{"id":38060,"date":"2018-03-23T06:00:49","date_gmt":"2018-03-22T19:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=38060"},"modified":"2018-03-26T11:08:26","modified_gmt":"2018-03-26T00:08:26","slug":"asean-australia-summit-success-false-leads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/asean-australia-summit-success-false-leads\/","title":{"rendered":"The ASEAN\u2013Australia summit: success, but some false leads"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

The ASEAN\u2013Australia Special Summit attracted bipartisan Australian support, and was a success. We saw Malcolm Turnbull, in his carefully worded commentary and body language, engaging effectively with our neighbours. He understood the rhetorical need to declare our \u2018steadfast commitment to ASEAN\u2019, and in various economic, security and education areas Australia expressed a commitment to practical cooperation.<\/p>\n

In reminding our guests that we have much to offer, we were developing a distinctively Australian engagement with Asia. This is the long game Australia has sometimes played in the past\u2014and must play assiduously if we aren\u2019t to become an increasingly lonely nation<\/a> in a less America-dominated era.<\/p>\n

Thus, the good news. However, listening to ASEAN reactions\u2014including in the chatter around the edge of formal events\u2014suggests the need for caution. The Australian media commentary, it might be argued, included several false leads.<\/p>\n

First, some analysts became excited by the idea that Australia might join ASEAN. Former Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natelagawa called such an initiative a \u2018distraction\u2019. In fact, it would be counterproductive.<\/p>\n

Rudolfo Severino, former Secretary-General of ASEAN, has said that Australians aren\u2019t perceived to be \u2018Southeast Asians\u2019. Australian membership would require consensus approval, and a campaign to join would arouse negative as well as positive responses in Australia, as well as in ASEAN countries, damaging our engagement.<\/p>\n

In economic and security matters there\u2019s important common ground between Australia and our Southeast Asian neighbours\u2014but there are also differences in policy objectives and political culture. The Rohingya crisis and Cambodian politics are danger areas, and the conspicuously absent Philippines president, Rodrigo Duterte, has a wider regional influence than many Australians would like.<\/p>\n

Looking across the region, no country comes close to Australia in commitment to liberal values\u2014and yet many Southeast Asians are proud of what their countries are achieving in economic and social development, and are unlikely to see Australian membership as a priority.<\/p>\n

True, Australia was ASEAN\u2019s first official dialogue partner back in 1974, but today ASEAN has many suitors. Japan, South Korea, the United States, Russia and India all hosted summits with ASEAN before we did\u2014and Australia is now outmatched in both trade and investment<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Another reason for hesitation about Australia getting inside, rather than closer to ASEAN, is the contrast in diplomatic culture. The increasingly influential Sultan Nazrin of Malaysia, who gave the keynote speech at the lively Track 2 dialogue<\/a> preceding the summit, stressed the significance of \u2018mutual consultation\u2019 and \u2018consensus building\u2019 as ASEAN\u2019s \u2018preferred methods for managing disputes and moderating differences\u2019\u2014and the ASEAN discomfort with \u2018adversarial approaches\u2019.<\/p>\n

Australians may come to respect ASEAN methods, but this would require new levels of patience\u2014as would working within the complex and often ritualised processes of ASEAN.<\/p>\n

In addition to the issue of membership, another false lead was the proposal to unite ASEAN in some way with the developing Quadrilateral, which brings Australia together with the United States, Japan and India. Apart from its security dimension, this grouping is said to be planning to fund regional infrastructure \u2018to counter the rising influence\u2019 of China\u2019s Belt and Road Initiative.<\/p>\n

The Quad has been promoted as a democracy-based venture, which immediately raises ASEAN suspicions. As Sultan Nazrin\u2019s keynote address explained, ASEAN doesn\u2019t discriminate on grounds of \u2018political ideology and security alignment\u2019, but \u2018welcomes all political systems\u2019. Thus, Singapore\u2019s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong warned that ASEAN doesn\u2019t want \u2018rival blocs forming or countries having to take sides<\/a>\u2019.<\/p>\n

Even when talking of the reworked Trans-Pacific Partnership, Lee hoped that both China and America would eventually join. By contrast, the Australian leadership has been content to claim that in strategic terms we\u2019re \u2018joined at the hip\u2019 with the United States.<\/p>\n

ASEAN doesn\u2019t approach China the way Australia tends to do today. It\u2019s an exaggeration to say\u2014as one newspaper did\u2014that the \u2018spectre of a rising China stalked<\/a>\u2019 the summit. Singapore is by no means the most pro-China country in the grouping, yet Lee described China\u2019s aim to grow its influence as \u2018legitimate\u2019. Southeast Asia has very long experience of a powerful China and sees advantage as well as danger in its rediscovered paramountcy.<\/p>\n

The South China Sea disputes are only one dimension of the relationship\u2014and here too there\u2019s an element of optimism, and patience. Australian commentators have overestimated the degree to which ASEAN is divided. Also, although Southeast Asians tend to welcome the presence of the United States and others in their region\u2014and want to maintain the space for their engagement\u2014it\u2019s wrong to assume they favour confrontation.<\/p>\n

Even in the case of the concept of the \u2018Indo-Pacific\u2019 we\u2019ll have to argue hard that it isn\u2019t a code-word for containment\u2014nor the basis for a new regional architecture designed to challenge ASEAN\u2019s structures.<\/p>\n

An additional false lead, favoured by a few Australians, was the suggestion that we\u2019re wasting our time on ASEAN, a slow-moving organisation that has failed to \u2018stand up to China militarily<\/a>\u2019 and has been unable to solve the Korean crisis<\/a>. These are unreasonable tests, and our prime minister was right to praise ASEAN as the \u2018strategic convenor of our region\u2019.<\/p>\n

Institutions that Australia has favoured\u2014The Asia and Pacific Council of decades ago, Rudd\u2019s doomed Asia Pacific Community and even APEC\u2014have prospered less than ASEAN-centred ones, and we have operated best when working with ASEAN countries (for instance, in the Bali Process). Competition between China and Japan prevented Northeast Asia from providing leadership, and ASEAN\u2019s creative diplomacy hasn\u2019t only promoted dialogue between these powers, but also brought the US, Russia and even North Korea into regional deliberations.<\/p>\n

ASEAN remains our best option if we wish to build trust, not confrontation, in this rapidly changing region. What\u2019s more, we already trade with ASEAN much more<\/a> than with the US and even Japan\u2014and the future potential is impressive. Prioritising relations with our nearest Asian neighbours will benefit\u2014not damage\u2014our relations with both Beijing and Washington. Far from undercutting our critical US alliance, the ASEAN priority enriches Australia\u2019s international identity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The ASEAN\u2013Australia Special Summit attracted bipartisan Australian support, and was a success. We saw Malcolm Turnbull, in his carefully worded commentary and body language, engaging effectively with our neighbours. 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