A new, durable Asia-Pacific security order

By Juwono Sudarsono

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations will open a new chapter in its 27 year history in Bangkok next week. Political scientist Juwono Sudarsono takes a close look at the significance of the event.

JAKARTA (JP): The ASEAN Regional Forum, which meets for its first formal session in Bangkok next Monday, provides the opportunity for all 18 participating states to assess the implications of the fundamental shifts in the power configurations in Asia and the Pacific following the end of the Cold War nearly five years ago.

Conceptually, three underlying issues will have to be addressed in conceiving a new and durable Asia-Pacific security order.

The first involves the role of the major powers. Lack of leadership in the United States and a temporarily weakened Russia mean that the overall strategic balance will be largely determined by the growing power of Japan and China. A new quadrilateral equilibrium will mark the security framework as China and Japan slowly but surely assert themselves politically and militarily. These trends, precisely because they are inevitable, may unsettle states that for too long have been psychologically dependent on Western external guarantees. Signals from Beijing and Tokyo, in addition to those emanating from Washington and Moscow, will have to merit more serious consideration.

Secondly, in Northeast Asia, the process of Korean unification will be a matter of timing. It must be ironed out in protracted negotiations by both sides of the 38th parallel. Economic resilience and political stability are on the side of the South Koreans, who will largely determine the terms and conditions of unification. But the new leadership in Pyongyang will have to be allowed a tangible political role to co-determine how the unification process should be consummated.

In Southeast Asia, sustained economic growth has enabled most ASEAN countries to upgrade their military hardware and improve defense planning. Reduced American military presence and growing individual ASEAN country assertiveness in projecting military preparedness has led to some degree of disquiet.

Rising annual defense budgets and greater allocation for military spending relative to Gross Domestic Products has led each ASEAN country to embark on improved joint defense coordination. But the Five Power Defense Arrangement, a veritable relic of the Cold War, must be progressively phased out if region-based security is to engage Indonesia's enthusiasm and dispel Beijing's suspicion that it is maintained to contain China.

ASEAN must also provide "second track" benchmarks that complement economic growth and transparent defense planning at a pace both acceptable and amenable to each individual state's sense of military security, economic advancement and political prestige.

Finally, as economic growth moves further apace, individual Asia-Pacific countries -- particularly those facing acute population pressure -- must seriously tackle the all-important issue of planting peace and security at its root: establishment of a more equitable and participatory domestic social and economic order. Jakarta, Manila, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok face mounting domestic problems arising from the ill effects of unbridled market-driven industrialization resulting in economic disparities and political disputes between the rich and the poor, between central authority and provincial autonomy.

The ASEAN Regional Forum hopefully will provide a broad set of guidelines promoting the notion of cooperative security. In essence, cooperative security seeks to ensure that however high the level of tension between nations, resort to unilateral military force will entail severe political and economic penalties that no state can afford to sustain.

Conversely, all participants in the endeavor must ensure that no single state will need to find itself in a untenable position in which it would have to resort to such desperate action. As with sustainable development, the long-term goal of crafting a new and durable security order in Asia and the Pacific requires an inter-generational political commitment.

The writer is professor of International Relations at the University of Indonesia in Jakarta.