Can ASEAN's China policy succeed?

Can ASEAN's China policy succeed?

The admission of Vietnam marks an important moment in the 28-
year long history of ASEAN. Seen from East Asia, our Asia
correspondent Harvey Stockwin notes that ASEAN has reversed the
logic behind its creation in 1967, and has been a political more
than an economic success story. ASEAN now faces a major test of
how to manage its relationship with China.

HONG KONG (JP): ASEAN's success in the politics of cohesive
diplomacy has been pointedly illustrated by the issue of Vietnam.
Vietnam is becoming an ASEAN member now, but not because the
United States had been pondering the decision years ago to
normalize relations with Vietnam.

To the contrary, ASEAN led the way. President Bill Clinton
belatedly announced normalization with Vietnam recently, in part
because the U.S. saw the need to catch up with ASEAN.

As the 28th annual Foreign Minister's Meeting (FMM) of the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) gets underway in
Brunei, the grouping has turned its original motivation on its
head. Formed in the belief that economic cooperation would help
promote political togetherness, ASEAN's main achievement has been
political and diplomatic solidarity, while economic accord has
lagged behind.

An ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) was belatedly agreed to in the
1980s instead of the 1970s. It is still something of an unproven
institution. The ASEAN Economic Ministers do not yet meet as
frequently or as purposefully as they should.

The Foreign Ministers meeting, on the other hand, has come to
resemble an umbrella that gets larger every time it is opened,
thus enabling more moves to take place, and more progress to be
accomplished, beneath its expanding shade.

The annual FMM get-together has become a complex array of
meetings. First come the preparatory meetings of officials,
followed by the FMM alone. This is followed by the PMC , as it
is widely known, -- the post-ministerial conference, now longer
in duration than the FMM itself. This consists of meetings with
ASEAN observers (Papua New-Guinea, Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia)
and, both separately and collectively, with ASEAN's dialog
partners (Japan, Korea, the U.S., the European Union, Australia,
Canada and New Zealand).

Last year, a further round of discussions after the PMC was
formally initiated. The 18-member ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF),
including all seven dialogue partners, the observers apart from
Myanmar and Cambodia, plus China and Russia but not yet India, is
avowedly concerned with the issue of regional security. Whether
ARF will provide the means for the development of collective
security in Asia remains to be seen. For now, it comes closest
to doing so.

Amidst all these multilateral meetings, significant bilateral
progress in diplomatic relationships can also be registered,
given the multilateral pressure for conciliation rather than
confrontation which pervades the overall get-together.

One example of what may be accomplished in Brunei this year
under the expansive ASEAN FMM-PMC-ARF umbrella is already
obvious.

There can be no question that deteriorating Sino-American
relations could easily affect regional stability. Already,
Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Chinese Foreign
Minister Qian Qichen have arranged at least one quiet get-
together in the umbrella's shade.

Such a meeting will not end the deterioration, but it might
well put some brakes on what Henry Kissinger has described as the
"free fall" in the Sino-American relationship. Should current
Beijing intransigence continue to manifest itself, both in
relation to the U.S., and also to the South China Sea issue, then
Qian will come under subtle pressure in Brunei to be more
flexible. The ASEAN faith, based on past performance, is that
talking over problems can ease many tensions.

This has given rise to the charge that ASEAN is nothing more
than a "talking shop" wherein words are plentiful but substantive
achievements are much less commonplace. This may be true for any
single meeting but, taken over time, it is patently false.

Formed in the wake of konfrontasi between Indonesia and
Malaysia/Singapore, during ASEAN's 28-year existence it has
tamed, though not ended, the abundant raw material for Southeast
Asian regional discord. Territorial disputes between ASEAN
members have first been stilled and then negotiated, rather than
fought over. Other emotional issues have been kept within bounds.

The overall ASEAN accomplishment is vividly illustrated by the
main new departure due to take place in Brunei.

When ASEAN was formed in 1967 the still-expanding Vietnam War
was the key geopolitical reality in the region. ASEAN gained
much of its cohesion and strength in the late 1970s and early-to-
mid 1980s as it opposed Vietnam's attempt to conquer Cambodia.

Now, in Brunei, the country ASEAN once opposed, Vietnam, is
being elevated from its former observer status to become the
seventh full member of the organization.

Again, seen from East Asia, it appears that, in making this
move, ASEAN is taking a calculated risk.

Vietnam is often regarded as being more East Asian in
temperament, more part of the Sinified cultural world rather than
the polyglot world of Southeast Asia. ASEAN-wide reflexes may
not always come easily to Vietnam's entrenched bureaucracy.
Vietnam still shares a major interest with China and North
Vietnam -- the survival of the communist political system.

Above all, as the ASEAN Six become Seven, the three
Indochinese states cease to be a de facto buffer between ASEAN
and China. Put another way, ASEAN now shares a land border with
China. When and if Laos and Myanmar become full ASEAN members,
the Sino-ASEAN land border will lengthen.

The risk seems worth taking for several reasons. Vietnam
yearns for greater economic dynamism which it hopes ASEAN
membership will help impart. Joining AFTA will not be easy -- but
the addition of 70 million Vietnamese to the AFTA market could,
if successfully accomplished, make AFTA far more formidable.

For the foreseeable future, ASEAN will have to grapple with
the ever-growing regional reality of an assertive China. In this
geopolitical task, Vietnam will be a very useful guide, even if
it is communist.

Further, with Vietnam's accession, all the Southeast Asian
claimants to disputed islands in the South China Sea -- Vietnam,
Brunei, the Philippines and Malaysia -- are within ASEAN. Only
the two Chinese claimants -- China and Taiwan -- remain outside.
Vietnam will probably provide a healthy corrective to an enduring
ASEAN mistake, the tendency to think that the mere issuance of
the ASEAN Declaration on the South China Sea in July 1992 binds
all claimants to conciliation.

The most important document for China that year was its own
law on the South China Sea, passed in February 1992 by the
National Peoples Congress, effectively annexing the whole sea as
part of China. That law implicitly involved the largest ASEAN
member, Indonesia, since it could mean that Beijing claims the
Natuna Islands, too.

ASEAN's technique, which Vietnam will now have to adopt, has
been to minimize territorial discord by freezing the status quo
in any dispute and conducting dialog. The recent Philippine
reaction to Chinese installations on Mischief Reef in the Spratly
Islands served to draw attention to the fact that China has been
quietly changing the status quo, and implementing its own law,
since 1992 -- even though there was a tentative Indonesian
sponsored unofficial dialogue with ASEAN countries proceeding at
the same time.

Somewhat imperiously, in what looks like a blatant attempt to
"divide and rule" among those nations which the Middle Kingdom
has traditionally regarded as "tributary states", China has
insisted that all South China Sea disputes be settled with it on
a bilateral basis.

The challenge facing ASEAN both now in the Brunei meetings,
and also into that foreseeable future, is to insist, quietly but
firmly yet persistently, that ASEAN solidarity is a multilateral
diplomatic reality which Beijing must recognize and accept. It
will never be easy, especially amidst the current profound
uncertainties of China's domestic politics. But ASEAN has no
choice but to assert itself in this modest way, because only in
cohesion does Southeast Asia gain an ability to diplomatically
counter China's greater overall power.

The South China Sea will take much of the spotlight in Brunei
but it remains only one of many other issues which will be raised
under the expanding umbrella.

ASEAN celebrates one failure and one success.

The success came when Myanmar's military rulers, almost
certainly anxious to increase their ASEAN connections, and
decrease their wider isolation, released Aung San Suu Kyi from
six years of house arrest.

This enables ASEAN to claim that its policy of "constructive
engagement" with Myanmar was bearing fruit after all. But ASEAN
cannot sit back and relax. Rather, it must gently urge Myanmar's
generals to enter into further constructive engagement with Ms.
Suu Kyi.

The ASEAN failure came when Philippine-Singaporean relations
severely deteriorated over the Singapore hanging of a maid, Flor
Contemplacion, who was convicted for murder, despite half-hearted
requests from the government in Manila for a stay of execution.
It was a complex incident which usefully reminded everyone that
ASEAN solidarity remains an elitist concept -- which can be
easily damaged either by Singaporean elite disdain for Southeast
Asians, or Philippine elite disdain for their own people.