{"id":85733,"date":"2024-03-06T06:00:43","date_gmt":"2024-03-05T19:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=85733"},"modified":"2024-03-05T19:02:56","modified_gmt":"2024-03-05T08:02:56","slug":"why-asean-australia-summits-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/why-asean-australia-summits-matter\/","title":{"rendered":"Why ASEAN-Australia summits matter"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The ASEAN-Australia leaders\u2019 summit in Melbourne offers the opportunity for Australia to embrace ASEAN\u2019s \u2018inclusive regionalism\u2019 and the organisation\u2019s centrality in mediating the Indo-Pacific struggle between the great powers.<\/p>\n

With the Albanese government\u2019s $2bn investment facility, Australia\u2019s engagement with Southeast Asia is starting to look serious. The new Southeast Asia Investment Financing Facility to catalyse Australian investments in clean energy and infrastructure gave \u00a0Prime Minister Anthony Albanese a big-ticket initiative to grab the attention of fellow leaders at this week\u2019s ASEAN-Australia Special Summit<\/a> in Melbourne.<\/p>\n

The investment facility\u2014a recommendation from the government\u2019s Southeast Asia economic adviser Nicholas Moore\u2014is a welcome sign of the government\u2019s commitment to overcoming a glaring weakness in Australia\u2019s international economic engagement. We keenly await the government\u2019s full response to the Moore Report<\/a>.<\/p>\n

From a longer-term perspective, however, there is much more to the Summit than commerce. An equally important issue hanging over the discussions is Australia\u2019s positioning in the changing Indo-Pacific and whether Canberra has the imagination to adjust our strategic posture to meet those changes.<\/p>\n

Our first special summit in 2018 received only five lines in the 698-page political memoir of then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, and the Australian community continues to be preoccupied with China, and the US-China dynamic. This summit provides the opportunity to consider why Southeast Asia is so fundamentally important to us\u2014and why the going might not be easy.<\/p>\n

Geographic and economic imperatives make the Australia-ASEAN relationship vital in itself, but it is also the starting point for developing new possibilities for Australia\u2019s strategic future.<\/p>\n

There are no downsides to strengthening Australian interaction with Southeast Asia.\u00a0 This is the region of Asia closest to Australia, where the major powers, including Washington and Beijing, assume us to be active. Engaging effectively with ASEAN can only enhance Australia\u2019s wider influence. Also now, when the Indo-Pacific seems to be increasingly multipolar rather than American-led, it makes sense to define Australia internationally in terms of our tighter collaboration with ASEAN, as well as being a US ally. But there are challenges.<\/p>\n

Certainly, Australia has assets with respect to ASEAN.\u00a0 Apart from being ASEAN\u2019s first dialogue partner 50 years ago, we possess strong scholarly and diplomatic expertise on Southeast Asia and our universities have been leading providers of Western education to the region.<\/p>\n

Recently, however, the Australia-ASEAN relationship has transformed and many in the Australian community have not registered this. Our GDP was once larger than the combined total of ASEAN countries, and Australians tended to frame relations with the region as development assistance. Today the ASEAN figure is well over twice ours<\/a>, larger than that of India and more than four-fifths the size of Japan. The Japanese leadership acknowledges that their old client relationship with the region is over. As for China, many ASEAN countries rank this economy as their top trade destination. Since 2020, ASEAN has achieved the status of being China\u2019s top trading partner.<\/p>\n

Despite such dramatic statistics, some commentators continue to refer to Southeast Asia as Australia\u2019s \u2018backyard\u2019 and official government statements still speak of \u2018development assistance to the Pacific and Southeast Asia\u2019 as if the two regions are comparable.<\/p>\n

Australia was more important to Southeast Asia in 1974 than it is today. Although ASEAN is our second largest trading partner, we just make it to eighth on their top ten list. China\u2019s current dominance is well known. But South Korea, a minor player a few decades ago, today has twice our trade with Southeast Asia. With respect to investment, we are a very small player, with only 3.45% of our total investment stocks abroad going to the region. While Southeast Asia is attracting funds from many other countries, including in Europe, our outward investment tends to stay in the Anglosphere. It is good that the recent Moore Report<\/a> addresses this investment gap\u2014a gap that also damages Australia\u2019s political influence.<\/p>\n

That influence cannot be taken for granted. Five decades ago, we were the close ally of the region\u2019s dominant power and viewed as a leader in economic development and democratic government. Today democracy has lost some of its shine\u2014and the Singapore survey<\/a> of Southeast Asian opinion leaders indicates China is seen as the country with most \u2018political and strategic influence\u2019. Australian contributions to the region continue to be seen as constructive, but many wealthy states are vying for the region\u2019s attention. As a destination for tertiary education, Australia remains strong, although there are now fewer Southeast Asian leaders with Australian degrees.<\/p>\n

While the focus on \u2018climate and clean energy\u2019 and the \u2018blue economy\u2019 at the March summit should be welcomed, deeper engagement with Southeast Asia means more investment, scholarships, and development initiatives. There are also vital differences in strategic culture that need to be taken seriously.<\/p>\n

Malaysia\u2019s then prime minister Mahathir Mohamad used to say Australians were \u2018basically European\u2019 and portrayed themselves as \u2018deputy sheriff for America\u2019. Despite our growing multiculturalism, these perceptions continue and are sharpened when a recent prime minister describes Australia as \u2018joined at the hip\u2019 with the United States, or when his successor calls the AUKUS arrangement a \u2018forever partnership\u2019, or when our Anglosphere investment bias is noted.<\/p>\n

Our present government\u2019s attempts to modify Australia\u2019s image as a regional outlier include calling us a \u2018steadfast supporter of ASEAN centrality\u2019 and promising to be \u2018guided by the principles of ASEAN\u2019s Outlook on the Indo-Pacific\u2019 (a major ASEAN policy statement from 2019). But can we gain advantages from those principles? The biggest challenge to a full engagement with ASEAN may be our own long-held political perspectives.<\/p>\n

The Outlook stresses the \u2018inclusivity\u2019 of ASEAN regionalism, which means including, not rallying, against China. It insists on \u2018non-intervention\u2019 in a state\u2019s domestic affairs, which makes it difficult to intervene in Myanmar\u2019s domestic turmoil. The \u2018non-intervention\u2019 principle also underpins ASEAN\u2019s non-ideological approach to international relations, running counter to promotion of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) as an \u2018alignment of like-minded democracies\u2019. The Outlook insists, as well, on \u2018dialogue and cooperation instead of rivalry\u2019, which is far distant from the commitment to alliance-building which led Australia to AUKUS and the Quad.<\/p>\n

ASEAN has moved more cautiously in political than in economic development, but be in no doubt, it is ambitious. The region\u2019s states have had centuries of experience operating in hierarchies, while asserting agency in dealing with major powers. True, there are today serious maritime disputes with China, but Southeast Asians say Western analysts overlook the many benefits they leverage from their relationships with China.<\/p>\n

Adhering to \u2018the principles of ASEAN\u2019s Outlook\u2019 means ignoring recent calls to turn to \u2018minilateral organisations\u2019, such as the Quad, to \u2018get things done\u2019. Groupings of \u2018like-minded\u2019 countries may move faster in achieving practical outcomes, but they also tend to be adversarial, sharpening political division in the region. Will Australians see the advantage of endorsing ASEAN\u2019s \u2018inclusive regionalism\u2019, insisting that ASEAN leadership in the Indo-Pacific mediates the struggle between the major powers?<\/p>\n

Such genuine commitment to ASEAN would have been unimaginable in the past, but the ending of American hegemony demands strategic imagination. Our summits with ASEAN offer the opportunity to consider a new international identity for Australia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 The ASEAN-Australia leaders\u2019 summit in Melbourne offers the opportunity for Australia to embrace ASEAN\u2019s \u2018inclusive regionalism\u2019 and the organisation\u2019s centrality in mediating the Indo-Pacific struggle between the great powers. With the Albanese government\u2019s $2bn …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":775,"featured_media":85736,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[189,2212,56,2380],"class_list":["post-85733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-asean","tag-australia-china-relations","tag-indo-pacific","tag-us-china-relations"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWhy ASEAN-Australia summits matter | 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\/why-asean-australia-summits-matter\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why ASEAN-Australia summits matter | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u00a0 The ASEAN-Australia leaders\u2019 summit in Melbourne offers the opportunity for Australia to embrace ASEAN\u2019s \u2018inclusive regionalism\u2019 and the organisation\u2019s centrality in mediating the Indo-Pacific struggle between the great powers. 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