ASEAN, armed and dangerous

ASEAN, armed and dangerous

The arms buildup in Southeast Asia is not simply a response to perceived threats from big powers like China and Japan but is mainly directed at ASEAN members' defense systems against one another, says Walden Bello in this Inter Press Service analysis.

MANILA: The Nuclear Weapon Free Zone Treaty signed in December by members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) may be an encouraging sign of their commitment to forswear nuclear arms, but it draws attention away from a more serious armaments problem in the region: the conventional arms race.

The Asian conventional arms market is now the second largest in the developing world. According to figures assembled by the U.S. Congressional Research Service, Asia accounted for 39 percent of all arms transfer agreements in the period 1991-1994 -- up from 26.3 percent in 1987-1990 -- and the arms trade was worth US$41 billion 1991-1994.

The supply and demand aspects of this phenomenon deserve scrutiny.

First, the supply side: Americans may have joined the chorus of critics of the recent French nuclear tests but they are, in fact, a far greater de-stabilizer of regional security than is France.

In the 1991-1994 period, the United States accounted for 43 percent of the value of all arms transfer agreements with the developing countries of Asia-Pacific region, far outstripping Western Europe's 26 percent share and Russian's 23 percent. China, often depicted in the Western press as an unscrupulous arms merchant, accounted for a minuscule 3.2 percent.

Furthermore, the United States has been associated with the most destabilizing deals. Its sale of 150 F-16's to Taiwan in the late 1980's helped torpedo better ties between Taiwan and China.

This was followed by the U.S. sale of F-16's to Singapore that triggered the jet-fighter arms race in Southeast Asia, the consequences of which continue to unfold.

As for demand, it is clear that the arms races in Southeast Asia are not simply a response to perceived threats from big powers like China and Japan but are mainly directed defensively against one another by the ASEAN governments.

Obsession with F-16's has been joined by a race for submarines -- which clearly illustrates the reinforcing dynamics of national interest, threat perception, and arms acquisition that drives Southeast Asia's general arms race.

For example, the Thai Navy's determination to acquire two diesel submarines is justified as a response to Indonesia's possession of two submarines and the decision of Malaysia and Singapore to buy submarines.

Submarines are said to be a decisive weapon because, as Thailand's then Armed Forces Supreme Commander General Watthanachai Wutthisiri noted last year "most of our natural resources are in the sea, and if we have no strong armed forces, we may regret it in the next five years when we are defeated in marine battles".

General Watthanachai's assessment seems to be shared by other ASEAN military leaders as the Stockholm Peace Research Institute's Derek da Cunhia predicts acquisition plans of the five countries may result in a fleet of some 20 submarines in the region within 10 or 15 years.

Representative of the strategic and tactical calculations underlying the present push for submarines is an interview last February with Thai Vice Admiral Winai Intharasombat who said: "Competition will continue to grow, especially competition to find resources in the sea... If valuable resources are discovered, such as oil and gas, a dispute could arise... An accumulation of these incidents could lead to the use of force some day. Any country wanting to use aggression against us would think again if it does not know the locations of our submarines."

Two things about this interview are worth highlighting: First, Winai gives an accurate description of the fluid and threatening regional situation because of multiple unsettled territorial and resource conflicts.

In addition to better-known issues like the six-country dispute over the Spratly Islands and the conflict in East Timor, we have in Southeast Asia alone at least seven other intra- regional disputes over issues ranging from the definition of borders and offshore demarcation lines, to fishing rights and territorial disputes over small islands.

Second, Admiral Winai's comments underscore a belief, strong among the region's military establishments, that in order to preserve the peace, one most make sure that ones's country is militarily powerful.

In the context of a fluid security situation with many unsettled conflicts -- and in the absence of a multilateral framework for the peaceful resolution of conflicts and the negotiation of arms control agreements -- there does appear to be a certain logic to the principle of "deterring conflict through strength".

But it is a logic that is ultimately self-defeating, for arms races tend to acquire a momentum of their own that leads to arms use: witness the feverish arms race that exploded in World War I.

Yet the Winai position does challenge those seeking arms control and disarmament to go beyond merely deploring the arms race. They must focus on its more fundamental cause: the absence of an institutionalized regional multilateral framework within which Asia-Pacific governments can resolve issues through diplomacy, negotiate arms reductions with a fair level of trust, and from there gradually move the region to significant disarmament.

Despite the opportunity afforded by the end of the Cold War to create a new architecture of peace and security in the region, such a system is nowhere in sight.

The ASEAN Regional Forum is light years away from being such a body, especially with its refusal to discuss burning territorial conflicts like East Timor or to institutionalize procedures for the negotiation of arms reduction.

This dismal state of affairs will probably go down in history as the grand failure of political will in the immediate post-Cold War period.

Instead, what passes for a system of regional security is a fluid and ultimately unstable hybrid system of regional security that rests on three legs: an arms race, balance-of-power diplomacy, and American military unilateralism.

To expect such an unstable system to preserve the peace is to ignore the lessons of history.

Walden Bello is author of People and Power in the Pacific: The Struggle for the Post-Cold War Order and American Lake: The Nuclear Peril in the Pacific.

-- IPS