Partnership for Peace in Asia: ASEAN, the ARF, and the United Nations

Abstract

Introduction There has been renewed attention on regionalism and a reconsideration of the security role of security organizations since the end of the Cold War. Several factors account for this new enthusiasm. Among them is the fact that in the post-Cold War era, relations have expanded and areas have become substantially more important venue(s) of conflict and co-operation than in the past. (1) Juxtaposed with this is the increasing security role of the United Nations (UN) after being involved in major conflicts, such as in the Gulf War, Cambodia, and more recently those in the Balkans. This has severely stretched the resources of the UN and has been made even more acute with the expansion of peacekeeping operations it has undertaken in recent years. Moreover, with UN member-nations cutting back on financial contributions and support, the UN's capacity to undertake additional responsibilities has become more complex, while the will of its dominant members has often been weak. (2) It is hardly surprising therefore that some countries have called for the UN to scale-down its involvement in conflict situations and instead rely on so-called coalitions of the willing. Given the limitations of UN operations, a task-sharing arrangement between the UN and organizations has become imperative to advance regional, as well as, global order. This idea was forcefully argued by former UN Secretary-General Boutrous Boutrous Ghali, in his 1992 report, An Agenda for Peace: Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking and Peacekeeping. (3) However, the role assigned to organizations is not really new. Chapter VIII of the UN Charter had ascribed to regional arrangements and agencies the task of dealing with matters in relation to the maintenance of international and security as are appropriate for action. (4) Given this function, regions and organizations were also supposedly to become islands of peace and building blocks of (5) The main objectives of this article are twofold. First, the article will analyse the nature of operations in Asia which are significantly different when compared with the types of operations by organizations elsewhere. Secondly, it will examine the possibility of closer co-operation and partnership between the United Nations and arrangements in the resolution and management of conflicts. The article argues that operations in Asia--which are mostly in the area of conflict prevention, exemplified by the types of mechanisms found in ASEAN and the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF)--have made valuable contributions towards peace. In spite of this considerable success, however, the changing strategic environment requires a more pro-active engagement of organizations, which involve reviewing and/or changing existing mechanisms to be more responsive to current challenges. At the outset, it would be useful to review the relationship between organizations and the UN over the past decades, and to examine the dynamics of these relationships in the area of conflict resolution and management. This brief historical overview provides a context for the analyses of the types of processes and mechanisms that both ASEAN and the ARF have developed from the time they were established. Regional Organizations and Regional Security Since the task-sharing idea between the UN and organizations was adopted, there have been doubts about the security role of organizations and their relationship vis-a-vis the UN. Indeed, while the basic idea of Chapter VIII in the UN Charter was to enable and empower organizations to settle local disputes before referring them to the UN, the record has been, at the very least, chequered, while at worst unimpressive. As one earlier study noted, forty-five years hence, the UN has found only limited use for organizations. …