ASEAN: From turbulent past to promising future

ASEAN: From turbulent past to promising future

Milton Osborne argues that while ASEAN should not forget its past, it should constantly subject its thinking to scrutiny so as not to be caught unaware by events.

The countries of ASEAN have every reason to be pleased with the present and bullish about the future. With major conflicts banished from the region and economic growth figures promising even better times to come, there seems little reason to dwell on past difficulties. Yet it is only by looking at the past that it is possible to gain a clear sense of just how much has been achieved throughout Southeast Asia in barely 25 years.

A quarter century ago, one could publish a book on Southeast Asia with the title Region of Revolt without being accused of exaggeration, for the catalog of troubles that afflicted the countries of the region then was long indeed. Topping the list were the conflicts in Indochina. Yet if the war in Indochina was the most dramatic example of conflict in Southeast Asia, it was certainly not the only instance of armed challenge to governments, or of serious challenges to political stability. In the latter category, the events that had taken place in Indonesia were the most dramatic.

Following a failed coup involving the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) in 1965, there was an explosion of political violence. While the Indonesian army moved to assert its control over the state, hundreds of thousands of communists and their suspected allies were killed. Amidst this terrible violence, the foreign and domestic policies that President Sukarno had promoted over two decades were reversed. By the late 1960s, with Sukarno replaced by President Soeharto, Indonesia had achieved an uneasy calm, but few were certain how long this calm would last.

The political violence that erupted in Malaysia in 1969 was on a much more limited scale than that which had occurred in Indonesia a short time before. Nevertheless, the rioting and killing that began on May 13, 1969, shook the Malaysian political system and brought into question many of the assumptions on which that system had been founded. Most importantly, the old assumption that Malays would be endlessly ready to cede major economic power to the Malaysian Chinese community was now recognized to be no longer valid. As 1970 began, Malaysian politicians wrestled with the task of realigning the balance of political and economic power while working to prevent any repetition of the urban violence of the previous year.

Superficially, Thailand in 1970 seemed to have escaped the problems that dogged Indonesia and Malaysia. Gaining economic benefit from an expanded American presence linked to the Vietnam War, Thailand presented an appearance of political stability following the introduction of a new constitution and the election of a new parliament at the end of the 1960s. What was not apparent to most foreign observers was the extent to which a communist-led insurgency had gained a grip over parts of the kingdom.

With the exception of Myanmar, a country that in 1970 seemed fated to see its government forever engaged in combating ethnically based insurgencies, the rest of non-communist Southeast Asia faced different problems. For Singapore, the principal concerns were economic, while for the Philippines the chief concerns that seemed likely to trouble the government were those linked to the endemic political infighting among the country's elite.

The turbulent 1970s

Positive change did not come rapidly. Neither was it spread evenly in the countries of Southeast Asia through the 1970s. And the positive changes that did occur were frequently obscured by the dominating news story of the first half of the decade: the continuing war in the countries of Indochina.

Deeply unfashionable though the view may still be today, the hostilities in Indochina played an important part in creating the circumstances in which the countries of ASEAN could address their own political problems with a measure of confidence. This was especially true in Thailand, where the 1970s were marked by bloody confrontations between students and the military, alternating civilian and military rule and the continuing threats to the Bangkok government's authority from the communist-led insurgency in the countryside. Not until the end of the late 1970s was a substantial measure of political stability established and the insurgency reduced to a minor threat through policies that combined economic carrots with the sticks of harsh, armed suppression.

It does not seem unreasonable to speculate that earlier communist victories in the countries of Indochina would have added to the problems that Thailand faced in the 1970s. As it was, when Vietnam completed its invasion of Cambodia in 1979, the Thai state could contemplate the future with relative equanimity.

Unlike Thailand, neither Malaysia nor Indonesia shared a common border with an Indochinese country. In the 1970s, their concerns were less with immediate military security issues and more with the re-establishment of political stability after the events of the late 1960s.

For Malaysia, this involved suspending parliamentary government for more than two years and the formulation and introduction of the New Economic Policy, which was unapologetically designed to advance the interests of the Malay community. While dramatic economic growth was still some distance away, the policies instituted in the early 1970s made absolutely clear the future pattern of Malaysian politics as a system in which Malay interests would be dominant.

In Indonesia, events during the first half of the 1970s, and most importantly as the result of the "Malari Incident", which involved major anti-Japanese riots in Jakarta in January 1974, led to the establishment of another clear political pattern. This was the entrenchment of President Soeharto as the unchallengeable source of all political power in Indonesia.

Although Soeharto had been the dominant figure in Indonesian politics ever since the failure of the September 1965 coup, there still had been some in the military who had been ready to question his policies and to give at least tacit support to those elements in society, particularly students, who were critical of the links between government and the Chinese business community. In the aftermath of Malari, and buoyed by greatly increased oil prices, Soeharto marginalized his critics and made clear his unswerving commitment to the economic policies on which he was already embarked.

While Indonesia combined improved economic performance with the increased personalization of presidential power, a very different pattern of developments took place in the Philippines. In that country, President Ferdinand Marcos's proclamation of martial law in 1972 at first appeared to be both welcome to many Filipinos and to promise economic advantages to domestic and foreign investors alike. Before the end of the 1970s, it was clear that the optimism engendered by the institution of martial law was misplaced. The government in Manila was under challenge from a growing communist insurgency and the economy was in the grip of "crony capitalism".

Myanmar, consistently an outsider among the non-communist states of Southeast Asia, continued its inward-looking policies through the 1970s. Fighting a range of insurgencies and discounting the benefits of economic growth, the government in Rangoon persisted in its attachment to what was called "the Myanmarese way to socialism".

Of all the countries of ASEAN, Singapore traversed the 1970s in the surest fashion. While the island-republic faced only negligible internal security threats, the economic challenges with which it had to contend were formidable. Yet through the 1970s, Singapore's leaders displayed a clear-sighted appreciation of the need constantly to adjust economic goals and activities. By the end of the decade, Singapore had demonstrated the success of its policies, not least as it steadily rehoused its population in modern buildings that replaced the slums in which many had lived.

As they entered the 1980s, the countries of ASEAN, with the notable exception of the Philippines, faced few internal security problems and were already reaping the benefits of economic policies instituted over the previous decade. These policies differed from country to country, but their essential character involved an acceptance of the need for a system that encouraged capitalist enterprise, however much the state was involved in the setting of priorities and the allocation of opportunities to one or another group of investors.

One pressing regional security problem remained: Vietnam's presence in Cambodia following its invasion which removed Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge government in 1979. Led by Thailand and Singapore, ASEAN was united in rejecting the right of one country to invade another, even allowing for the provocation the Khmer Rouge regime had offered and the ghastly character of its rule.

At the beginning of the 1990s, few observers would have predicted that Vietnam would be invited to join ASEAN as soon as 1995. That this should have happened was a further testimony to the speed with which old assumptions could be swept away. A recognition of the need to submit old assumptions to continuous scrutiny is, indeed, one of the principal lessons to be learned from a review of developments in Southeast Asia over the past 25 years. As a personal memory, one well remembers a symposium held in an ASEAN country in 1976 at which the value of the organization and its survival was questioned by foreign observers.

No one would make such a mistake today, but there may be other entrenched assumptions that warrant critical examination. Is the proclaimed intention of the United States to maintain a security interest in Southeast Asia such an instance?

Whatever the future may hold, a recognition of the achievements of the ASEAN states, both individually and as an organization, highlights the change that has taken place in the past three decades. Knowing how this happened, and why, suggests that the optimism that pervades Southeast Asia in 1995 is well- founded.

Dr. Milton Osborne is a freelance writer on Asian issues.