Balancing power in and outside the ARF

Balancing power in and outside the ARF

The recent progress made by the ASEAN Regional Forum might well be reversed by a combination of factors, institutional and geopolitical. Amitav Acharya examines the subject

The second meeting of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), held in Brunei on Aug. 1, may well be remembered as a landmark event in the evolution of Asia-Pacific security cooperation. This is not so much because of the list of security measures adopted by the ARF in Brunei. In fact, the ARF ministers selected only a handful of items from the elaborate list of proposals contained in a Concept Paper prepared by ASEAN following year-long consultations among ARF members.

The Brunei agenda called for exchanging information on annual defense postures on a voluntary basis, increasing dialogs on security issues on bilateral, sub-regional and regional bases, maintaining senior-level contacts and exchanges among military institutions, and encouraging participation of the ARF members in the UN Conventional Arms Register.

But the Brunei meeting might be remembered for two other and arguably more significant events, both of which preceded the ARF meeting. The first was Vietnam's formal entry into ASEAN.

Although a mixed blessing, this considerably strengthens the grouping's clout and bargaining power, especially in dealing with the larger powers within the ARF, including China. The potentially more important development was what some ASEAN ministers saw as a notable shift in China's position on the South China Sea dispute. In Brunei, Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen hinted that Beijing was now willing to discuss the dispute multilaterally with ASEAN. He also seemed to accept the Law of the Sea as a basis for negotiations to resolve the dispute.

Whether these statements, described by Philippine Foreign Secretary Domingo Siazon as "good signals" from China, will become official Chinese policy is far from certain. The signs are that the so-called shift in China's position on territorial issues may be more apparent than real. While the Chinese Foreign Minister was trying to appear conciliatory, his spokesman Shen Guofeng reasserted an old position affirming China's "indisputable sovereignty over the islands and their adjacent waters". In his view, the ARF was "not an appropriate place" for discussions on the issue since, in his words, "the most effective way to handle this dispute is through bilateral negotiations".

The episode reflects the dilemmas of Chinese policy towards multilateral security cooperation in the Asia-Pacific. While unwilling to sacrifice national interests and pride, China is clearly feeling the pressure from ARF members to compromise more on this sensitive issue. By making an effort to sound conciliatory, China clearly seeks to avoid being isolated within the ARF. For China, the political costs of defection from a multilateral security forum like the ARF have begun to outweigh the strategic benefits accruing from an uncompromising territorial posture.

Apart from the South China Sea issue, the Brunei meeting did provide some insight into the ARF's long-term plans. The latter envisages three phases of security cooperation: confidence- building, preventive diplomacy and "elaboration of approaches to conflicts". The original draft of the ASEAN concept paper listed the third stage as one of "conflict resolution", but the change was made as a concession to China which had warned against rapid institutionalization of the ARF.

The meeting also decided to set up three working groups, one dealing with confidence-building measures (to be chaired by Indonesia and Japan), another dealing with peacekeeping operations (co-chaired by Malaysia and Canada) and a third one on search-and-rescue cooperation (led by Singapore and the U.S.). These groups are expected to play an important role in developing concrete steps towards greater security cooperation beyond what was already adopted in Brunei.

The Brunei meeting underscored the close linkage between bilateralism and multilateralism in Asia-Pacific security cooperation. A multilateral setting can both encourage and provide a useful venue for serious efforts at bilateral problem- solving. Although the meeting between Qian Qichen and Warren Christopher produced no breakthrough in dealing with the fallout of Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui's visit to the U.S., the very fact that it was held underscores the usefulness of the ARF and the ASEAN ministerial consultations in providing a conducive institutional setting. Similarly, the meeting between the Foreign Ministers of China and the Philippines was an important step towards avoiding further tensions over the Spratly Islands.

The Brunei meeting confirmed that ASEAN remains cautious about deepening the scope and pace of security cooperation in the Asia- Pacific region. The adoption of more intrusive measures of confidence-building remains a distant prospect. At the same time, however, the Brunei meeting signaled a significant widening of ASEAN's (and the ARF's) security horizons. Malaysia's strong voicing of concern over the Bosnian situation and the intense criticism directed against French nuclear testing in the South Pacific by most ARF members are indicative of the development of the ARF as a debating venue for global security issues.

But ultimately, a larger membership and wider security agenda might also pose serious challenges for ASEAN, the self-proclaimed "primary driving force" behind the ARF. The advent of the ARF represents a significant broadening of ASEAN hitherto inward- looking and sub-regional political and security agenda. An expanded ASEAN makes it more difficult for the group to achieve consensus on key issues, as the Foreign Minister of Singapore noted in Brunei.

More ominously, Malaysia's Foreign Minister spoke of growing disunity within ASEAN over developments in the wider Asia-Pacific region. His reference to a lack of "resolve" on the part of ASEAN to "stay united in the face of certain pushes and pulls exerted upon it by the dynamics of international politics and diplomacy", was an implicit criticism of fellow ASEAN members who had failed to back Malaysia's own regional and international initiatives, particularly the East Asian Economic Caucus proposal.

Apart from questions of unity, ASEAN may have reason to fear losing control of the ARF to the grouping's larger and more powerful actors. The ARF is an oddity in one important respect. It is the only regional security forum in which all the major powers of the contemporary international system are represented (if one accepts the representation of Britain, France and Germany through the EU).

It is also a rare case where leadership in institution- building has been provided by a collection of weaker states. ASEAN facilitated the creation of the ARF by providing it with a suitable institutional setting and anchoring it on its own long- standing code of inter-state behavior.

While as a collective ASEAN carries significant diplomatic and political clout within the ARF, its ability to prevail over the major powers such as China and the U.S. on hard strategic issues might be limited. The fate of the ARF might well be decided by the shifting balance of structural strength among the major powers in the region, rather than by ASEAN's painstaking and sincere efforts at providing normative and entrepreneurial leadership.

This danger is especially apparent when one looks at ASEAN's approach to the all important question of how to deal with resurgent Chinese power. Under present circumstances, ASEAN's preferred policy of "engaging" China is perhaps better than the alternative of "containing" it. But this policy assumes that China is willing to be engaged on terms set out by ASEAN. If China is not, then an engagement policy could become an excuse for inaction and mask a lack of resolve in dealing with the realities such as China's displacement of the regional balance of power. An ASEAN-led ARF can be good for debate and discussions, but might ultimately have a limited ability to influence the balance among the major powers, a key determinant of regional stability.

Dr. Amitav Acharya is an Associate Professor of Political Science at York University, Canada.