“ Enhanced Interaction” with Myanmar and the Project of a Security Community: Is ASEAN Refining or Breaking with its Diplomatic and Security Culture?

Abstract

Introduction In June 1998, against the backdrop of the Asian economic and financial crisis and serious diplomatic disagreements with neighbouring Myanmar, (1) former Thai Foreign Minister Surin Pitsuwan called on members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to adopt the concept of flexible engagement as a corporate policy. (2) Flexible engagement was to allow ASEAN governments to publicly comment on and collectively discuss fellow members' policies when these would have cross-border implications, i.e. adversely affect the disposition of other ASEAN states. Surin Pitsuwan's bold proposal constituted a multi-pronged challenge to ASEAN's diplomatic and security culture (Haacke 1999, pp. 583-85). (3) First, flexible engagement appeared to challenge the principle of non-interference in the sense that agreement on the concept seemed designed to pave the way for unsolicited involvement in the of other states. Second, the proposal challenged the norm of quiet diplomacy because the concept was to explicitly allow for public discussion and criticism of one ASEAN country by another. And, third, by suggesting that the Association should become involved in intra-state issues if these entailed adverse consequences for other members, flexible engagement also challenged the long-standing norm that ASEAN should not take up collectively what for the most part would previously have been regarded as bilateral disputes. Arguably, the proposal also threatened to remove the ambiguity that until then had allowed individual member states to sometimes engage in and/or tolerate perceived instances of diplomatic interference. While noting that flexible engagement would indeed amount to a new departure for ASEAN, the Thai Foreign Minister was adamant at the time that flexible engagement was not incompatible with the principle of non-interference. Rather, it was an attempt to delimit the range of situations in which individual member states would henceforth still be justified to appeal to the norm of non-interference to ward off outside involvement in their so-called internal affairs. Notably, the flexible engagement idea did not amount to the advocacy of a new security model. Nor was it meant to denote for ASEAN a sudden shift from a state-centric view of security to new security referents or a shift to an exclusive preoccupation with a new category of threats. In the event, the overwhelming majority of ASEAN countries rejected Surin's proposal, mainly because not to do so seemed to potentially open up a can of worms that could endanger intramural stability and, in some cases, jeopardize regime security. Having repulsed flexible engagement, ASEAN governments nevertheless informally agreed to henceforth allow for enhanced interaction. (4) This decision reflected the realization of ASEAN decision-makers that they ultimately could not prevent each other from publicly commenting on those intrastate developments that had a perceived detrimental social, economic or political impact on other members or the Association as a whole. Nevertheless, at the time there was (or seemed to be) a subtle but significant difference between enhanced interaction and flexible engagement, insofar as enhanced interaction appeared to imply that individual member states could comment on other members' domestic affairs although ASEAN should not. In other words, as a compromise, enhanced interaction de facto condoned efforts of individual ASEAN leaders to take their colleagues to task on matters heretofore perceived as domestic affairs if the issue at hand had cross-boundary implications, while still ruling out the legitimacy of such endeavours being undertaken under ASEAN's auspices. Notably, when put into practice, enhanced interaction quickly proved deeply disruptive and divisive within the Association and led to the temporary reassertion of more traditional understandings of ASEAN's diplomatic and security culture (Kraft 2000, Ramcharan 2000, Haacke 1999: 598-603). …