ASEAN's future is at stake

By Jusuf Wanandi

JAKARTA (JP): At the same time that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) foreign ministers met at the end of last month in Bangkok, 10 experts from the original five members had a two-day meeting to discuss its long term future. What follows are some of the thoughts expressed during the discussions.

ASEAN was created 33 years ago to jointly deal with the uncertain aftermath of the Vietnam War and to provide a forum for inter-regional cooperation and the prevention of possible inter- regional conflicts in the future.

Thus, ASEAN has been a state-to-state cooperation par excellence, with no intentions to achieve integration and become a community. That is also why the principle of non-intervention has been sacrosanct and explains why foreign ministers have a dominant role in ASEAN.

While the stated purpose of the Association is to promote economic and social cooperation, for many years ASEAN did not develop any of those ideas. Instead, diplomacy was supreme. It was very much a top down exercise and the public had only a marginal role.

In a sense, ASEAN has achieved the basic objectives of its creation. There have been no major conflicts among ASEAN members, and since the Vietnam War, stability and peace have reigned. This was partly due to ASEAN's efforts to prevent the often predicted Balkanization of Southeast Asia. Indeed, this is no small achievement!

But what about the future? In the last 30 years there have been a lot of changes. There have been significant internal changes within the countries and external global and regional changes, particularly in the last decade, have created extreme and dramatic pressures for ASEAN as a whole and for each of its members.

The greatest impact on ASEAN has been the pressures resulting from globalization. Its influence is all encompassing as the financial crisis in East Asia has shown since 1997 and members cannot adjust to these external pressures by themselves. Even developed nations cannot cope with the changes on their own. That may also be the reason why European Union members are expanding their cooperation.

The second global event affecting ASEAN was the end of the cold war. That has altered the security and stability of the region and has opened new horizons in strategic developments. It also has put pressure on existing mechanisms and institutions to adjust and to change or risk the possibility of perishing.

Thus the big question is whether ASEAN can adjust and change in the medium term and cope with those dramatic changes.

It will not be easy and it seems almost impossible for ASEAN to change so fundamentally given the constraints that it is now facing. Because of the financial crisis ASEAN members tend to be inward looking. In addition, because of leadership changes in some of the old members, personal relations are no longer so critical for ASEAN cooperation as in the past. New members have brought difficulties of all sorts because of a difference in experiences, political systems and economic developments.

Basically the old principles on which ASEAN has functioned for the last 30 years, namely a personal, non-legalistic and informal system of cooperation between the states or their bureaucracies are no longer adequate to cope with fundamental changes in ASEAN and in each of its member countries.

Domestic problems such as the financial crisis, drug- trafficking, environmental hazards, migration problems, transnational crimes (e.g. piracy etc.) are also regional problems. They call for regional and in some instances even global cooperation. The new challenges no longer recognize the divide between domestic and external aspects. Therefore, ASEAN as a regional entity could be even more relevant if it could get its act together and change in a fundamental way.

To achieve that would require ASEAN members to have a common vision of the future. ASEAN heads agreed on the ASEAN Vision 2020 almost three years ago in Hanoi. However, ASEAN members also need to develop new principles of cooperation.

Based on those principles, rules have to be established to guide the organization and to make the cooperation viable. Those rules have to take into consideration that the many problems ASEAN is facing can not be solved individually.

Therefore, the principle of "non-intervention" is passe. As a last resort, "intervention" could be done in a more acceptable way. Examples where beneficial intervention might have worked in past experiences in ASEAN are surveillance of macro-economic indicators, the haze problem, and some policies on migration, drug-trafficking and transnational crime.

For the implementation of the rules, institutions have to be established. The heads should meet annually and empower this meeting as the highest decision making body. A council of ministers also has to be formed with the task of deciding on programs and directives. The dominant role of the foreign minister in ASEAN is no longer relevant. ASEAN problems have become all encompassing and complex, and other ministers have to get involved in working out answers.

The office of the Secretariat General has to be strengthened and prepared for all the decisions that the council of ministers and heads of ASEAN have to make. The workload of the existing rotating Senior Officials Meetings has to be replaced by the Secretariat with very few exceptions.

Last but not least the public, think-tanks, non-government organizations and society at large who have a stake in the cooperation should have their say and should be allowed in some instances to take the initiatives towards ASEAN functional cooperation.

Can these changes be implemented? Many wise men and visionary groups have proposed modest institutional changes and failed. But the future will be different, and the challenges are huge and complex. If ASEAN fails to change, then ASEAN will become irrelevant to its members and will wither away.

Those changes could be implemented over a medium term. In the meantime two priorities have to be accepted. First is the total engagement of the older members with the new members of ASEAN that will also involve providing development assistance by the old members to the new ones. This could be done in a triangular way with financial assistance from international/financial institutions or from Japan. Only then can the new members participate fully in ASEAN's programs. This is critically important if ASEAN would like to stay united.

Second, the principle of the "coalition of the willing" or the decision of ASEAN minus X should be introduced. As such, some members can develop a program without the participation of others at the beginning. But it should be open to them whenever they are ready to participate.

To be able to get those changes moving, the civil societies in ASEAN have to participate fully in the effort and should pressure their governments by arousing public opinion and initiate programs in respective countries. At the functional and professional levels there is ample cooperation going on among ASEAN societies.

Hopefully the ASEAN People's Assembly (APA) to be held for the first time in November in Batam, in conjunction with the Informal Summit in Singapore, could push for these changes that are of vital importance for ASEAN's survival. APA is initiated by ASEAN and the Institute of Strategic and International Studies, an ASEAN non-governmental organization. The Assembly is expected to bring together over 300 NGO and civil society representatives as well as governments.

The writer is chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Jakarta.