{"id":51873,"date":"2019-11-13T06:00:22","date_gmt":"2019-11-12T19:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=51873"},"modified":"2019-11-12T20:06:56","modified_gmt":"2019-11-12T09:06:56","slug":"southeast-asian-narratives-about-us-china-competition-part-1-choice-and-necessity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/southeast-asian-narratives-about-us-china-competition-part-1-choice-and-necessity\/","title":{"rendered":"Southeast Asian narratives about US\u2013China competition (part\u00a01): choice and necessity"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/figure>\n

Language and rhetoric<\/a> are important in a time of consequential power shifts and may even form a key front<\/a> in Asia\u2019s great-power rivalry\u2014especially now, looking at US strategy in the region. Washington\u2019s declared strategy of a free and open Indo-Pacific\u2014despite what the name suggests\u2014still struggles to convince that it has transitioned from mere rhetoric into genuine action.<\/p>\n

The pulse of the regional debate suggests that there are now four dominant\u2014albeit misleading\u2014narratives in Southeast Asia about great-power competition and the differing roles of China and the US.<\/p>\n

The first is the push-back against a paradigm of great-power competition in which smaller states are compelled to choose between Washington and Beijing. The narrative of choice isn\u2019t a new one, but it has gained currency particularly among the ASEAN leaders over the past year. At the 2018 ASEAN summit, Singapore\u2019s Lee Hsien Loong declared<\/a> that making such a choice might be unavoidable. \u2018Circumstances may come where ASEAN could have to choose one over the other,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n

Some six months later, as the debate intensified, Singapore\u2019s PM steadfastly resisted the notion that the region should have to choose. In a keynote speech at the 2019 Shangri La Dialogue, Lee stressed that Singapore wants to be friends with both, rather than choose one over another. This view is not exclusive to Singapore; as a recent report from the Brookings Institution, Don\u2019t make us choose<\/a><\/em>, makes clear, it\u2019s now widespread across ASEAN.<\/p>\n

While this narrative narrowly\u2014and falsely\u2014frames the choice as either\/or, it does reflect a level of anxiety about the impact of growing great-power competition and resistance to the return of bipolarity. While Beijing has a track record in pushing binary choices, the debate has shifted the focus onto the US. Now it appears that Washington is the great power that\u2019s asking states in the region to choose.<\/p>\n

US Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have appeared to convey the following message at previous regional summits and in public speeches: \u2018Don\u2019t go for the debt-trap diplomacy of the Belt and Road Initiative. The free and open Indo-Pacific is a much better alternative to the Sino-centric regional order.\u2019 The Huawei ban<\/a> declared by the US and some of its closest allies also involves regional fears about a new technology iron curtain. Rather than seeing viable and attractive alternatives, more often than not Southeast Asia sees having to choose as an imposition.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the Trump administration\u2019s language fuels this interpretation. The narrative also misleadingly suggests that all other actors are destined to fall victim to the great-power contest and that they have no, or little, power to influence events. In fact, the US\u2013China choice serves different purposes for some of the Southeast Asian states in manoeuvring in a tenser strategic environment\u2014a development that deserves a separate analysis<\/a>. But that doesn\u2019t change the fact that this narrative is being popularised.<\/p>\n

When it comes to ASEAN\u2019s relations with China, another dominant refrain is the narrative of destiny.<\/p>\n

The tyranny of cartographic reality, aggravated by the sheer power asymmetry, translates to a kind of strategic fatalism\u2014an assumption, however unwillingly, that there\u2019s no option other than working with Beijing. The alternative\u2014confronting it\u2014is simply undesirable, if not unacceptable to some.<\/p>\n

This applies even to the giant of Southeast Asia, Indonesia. The country\u2019s newly re-elected president, Joko Widodo, was quoted as saying, \u2018There is no choice but cooperate and co-exist.\u2019<\/p>\n

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte\u2014whose country won an unprecedented international legal action over a maritime dispute with China\u2014has on many occasions expressed the logic behind his government\u2019s failure to pursue maritime territorial claims. \u2018What can we do? Go to war with China? Educate me please\u2019, he has said.<\/p>\n

At the ASEAN summit last week, Malaysia\u2019s veteran prime minister, Mahathir Mohammad, said<\/a>: \u2018We pointed out that we are a small country. [We] can\u2019t confront China. If they want to claim [the] South China Sea as theirs, that\u2019s their concern.\u2019<\/p>\n

This narrative bears a striking resemblance to the words uttered by Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi at the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting in Hanoi in 2010, when he reminded his counterparts in the region that \u2018China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that\u2019s just a fact.\u2019<\/p>\n

It flows from a recognition that China will continue to play by far the most significant economic role in Southeast Asia\u2014something that concerns each and every country, regardless of their political relations with China.<\/p>\n

A regional survey<\/a> conducted by the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute reflects this reality, with over 73% of respondents seeing China as having the most economic influence in Southeast Asia compared with only 7.9% who thought the same about the US. This is despite the fact that US direct foreign investment in the region remains higher than that of China.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s geostrategic shadow looms large over Southeast Asia and promises an intertwined economic future. The notion of a common destiny with Beijing, accompanied by a certain sense of strategic fatalism, is increasingly being touted in the region.<\/p>\n

To support that contention, there are two other narratives that suggest that China is cooperating with ASEAN and that US engagement with the region\u2014under President Donald Trump at least\u2014is in decline. I will discuss these in part 2.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Language and rhetoric are important in a time of consequential power shifts and may even form a key front in Asia\u2019s great-power rivalry\u2014especially now, looking at US strategy in the region. 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