Systemic Neglect? A Reconsideration of US-Southeast Asia Policy

Abstract

I feel this [US-Southeast Asia] partnership ... suffers a considerable problem with expectations which do not match. Abdullah Badawi, Prime Minister of Malaysia (2005) (2) The last few years have seen much anxiety expressed about the US position in Southeast Asia the pages of major US newspapers and in the reports of Washington think-tanks. Some blame China and what they regard as its policies aimed at removing the United States from Southeast Asia. Others blame the policies of former President George W. Bush. Either way, if the commentary is to be believed, the United States is Southeast Asia to China. This article takes a different view. The article agrees that the United States has lost important standing in Southeast Asia, but US influence balance also remains substantial. The article also takes issue with both the projected implications associated with the US loss of standing and the two explanations most often cited. First, in contrast to explanations that over-privilege the politics of the moment (be it Bush policies or Beijing's new diplomacy), this discussion sees recent developments as products of a historical structure and pattern of US-Southeast Asia relations, as well as post-Cold War adaptations ongoing in US-Southeast Asia relations. Second, it concludes that the process is less about the United States losing Southeast Asia to China than it is about relationships that are normalizing in ways that can ultimately prove beneficial for all sides. In particular, adaptations have helped soften dependencies and asymmetries that have sometimes contributed to over inflated expectations about what each side expects from the other. Southeast Asian actors have also gained an expanded range for maneouvre and greater confidence in their own approaches. For the United States, long accustomed to being at the centre, such trends can be disconcerting, but they may also lessen burdens and expectations placed a stretched global power. Systemic Challenges? Much concern was expressed at the foreign policy of President George W. Bush, and in this respect US-Southeast Asia policy was little different. However, Southeast Asia at least, there is also something very old hat about the concerns raised. Indeed, pick up any annual review of US-Southeast Asian relations written during the last quarter of a century, and one is likely to find (with variations in degree) remarkable similarity in the concerns expressed: that US involvement in Southeast Asia suffers from neglect (benign or otherwise), episodic attention, a lack of imagination, recurrent frictions and incoherence, in addition to being off the radar screen, on automatic pilot, distracted, rudderless and subject to strategic drift. (3) Other criticisms, especially those from Southeast Asia, focus more the approach and style of US diplomacy but are no less repetitive: the United States fails to consult, disregards multilateral processes, insufficiently appreciates Southeast Asia, is over-preoccupied with particular (and often wrong) threats, and is out of alignment with regional changes/realities. (4) Failure to adequately consult (sometimes even inform) has been a longstanding complaint of Washington's Southeast Asian partners who associate that failure with a penchant for unilateralism and general disregard for local preferences and sensitivities. Explicit criticisms about Washington's failure to support regional frameworks are more recent but likewise speak to longstanding concerns about the subordination of regional perspectives and interests to those of the United States. (5) In short, the consensus is that Washington gives inadequate attention (in quantity or quality) to Southeast Asia. The repetitiveness of concerns suggests that the problems of US-Southeast Asia relations are chronic and may be a function less of partisan failures than of ones. In the international relations sense, the term systemic speaks to the structural character of relations, the significant power inequalities that define the US-Southeast Asia relationship, and its sensitivities to changing regional and global balances of power. …