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

245
C HAPTE R FIVE
C ONCL USION

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

246
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

247
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.

248
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

249
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

250
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 ‘we-
feeling’ community, and that of a ‘non-war’ community. Such a theoretically-eclectic
approach, pioneered by Peter Katzenstein,
3
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.


251
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.




252
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.


253
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.

254
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.


255
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

256
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 17
th
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.

257
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.


258
instance, it occurred when Indonesia and Malaysia held combined military exercises
(code-named “Total Wipe-out”) in Johor near Singapore’s National Day celebrations
in August 1991 (Chapter Three). Such ‘unfriendly’ and potential hostile acts are now
part of the historical legacy and national psyches between Singapore and
Indonesia/Malaysia. Singapore’s immediate counter-mobilization of its armed forces,
including the activation of its reservist armoured tank forces, signaled that it was
ready for conventional inter-state warfare, contrary to claims that ASEAN is a nascent

security community. National military establishments tend to consider the existence
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.

259
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

260
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 supra-
nationalism. 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.

261
member-states.
14

14 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.
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. A united ASEAN is critical to ensuring that it will

262
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 member-
state. 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 do 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

15
Geoffrey Cockerham, “Regional integration in ASEAN: Institutional Design and the ASEAN Way”,
East Asia: An International Quarterly 27 (2) July 2010: 164-185.
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

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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

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.
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

264
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
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’.
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.


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.
.
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.

265
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


266
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 do 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 do 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.

267
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-

268
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 21
st
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 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.

20 Sim Chi Yin, “Obama sets cordial tone in Shanghai”, Straits Times 17 November
2009, p. A10.

269
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 over-
state 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.