ASI Blog in the News: Catharin Dalpino Testifies on China’s Activities in Southeast Asia

Catharin Dalpino, who also blogs here at the Asia Security Initiative Blog, testified February 4 before the U.S.-China Economic Economic and Security Review Commission on “China’s Activities in Southeast Asia and the Implications for U.S. Interests.”

She makes six recommendations:

1. Commit to an annual US-ASEAN Summit, and use it as a vehicle to bring the President of the United States to Southeast Asia once a year.
2. Reassure Southeast Asians that the United States will not decrease its presence in the South China Sea. 
3. Press Beijing to become part of the Mekong River Commission, which would help legitimate discussion and action to remediate the environmental, human health and employment impacts of developments on the Mekong. 
4. Address the drift in US-Thai relations with a dialogue process to reinvigorate the alliance and lower tensions over specific issues.
5. Let the new engagement policy with Burma play out in the fullness of time. 
6. Consider the benefits of legislation introduced to extend trade preferences to Asian Least Developed Countries, similar to those given to African and Caribbean countries.

Read the entire testimony here.

Posted by Matthew Shannon Stumpf on February 8, 2010. Respond »

Thailand and Cambodia: Time for ASEAN to Act

It doesn’t take long for a visitor to the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh to hear about the country’s problems with Thailand.  Almost anyone you speak to has a view, mainly centered on Thailand’s alleged provocative actions over a disputed boundary that intersects a 12th century Buddhist temple.

The dispute was formally resolved more than forty years ago when the International Court of Justice awarded sovereignty of the Preah Vihear temple to Cambodia. The dispute erupted again two years ago when Cambodia applied to UNESCO to have the temple declared a world heritage site. Thailand initially supported the bid.  But opposition politicians in Bangkok’s highly polarized political climate protested that the temple’s world heritage status would mean encroaching on Thai territory, forcing the Thai government to withdraw support for Cambodia’s UNESCO bid.  This led in 2008 to an escalation of military tensions along the border and the outbreak of some fighting, quickly quelled by local commanders.

What has happened since is an example of how bilateral disputes can easily escalate into conflict and a wake-up call for ASEAN in terms of the need for a more formal conflict management mechanism.  Another armed clash between Thai and Cambodian forces along the border in the third week of January underscored the fragile security situation in the area.

As is commonly the case in the region, both countries agreed at first to keep the dispute strictly a bilateral affair. Boundary disputes between Indonesia and Malaysia and Singapore and Malaysia have followed the same route – although in the case of the Sipadan and Ligitan dispute in Borneo waters between Indonesia and Malaysia and the more recent Pedra Branca island dispute between Singapore and Malaysia, the parties sought international arbitration.

In the case of Preah Vihear, international arbitration has already settled the question of sovereignty, and the issue was only resurrected on the Thai side as part of a bitter political quarrel between forces for and against ousted Thai Premier Thaksin Shinawatra. In the process, whatever goodwill there was between Thailand and Cambodia, which have a long history of mutual dislike and suspicion, evaporated towards the end of 2009 after Cambodia accused Thailand of betraying a promise and raising the Preah Vihear issue in multilateral fora.

Thailand, for its part, felt stabbed in the back after Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen appointed the fugitive Thaksin Shinawatra as one of his economic advisors, which led to an escalated level of diplomatic tension and the recalling of each country’s ambassador. A deep sense of recrimination and bitterness now prevails; Cambodia has accused Thailand of espionage amid leaked Thai official documents that talk of preparations for war. Thailand accuses Cambodia of harbouring fugitives from Thai law and acting as a sanctuary for those who plot violent demonstrations aimed at bringing down the government.

Thaksin has in fact made frequent visits to Phnom Penh, where he has met with supporters unhindered. Now, some officials in the Cambodian capital provocatively say that only a general election in Thailand will help restore relations. Meanwhile, both sides of the border have been reinforced with heavily armed troops. Cambodia has acquired new equipment, including ground to air missiles, built new roads, sowed fresh mine fields and deployed thousands of troops in newly built villages.

None of this sits very well with the image of ASEAN as an effective bulwark against intra-regional conflict. Here are two neighbouring countries that have taken their animosity to levels of political and military brinkmanship never seen in the region.

The question is whether ASEAN can and should intervene, and then how?  The first obstacle to doing so is that ASEAN Secretary General Surin Pitsuwan is himself a Thai, and Cambodian officials openly express their suspicion of his role advising the Thai government on the matter of Preah Vihear and the subsequent fallout.  Surin himself strongly denies any role in influencing or shaping current Thai foreign policy.  But even with Surin’s natural reluctance to get involved, no one else has come forward to assume a quiet diplomatic role in defusing tensions, which is a pity.

This seems all the more astonishing since the dispute has had a somewhat disrupting impact on high-level ASEAN meetings in the past few months, with Cambodia accusing Thailand as the ASEAN Chair of not properly following diplomatic protocol at summit meetings.  Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono did meet separately with the Thai and Cambodian Prime Ministers on the fringes of the APEC meeting in Singapore last November, but this rather public attempt at mediation appears to have had no effect on levels of acrimony in the two capitals.

A more effective approach would be for a credible neutral envoy, given a mandate by ASEAN Foreign Ministers, to embark on some quiet diplomacy. This might involve shuttling between meetings in Bangkok and Phnom Penh aimed at finding areas where confidence and trust building can begin the long process of repairing relations.

In this respect, it would be beneficial if Cambodia stopped commenting on internal Thai political affairs, and Thailand in turn stopped raising the Preah Vihear issue in international fora. Neither of these measures would result in a loss of dignity for either party, and would set the stage for a resumption of bilateral dialogue through designated official channels.

Reader comment by Catherin Dalpino:

When disputes and conflict arise between two Southeast Asian countries, Western analysts are quick to call for ASEAN mediation, and to criticize ASEAN for its lack of mechanisms and political will to resolve or prevent disputes.  It would be useful for the advocates of this position to delve more deeply into the history and nature of ASEAN in the process.  Was ASEAN ever intended to serve as a regional conflict resolution mechanism?  If so, what would it take to get ASEAN into gear on the current Thai-Cambodian conflict?

Some related comments and issues:

1.  The author’s chronology suggests that the conflict was ignited when Thai opposition figures (which would have been the People’s Alliance for Democracy) fanned nationalist sentiment to hobble the then Thai government (under the People’s Power Party, the second-generation clone of Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai Party).  What he does not mention is that Cambodia was in the midst of a national election at the time, and Prime Minister Hun Sen’s share in the polls clearly got a boost from the conflict.  There are, of course, two accounts of which side started the bullets flying, but the author only seems interested in Cambodia’s perspective.

2.  The author paints the conflict as the most severe the region has ever seen, and certainly the most serious that Thailand and Cambodia have ever experienced. That might be correct if history began in 1991.  If that is extended back to the second half of the 20th century, the level of conflict is relatively low.  In fact, few analysts paint the current conflict as having the potential to erupt into a serious and sustained confrontation.

3.  If ASEAN were to mediate the dispute, the current chair would need to back that effort if not actually lead it.  What would Hanoi’s position be?  Would Vietnam be constrained by its own (complicated) relationship with Cambodia in favoring an ASEAN intervention?

4.  The author suggests that a “neutral” individual should serve as mediator between Bangkok and Phnom Penh.  Should that be a serving ASEAN leader or someone more removed from the arena?  Who might that be?

Michael Vatikiotis responds:

1. Whilst there is no doubt that Prime Minsiter Hun Sen has exploited the dispute with Thailand for domestic political ends, few observers in Thailand doubt that the re-eruption of a long standing boundary issue was principally, and rather recklessly, stoked by opposing political factions in Thailand. 

2. There is no comment in the piece that suggests this is the most severe conflict the region has ever seen - and certainly not as serious as Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia in 1978.  But measured in terms of bilateral tension and the potential for conflict, one would need to agree that a severing of diplomatic relations leading to a troop build up on either side of the border is as serious as anything in recent years. In terms of the potential to erupt into serious armed confrontation, I think the risk is relatively slim for now. But the potential for nationalist sentiment on either side to become inflamed and take things to another level exists. 

3. ASEAN operates on the principle of consensus, and any support for a mediation effort would have to secure the agreement of all members.  The ASEAN Chair is important in taking the lead, but as we have seen in recent years on the issue of Burma, other leading member states such as Indonesia and Singapore have goaded the chair into action. 

4. The best candidate would be a senior official or recently retired official from a neutral and important ASEAN member state, preferably with good knowledge or connections in both Thailand and Cambodia. This would most probably mean someone from either Indonesia or the Philippines.  The key is that the diplomacy needs to be quiet so that neither side is embarrassed or loses face.

Posted by Michael Vatikiotis on January 25, 2010. Respond »

In the News: “Dialogue Key to Ending Leftist Violence in Asia”

In the Bangkok Post, Michael Vatikiotis writes that a “new threat is emerging in Asia.”

...[T]he newest non-state armed groups battling governments in the name of justice and freedom draw on what was once thought to be a dead ideology: Marxism.”

Citing examples from India, to Nepal, parts of Burma, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Thailand, Vatikiotis concludes:

... In the experience of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, which has convened dialogue with parties in armed conflict across Asia and Africa for the past decade, resolving any conflict necessitates the initiation of dialogue, almost always in conditions which initially will not be conducive or promising.

More broadly, governments need to recognise that armed violence against the state won’t disappear when Osama bin Laden is one day captured and al-Qaeda defeated.

For millions of disenfranchised people across Asia, whether they are facing ethnic or economic marginalisation, it would appear that Marxist ideas of popular struggle still have enormous appeal.

It would be a shame indeed, if all the effort expended on defeating terrorism this past decade is not related back to the basic root of the problem, which is that when people run out of peaceful ways to see their grievances redressed, they will take up arms.

Rather than becoming obsessed with cultural and religious divides - and in the process reinforcing them - the best way to deal with the problem is to engage in a dialogue to bring about an end to violence, whatever the root cause or driving ideology.”

Read the entire op-ed here.

Posted by Matthew Shannon Stumpf on December 14, 2009. Respond »

ASEAN and the US – Towards a Working Partnership

US-ASEAN relations are on a roll following the breakthrough US-ASEAN leaders summit convened in Singapore on the fringes of last month’s APEC meeting. But whilst ASEAN certainly gained from the summit in terms of reinforcing the regional association’s geo-political relevance, it isn’t clear that Washington can immediately benefit from the enhanced relationship. This much seemed implicit in remarks made recently in Singapore by the US ambassador to ASEAN, Scot Marciel, who is also Deputy Assistant Secretary of State.

Marciel underscored the importance the US attaches to ASEAN’s progress towards closer regional coherence and integration in political, security and economic spheres.  He said that the US “took ASEAN at its word” that it was serious in becoming a stronger and more important regional organization, and that Washington hoped it could soon work with ASEAN in partnership on global issues of non proliferation, climate change and trade liberalization.

But Marciel, whose appointment as the first ambassador to ASEAN indicates the level of Washington’s interest in such a partnership, was also candid about the slow pace of ASEAN’s development, pointing out that member states don’t always speak with one voice and that ASEAN needs to become a more effective organization in order to get things done.

To this end, the US as well as other countries such as Japan, Australia and the European Union are devoting considerable resources to capacity building and support aimed at encouraging ASEAN to become a more coherent and effective regional organization. Things do seem to be moving in the right direct, Marciel told his Singapore audience, but he did not seem to think they were moving fast enough.

Posted by Michael Vatikiotis on December 13, 2009. Respond »

Special Report: Vatikiotis on ASEAN and the US, Helping to Reinforce SE Asia’s Centrality

It took some persuading to entice the United States back into serious engagement with ASEAN. The outgoing Bush administration had managed to relegate official presence at yearly ASEAN meetings to an Undersecretary from the State Department. The incoming Obama administration was happy to sign on to the bedrock Treaty of Amity and Cooperation and restore ministerial level presence at annual ASEAN meetings. But ASEAN Secretary General Surin Pitsuwan asked Secretary of State Hilary Clinton to go one step further and take the engagement to the leadership level. She readily agreed.

The upgrade came not a moment too soon. For with Australia and Japan both courting the region with their own visions of a wider East Asian grouping, ASEAN feared relegation or even dismemberment.  This explains one of the key phrases in the joint statement issued by the US and ASEAN after the Summit in Singapore on 15. November. “We shared a vision of a regional architecture that is inclusive, promotes shared values and norms, and respects the diversity within the region. We agreed to work closely together in building this regional architecture, and were ready to study initiatives of this nature,” runs the statement. But it also unequivocally adds: “We reaffirmed the importance of ASEAN centrality in this process.”

Some ASEAN officials are quietly hoping that the US-ASEAN engagement essentially kills off the Australian initiative that aims at drawing largest ASEAN member state Indonesia into an Asia Pacific grouping focused on security, a prospect that caused great anxiety in smaller ASEAN states like Singapore. It also helps take the sting out of the Japanese idea, focused more on economic cooperation, which also threatens to marginalize ASEAN. The idea is that with the US so closely engaged with ASEAN at the highest level, neither Japan nor Australia can afford to downgrade ASEAN’s position in these larger groupings.

The Singapore summit also generated other important signals. There was an endorsement of sorts for ASEAN’s role in the G20 process that the whole world seems to be joining. And for those who believe strongly in the need to cement in place the Human Rights mechanism called for by the ASEAN Charter, it was important that the US expressed support for the establishment of the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights, and reinforced the sentiment by inviting members of the Commission to visit the United States next year to consult with international experts.

Posted by Michael Vatikiotis on November 19, 2009. Respond »