Peacekeeping idea ahead of its time
Peacekeeping idea ahead of its time
Foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) met in Vietnam last week and put off the idea of forming a joint military force. The proposal came out of the blue last month at a meeting in Jakarta between senior officials from the 10 ASEAN members and the United Nations.
Host Indonesia proposed establishing an ASEAN peacekeeping force. The idea may have been ripe for discussion at an international conference, but ministers should have dismissed it more forcefully at their Halong Bay meeting last week.
Forming a joint military force from the ASEAN member countries is a bad idea. The prime reason is that ASEAN was established as a regional body to promote trade and other cooperation.
The five founding countries and their visionary foreign ministers were clear that ASEAN was not -- and would never become -- a military pact.
There were good reasons for that, and there still are. A few Cold War warriors tried to make ASEAN into a successor of the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO), but the effort was properly doomed.
ASEAN was the antithesis, an organization formed to promote common interests, no matter what form of government its members wanted.
Today, ASEAN governments are communist, socialist, democratic and dictatorships. Members trust one another, and nations of the world recognize and respect the grouping. A formal military alliance of any type would change the balance of trust, and the balance of actions.
Indonesia saw the peacekeeping force as a standing army ready to go to any embattled country to help to restore civil order. The theory is that an insecure nation would ask for such help.
Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai criticized the Jakarta proposal within a day. He said correctly that an ASEAN peacekeeping force is unnecessary.
Surakiart worried that peacekeeping could violate the ASEAN principle of non-interference in its members' internal affairs. Singapore Foreign Minister Shanmugam Jayakumar had a better reason to oppose it. He told Surakiart and other ministers at their meeting at Halong Bay that ASEAN is the wrong forum.
It is not a security organization, and any effort to graft a military group to ASEAN would be unwieldy at best.
ASEAN and its members face common security threats. First and foremost is terrorism, followed by organized, cross-border crime. A standing military force will have no effect on these scourges.
ASEAN must establish greater security cooperation, including among its military officers. A standing military force is not needed. Instead, members must build better intelligence and information links to crack down on the major threats faced by all. -- The Bangkok Post