ASEAN Lecture Series (5)

External Powers in
Southeast Asia
01 August 2012 9:50 am – 11:40 am
At Defence Academy
By Dr. Mikio Oishi
Academy of Brunei Studies & Institute of Asian Studies, UBD
A Wider Picture: the East Asian Peace:
 East Asia used to be the world’s most war-prone region since the
end of WWII
 However, after the short but devastating Chinese-Vietnamese
War in 1979, there has been no major conflict in East Asia. Why?
 Its origin in the post-WWII Japan Japanese model
 Thick in economic development and extremely thin in military
affairs—a Japanese model
 This model adopted by Indonesia from the late 1960s and spread
to other SE Asian countries
 Forming the “ASEAN Way of conflict management”
 Conflict avoidance, relationship building, and focusing on
domestic economic development
 Regional co-existence despite conflict-- threat does not come
from neighbouring states
 The Japanese model adopted by China since after 1979 and,
to a lesser degree, by S. Korea since the early 1960s
China Has Taken Over the Torch (1)
(1) China has developed its own model of
conflict management
Through the management of two conflicts:
The Taiwan Straits conflict
 Shifting conflict from actual battlefield to political,
economic/developmental and diplomatic area;
The South China Sea (Spratly islands) dispute
 China has learnt from the ASEAN Way of conflict
management
China Has Taken Over the Torch (2)
 (2) Current Conflict Management/Peacemaking
Endeavour by China
 Peacemaking on the Korean Peninsula
 While hosting the Six-Party Talks, China persuading North Korea
to adopt its own development model and guaranteeing North’s
regime survival—nurturing regional economic interdependence
 Mediation in China-Myanmar border area
 Settlement of territorial disputes with Russia and Central Asian
States
 Using the platform of the Shanghai Five process Shanghai
Cooperation Organisation (SCO: established in 2001)
 In cooperation with Russia, China is acting as mediator in the
India-Pakistan rivalry, in Afghanistan and even in the Iranian
nuclear issue
 Creating regional economic interdependence in view of imminent
US withdrawal from the region
 Is This a Pax Sinica?
 The US “Pivot to East Asia”
 The U.S. withdrawing militarily from the Middle East (Iraq), Central
and South Asia, and Afghanistan
 But the US pivot (return) to East Asia since 2010
 Secretary of State Clinton’s declaration in Hanoi 2010
 President Obama’s speech in Canberra 2011
 E.g., US navy forces from current 50:50 split between the Pacific and the
Atlantic to 60:40 by 2020; stationing US marines in Darwin, Australia
 Increasing regional tension in East Asia since 2010
 The US decision to sell its weapons to Taiwan
 The Corvette Cheonan sinking incident between North and South Korea
 The Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands incident between Japan and China
 The Yeonpyong Island incident between North and South Korea
 Protests and incidents over/in SC Sea between China and Vietnam and
between China and the Philippines
 These can be considered as the US’ “balancing acts” against China
Southeast Asia as a Main Field of the US-
China Rivalry?
 A rivalry over influence and the idea of the state and
society
 Symbolised in non-military field as well by
 The “Washington Consensus” v.s. The “Beijing Consensus”
 Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP: Pacific centred) v.s.
ASEAN Plus Three (APT: East Asia centred)
 Issues:
 Neoliberal policies, free trade, the role of the government, national
sovereignty, maintenance of national/regional cultures; China
encirclement, united Southeast Asia/East Asia
 Two theatres in Asia: Northeast Asia and Southeast Asia
 ASEAN Ministerial Meeting (AMM) in 2012 in Phnom Penh failed to
issue a communique for the first time in its history, due to disagreement
over the South China Sea issue
 Responses of ASEAN
 How ASEAN avoids negative effects of the rivalry and
rather benefits from it?
 Hedging strategy
 Deepening economic relations mainly with China
 Maintaining security arrangement with the US
 Using ASEAN meetings for control of the behaviours of China
and the US (binding and soft-balancing)
 Avoiding a situation in which ASEAN has to take sides
 Military cooperation with both the US and China
 ASEAN employing the same strategy for less prominent
rivalries (China-Japan & China-India) over ASEAN
 ASEAN may play a role in mitigating these rivalries
 Inviting the parties for dialogues
 Using ASEAN/Asian Values
Other External Powers in S.E. Asia
 Japan
 ASEAN was Japan’s economic turf for a long time (esp., since the late
1980s): trade, investment and Official Economic Aid (ODA)
 With it economic decline, Japan economic role in Southeast Asia be
gradually replaced by China
 Cooperation in maritime security (anti-piracy measures and training)
 India
 For a long time, not influential in ASEAN mostly due to its support of the
Vietnamese-installed People’s Republic of Kampuchea (PRK)
 India now approaching ASEAN as an economic player, using connection
of Indian population in the region
 India concerned with China’s increasing military presence in the Indian
Ocean (China using port facilities in Sri Lanka and Pakistan)
 Russia
 Former Soviet Union played an important role in S.E. Asia until the end of
the Cold War
 Like India, Russia is coming back to S.E. Asia as an economic player,
usint the Russia-ASEAN summit platform
 Plans to supply petrol and natural gas in Siberia to S.E. Asia through
pipelines.