Asean's enlargement: solution or pr

[moe@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Subject: Asean's enlargement: solution or problem?    Business Times 28/6



         Asean's enlargement: solution or problem? 


By Michael Leifer 

      More members do not guarantee more diplomatic
                                strength 



ASEAN'S enlargement to include all the states of geographic South-east Asia
is a logical outcome
of a continuous process of regional reconciliation. Reconciliation has
marked every stage of the
association's institutional growth from the very outset. With Vietnam's
entry in July 1995, the
political logjam for enlarging to an Asean 10 was broken. 

Myanmar's political notoriety has been an impediment to that end but, given
Asean's commitment
to "constructive engagement", the entry of Cambodia and Laos without Myanmar
would have
been construed as an admission of failure as well as contributing further to
Yangon's diplomatic
isolation. 

The problems of enlargement need to be well understood, however. Asean has
owed its measure
of success partly to an intimacy of limited scale and to a relative
homogeneity of political outlooks.
Enlargement to an Asean-10 puts that quasi-familial culture at some risk as
the association
becomes a far more disparate entity, affecting in turn both
consensus-building and
decision-making. 

Moreover, the new entrants are likely to be a charge on the resources of the
existing members as
well as complicating their relationships with Western governments. The
problem is not only the
political taint of Myanmar but also, for example, the incipient civil war in
Cambodia which it will
be difficult for Asean to ignore. 

Asean is enlarging to 10 states in an act of regional self-empowerment.
Beyond the aspiration of
an Asean-10, there is a practical problem which enlargement is intended to
address. It arises from
the way in which Asean has sought to cope with the uncertainty in its
strategic environment
attendant on the end of the Cold War. 

In 1993, Asean took the initiative to call into being an Asia-Pacific-wide
multilateral security
dialogue known as the Asean Regional Forum (ARF). The ARF has 21 participant
states
extending from India to North America with the adherence of all of the major
regional powers,
including China. 

By promoting the ARF, Asean acknowledged its limitations in providing on its
own for regional
order and questioned by implication the utility and legitimacy of South-east
Asia as a strategic
category. The ARF registered the geopolitical indivisibility and fusion of
North-east and
South-east Asia which had been pointed up also by the maritime assertiveness
southwards of a
rising China. 

Moreover, in taking the initiative to promote the ARF, Asean went against
the grain of its
long-standing prerogative approach to regional order expressed in the Zopfan
(Zone of Peace,
Freedom and Neutrality) formula. The proposal for Zopfan promulgated in 1971
was a
declaratory policy which posted the diplomatic equivalent of the warning
sign "trespassers will be
prosecuted" to external powers. 

Participation in a wider structure of security dialogue beyond Asean and
involving the major
Asia-Pacific powers gave rise to the prospect of a number of opportunity
costs, however. For
example, it raised the logical and disturbing possibility of Asean being
diminished in its identity and
security role within its own geographic region through the intervening
greater political and military
weight of those powers. Indeed, even more disturbing was the possibility of
Asean becoming
redundant and subsumed institutionally within the ARF. 

Asean sought to cope with such implications arising from the ARF by imposing
its name on the
forum as an alternative to an Asian Regional Forum which some states would
have preferred. It
was able also to determine the ARF's operational terms of reference and
modalities so that Asean
would enjoy a continuing diplomatic centrality. 

The idea of an Asean Regional Forum remains a contested concept, however,
while the diplomatic
centrality of Asean within it cannot be taken for granted. 

Enlargement to an Asean-10 constitutes an attempt to address these problems
through the power
of numbers. An Asean of 10 members able to speak with a single harmonious
voice should be
able to enjoy greater diplomatic influence within the wider Asia-Pacific
enterprise so protecting the
pivotal position and interests of the association. 

At issue is the extent to which enlargement is a solution to Asean's problem
of upholding a distinct
identity and prerogative regional role. To employ the idiom of the European
Union, much will
depend on a collective ability to translate "widening" into "deepening";
namely, to socialise new
members into an established culture of association which has served Asean
well at a smaller scale. 

A key challenge will be the ability of the association to forge a common
policy on the complex
problems of the South China Sea. This is critical for Asean. Underlying
China's irredentist claims
to sovereign jurisdiction is a disturbing assertion of a right to be as much
of a South-east Asian
state as, say, Indonesia, and by implication the 11th member of Asean. 

The problem with enlargement is that the power of numbers can be a
double-edged sword.
Diversity is not a guaranteed formula for diplomatic strength. At issue for
Asean is the extent to
which enlargement may give rise to even greater problems than those for
which it is intended to
provide a solution. 

Professor Michael Leifer is Professor of International Relations at the
London School of
Economics and Political Science and was recently a Senior Professorial
Fellow at ISEAS.