ASEAN at 27: Achievements and deficiencies

ASEAN at 27: Achievements and deficiencies

By C.P.F. Luhulima

JAKARTA (JP): Twenty-seven years ago this week, ASEAN's
foreign ministers set out a number of major goals for the
association.

The first was to reconcile intra-regional strife which
characterized Southeast Asia in the shape of border and
territorial disputes, ethnic conflicts and animosities, religious
prejudices, and the fear of the bigger states by the smaller
ones.

Second was to manage intra-regional relations and establish a
Southeast Asian regional order on the basis of the social and
economic systems of the member states and the territorial status
quo.

Both goals were to be achieved through a third goal which was
to speed up "the economic growth social progress and cultural
development in the region". This goal was indeed more pronounced
than the goal to "promote regional peace and stability".

However, ASEAN's founding fathers were strong believers in the
link-up between economic and societal development. On the one
hand they targeted affluence, on the other, peace and stability.
They have emphasized this linkage time and again in their
speeches and in the agreements they have signed since the
association's establishment.

They were further determined, and this was their fourth goal,
to "ensure their stability and security from external
interference in any form or manifestation" and to "preserve
their national identities in accordance with the ideals and
aspirations of their people".

Now, after 27 years, let us try to assess whether the
successes gained have fulfilled the goals which were set at
ASEAN's establishment.

First ASEAN has succeeded in diffusing the intra-regional
strife and preventing it from re-emerging to the point of
physical conflict. However, ASEAN is still a long way from
conflict resolution. The Sabah dispute between Malaysia and the
Philippines has not been resolved. It has only been diffused and
prevented from arising again. The case is the same with the
Ligitan-Sipadan dispute between Indonesia and Malaysia.

Second, ASEAN has been successful in creating a sub-regional
order in Southeast Asia. It has codified that order in a
Declaration of the Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality (1971);
its legal instrument, the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in
Southeast Asia (1976), and its military component, the Southeast
Asia Nuclear Weapon Free Zone (1984).

ASEAN had never actually employed the Pacific Settlement of
Disputes contained in the Treaty to solve the border and
territorial issues. Now in the post-Cold War era ASEAN has
instituted ZOPFAN's main format, the ASEAN Regional Forum (1994),
to secure the recognition and respect for Southeast Asia as a
security community. It has also been successful in making peace
in Cambodia in cooperation with major outside powers, thus also
highlighting ASEAN's peace-making role.

Third, ASEAN has also been successful in designing and
implementing economic programs in the shape of the ASEAN
Preferential Arrangement, the ASEAN Industrial Project,
Industrial Complementing, Industrial Joint Ventures, Brand-to-
Brand Complementing in the Automotive Industry and Enhancing
ASEAN Economic Cooperation on the Common Effective Preferential
Tariffs Scheme (1992).

In the field of functional cooperation, ASEAN had been
successful in designing and implementing the Agreements on the
Promotion of Cooperation in Mass Media and Cultural Activities
(1969), on the Establishment of the ASEAN Cultural Fund (1978),
on the ASEAN Environment, on the Advancement of Women in the
ASEAN Region (1988), and a host of other programs and projects
too numerous to list here.

Most of all however, ASEAN's successes have been in achieving
and providing the intangibles so indispensable for stepping up
cooperation and sustaining the cooperative spirit in the sub-
region.

Also to be noted is the immensely well-developed mutual
understanding over the years, the cordiality and friendship, the
solidarity, the cohesion, the supremely ingrained awareness of
the value of ASEAN, the ASEAN spirit, in the development of the
political, security, economic and societal life of each ASEAN
member country and the Association as a whole.

Without ASEAN, member countries would not have been able to
achieve their high economic growth rates, the remarkable level of
economic and societal progress, their national and regional
resilience, the fundamental ingredients of ZOPFAN, and their
respectable stature in international relations.

However, we should admit that ASEAN's tangible cooperative
achievements have not amounted to very much. The border and
territorial disputes have not been resolved, they still exist in
a state of suppressed activity, while smoldering on and on. The
attitudes towards ZOPFAN and the Nuclear Weapon Free Zone are
still far from unified, despite the harmonized positions and the
programs of action formulated.

ASEAN is still unable to formulate its position and provide
substantive guidance to the ASEAN Regional Forum.

ASEAN's economic projects have not amounted to very much
either. They have met with limited success, even after the Manila
Summit (1987) provided for significant improvements to motivate
expanded cooperation and activities.

The basic flaw in ASEAN economic cooperation schemes is that
it started from the basic assumption that each ASEAN member state
is willing to share its entire domestic market with the others.
That was the major illusion.

Moreover, the size of the ASEAN market itself is not big
enough to ensure the growth of an efficient and strong industrial
sector.

Hence, the ASEAN economic cooperation schemes should be
redesigned into an instrument to strengthen ASEAN's economies to
successfully compete on the world market. ASEAN should be moving
faster towards the goal of free flow of goods and investments in
the region and should discard the preferential arrangements, thus
stimulating the growth of internationally competitive industries.

It should thus retain its course of an outward-looking
regional economic grouping, while being committed to developing
AFTA in the next 15, preferably 10 years.

ASEAN will have to get its act together and prepare its basic
positions on how to develop confidence and security building in
the region.

This entails an exhaustive list of homework: preventive
diplomacy and conflict management, particularly exchanges of
military information, including arms procurement plans, as well
as of maritime security issues and the setting up of joint
programs to monitor Asia-Pacific sea lines of communications. In
addition there are the tasks of limiting weapons proliferation
and nuclear non-proliferation; of disciplining population growth,
of enhancing human rights, of protecting the environment,
alleviating poverty, disease and illiteracy and of constructive
trade and investment policies, which also means how to implement
ZOPFAN and NWFZ.

ASEAN will really have to proceed to shorten the transitional
period of creating a free trade area from 15 to 10 years, and to
include agriculture and services into the CEPT if it is to make
optimal use of the World Trade Organization which is to succeed
GATT at the beginning of next year.

ASEAN's experience has shown that intra-regional trade can
only flourish as long as extra-regional trade thrives. AFTA will
have to be developed against the background of worldwide trade
liberalization.

Member countries will have to continue their deregulation
processes and reform their economies. They will have to continue
restructuring their industries and harmonize their investment
policies and thus improve the regional investment climate and
develop industrial selectivity.

The first set of measures will ensure the sustenance of
ASEAN's remarkable economic performance. The second is to prevent
income and welfare losses in the traditional industrial zones,
which may produce strong resistance in some countries, or some
segments of the economy.

The writer is a senior researcher at the Indonesian Institute
of Sciences (LIPI).