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.