EU, ASEAN and politics of exclusion

EU, ASEAN and politics of exclusion

For the EU the issue of the exclusion of Myanmar from EU-Asean
forums is not likely to go away, says Michael Leifer.

EVER since the end of the Cold War, the relationship between
the EU and ASEAN has been troubled by a tension over human
rights.

That tension has been registered most explicitly over how to
deal with the unelected military regime in Yangon. Indeed, an EU-
ASEAN Joint Cooperation Committee meeting due to have been held
in Bangkok in November last year was canceled because the EU side
had refused to accept Myanmar's participation with the status of
an official observer, despite its full membership in the
association from the previous July.

That cancellation prompted speculation that the issue of
Myanmar's representation might well prejudice the second Asia-
Europe heads of government meeting scheduled to convene in London
in April 1998. The leaders of the Yangon government have been
banned from visiting EU capitals under visa restrictions imposed
as part of a package of sanctions in 1996. The prospect of an
Asean boycott as a demonstration of a refusal to be subject to a
European diktat over representation arose when a source close to
the Philippine chair of its Standing Committee threatened the EU
with exclusion from security dialogues under the Asean Regional
Forum and the Asean Post-ministerial Conference.

In the event, the issue of Myanmar's representation has not
been allowed to threaten the second ASEM which exists on a
different plane to the relationship between EU and ASEAN. It was
made clear at the historic first meeting between the heads of
government of ASEAN and their counterparts from China, Japan and
South Korea in Kuala Lumpur in mid-December last year that there
would not be automatic membership in ASEM for ASEAN governments
which had joined the association since the first meeting in
Bangkok in March 1996. Indeed, no new members would participate
in London.

Disentangling ASEM from the relationship between the EU and
ASEAN, at least for the time being, has not solved the problem
which arose over Myanmar. That problem exemplifies fundamental
differences of policy which may be defined with reference to the
concept of exclusion. The EU has taken a high moral tone towards
the military regime in Yangon in keeping with its resolution on
Human Rights, Democracy and Development in November 1991. In
protest at the deplorable human rights record of that regime and
its refusal to embark on a dialogue with Aung San Suu Kyi, the EU
has sought to punish Myanmar through a policy of exclusion from
political dialogue, albeit not to the extent of breaking off
diplomatic relations either on an individual or an EU basis.

That policy of exclusion was pursued in the EU's abortive
attempt to persuade ASEAN not to admit Myanmar to membership
until its human rights record had improved. Since its entry in
July 1997, the EU has refused to accord Myanmar ASEAN-member
status at meetings with the association which led to the
cancellation in Bangkok last November. ASEAN has long taken a
diametrically opposite view towards Myanmar expressed in the
notion of "constructive engagement". That policy of inclusion is
justified on the grounds that sanctions will only reinforce the
doggedness of the Yangon government and also encourage it to
develop an even closer relationship with Beijing.

On ASEAN's side, there is an evident resentment of the
European presumption to dictate the terms of the association's
enlargement.

Moreover, the perceived spurious legalism of the EU's
rationale for excluding Myanmar on the grounds that it was not a
signatory of the original Cooperation Agreement of 1980 is also
deemed offensive. Added to those factors is the evident
sensitivity within ASEAN of the way in which its new-found
economic adversity has been greeted in Europe and the failure of
the EU, which seemed to rediscover Asia in 1994 from a sense of
economic opportunism, to demonstrate a greater willingness to
help in mitigating that adversity.

It has been suggested that part of the problem between the EU
and ASEAN last November was the measure of diplomatic rigidity
displayed by the Luxembourg Presidency. A greater diplomatic
imaginativeness and flexibility is not going to be sufficient in
itself as a basis for rebuilding the troubled relationship with
Britain replacing Luxembourg in the EU presidential role.

Indeed, Britain's Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, has
registered the ethical dimension of his government's foreign
policy which is driven, in part, by the close link between a
number of UK-based NGOs and the ruling Labour Party.

From ASEAN's point of view, in seeking to make an issue of
Myanmar, the EU is attacking a soft target with which economic
engagement is limited by contrast, for example, with China where
confrontation has been deliberately avoided. European
inconsistency over human rights and ASEAN's sensitivity to the
EU's presumption to interfere in the management of its own
affairs drives a disposition to diplomatic solidarity, even on
the part of those members strongly committed to democratic values
and uncomfortable about Myanmar's membership.

If the EU may be accused of inconsistency, so may ASEAN in its
exclusion, albeit temporarily, of Cambodia from membership as a
result of Hun Sen's successful violent coup in July last year.
Moreover, the EU may be reluctant to compromise over human rights
and Myanmar as the sense of economic opportunity which prompted
its Asian initiative in 1994 gives way to a more pessimistic
regional outlook.

The fact of the matter is that for domestic reasons in EU
countries the issue of exclusion in the case of Myanmar is not
likely to go away, certainly as long as the government in Yangon
refuses to attend to its lack of political legitimacy which has
not been achieved by a recent change of nomenclature. For the EU,
democracy is part of its organic identity which is not the same
for ASEAN which has always been a diplomatic and not a political
community. For ASEAN, however, the EU's policy of exclusion is no
more than a posture without practical merits and to be resisted
for that reason as well as for its presumptuous nature.

Professor Michael Leifer is Professor of International
Relations and Director of the Asia Research Centre at the London
School of Economics and Political Science.