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