{"id":68492,"date":"2021-11-11T06:00:46","date_gmt":"2021-11-10T19:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=68492"},"modified":"2021-11-10T16:39:04","modified_gmt":"2021-11-10T05:39:04","slug":"the-myanmar-crisis-may-be-aseans-biggest-test-is-there-a-role-for-australia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/the-myanmar-crisis-may-be-aseans-biggest-test-is-there-a-role-for-australia\/","title":{"rendered":"The Myanmar crisis may be ASEAN\u2019s biggest test. Is there a role for Australia?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Myanmar crisis and its fallout have become one of the greatest tests for ASEAN in its history. Doubts about the group\u2019s relevance, credibility and utility have arisen over the past decade, largely because of its ineffective reaction to many regional challenges. But its unedifying response to the Myanmar crisis is amplifying those doubts and exposing the shortcomings of \u2018the ASEAN way\u2019. Ultimately, this is not in Australia\u2019s interests and Canberra should be doing more to advance and protect them.<\/p>\n

While the military coup in Myanmar wasn\u2019t the first for an ASEAN state, never before has ASEAN faced a non-compliant member that not only blatantly disregards its decisions but cites the ASEAN charter against it. This was a consequence of the group\u2019s decision<\/a> to disinvite the junta\u2019s leader, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, from last month\u2019s ASEAN summits because of his regime\u2019s lack of progress and cooperation in stabilising the country and ceasing violence. ASEAN offered \u2018non-political representation\u2019 instead, but Min Aung Hlaing condemned the move as a violation of ASEAN\u2019s consensus principle and Myanmar was not represented at the virtual summits.<\/p>\n

As a result, ASEAN has become a group of nine, instead of 10, functional members\u2014for the first time in its history\u2014and the question that follows is: what\u2019s next for ASEAN?<\/p>\n

While Myanmar\u2019s effective informal suspension from ASEAN ensured the association escaped the condemnation that would have come with permitting the junta to be represented, it hasn\u2019t stopped criticism of ASEAN\u2019s perceived ineffectiveness and ineptitude. These problems stem mainly from ASEAN\u2019s inadequate crisis-management mechanisms and its charter\u2019s lack of enforcement tools. Grounded in principles of non-interference and consensus-only decision-making, \u2018the ASEAN way\u2019 relies on diplomacy, dialogue and goodwill. It loses its way when these facets are missing, as the junta\u2019s recalcitrance has shown.<\/p>\n

The Myanmar crisis has also exposed divisions within the group. These are not new. They arise naturally from the member states\u2019 differing national interests and ideological bases, which recent events\u2014and the need for ASEAN to respond to them\u2014have brought into stark relief. Developments in Myanmar have highlighted not just the diverse interests of ASEAN nations vis-\u00e0-vis Myanmar but also the different views among them on such values as liberal democracy and human rights.<\/p>\n

A new ASPI report<\/a>, released today, recounts and assesses the security situation in Myanmar, ASEAN\u2019s collective response and the individual roles of key ASEAN member states in the mediation process. It focuses on the crisis\u2019s effect on ASEAN\u2019s political and security circumstances and highlights Indonesia\u2019s leadership, and its limitations, in the process. As arguably Southeast Asia\u2019s most democratic polity and the state most responsible for injecting notions of democracy into ASEAN\u2019s charter, Indonesia has tried to engineer an acceptable resolution through ASEAN. But its own adherence to ASEAN\u2019s foundational principles of non-interference and consensus have constrained its efforts.<\/p>\n

The report also examines the ASEAN charter as a legal and policy instrument, highlighting its inherent complications and their impact on ASEAN\u2019s capacity to ensure members uphold the rule of law and practise the principles codified in the document.<\/p>\n

The report concludes that the most likely outcomes of the current situation in Myanmar are an entrenched Tatmadaw regime or worsening violence and the risk of all-out civil war, and considers the implications for the wider region, especially Australia. The more the generals\u2019 brutality destabilises Myanmar and its neighbourhood, the more those developments conflict with Australia\u2019s (and ASEAN members\u2019) interest in a stable ASEAN focused on common economic, social and political goals, and whose \u2018unity in diversity\u2019 isn\u2019t facing an acute risk of fracturing. As Australia\u2019s Foreign Minister Marise Payne has said<\/a>, \u2018The political stability of ASEAN member states is essential to achieving our vision for a secure, peaceful, prosperous and open Indo-Pacific region with ASEAN at its centre.\u2019<\/p>\n

The coup has also disrupted a part of Australia\u2019s own plans<\/a> to play a greater role in the region. One of the ways that Canberra intended to do so was by means of a package of assistance to Southeast Asia worth more than $500\u00a0million that was announced at the East Asia Summit in November 2020. Along with pledges to supply Covid-19 vaccine doses to Southeast Asia, this represents Australia\u2019s largest funding commitment to the region since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.<\/p>\n

If effecting change in Myanmar is proving to be beyond ASEAN\u2019s capacity, it is certainly well beyond Australia\u2019s. If the bleaker scenarios for Myanmar over the coming decade eventuate, Canberra will have no choice but to engage with the regime to protect and advance Australia\u2019s security interests, including on countering the illicit drug trade.<\/p>\n

Above all, as a regional middle power, Australia retains an interest in seeing the Indo-Pacific\u2019s future determined as much as possible through diplomacy rather than the simple exercise of power. Only a functional and responsive ASEAN can warrant its much-vaunted centrality. Since Australia retains an interest in an ASEAN fit for the role it has assumed as the region\u2019s central actor, it is incumbent on Canberra to do all it can to help make this happen, especially in an era of great-power politics.<\/p>\n

Fortuitously, recent events afford new opportunities for doing so. At the recent summits, Australia\u2019s relations with ASEAN were elevated to a comprehensive strategic partnership.<\/a> If this status is to mean anything beyond rhetoric, the Australian government should use it to undertake more intensive and sustained diplomacy with key ASEAN partners towards helping them change ASEAN\u2019s direction.<\/p>\n

Specifically, Australia should actively encourage and support ASEAN to initiate reforms, including in its decision-making mechanisms. The government should aim to reassure interlocutors that Australia values the role an effective ASEAN can play in mediating great-power tensions while encouraging it to heed internal calls for change so that it can perform that role more compellingly. For many ASEAN partners, such forthrightness in urging the association to make its own adjustments towards hard-edged reality so that it can perform the role that ideally it should do would likely ring truer than formulaic blandishments about ASEAN\u2019s centrality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Myanmar crisis and its fallout have become one of the greatest tests for ASEAN in its history. Doubts about the group\u2019s relevance, credibility and utility have arisen over the past decade, largely because of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":755,"featured_media":68495,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[189,294,212],"class_list":["post-68492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-asean","tag-diplomacy","tag-myanmar"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Myanmar crisis may be ASEAN\u2019s biggest test. 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