{"id":31712,"date":"2017-05-08T06:00:32","date_gmt":"2017-05-07T20:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=31712"},"modified":"2018-03-08T10:25:08","modified_gmt":"2018-03-07T23:25:08","slug":"50-years-asean-angst","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/50-years-asean-angst\/","title":{"rendered":"50 years of ASEAN: \u2018A\u2019 is for angst"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Image<\/p>\n

ASEAN is ever beset by existential angst. The \u2018A\u2019 in ASEAN stands for Angst as well as Association. Regard this as more description than criticism. The Angst-Association of South East Asian Nations always has lots to worry about. Angst and anxiety are rational responses.<\/p>\n

The questions are constant: can the association hold together? Can it actually do anything? Will ASEAN be crushed as it\u2019s courted by the bigger beasts of Asia? Celebrating its 50th birthday in August, ASEAN pumps out celebration. And, simultaneously, ASEAN engages in one of the things it does best\u2014agonises over tough times and hard choices.<\/p>\n

The public tone of the summit of the 10 ASEAN leaders in Manila was set by a quintessentially ASEAN theme: \u2018Partnering for Change, Engaging the World\u2019. The not-so-private measure of difficult choices was what the leaders could agree to say about the South China Sea.<\/p>\n

ASEAN confronts China\u2019s terraforming: using great walls of sand to create sand castles on rocks and reefs. As usual, ASEAN consensus decreed that the Association speak softly. The torturous travail of the chairman\u2019s statement<\/a> is the new measure of ASEAN angst, from the low point in 2012 when no statement could be agreed on. In Manila, the statement emerged 12 hours after the summit ended. Dropped from the latest communiqu\u00e9 were references<\/a> to land reclamation and militarisation from last year’s statement that had been included in earlier drafts of this year\u2019s text. ASEAN\u2019s \u2018serious concern\u2019 in 2016 this year dropped to \u2018concern\u2019.<\/p>\n

For the pundits, it\u2019s just a matter of dusting off the usual headlines about \u2018ASEAN in crisis\u2019 or \u2018ASEAN\u2019s failure\u2019. As an example, here\u2019s Huong Le Thu<\/a> with an acid take on ASEAN\u2019s \u2018weak unity and low effectiveness in responding to China\u2019s pressure\u2019, on its embrace of \u2018de facto appeasement\u2019.<\/p>\n

An interesting twist, though, is that ASEAN thinks it\u2019s going to get something from China in return for playing nice and going soft on the Manila communiqu\u00e9 language. The chairman\u2019s statement claims a negotiating win is only months away: \u2018We took note of the improving cooperation between ASEAN and China. We welcomed the progress to complete a framework of the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea (COC) by the middle of this year, in order to facilitate the early conclusion of an effective COC.\u2019 China promises a 50th birthday gift.<\/p>\n

Give ASEAN a capital letter mark\u2014\u2018F\u2019 for Framework rather than Fail. ASEAN thinks it\u2019s about to get something Formal from China. Back in November 2002, ASEAN and China agreed on the Declaration on the Code of Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea<\/a>. After 15 years of negotiation, still no Code, but apparently a Framework is a further step.<\/p>\n

No ironic laughter, please, this is interesting\u2014although if the Framework is the new staging point, the Code could take another 15 years. The significance is that ASEAN is in the game and is able to extract something formal from China.<\/p>\n

Bear in mind that China\u2019s hardheads still lament the concession to ASEAN centrality involved in that 2002 Declaration. The hard-line view is that Beijing should\u2019ve stuck firmly to dealing bilaterally and separately with other claimants in the South China Sea in order to crush them one by one, never conceding that ASEAN had a right to be at the table.<\/p>\n

15 years of negotiation hasn\u2019t achieved a Code of Conduct. And it certainly hasn\u2019t prevented China\u2019s burst of muscular castle creation. What\u2019s been achieved? Talking is always better than not talking, of course: jaw-jaw rather than war-war. Another achievement matters. At every moment in this process\u2014I hesitate to say \u2018at every step\u2019\u2014China\u2019s had to engage with ASEAN, accepting the Association\u2019s central place in negotiation on this key regional dispute.<\/p>\n

Getting a Framework would be a fresh acknowledgement by Beijing of ASEAN\u2019s role. Then the parsing can start to see if the Framework actually moves one jot beyond the promises in the Declaration 15 years ago. China is set to consolidate the gains made by its new giant sand castles, taking ASEAN acknowledgement of the new facts on the reefs in return for another bit of paper. ASEAN is after firmer promises about no more South China Sea castle-building. The core aim is getting a Framework that\u2019ll mean no new terraforming. ASEAN would concede China\u2019s recent creations in the South China Sea in return for the promise of no new castles. It\u2019s not appeasement if the deal holds.<\/p>\n

The recipe guarantees lots more ASEAN angst. Yet the evidence of its 50-year history is that ASEAN will both survive and thrive. China can constrain ASEAN, but it can\u2019t crush it. The Association’s too useful to its 10 members and all the other players in Asia\u2014even China.<\/p>\n

ASEAN\u2019s members are relatively weak and the Association must play a weak hand. And before going into the game, ASEAN must always look inward to balance the dynamic among its disparate members. The wonder isn\u2019t ASEAN\u2019s weak hand, but its long-game skill and the leverage it extracts.<\/p>\n

All that angst over many decades has taught Southeast Asia a lot about the value of regionalism. One basic ASEAN lesson holds true: hang together or hang separately.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ASEAN is ever beset by existential angst. The \u2018A\u2019 in ASEAN stands for Angst as well as Association. Regard this as more description than criticism. The Angst-Association of South East Asian Nations always has lots …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":31713,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[189,52,471,25],"class_list":["post-31712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-asean","tag-china","tag-south-china-sea","tag-southeast-asia"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n50 years of ASEAN: \u2018A\u2019 is for angst | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/50-years-asean-angst\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"50 years of ASEAN: \u2018A\u2019 is for angst | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"ASEAN is ever beset by existential angst. 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