ASEAN formula could work elsewhere: Experts
JAKARTA (JP): After its successful adoption by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the concept of "regional resilience" should now be touted as a possible paradigm for regional security arrangements in other parts of the world, Indonesian experts said yesterday.
"ASEAN's track record proves that the regional resilience concept has been able to sustain peace and stability conducive to impressive economic growth during the last two decades," Rear Admiral R.M. Sunardi, an expert staff member on foreign affairs to the ministry of defense and security, said yesterday.
Speaking at a seminar on Indonesian and Canadian perspectives on the evolving security situation in the Asia-Pacific region, Sunardi said the ASEAN concept should be applied as the new paradigm for conflict resolution.
"Regional resilience is diametrically opposed to the use of power in solving problems and antagonisms," he told the seminar at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.
ASEAN, established in 1967, is comprised of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.
The group has eschewed regional security cooperation arrangements, opting instead for the regional resilience concept, under which the security of the region is said to be best served if each nation enhances its own national resilience.
Originally developed by Indonesia, the regional resilience concept also entails a commitment to the well-being of the group and meaningful interaction amongst the members. It also calls on the association to adapt to the changes of the strategic environment.
Sunardi said that in the post-Cold War era, a balance of interests is more important than a balance of power.
"Since regional resilience has the spirit of togetherness as its core, the evolutionary emergence of a security community is very natural even without being proclaimed as such," he said
Approach
For this reason, this concept could be adopted by other sub- regions and adjusted to fit their particular dynamics, he added.
Apart from the concept of regional resilience, Sunardi advocated the fundamental approach of sub-regionalism to contain potential security conflicts in various parts of the world.
"Any security must be sub-regional," he said, arguing that countries in a particular sub-region should be responsible for their own conflict resolution measures.
At the same seminar, political scientist J. Soedjati Djiwandono also encouraged the regionalism or sub-regionalism approach.
He extolled ASEAN's success as evidence of its effectiveness, and pointed out that despite the existence of differences, member states have maintained valuable cooperation with each other.
"Without ASEAN, such disputes would have readily come into the open and some may even have developed into armed conflicts," he said.
Soedjati said that regional cooperation allowed countries to find more common interests and problems than a wider grouping would and thus helped to dampen conflicts in the bilateral relationship of member states involved in that cooperation.
Soedjati said that regional organizations had a better chance of working out conflicts because the demise of the Cold War meant the end of intervention and instigation by the big powers.
He warned that big powers were now far less interested in helping to seek solutions to regional problems.
But if countries can successfully maintain peace in their own regions then, Soedjati believes, they will grow in their importance to the great powers and thus "become subjects in their own right, rather than objects, in international politics." (mds)