{"id":82174,"date":"2023-09-08T13:00:13","date_gmt":"2023-09-08T03:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=82174"},"modified":"2023-09-08T12:59:03","modified_gmt":"2023-09-08T02:59:03","slug":"asean-summits-overshadowed-by-absences-and-a-map","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/asean-summits-overshadowed-by-absences-and-a-map\/","title":{"rendered":"ASEAN summits overshadowed by absences and a map"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As Indonesia prepared to play host this week to the various annual ASEAN-centred summits, culminating in the 18th East Asia Summit, President Joko Widodo warned<\/a>, in terms familiar to ASEAN watchers, against the risk of Southeast Asian countries being pulled into major-power rivalry. \u2018ASEAN has agreed to not be a proxy to any powers,\u2019 he boldly declared, in a reference intended to resonate equidistantly in Washington and Beijing.<\/p>\n

If Jakarta, as the outgoing ASEAN chair, is concerned about a surfeit of competitive strategic attention from the US and China, the more immediate issue for ASEAN this week was high-level neglect, underlined by the absence of both US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping from Jakarta. ASEAN\u2019s convening power is not what it could be, or once was.<\/p>\n

It is not ASEAN\u2019s fault that the regional security environment has deteriorated to the extent it has. But the dimming of ASEAN\u2019s diplomatic fortunes is an inevitable consequence of the grouping\u2019s increasing struggle to maintain internal coherence, which has undermined its role as an institutional hub for the region\u2019s multilateral security architecture and raised fundamental questions about the organisation\u2019s ability to live up to its founding purpose<\/a>.<\/p>\n

ASEAN\u2019s limited decision-making bandwidth in the run-up to summit week was mostly concentrated on the intractable embarrassment generated by Myanmar, one of the group\u2019s newest and most troublesome members. Not for the first time, ASEAN\u2019s rotating chairmanship will skip Myanmar, passing to the Philippines in 2026. This move to spare ASEAN\u2019s blushes by alphabetically rearranging the diplomatic deckchairs will do nothing to convince critics that it is any closer to a more coherent policy position on Myanmar. Neither the ASEAN chairman\u2019s statement<\/a> nor the East Asia Summit statement<\/a> included any new significant initiatives or wording on the matter.<\/p>\n

While Myanmar\u2019s ejection from the ASEAN chair\u2019s seat will bring the diplomatic limelight to Manila earlier than planned, the Philippines has its own reasons to feel ambivalent about ASEAN, despite being a founder member. Manila has struggled in vain to obtain diplomatic support from its fellow ASEAN members, in the face of a sustained external threat from China\u2019s encroachment on the portion of the South China Sea that international law recognises as the Philippines\u2019 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone. This week\u2019s summit statements brought no obvious changes of tone or substance on the South China Sea, either.<\/p>\n

Instead, an apparently never-ending process to negotiate an ASEAN\u2013China code of conduct in the South China Sea, running for more than 20 years, has taken on the feeling of a sham exercise that serves only to expose ASEAN\u2019s powerlessness and disunity in the face of Beijing\u2019s bilateral carrot-and-stick tactics. While Vietnam, and to a lesser extent Malaysia and Brunei, are in the same claimant boat as the Philippines, Indonesia has appeared more willing to turn a diplomatic blind eye to China\u2019s less intense but still persistent presence<\/a> in Indonesian waters near the Natuna Islands.<\/p>\n

Widodo\u2019s administration is preoccupied with domestic concerns, such as relocating the capital from Java to Borneo, for which it needs funding, including from China. Plans for ASEAN navies to stage an unprecedented multilateral exercise in waters north of Natuna this month, sending a strong collective signal to Beijing, have been modified<\/a> in favour of a less pointed location to the south of Natuna. This adds to the impression of an organisation that appears collectively willing to look the other way in the South China Sea.<\/p>\n

Probably the stand-out speech<\/a> in Jakarta this week was given by the Philippines\u2019 President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, who told his ASEAN counterparts that his country \u2018firmly rejects misleading narratives that frame the disputes in the South China Sea solely through the lens of strategic competition between two powerful countries\u2019. He added: \u2018This not only denies us our independence and our agency, but it also disregards our own legitimate interests.\u2019 As well as airing its concerns about China\u2019s recent aggressive behaviour in the South China Sea, Manila was plainspoken about its growing frustration with ASEAN\u2019s passivity on a \u2018core\u2019 issue for the Philippines.<\/p>\n

The relevance of the East Asia Summit has also waned in tandem with ASEAN\u2019s fading star, and the forum is at risk of descending into a perfunctory and pro forma meeting. The summit continues to fall short of its optimistic billing in Australia\u2019s 2017 foreign policy white paper as \u2018the region\u2019s premier political and security forum\u2019. Biden\u2019s and Xi\u2019s no-shows, too, belie that description.<\/p>\n

Fortunately for the US and its allies, Beijing was in no mood to capitalise on Biden\u2019s absence in Jakarta by projecting a softer side to Southeast Asia. Representing China at the ASEAN Plus Three summit on Wednesday, Premier Li Qiang shrilly warned<\/a> ASEAN, Japan and South Korea against \u2018taking sides, bloc confrontation and a new Cold War\u2019.<\/p>\n

Last week, China\u2019s Ministry of Natural Resources unveiled<\/a> a new \u2018standard\u2019 map of China, timed \u2018during the celebration of Surveying and Mapping Publicity Day and the National Mapping Awareness Publicity Week\u2019, according to China\u2019s state media. The map drew widespread and rapid condemnation from across the region for reiterating Beijing\u2019s expansive territorial claims, including the dashed line that encloses most of the South China Sea and Taiwan\u2014via the inclusion of a tenth dash to the island\u2019s east.<\/p>\n

India, Malaysia<\/a>, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam all lodged diplomatic protests. While the map restates China\u2019s claims in very similar terms to a national map unveiled almost exactly a decade ago (which I covered<\/a> for The Strategist<\/em>), the episode underlines Beijing\u2019s chronic insensitivity towards its neighbours, on land and across water, following as it did on the heels of a meeting between Xi and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a recent altercation<\/a> between China\u2019s coastguard and Philippine vessels near Second Thomas Shoal.<\/p>\n

A statement<\/a> from China\u2019s foreign ministry asserting that the issuance of standard maps \u2018is a routine practice in China\u2019s exercise of sovereignty\u2019 only further inflamed regional concerns already piqued by China\u2019s latest exercise in expansionist cartography. While Beijing\u2019s new map represents nothing new in terms of the territorial claims it depicts, the fact that it has drawn a much sharper regional reaction than the map of 10 years ago attests to heightened threat perceptions among a majority of its neighbours, even if that reality failed to percolate down to the lengthy summit statements and handshakes on display in Jakarta this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Indonesia prepared to play host this week to the various annual ASEAN-centred summits, culminating in the 18th East Asia Summit, President Joko Widodo warned, in terms familiar to ASEAN watchers, against the risk of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":143,"featured_media":82176,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[189,52,473,212,471],"class_list":["post-82174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-asean","tag-china","tag-east-asia-summit","tag-myanmar","tag-south-china-sea"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nASEAN summits overshadowed by absences and a map | 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\/asean-summits-overshadowed-by-absences-and-a-map\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"ASEAN summits overshadowed by absences and a map | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As Indonesia prepared to play host this week to the various annual ASEAN-centred summits, culminating in the 18th East Asia Summit, President Joko Widodo warned, in terms familiar to ASEAN watchers, against the risk of ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/asean-summits-overshadowed-by-absences-and-a-map\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ASPI.org\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2023-09-08T03:00:13+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2023-09-08T02:59:03+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/GettyImages-1660186403.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"683\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Euan Graham\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Euan Graham\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/\",\"name\":\"The Strategist\",\"description\":\"ASPI's analysis and commentary site\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/asean-summits-overshadowed-by-absences-and-a-map\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/GettyImages-1660186403.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/GettyImages-1660186403.jpg\",\"width\":1024,\"height\":683,\"caption\":\"JAKARTA, INDONESIA - SEPTEMBER 04: A view of the media center for the 43rd ASEAN Summit on September 4, 2023 in Jakarta, Indonesia. 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