ASEAN not eager for united strategy

ASEAN not eager for united strategy

MANILA (AFP): ASEAN countries have displayed a united front in the face of Chinese incursions in the South China Sea, but the regional body is unlikely to create a formal regional defense strategy, analysts say.

"ASEAN heads of state are not keen about formal defense and security arrangements," Philippine Defense Secretary Renato De Villa said after an Association of Southeast Asian Nations security conference here last week.

Defense experts at the first conference of the ASEAN Defense Technology Exchange (ADTEX), a Philippine-based think-tank, agreed that the regional group faced major security concerns despite the end of the Cold War.

The situation in the Korean peninsula, continuing tensions between China and Taiwan and the conflicting claims to the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, were all identified as potential "hot spots" affecting ASEAN members.

The discovery in February of Chinese-built structures on a reef in the Spratlys claimed by the Philippines set off alarm bells within ASEAN, which groups Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.

In addition to China, Taiwan and Vietnam, three ASEAN members -- Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines -- lay total or partial claim to the archipelago, but have pledged to resolve the issue peacefully.

Despite Chinese efforts to force the other claimants to discuss the Spratlys bilaterally, ASEAN presented a united front in talks with China on the issue in the Chinese city of Hangzhou earlier this month.

Carolina Hernandez, president of the Philippines' Institute for Strategic and Development Studies, called the unity "an amazing achievement on the part of ASEAN."

But while ASEAN members closed ranks on the Spratlys issue, defense experts at the conference said it was unlikely such unity could be translated into a formal security arrangement between countries in the grouping.

"The smaller and weaker nations may continue to face a possible threat of external interference," Soedjati Djiwandono, director of Indonesia's Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said.

But, he added: "A common perception of threat of external nature has never been, and most probably will never be developed" in ASEAN, unlike in military alliances such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, formed to counter the threat of the Soviet bloc.

Djiwandono also said that security cooperation among ASEAN members tended to be bilateral or trilateral in nature and often involved non-ASEAN members -- such as the U.S.-Thai and U.S.- Philippine defense agreements.

Djiwandono also raised the possibility of a "multilateral security cooperation within the framework of ASEAN" that would not be directed at any sole external threat.

But he said this would not be a formal military pact but would be in the form of confidence-building measures, such as information and intelligence exchanges -- as well as possible coordination in procuring and manufacturing weapons.