Asean dreaming

At an academic conference some years ago in Seoul, South Korea, Chua Beng Huat, a sociology professor at the National University of Singapore, remarked that Asean as a regional grouping had achieved nothing over the last few decades.

Not true, I retorted. While a ‘Southeast Asian Community’ remains an illusive idea, the very existence of Asean has at least created a relatively stable regional environment that has given impetus to the rise of a prosperous island-state called Singapore, which has in turn benefitted many Malaysians who continue to cross the causeway to work or study there on a daily basis.

Needless to say, Singapore’s strong economy has also ensured it a head start in terms of investment in other ‘backward’ Southeast Asian countries. Therefore, to dismiss Asean as merely a talking shop would be wide of the mark.

On the contrary, it was the iron rule in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand from the 1960s through the 1980s that was incidental in making Singapore a ‘success story’ and the region’s ‘poster boy’.

I would go a step further by saying that Asean countries have made significant progress in removing intra-regional trade barriers. That Malaysians are now given the opportunity to choose affordable foreign-brand automobiles manufactured in Thailand or Indonesia over the substandard Proton is a case in point.

Another example was the signing of the agreements in August this year that will allow doctors, dentists and accountants to take their skills more freely to any Asean country, again a piece of very good news for disgruntled Malaysian professionals who encounter arduous administrative or bureaucratic hurdles to practise at home.

Better still, similar arrangements for architects, surveyors, engineers and nurses by member-states are already in the pipeline.

Be that as it may, Asean is experiencing serious uncertainties over its future relevance in rapidly changing global and regional settings.

The rise of India and China has presented the regional grouping with tremendous challenges, while internal problems of member-states continue to hinder Asean’s development into a full-fledged, mature politico-economic community along the lines of the European Union.

Politically, Asean countries are jealously guarding their own boundaries. It is worth a reminder here that the regional grouping stood idly by when the Indonesian army ransacked Aceh and East Timor, killing tens of thousands, while hundreds of Chinese Indonesian women were raped or even brutally murdered in Jakarta during the 1998 riots.

In the same vein, when thousands of protestors took to the streets in Kuala Lumpur against the autocracy of the Mahathir government in 1999, only to be cracked down by the oppressive security forces, Asean countries, including the ‘democratic” Thailand, did not lift a finger to raise concerns.

Early this week, Somchai Wongsawat of the People’s Power Party was found guilty of electoral frauds by Thailand’s constitutional court and forced to step down as prime minister.

His party is now busily stitching new clothes to cover itself, while the Asean Summit, scheduled to take place in Chiang Mai less than two weeks, has been postponed to next March.

Asean’s failing

But domestic turmoil is not the only trouble that Bangkok is dealing with. After Unesco declared Preah Vihear a World Heritage site in July, the Thai authorities immediately dispatched troops to the Thai-Cambodian border.

This was a manifestation of Thai sovereignty over the ancient temple, a move popularly interpreted by analysts as a strategy to shore up government support against the Thai opposition.

The standoff between the two Asean neighbours has resulted in some deadly clashes, with regional countries being conspicuously silent and utterly helpless. It would seem that Asean is thoroughly alien to conflict management despite many lessons in the past.

A friend of mine, who is currently a lecturer at the prestigious Thammasat University and well-versed with Thai politics, expressed his worry that the conflict at the border could open the way for subtle extra-regional interference.

In retrospect, Washington openly supported Bangkok’s efforts to alter the borderline with Cambodia during the Cambodian civil war in the 1990s, having sided with Phnom Penh on the ownership of the temple (right) in the previous decade.

With communist takeover being imminent, the US administration in the early 1970s deemed it strategically necessary to show solidarity with the Thais against the advancing Khmer Rouge, although it blatantly contradicted Washington’s earlier position.

My friend, never a Thai nationalist, now blames the US for quietly backing Cambodia’s application for Unesco status for the disputed temple, which has only served to radicalise the situation on both sides of the border.

He reckons all this is just part of an attempt by Washington to strengthen its military presence in Indochina, including an idea to establish permanent bases in Thailand and Cambodia.

In fact, during a meeting with the Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen in September, US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte offered to help the two countries resolve the conflict with a plan of forging bilateral military relations.

Given the fast disappearing Asean influence over other member-states, and in view of the lack of viable leverage against the emerging powerful players in the region, such as China and Russia, it is not inconceivable that Thai and Cambodian leaders would incline towards a mechanism as such.

In any case, Thailand’s political turmoil and the impending global financial crisis only highlight the increasingly irrelevance of Asean as a political grouping.

I may disagree with Chua’s blunt remarks that Asean has achieved nothing in the past, but a closer and politically independent union walking tall is no more than a diplomatic fantasy.