it doesn’t matter that it won’t be realized in 2015, but that
ASEAN is working on it.” - Rappler.com
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