Creating a democratic peace in the ASEAN region

Creating a democratic peace in the ASEAN region

Bantarto Bandoro
Editor
'The Indonesian Quarterly'
Centre For Strategic and
International Studies (CSIS)
Jakarta
bandoro@csis.or.id

The 2003 Bali summit of ASEAN leaders saw the signing of the
Bali Concord II, which according to President Megawati
Soekarnoputri was a watershed in the history of ASEAN. ASEAN is
determined to move forward to face more severe security and
economic challenges ahead.

ASEAN's ten members, in the Bali Concord II, promised "to live
in peace with each other and with the world at large, in a just,
democratic and harmonious environment." The introduction of the
notion of democratic peace sets the standard of political norms
in the region. This would mean that ASEAN member states subscribe
to the notion that the democratic process promotes regional
cooperation and security. Democracy is something that members of
ASEAN will aim for.

As the democratization process in the world is moving at a
very rapid pace, ASEAN's understanding of democracy seems to have
gone beyond the electoral aspects of democracy itself, such as
regular elections and multiparty competition, etc. Democracy, as
envisioned in the Bali Concord II, reflects the need for ASEAN to
develop a kind of zone of non-violence, one that would guarantee
a long-lasting security and durable regional peace. With the
introduction of ASEAN's method of non-violence, ASEAN hopes to be
able to gradually eliminate sources of turbulences and turmoil in
the region.

This ASEAN proposition provides an important rationale for
promoting democratization as a pillar of ASEAN's regional
relations and policies. Ultimately, the best strategy to insure
Southeast Asian regional security and to build a durable peace is
to support the advance of democracy upon which a common stand on
regional problems should be based.

It implies that war or other forms of violence as a means for
conflict settlement are no longer part of the menu. The Bali
Concord II clearly states that all members of ASEAN pledge to
settle differences with each other peacefully.

Indonesia in particular sees it as away to cope with regional
disputes in an ASEAN peace framework. But, understanding and
focusing Kantian's thesis of democratic peace as an idea or fact
that democracies do not (or virtually never) make war on each
other, as one might call it the war version of democracy, is
fundamentally misleading.

Democracies have not only not made war on each other, but they
also have, by far, helped minimize, if not eliminate, the sources
of domestic violence. That is, democracy can be a general cure
for political or collective violence of any kind. It indeed is a
method of nonviolence, and thus is truly a democratic peace.

The Bali Concord II has yet to prove its vitality and
effectivity. But one should expect a decline in violence
afterwards as a natural adjustment of the changed perception of
the ASEAN leaders as well as regional and international system.
The fact that ASEAN has signed a key pact supporting democracy
means that it has united ASEAN, politically and strategically, to
eliminate the scourge of new regional problems.

It is thus a sign of the movement the region has made toward a
democratic peace.

A zone of non-violence in the Southeast Asia region is not an
immediate, but a long-term projection, as ASEAN still has to
reach the stage to which it would be ready, at any time and at
all costs, to collectively compromise on certain regional issues
and policies, given the fact that only six of its current members
are democracies. It is to say that the appearance of a democratic
"zone of peace" in Southeast Asia is highly dependent on a
particular country's degree of "democraticness".

In the creation of a zone of non-violence, we will see that
the most democratic countries of ASEAN members may be located at
one end of a democraticness continuum as democracy; and at the
other end is the less specific concept of "undemocracies", such
as non-democratic, closed hegemonic and authoritarian countries,
or to use a more generic term, autocracies.

Under such conditions, and though a zone of non-conflict is an
ideal one, the future political landscape of Southeast Asia will
therefore be in flux. The line between commitment to a democratic
path and reverting to authoritarianism and tending towards chaos
is very thin. Believing this to be a major tendency means that
zone of non-violence based on the Bali Concord II is unlikely to
appear, particularly if an "undemocratic" general election in
Indonesia, and other members of ASEAN, next year is to produce
long-term and perpetuated chaotic and instability in the region.
Democracy and "nation" after all were inseparable, for democracy
is only possible when the nation is ripe for it.

What we will see then is not a regional adherence to
democratic peace, as expected by the Bali Concord II, but instead
a long period of struggle and engagement and possibly
disappointment and some setbacks along the way. Thus, the process
of creating democratic peace upon which ASEAN regional relations
as well as regional security and stability would have to be based
on looks set to be a long process with its ups and downs. It all
reflects the immense difficulties of transition toward building a
democratic peace in the region of Southeast Asia.

Democracy is a force for peace as stated by Alexis de
Tocqueville. Democracy must thus be a product of a considerably
high degree of awareness of the Southeast Asia countries of the
importance of the democracy-peace linkage, the message carried by
the Bali Concord II. Not only that, they should also support the
proposition that only a carefully managed rather than
freewheeling democracy is feasible in the region.

It is through an ASEAN adherence to democratic values and
principles that the people in the region hope to witness the
decreasing zone of violence and turmoil. However, given the fact,
as stated above, that ASEAN is still in the process of searching
for common ground rules for building democracy and has different
views as to how the ASEAN community should proceed, the severity
of enmity, if not violence, may still increase or remain the
same.

Creating a democratic character of the region is indeed a
tremendous task for ASEAN to do, meaning that ASEAN must agree on
a kind of road map to become a community of democracies and act
together in terms of their mutual interests. Only with the
realization of such an objective can such democratic peace in
the region truly develop. The democratically based ASEAN
community must therefore aim to increase the zone of peace in the
region. It will in turn, hopefully, lead to a decrease in
violence and turmoil and its severity.