Regionalism's multiple negotiations: ASEAN in East Asia

Abstract

This article explains East Asian regionalism as the product of two sets of negotiations. The first negotiation is between East Asia on the one hand and global forces and structures on the other. The second negotiation is intra-regional and includes a critical negotiation between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-Southeast Asia and East/Northeast Asia, which also provides the primary focus of this article. This article details ASEAN's extensions into East Asian regionalism as part of interdependent efforts to adapt transitioning global and regional systems. Conceiving these regional negotiations to be not just economic and utilitarian but first and foremost normative, this article details the opportunities and dilemmas represented by ‘East Asia’ for ASEAN, ASEAN-Southeast Asia and Southeast Asia as a meaningful organizing principle. Dilemmas associated with the ASEAN Plus Three process, an East Asia free-trade area and the ASEAN Charter provide illustrations of East Asia's understood challenges for Southeast Asia in addition to the ways that Southeast Asian agencies have been shaping the form and content of recent East Asian efforts and also how regional-global and intra-ASEAN negotiations continue to provide key constraints.

Notes

¹ The author thanks three anonymous reviewers for their comments.

² Founded by Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand in 1967, ASEAN was then expanded to include Vietnam (1995), Laos and Myanmar (1997) and Cambodia (1999).

³ For some different and representative overviews of Southeast Asia as a region, with most understanding it to be a particularly contested, post World War II construct, see, for example, Fisher (1974), Emmerson (1984), Huxley (1996), Charrier (2001). It should be noted that it is not the intent of this article to reconstruct debates about the origins of Southeast Asia; rather, it begins with the premise that Southeast Asia is a challenged principle for regionalism and organization.

⁴ Huxley (1996) provides a good chronological literature review of Southeast Asia as an ‘analytic concept’ (understood in his account mostly in terms of ‘security complexes’ a la Buzan 1988, 1994) in studies on Southeast Asian international relations. See also Emmerson (1984).

⁵ Thus, I make a distinction between Southeast Asia as an analytic concept and as political organizing or coordinating principle, though this should not be read to mean the two are unrelated or do not inform the other. Theories generally claim, for example, that their scholarship and concepts describe and are founded on actual politics. Others have argued, in contrast, that scholarship and concepts can also inform and affect the practice of Southeast Asia's international relations. (See Emmerson 1984; also Ba 2009, Introduction and Chapter 1). In this article, however, my focus is primarily on the appropriateness and challenges of Southeast Asia as a political organizational principle for Southeast Asian states.

⁶ Though APEC was not an ASEAN initiative, ASEAN as a group was courted by APEC's Australian and Japanese proponents (Ravenhill 2001) and the decision to enter into APEC was collective as well as individual. All ASEAN members at the time joined simultaneously and ASEAN as an organization is explicitly referenced in APEC's founding documents and statements.

⁷ While US-ASEAN relations were not characterized by multilateral institutionalization, they were institutionalized in the sense of the web of US-centric, mostly bilateral arrangements and agreements, as well as what had become a culture of expectations as to the role—even perceived indispensability—of the United States in East and Southeast Asia.

⁸ Eleven if the number includes the two informal summits in 1997 and 1998. The twelfth—originally scheduled in December 2008 but delayed due to political crisis in Thailand—eventually took place on 26 February–1 March 2009.

⁹ In addition to East Asian markets, European markets were also seen to be offsetting the slow down in US demand, developments that contributed to conclusions that East and Southeast Asian economies might be less vulnerable and dependent on the US economy compared to the past (Lloyd's List 2008; The Australian 2008)

¹⁰ The IMF and World Bank, in particular, have questioned East Asia's insulation from the US market (Rowley 2008). See also Pearlstein 2009.

¹¹ For the period 2000–2007, China was the only East Asian economy whose high value exports grew faster than its low value exports (Economist Intelligence Unit 2007).

¹² This number includes Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao.

¹³ ‘ASEAN considers strengthening ‘ASEAN Plus 3’ cooperation’, Japan Economic Newswire (27 July 2002). See also comments of Philippine foreign minister (Abdullah 2002).

¹⁴ Singaporean minister quoted in Goh (2007/08).

¹⁵ Quoted in ‘ASEAN Cool to Japan's 16-Way FTA’, Japan Economic Newswire (23 August 2006). This position suggests some tension with the above point about India's participation in East Asian processes, but it may also point to specific opposition to Australia and New Zealand. The 2007 EAS, however, did agree to study it.

¹⁶ The 2007 ASEAN Charter's preamble maintains ASEAN's 2003 Bali Concord II's original reference to an ‘ASEAN security community’ but it has actually been renamed ‘ASEAN Political Security Community’ (APSC). A reference to the APSC can be found in the Article 9 of the Charter that elaborates ASEAN's three ‘Community Councils’. See < http://www.aseansec.org/145.htm>

¹⁷ In the political security realm, this may already be happening as members such as the United States, finding the ARF unresponsive to its interests, has begun to pursue and prioritize other forums such as the Shangri-La Dialogues.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alice D Ba

 1  1 The author thanks three anonymous reviewers for their comments.