One doesn’t need to be a sceptic of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to question whether its much vaunted ‘centrality’ as a regional organisation has value beyond rhetoric.
Three big meetings will be held in Asia this week: an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Seoul; the attention-grabbing meeting between presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping on the APEC sidelines; and, almost unnoticed, a set of ASEAN gatherings in Malaysia.
It’s notable that Trump and Xi will meet in Seoul, not Kuala Lumpur, even though the US president will go to Malaysia, in part to witness the signing of a ceasefire between Thailand and Cambodia following their July border flare-up. He helped to catalyse the deal and has praised Malaysia’s key role in the negotiations. But Xi will not be at the ASEAN meetings, having again delegated the job of representing China to a premier. India’s leader, Narendra Modi, is also staying away.
ASEAN has not disappeared. In fact, the organisation is set to expand this week, with East Timor becoming its latest member. With this, all 11 nations in Southeast Asia will finally sit under ASEAN’s institutional roof. However, as in the mid to late 1990s, when ASEAN embraced Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Myanmar as new members, the grouping’s willingness to broaden is symptomatic of its inability to deepen.
ASEAN has unfortunately passed the point at which it needs to decide whether to regenerate and play a genuine leadership role for the region or is content to run itself into insignificance, requiring only that Australia and others continue giving lip service to its centrality.
And no one really knows what this almost theological idea of centrality means, beyond a desire to convene meetings and open-ended processes and to laboriously draft joint statements dancing around divisive issues that demand concrete collective action. The bald reality is that ASEAN is only on the periphery of significant developments and major decisions that are affecting Southeast Asia. Its ambition to exert influence and leadership beyond Southeast Asia is no longer credible as the grouping continually struggles even to deal with disputes and differences involving its own members.
From Myanmar’s continuing civil war to bloody clashes on the Cambodia–Thailand border and responding to China’s bellicosity towards the Philippines in the South China Sea, ASEAN struggles to exert influence even within Southeast Asia. Myanmar has taken up much of its time, but ASEAN has achieved meagre results. Myanmar’s military regime is still in power, making money off people smuggling and scam centres that prey on ordinary Southeast Asians.
ASEAN’s reluctance to show collective support to the Philippines in the face of a clear and present external threat, from China, poses a more basic challenge to the organisation’s credibility, especially since it came into being precisely to prevent external powers from exploiting Southeast Asia’s manifest internal differences. Few in Manila, which takes over the chairmanship reins from Kuala Lumpur, have much faith left in ASEAN centrality or the interminable Code of Conduct negotiations with Beijing on the South China Sea. Instead, the Philippines increasingly relies on more tangible support from the United States, Australia, Japan and European countries. How the Philippines handles the chairmanship next year will be fascinating to behold.
Apologists for ASEAN’s inaction say it is too much to expect Southeast Asian nations to take on China. But the South China Sea has exposed gaps in cohesion and rendered ASEAN now less than the sum of its parts.
These internal troubles complement ASEAN’s growing insularity. This combination is holding back Southeast Asia, in aggregate and individually, in economic, technology and security terms.
Who gains from the prevailing do-nothing approach? Not ASEAN members, such as the Philippines, nor partners, such as Australia and Japan, that must do the heavy lifting of regional security. China is the main beneficiary of a region that relies on Chinese trade and investment and is too scared to counter malign behaviour or even to call it out.
What about the US? It’s true that Trump’s tariffs have incensed ASEAN members and were an own goal. American tariffs on Southeast Asian nations are a misstep, and they reveal the absence of an underlying US strategy towards the region. But they are not in the same league as Beijing’s aggression against the Philippines and Taiwan, nor its economic coercion and cyber intrusions that daily undermine national security and stability across the region.
The biggest drag on ASEAN’s effectiveness may, in fact, be Indonesia’s ambivalence towards it. Under the previous administration of president Joko Widodo, Jakarta turned inwards and relinquished its customary leading-from-behind role within ASEAN. Now, under President Prabowo Subianto, Indonesia is more active internationally but keeps side-stepping ASEAN while, even more uncomfortably for Australia, getting steadily closer to Russia and to China.
The latest evidence of Indonesia’s tilt towards Beijing are reports of a large deal to buy Chinese defence equipment and an agreement to establish a satellite remote-sensing centre for resource management, which will monitor vessel traffic and detect illegal fishing. Of course, such dual use tech can monitor, detect and track any other activities too, all under the guise of environmentalism. In June, Indonesia signed a strategic partnership with Russia.
Some ASEAN members voiced concerns when AUKUS was established. Why aren’t ASEAN’s members asking more questions about the strategic risks of deals with Russia and China? Perhaps it is because they are eyeing similar deals of their own.
ASEAN’s inaction and silence is why, in practical terms, Australia defines ASEAN centrality to mean factoring the grouping into Australian decisions rather than expecting it to play a shaping role in the region’s future security and stability. For regional stability, while Southeast Asia is geographically central to the Indo-Pacific, Australia will need to look elsewhere for collective security—to Washington, Tokyo, Brussels, London and Delhi.
Japan’s new prime minister, Takaichi Sanae, is well placed to join Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in bringing Modi and Trump together to keep the Quad on track. Canberra can also look increasingly to the Philippines as a like-minded strategic partner within Southeast Asia, which is cross-bracing and reinforcing its security partnerships with other US allies. But that is despite supposed ASEAN centrality, not because of it.
For now, the world is looking past ASEAN, to the APEC meeting in Seoul. May any agreement reached there between Trump and Xi be in the region’s interests too. Better no agreement, than a bad one.