ASEAN’s Increasing Irrelevance Highlighted over Myanmar

Global Asia

THERE IS NO DOUBT that the consequences of the February 2021 military coup in Myanmar have been disastrous. With thousands of people killed, an intensified civil war, hundreds of thousands of civilians displaced and a collapsing economy, the country has been plunged into its worst crisis since the tumultuous years immediately after independence from Britain in 1948. But the tragic events in Myanmar have also become an existential crisis for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which once was seen as a successful model of regional co-operation. Myanmar is a member of the 10-member bloc, but since ASEAN’s two guiding principles are “non-interference” and “consensus,” there is nothing it has been able to do apart from issuing bland, nonbinding statements.

Charles Santiago, co-chair of ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights and a former Malaysian member of parliament, said in a statement issued on Sept. 3, “ASEAN’s silence on key issues, particularly the ongoing crisis in Myanmar, calls the bloc’s relevance into question. How can ASEAN matter if it cannot come together to resolve the most crucial and pressing issue in the region?” Laos, a country not known for promoting democracy or pursuing a proactive foreign policy — and heavily dependent on China — is scheduled to take over the ASEAN chair next year, which means even less can be expected. On the other hand, a splintered and increasingly irrelevant ASEAN could lead to greater rivalry between the United States and China, with both superpowers possibly jockeying for bilateral security arrangements with different members of the bloc.

ASEAN’s first attempt at addressing the military takeover and subsequent events came on April 24, 2021, when the coup maker, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, and leaders of the other nine members of ASEAN met in Jakarta. They agreed on what was called a “five-point consensus” that called for an immediate end to all violence and a “constructive dialogue” involving “all parties concerned,” but ASEAN’s “non-interference” doctrine meant that there was no way the agreement could be enforced. Min Aung Hlaing and his junta simply ignored it. And the “consensus” principle soon led to splits within ASEAN for the simple reason that its diverse members could not agree on what approach should be taken when engaging with the junta and its opponents.

The latest sign of disarray within ASEAN came when then Thai foreign minister Don Pramudwinai told his counterparts in ASEAN that on June 11 he had been to Myanmar and met Min Aung Hlaing as well as Aung San Suu Kyi, who had been ousted as State Counselor and detained after the coup. The meetings came as a shock to other members of the bloc. Don said that Suu Kyi “encourages dialogue without any preconditions”. But he did not give any precise details of the meeting, which took place in an annex to the prison in Naypyidaw and supposedly lasted for about an hour. Until then, no officials from ASEAN — or envoys sent by the United Nations — had been allowed to meet Suu Kyi, and it is not clear how and by whom Don’s visit to Naypyidaw had been arranged. But another visit, this time by China’s special envoy for Myanmar affairs, Deng Xijun, at the end of July, provides an indication of what might have happened behind the scenes. Although not officially confirmed, it is believed within international intelligence circles that Deng met Suu Kyi as well — and that China had played a crucial role in setting up Don’s June trip to Myanmar.

Don’s meetings in Naypyidaw prompted Malaysia as well as the Philippines to argue that individual ASEAN members should be given more latitude in dealing with the Myanmar crisis. But that proved to be embarrassing for this year’s ASEAN’s chair Indonesia, which had been promoting what its foreign minister Retno Marsudi called “quiet diplomacy” involving the entire bloc. It is clear that approach has not worked, and it is obvious that ASEAN’s two guiding principles make it impossible to act as a bloc when there is a crisis involving one of its members, or conflicts between member states.

ANTI-COMMUNIST ROOTS

A look at the history of ASEAN also explains why it has become a grouping characterized by indecision and ineffectiveness. The bloc came into being when the foreign ministers of Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines met in Bangkok on Aug. 8, 1967, and signed a declaration stating that its basic principles should be “co-operation, amity, and non-interference.” Its “founding fathers,” as they are called in the revisionist history on ASEAN’s official website, never had a “vision” of a bloc “that would include all the countries of Southeast Asia.” In reality, ASEAN was a product of the Cold War — and often not-so cold — in Asia and, as such, was motivated by a common fear of communism. Malaysia had just experienced a bloody civil war between communist insurgents and British and Commonwealth troops. Malaya — encompassing the Malay peninsula — had become independent in 1957 and, in 1963, it merged with Singapore, Sarawak and British North Borneo (which was renamed Sabah) to become Malaysia, a move that was done to prevent Singapore from falling to communism. But the ethnic Chinese dominance in Singapore led to its expulsion from the federation in 1965, and it became an independent city-state.

In the Philippines, pro-Western governments struggled to neutralize and reintegrate former Hukbalahap, or communist, militants who had been active throughout the 1950s. Conflicts between the Indonesian military and the Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI) had led to mass killings of suspected communists and other dissidents in 1965-66, which culminated in the seizure of power by General Suharto in March 1967. Before that, Indonesia had the world’s largest and most influential communist party in a country that was not a communist-ruled dictatorship.

A communist regime had been established in North Vietnam and allied guerrillas had begun their armed struggles in South Vietnam and Laos. Cambodia was ruled by the enigmatic and often unpredictable Prince Norodom Sihanouk, who had close relations with the communist bloc. Cambodia’s eastern provinces even served as bases for Vietnamese communist forces operating in South Vietnam. In 1965, Cambodia broke its diplomatic relations with the US, but reestablished them two years after ASEAN was founded. Myanmar (then Burma) was actually invited to join but declined. The military government in Rangoon (now Yangon) wanted to remain neutral so as not to provoke China into providing support for its homegrown communist and ethnic rebels.

In a way, ASEAN could be seen as a more palatable, non-military successor to the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), a regional, anti-communist alliance created in Manila in 1954 and formally established the following year. It brought together Thailand, the Philippines, Pakistan, the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand and France. Not surprisingly given its composition, it was widely seen as a grouping controlled by Western powers and never became, as once envisaged, a Southeast Asian equivalent of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Pakistan, wishing to have closer relations with China, left the organization in 1968. By then, SEATO had anyway become dysfunctional.

ASEAN held regular meetings to discuss the political situation in Southeast Asia and, in 1984, Brunei became its sixth member. It was when the bloc’s members began to prosper economically in the 1970s and early 1980s that it gained credibility and attracted international attention. Some observers went as far as comparing it with the European Union (EU), but the main issue that held ASEAN together and gave it a sense of purpose was the communist victories in Indochina in 1975 and, more specifically, the Vietnamese intervention in Cambodia in December 1978 to January 1979. Paradoxically, the leaders of the ousted, genocidal Khmer Rouge regime found shelter in Thailand, which together with other ASEAN members also helped build up a non-communist, anti-Vietnamese resistance in Cambodia. Vietnam was the main enemy, and its enemies were ASEAN’s friends. Thailand agreed to let Chinese arms supplies destined for the resistance — including the Khmer Rouge — pass through its territory in exchange for China ending its support for the insurgent Communist Party of Thailand (CPT). Deprived of such aid and combined with a general amnesty in 1980, the CPT virtually ceased to exist.

Then came a peace process, initiated by Indonesia and furthered by the United Nations, which led to the withdrawal of Vietnamese troops from Cambodia. And finally, in July 1995, Vietnam somewhat surprisingly decided to join ASEAN. Hanoi’s interest in becoming a member of a bloc that had been its enemy was prompted by a desire to develop its faltering economy by expanding trade with the rest of Southeast Asia and, more precisely, because its old allies, the Soviet Union and the communist states in Eastern Europe, had collapsed in the early 1990s. Hanoi needed to belong to a new family of nations to strengthen its position in relation to its northern archenemy, China. ASEAN began to take on a completely new direction, vastly different from what was discussed and agreed upon in Bangkok in 1967. Now it did want to encompass all the countries of Southeast Asia, regardless of their political system.

TROUBLES OVER MYANMAR AND CAMBODIA

At ASEAN’s 30th anniversary in 1997, Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia were going to become members as well. But that ran into problems that the bloc’s policymakers had not anticipated. Myanmar’s membership was controversial because the country was ruled by a brutal military dictatorship, and this caused serious strains in ASEAN’s relations with the European Union. Meetings between representatives of the two blocs were put on hold because the Europeans refused to sit in the same room as Myanmar’s generals. A compromise was eventually worked out, but Myanmar’s membership continued to be a thorn in relations between ASEAN and the EU. However, Laos, a communist dictatorship like Vietnam, became a member without any objections from members of the bloc or the international community.

Cambodia’s membership was deferred because of political unrest that took place in 1997. Sihanouk had been reinstated as head of state, now king, in 1993, but following a contested election that year, the country had two prime ministers: Hun Sen, a veteran of the regime the Vietnamese had installed in 1979, and Sihanouk’s French-educated son, Prince Norodom Ranariddh. Hun Sen had ousted Ranariddh in a coup that claimed the lives of at least 32 people. Ranariddh and many of his supporters were forced to flee the country, and the way was paved for autocratic rule with Hun Sen as the sole head of government. In 1999, Cambodia finally became ASEAN’s 10th member while Hun Sen continued to rule the country until July 2023, when his son Hun Manet became new prime minister after what international observers saw as a seriously flawed election. Hun Sen’s Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) had won yet another questionable landslide victory. The US State Department issued a statement after the election saying it was “neither free nor fair” because Cambodian authorities had “engaged in a pattern of threats and harassment against the political opposition, media, and civil society.”

WHAT IS ASEAN REALLY?

The outcome of this tangled history is today’s hodgepodge of nations, which has managed to establish little more than some degree of economic co-operation and organize exchanges in the fields of sports and music. It has also become easier for citizens of the various member states to travel within the bloc. But it was unable to do anything about the conflict in East Timor, which Indonesia occupied in 1975 and annexed the following year. East Timor was thus considered an internal Indonesian affair and that meant ASEAN could not interfere. In the end, the United Nations — and Australia — had to intervene and East Timor became independent. ASEAN has also been unable to solve issues such as territorial disputes between Cambodia and Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, and Malaysia and the Philippines over Sabah and adjacent islands, cross-border insurgency between Malaysia and Thailand, and incursions by Myanmar troops into Thailand. Furthermore, ASEAN has not managed to articulate a common policy on the South China Sea, one of the region’s most important security issues. In fact, it remains divided between members such as Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, which have sided with China — and Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia, which have challenged China’s claims.

It is also often forgotten that ASEAN is a gathering of mostly undemocratic regimes. Vietnam and Laos are communist party-ruled dictatorships, Cambodia remains under the authoritarian rule of the CPP and Brunei is an absolute monarchy. Malaysia has wavered between oppression of independent thinkers and periods of more openness. Singapore is not known for respect of dissident views. In Thailand, the military has staged several coups against democratically elected governments and manipulated the outcome of elections. The Philippines has democratic institutions but is riddled with corruption and various abuses of power. That leaves Indonesia as the main democratic force in ASEAN, but without the required consensus, there is nothing it can do to implement its vision of a freer Southeast Asia, as the Myanmar crisis has shown.

It will be the turn of Laos to chair ASEAN in 2024, because the position rotates annually based on the alphabetic order of the English names of member states. But that could prove fatal for the bloc. While the government in Vientiane has tried hard to balance Beijing’s influence with economic and diplomatic ties with Hanoi, massive Chinese investments in the country’s infrastructure and loans owed to Chinese financial institutions make it impossible for Laos to be truly independent. ASEAN is bound to become even more irrelevant and its members may have to decide whether the US or China should be their international partner. The Philippines is already strengthening its ties with the US while China continues to be the main ally of not only Laos but also Cambodia and Myanmar. The rest maintain a fragile and shaky neutrality — while ASEAN as a bloc and a role model for other regional groupings in the world passes into history.​