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recognized to be no longer valid.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.