A new, durable Asia-Pacific security order

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.