The togetherness of peoples: the genesis of a humanist agenda in a post-Westphalian age

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Acknowledgements

The author is indebted to his colleagues and friends, and to his anonymous reviewers, in the course of writing the material for this essay, which he presented most recently at the 6th Global International Studies Conference, World International Studies Committee (WISC) Conference (29 June – 01 July 2022), the 1st Symposium on World Politics and Muslim Society (22 June 2022), and much earlier on as part of my doctoral thesis at the University of Leeds, ‘Constructing Human Rights: Language in the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration’ (September 2014). The author also confesses that he cannot thank the editorial team of Postcolonial Studies enough for encouraging him with the light of their critique in what has sometimes felt like a flight in the dark. He has broken through the clouds because they gave him the courage to speak in his voice.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 I use the term concord instead of what I have previously referred to the ‘fifty-years peace’ in ASEAN, defined by agreement and harmony, and not the absence of conflict. See Kevin Henry Villanueva, ‘How have we kept the peace in ASEAN and how can we secure its promise among all peoples in Southeast Asia?: preliminary reflections on a humanist paradigm’, Global Change, Peace & Security, 34(1), 1 February 2022.

2 There is a fascinating and I believe ongoing debate on the deeper implications of the Bandung Conference as pivotal in the idea of collective liberation, and the beginning and symbol of, in the words of Robert Young, ‘postcolonialism as a self-conscious political philosophy’. See ‘Final Communiqué of the Asian-African Conference’, Interventions 11(1), 2009; Samuel Moyn, The last utopia: human rights in history, Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010; Pang Yang Huei, ‘The Four Faces of Bandung: Detainees, Soldiers, Revolutionaries and Statesmen’, Journal of Contemporary Asia, 39(1), 1 February 2009; Frank Gerits, ‘Bandung as the call for a better development project: US, British, French and Gold Coast perceptions of the Afro-Asian Conference (1955)’, Cold War History, 16(3), July 2, 2016; Christopher J. Lee, ‘At the Rendezvous of Decolonization’, Interventions, 11(1), March 1, 2009; Chua Beng Huat, ‘Southeast Asia in Postcolonial Studies: an introduction’, Postcolonial Studies 11(3), 1 September 2008.

3 Robert Young, Postcolonialism: A very short introduction, Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2003, pp 16–20.

4 Young, Postcolonialism, p 20.

5 Frantz Fanon, The wretched of the earth, New York: Grove Press, 1963, p 36.

6 Fanon, The wretched of the earth, pp 37–43.

7 Fanon, The wretched of the earth, pp 45, 47, 73–106.

8 It is the neglect of this ‘duty of consensus’ and its transformative capacity that leads us to choose, oftentimes above it, force, violence and what we reckon to be the ultimate and last resort of managing conflict – an all-out war. The relationship between consensus, violence and war is complex. The neglect of consensus leads communities to choose force and violence and war as alternative options to forming a consensus. But one can think of scenarios where the formation of consensus within groups enables, justifies, and encourages the use of force, violence, and war – both towards group members and for those outside a group. My preliminary reflections expressed in the 8-point humanist paradigm. See Villanueva, ‘How have we kept the peace in ASEAN and how can we secure its promise among all peoples in Southeast Asia?: preliminary reflections on a humanist paradigm’.

9 See Chris Brown, Understanding International Relations, 5th ed., London: Red Globe Press, 2019, p 137.

10 Brown, Understanding International Relations, 137.

11 The work of Walzer, permanent in its contribution to the morality of war, is a profound testimony to our received tradition of the international society of states. But the inside-outside divide (‘at home and abroad’) or the world of fixed borders now seems to me untenable; Humanity otherwise would have no meaning let alone exist. Walzer of course argues from what he calls a ‘legalist paradigm’; I am thinking beyond this received tradition. See Michael Walzer, Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994; Michael Walzer, Just and unjust wars: a moral argument with historical illustrations, 2nd ed., New York: Basic Books, 1992.

12 Brown, Understanding International Relations, p 137.

13 Brown, Understanding International Relations, p 137.

14 See Susan Strange, 'The westfailure system', Review of International Studies 25(3), July 1999, pp 345–354.

15 J. Ann Tickner, ‘Retelling IR’s foundational stories: some feminist and postcolonial perspectives’, Global Change, Peace & Security 23(1), 2 January 2011, p 13.

16 Kevin H R Villanueva and Rosario Manalo, ‘ASEAN Consensus: The Intangible Heritage of Southeast Asian Diplomacy’, in Aileen Baviera and Larry Maramis (eds). Building ASEAN Community: Political-Security and Socio-Cultural Reflections, Jakarta: Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia, 2017.

17 See for example Atena S. Feraru, ‘Regime Security and Regional Cooperation Among Weak States’, International Studies Review 20(1), 2018.

18 On the ASEAN Way, see Jürgen Haacke, ‘ASEAN's Diplomatic and Security Culture: A Constructivist Assessment’, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, 3(1), 1 February 2003.

19 Consensus has been reified in ‘the ASEAN Way’; it has been the object of criticism as a policy principle, including by its practitioners, its own member states. Jurgen Haacke and David Capie and Paul Evans have traced attempts undertaken by regional state elites as well as dominant interest groups, especially in the late 90s, to re-interpret consensus and provide alternative ideas. These ‘intramural challenges’ to replace consensus have all failed. See Jürgen Haacke, ‘The Concept of Flexible Engagement and the Practice of Enhanced Interaction: Intramural Challenges to the ‘ASEAN way’,’ The Pacific Review 12(4), 1 January 1999; David Capie and Paul Evans, The Asia-Pacific Security Lexicon, Updated 2nd ed., ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute, 2007.

20 Fernand Braudel, History of Civilizations, London: Penguin, 1993.

21 To explain ASEAN within the tradition Westphalian narrative is to remain within the logic of ‘sovereign states’. The principle of differentiation is not only sovereignty, but also, in terms of the discipline, it is to remain within the framework of the questions raised, most especially by the Anglo-American academy. Indeed, the historical context in which ASEAN has been interpreted as a ‘model of diplomacy’ has been overshadowed by its strategic value as a security arrangement during the Cold War. The historical interpretation is not complete. This is the subject of a future essay.

22 From say, as in the case of ‘nationalist mobilization’ and ‘mass politics’. See the study of Thomas B. Pepinsky, ‘Migrants, Minorities, and Populism in Southeast Asia’, Pacific Affairs 3(93), September 2020. I make these initial reflections on the critical role of ‘peoples’ and now carry them forward from an earlier essay: see Kevin Henry Villanueva, ‘How have we kept the peace in ASEAN and how can we secure its promise among all peoples in Southeast Asia?: preliminary reflections on a humanist paradigm’, Global Change, Peace & Security 34(1), 1 February 2022.

23 M J Schermaier and H Dedek, ‘Consensus’, in R S Bagnall et al. (eds), The Encyclopedia of Ancient History, Blackwell Publishing, 2012, pp 1712–1713.

24 Schermaier and Dedek, ‘Consensus’, pp 1712–1713.

25 Schermaier and Dedek, ‘Consensus’, pp1712–1713.

26 American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. s.v. ‘consensus’, https://www.thefreedictionary.com/consensus (accessed 18 June 2021).

27 James Miller, Can Democracy Work? A Short History of a Radical Idea, From Ancient Athens to Our World, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018, p 40.

28 The premise from which Walzer takes on the idea of a symbol is clear: ‘As a matter of fact, it is not the essential act of thought that is symbolization, but an act essential to thought, and prior to it’: see Susanne K. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957 cited in Michael Walzer, ‘On the Role of Symbolism in Political Thought’, Political Science Quarterly 82(2), 1967, p 194.

29 I am grateful to one my anonymous reviewers for laying emphasis on this argument.

30 On the island of Panay in the Philippines, there is the equivalent practice of sinapulay or pagtarabuay, which are notions that differentiate the act of conferring or consulting amongst the village elder-arbiters (magurang-manughusay) and the parties in conflict, with the act of the agreement itself or consensus-building, called paghirisugot. Alicia Magos writes that these indigenous practices or traditional approaches (dinuma-an nga paagi) were fundamentally ‘relational’ and sustained the equilibrium of the village community. See Alicia Magos, Indigenous Political Structures, 2017. More specifically, Hiligaynon is the lingua franca of the West Visayas in Central Philippines. West Visayas (labelled Region 6 as a political unit) is composed of the provinces of Iloilo, Capiz, Antique and Aklan on the island of Panay; including, Negros Occidental, the western half of the island of Negros; and the new island-province of Guimaras which used to be a sub-province of Iloilo. The mother language of West Visayas is Kinaray-a or Hiraya, the language spoken by the central and southern towns of Iloilo, all of the province of Antique and most of Capiz. Hiligaynon is spoken in Iloilo City in all the coastal towns north of Iloilo City, in all of Guimaras, in most of Roxas City in Capiz, and in Bacolod City and most of the towns of Negros Occidental. The language is also spoken in South Cotabato, in Mindanao, where many West Visayans have migrated. The northern towns of Negros Occidental speak Cebuano or Sugbuanon, the lingua franca of Central Visayas. The province of Aklan speaks Aklanon which, like Hiligaynon, developed from Kinaray-a. This is taken from Leoncio Deriada, ‘Hiligaynon Literature’, Hiligaynon Literature – National Commission for Culture and the Arts (ncca.gov.ph).

31 I follow the idea of freedom and political action in its depth, breadth, and clarity by Hannah Arendt in Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future, New York: Penguin Classics, 2006.

32 The point to be made here is that the sense of word and action is ‘mono/uni-directional’, as well as in terms of the world to which I refer to here, ‘multi/inter-directional’.

33 But we must also keep it. Due to the limit of space, I shall take up the ‘imperative of the word’ another time.

34 Atena Feraru sees as a ‘staggering difference’ between the preference of the ASEAN, AU and the OAS for non-binding communiques, decisions, statements, resolutions, and the like – over and in contrast to – multilateral treaties and agreements of a legally binding nature, such as those found in organizations like the EU and the UN: see Feraru ‘Regime Security and Weak States’. There is a sense that formality has become the measure of regional integration when informality – is in fact, the more general practice, or the widespread norm.

35 Arendt, Between Past and Future, 162.

36 What I refer to are ‘peoples’ who, as parties to a ‘contract’ (not in the familiar meaning of social contract theory), are ‘pretty much as they are, and not as abstracted from their real conditions of life’: see Norman Geras, The Contract of Mutual Indifference: Political Philosophy After the Holocaust, London: Verso, 1999, p 27.

37 A profile of these peoples, over 54 million, can be surveyed in Martin Smith, Burma (Myanmar): The Time for Change, Minority Rights Group International, Minority Rights Group International, 2002. Smith makes these categories largely based on political territories and how minority identities have come to be represented in the twentieth century; under the 1974 Constitution the political map demarcated seven ethnic states, and seven divisions; the last census conducted by the British in 1931 identified 135 linguistic sub-groups from 13 ethnic families; some ethnic groups like the Naga and Wa have never been identified on the political map, while others deliberately under-represented; it is argued that new studies are long overdue.

38 Nathaniel Peffer, ‘Regional Security in Southeast Asia’, International Organization, 8(3), 1954, pp 311–312.

39 Recovering the Southeast Asian-ness of ASEAN derives from a broader and more fundamental project rooted in a humanist paradigm of encounters worth recalling and reiterating henceforth. The eight-point paradigm that is called forth are the ‘rules of engagement’ among peoples. See Villanueva, ‘How have we kept the peace in ASEAN and how can we secure its promise among all peoples in Southeast Asia?: preliminary reflections on a humanist paradigm’.

40 Carsten Holbraad, The Concert of Europe: A Study in German and British International Theory, 1815-1914, New York: Barnes and Noble, 1971.

41 C M Turnbull, ed., Regionalism and Nationalism, vol. The Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries, The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, Cambridge Histories Online: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

42 Malcolm Murfett, ed., Cold War Southeast Asia, Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2012.

43 Milton E Osborne, Southeast Asia: An Introductory History, 11th ed., Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 2013.

44 Over many years of work in international service and in academia, I have observed and engaged in meetings and negotiations across national cultures in Europe (i.e., European Union) and in Southeast Asia (i.e., ASEAN), and in both contexts, each organization absorbs the ethos not only of international society but also its member states as well as its peoples and those who represent them. In 2012, I was a direct observer as a member of the official Philippine Delegation to the drafting of the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration which gave me a ringside seat to a kind of high-level diplomacy that has since marked my idea of a possible world in international relations – a divided community in harmony. It constituted my ethnographic study of the performance of consensus. The moment was charged with intensity all the more because it was evidence of a liberal, Western agenda being taken on by nations who erstwhile were their own colonial subjects. There was something to be said about the inherent power in words when all are seen and treated as equals on the negotiating table.

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Kevin Henry Villanueva

Dr. Kevin Henry Villanueva is an Associate Professorial Fellow at the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of the Philippines in Iloilo, Philippines, and Senior Fellow in Ethics and International Relations at the National Chung Hsing University in Taichung, Taiwan. He was awarded the ASEAN Fulbright Fellowship in 2018, at the American University's School of International Service in Washington D.C. and the Taiwan Fellowship in 2020, at the Institute of Strategic and International Affairs in National Chung Cheng University. He studied International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science for his Master of Science and received his Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom.