Association Of Southeast Asian Nations Security Research Articles

THE SOUTH CHINA SEA DISPUTE AS A THREAT TO ASEAN COOPERATIVE SECURITY IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC REGION

The article provides an overview of the dispute in the South China Sea between China and the member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) through the prism of ASEAN cooperative security. Emphasis is placed on the study of documents that envisionage mechanisms for resolving the dispute between China and ASEAN. It is determined that the activities of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations as a collective actor in resolving the dispute in the South China Sea are limited exclusively to confidence-building measures as the ultimate goal of activities in this area and the development of a code of conduct with the People's Republic of China. At the same time, the main legal instrument of ASEAN's relations with China at the mentioned waters remains the legally non-binding Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea of 4 November 2002, which indicates China's unwillingness to create a direct framework for cooperation in the South China Sea with a view to furthrer strengthening its position in the waters through militarisation and land reclamation activities. The authors also consider and analyse the main limitations of ASEAN's security policy in the Asia-Pacific region and its cooperative security regime, including absolutisation of sovereignty and non-interference in internal affairs, consensus as the basis for decision-making, adherence to the principle of mushyawarah - consultations as an end in itself, non-use of potential conflict resolution mechanisms due to soft institutionalism and the use of bilateral joint resource development in the South-China Sea, which undermines the principle of multilateralism of ASEAN cooperative security.

Problems faced by ASEAN in dealing with transnational drug smuggling in Southeast Asia region

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study the factors that caused The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) security regime to be ineffective in saving transnational drug smuggling, including the internalization of non-optimal values and norms of the ASEAN Drug-Free Declaration. Design/methodology/approach This study uses primary data and secondary data. Data analysis and observation are carried out simultaneously, where data are analyzed directly after it is obtained using descriptive analysis. Interactive data analysis is carried out at the initial step by collecting primary and secondary data. Data are analyzed inductively by drawing conclusions from data obtained from general views to specifics. Findings The development of ASEAN has led to the idea of “ASEAN Way,” namely, the ASEAN security forum to eliminate the use of force in maintaining relations between member countries through the dissemination of agreed values. Multilateral negotiations refer to the establishment of a negotiation regime at the ASEAN level that emphasizes the interests of ASEAN member countries in determining agreements relating to transnational drug crimes. There are several inhibiting factors in the negotiation process, namely, perception differences between ASEAN countries on the threat of drug smuggling in the Southeast Asia region and the differences of ASEAN leaders’ priorities and agenda. Originality/value The originality/authenticity of research is analyzing the factors that affect the ASEAN security system in transnational protection policies by using two models, namely, the international level negotiation model and one at the national level in the form of ratification of ASEAN international relations related to drug smuggling. At present, transnational crimes, especially drug smuggling, appear and pose a threat to national and international security. The object of this research is ASEAN international organizations in cases of transnational drug smuggling.

Enduring Mistrust and Conflict Management in Southeast Asia: An Assessment of ASEAN as a Security Community

AbstractThe paper explores whether the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has matured from a weak cooperative arrangement in its early days into a functioning security community by 2016. It first introduces a Deutschian and a constructivist understanding of security communities before examining ASEAN's involvement in the security realm since 1967. The paper claims that the regional body is not yet a security community, partly due to residual mistrust among its members, which undermines ASEAN's ability to address a series of ongoing inter-state disputes in Southeast Asia. While it has contributed to conflict avoidance, the Association has so far failed to conduct conflict resolution in spite of the ASEAN Political and Security Community initiative. The paper concludes that the failure to directly address and ultimately resolve sources of conflict in Southeast Asia has undermined the establishment of a security community in the region.

The ASEAN Security Community: A Misplaced Consensus

Is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) a security community? To many theorists and Southeast Asian specialists, the answer is a resounding yes. This article interrogates this consensus. The author contends that a greater sensitivity to empirical evidence and theoretical rigour leads to the conclusion that the claims of security community theorists are far less compelling than is claimed.

ASEAN at 46: Security Competition, Security Regime or Security Community?

Since its founding, there has been significant debate over the extent to which the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has succeeded in institutionalising reciprocal security cooperation in Southeast Asia. A review of the academic literature on the security dilemma, focussing on security regimes and security communities as sources of order in international politics, helps to frame a yardstick upon which the achievements of ASEAN may be assessed. In this regard, whilst ASEAN has not yet evolved into a security community, it may be argued that the association may be seen as a qualified success in promoting a security regime insofar as the norms of sovereignty are concerned. At the same time, however, the emergence of non-traditional security issues alongside the four new members of ASEAN highlight the need to expand the scope of the existing ASEAN security regime to encompass an expanded agenda for long-term security cooperation in the regime.

The ASEAN political and security community (APSC): opportunities and constraints for the R2P in Southeast Asia

Members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) took part in the World Summit 2005 and agreed to adopt the principle of Responsibility to Protect (R2P). However, there has not been any significant effort to discuss how the R2P might be applicable to the region and the issue remains a marginal one to ASEAN. However, the adoption of the ASEAN Political-Security Community (APSC) by ASEAN could provide a logical start for the maintraiming of R2P in ASEAN's discourse and practice. Some elements of the APSC appear to have characteristics in common with the R2P principle. While the APSC may provide broad and indirect support for building the capacity of States to recognise, prevent and respond to the situations of conflict, its immediate utility for preventing the four crimes of genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and crimes against humanity nonetheless remains to be seen.

Forming a security community: lessons from ASEAN

AbstractAt its Ninth Summit in October 2003 the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) announced its intention to create an ASEAN Community based upon three pillars: ASEAN Economic Community, ASEAN Security Community and an ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community. A year later ASEAN established the Vientiane Action Programme to realise this goal. The official discourse of community building is complemented by a vibrant academic debate over whether ASEAN's norms indicate that it is a nascent security community ready to transform itself into a fully-fledged security community. In this article I argue that ASEAN has never been a nascent security community but has instead been a security regime and therefore its norm compliance does not provide evidence of community building. If ASEAN is to form a security community then new socialising norms will need to emerge, which will need to include the active involvement of regional civil society organisations in order to bring plurality to ASEAN decision making. Only then will the people of ASEAN be able to take ownership of the community building process.

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

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). …

Constructing Southeast Asian security: the pitfalls of imagining a security community and the temptations of orthodoxy

At the ninth summit of the Association of South‐East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in October 2003, the organisation's leaders declared their intention of transforming ASEAN into a security community. In making the case that ASEAN has functioned as a realist security institution since its inception in 1967, this article argues that the theoretical literature underpinning the ASEAN security community idea is characterised by significant conceptual and empirical flaws. First, a number of problems surround the variables—either norms or identity—that are used to explain the emergence of a putative security community among the ASEAN states. Second, critical issues in the ASEAN security community literature include the tautological nature of the arguments and a failure to rule out alternative explanations. Third, from an empirical perspective, the nascent ASEAN security community has arguably never existed.

Islam in Southeast Asia: The Challenge of Radical Interpretations

This article addresses three questions. The rise of radical Islamic movements in Southeast Asia, the links between Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) and al-Qaeda, and the challenge to Southeast Asian states from JI. Desker gives an overview of radical Islamic organisations in Southeast Asia resorting to violence, and their reciprocal connections and ties to the global al-Qaeda network. These organisations and their actions draw attention to the interplay between transnational non-state actors, postcolonial states and regional integration processes in the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN). Desker points out the fragility of postcolonial states challenged by religious, ethnic and linguistic groups promoting separatist or transnational agendas. As new states protective of their sovereignty and the primacy of their national identities, the ASEAN members generally have pursued individual national interests in confronting such transnational actors. As such the ASEAN member-states have not relied on their multilateral relationships, highlighting the erosion of the ASEAN security community after the Cold War. The original version of this paper was prepared for the Regional Outlook Forum organized by the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore on 7 January 2003.

The concept of flexible engagement and the practice of enhanced interaction: Intramural challenges to the ‘ASEAN way’

This article examines the challenges to the diplomatic and security culture of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as posed by Thailand's spurned proposal for ‘flexible engagement’ and the pursuit of ‘enhanced interaction’ by some ASEAN members in intramural relations. It asks whether these challenges should be understood as turning points in the way in which regional leaderships in Southeast Asia interact. The article argues that while the ‘ASEAN way’ is indeed changing, this change, at least for the moment, focuses mainly on extending the range of issues and contexts traditionally defined as internal affairs in which other ASEAN governments may now legitimately become involved. Considerations about ASEAN cohesion, regime security and regional influence do not suggest an imminent or complete abandonment of ASEAN's diplomatic and security culture. The likelihood that enhanced interaction will continue to be pursued by ASEAN leaderships should therefore not be seen to imply that principles such as quiet diplomacy or restraint have already become obsolete.

ASEAN and the Management of Regional Security

T n HE ASSOCIATION OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN NATIONS (ASEAN) has the reputation of being the most successful indigenously produced regional organization in the developing world.' Much of that reputation is attributable to ASEAN's apparent internal cohesion and international effectiveness. In the post-cold war era, ASEAN hopes to build on its success by shaping the emerging security relations of the Asia-Pacific through new mechanisms such as the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). However, ASEAN's influence on Southeast Asia's regional security environment during the cold war was both more nuanced than is commonly recognized and dependent on a set of unique circumstances. ASEAN's experiences with regional security in the cold war are not readily transferred to the post-cold war era. This paper is a discussion and evaluation of ASEAN's efforts to manage its regional security environment (i.e., to affect the actors and events shaping security in Southeast Asia). The main argument of this paper is that ASEAN's ability to manage regional security in Southeast Asia has been, and is, limited by two factors: one, the interests and actions of the great powers, which have defined the parameters of ASEAN's security policies; and two, divergent security perceptions and interests within ASEAN, which have defined the limits of intraorganizational cooperation and made it difficult to evaluate the significance of ASEAN's stated security objectives. ASEAN has improved relations between its member states, but these achievements are contingent on its success as a larger regional actor. The ASEAN member states remain mostly motivated by narrow understandings of their self-interests, which are not always congruent and can undermine ASEAN's unity and ability to function effectively. ASEAN's present efforts to incorporate Vietnam, Burma, Laos and, eventually, Cambodia, may exacerbate this problem. This paper is broken into five sections. After a brief historical overview, I review ASEAN's stated regional security objectives and the political and

Indochina and ASEAN: Seeking a New Balance

The new relationship in place between Indochina and member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) may be regarded as a solution to yesterday's problems and not today's. This new balance in the relationship cannot in itself provide a sufficient basis for a post-Cold War security order in Southeast Asia. The attendant change in the regional strategic con text means that the question of security has to be addressed within a wider East Asian framework. That need has been recognized in the initiative taken for a wider multilateral security dialogue at the meeting of ASEAN's Foreign Ministers in Singapore in July 1993. This promising development extends geographically the ASEAN security model based on conflict management and avoidance. But that model has never been intended to cope with the problem of power in regional relations for which more robust provision is required than an extended structure for con/idence-building.

Security Co‑operation in ASEAN

Ever since Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was formed in 1967, questions of security have become an ever increasing issue, despite rhetoric to contrary. ASEAN was set up primarily to promote co-operation among members in socio-economic field. However, ASEAN leaders, then and now, have been tacitly preoccupied with security issues. One can argue that security co-operation has been far more successful than in economic matters. The fact that ASEAN could galvanize support of majority at United Nations over Kampuchean issue is indicative of importance of role of secu rity in ASEAN. The concept of Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality (ZOPFAN), although Utopian in nature, is yet another example where notions of security have proved to be significant. At present, proposal for setting up of Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone (NWFZ) in Southeast Asia sits high on ASEAN agenda. As we approach end of this decade, there is every indication that security issues will continue to play very significant role in ASEAN. It has been said that security is one element that could either unite ASEAN or lead to breaking up of this regional organization. There are many challenges to ASEAN security co operation and it is these elements that this paper will primarily focus upon. Let us first define some key concepts. The word * 'security'' has wide range of meanings and connotations, far more encompassing than term defence. It is defined by one scholar as, the protection and preservation of minimum core values of any nation: political independence and territorial integrity.1 There are various levels of security, ranging from individual and national security to international and regional security. In context of ASEAN, both national and regional security are of paramount importance. However, there is no doubt that national security is far more important than regional, although latter could well contribute to preservation of former and vice versa. Co-operation can generally be defined as, a joint or collaborative behaviour that is directed toward some goal in which there is common interest or hope of reward.2 The goal here is, in present context, attainment of security of states concerned. The other key factors are, firstly, common interest and, secondly, hope of reward. As we will later discover, there is no real consensus among ASEAN states on these two pertinent elements of co-operation. What then do we really mean when we talk of ASEAN security co-operation? It is important to remember at outset that ASEAN was and still is socio