Strengthening security community

Strengthening security community

Andi Widjajanto, Center for International Relations Studies,
University of Indonesia, Jakarta

The states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN) share the common recognition that the multilateral
security arrangement should be an essential feature of the
regional landscape. The establishment of security multilateralism
is needed to address the increasingly uncertain geo-strategic
landscape and to expand on regional integration derived from
economic interdependence.

However, ASEAN states were not in complete agreement in
selecting what kind of security cooperation should be
implemented. There are two main proposals on the issue. The first
proposal focused on the development of a defense community
similar to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) or the
former Warsaw Pact. Another proposal was forwarded recently by
President Megawati Soekarnoputri on the occasion of the ASEAN
36th anniversary, which called on ASEAN states to form a security
community.

The idea of a security community was generated to address the
emerging challenges of transnational issues. Realism's
concentrations on a state-centric and power-deterministic world
allow limited scope for considering the new salience of non-state
actors and the multi-dimensional nature of security. Today, the
state-centric world is no longer predominant. A complex multi-
centric world has emerged.

Complex, interconnected and multidimensional transnational
issues are moving from the periphery to the center of the
security concerns of states. This multi-centric world consists of
various non-state actors such as multinational corporations,
ethnic minorities, sub national governments, professional
societies, social movements, non-governmental organizations,
political parties, and individual actors. The proliferation of
actors in world politics has not pushed states to the edge of the
global arena; they are simply no longer the only key actors.

However, ASEAN had made a significant step to develop an ASEAN
security community by creating the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), an
initiative made by the regional grouping to move beyond its
limited experience of security cooperation.

The formation of the ARF suggests although ASEAN remains
reluctant to implement a more rigid European security mechanism,
the ARF is the vehicle through which ASEAN hopes to have ability
to shape its own security environment. For ASEAN, the ARF can be
used to foster habits of cooperation and provide the catalyst for
encouraging regional cooperation in the wider Asia Pacific
region.

Thus, instead of developing a new institution the best policy
to address security predicaments in Southeast Asia is by
strengthening the ARF mechanism. It would be easier to utilize
ARF than to build a new security arrangement. Moreover, the ARF
has a much better chance of getting all great powers in the
region in their security cooperation than any new security
institution.

In the security realm, Indonesia can increase its strategic
reliability by developing and publishing a strategic initiative
that describes three underlying principles. The first is that
Indonesia should give increased support to strengthening ASEAN's
multilateral effort in resolving intra-ASEAN disputes.

This support should manifest itself in encouraging ASEAN to
speed up the ARF institutional development. This is based on the
necessity to establish three pillars of the ARF: Confidence
building measures, preventive diplomacy, and conflict resolution.
Indonesia should seek to enhance its regional roles by initiating
preventive diplomacy and peacekeeping regime in the ARF. The ARF
mechanisms also will foster greater security cooperation in the
region since most of the security challenges in the region have a
transnational character.

This new character tells us that the emerging transnational
threat has elicited more interest than ever before in the idea of
creating a preventive regime that tries to provide a peaceful
solution as well as to anticipate future issues.

An ARF preventive regime can be strengthened by developing
specific preventive procedures. These procedures consist of
governmental and non-governmental actions, policies, and
institutions that are taken to keep particular states or
organized groups within them from threatening or using organized
violence, armed force, or related forms of coercion such as
repression to settle interstate or national political disputes,
especially in situations where the existing means cannot
peacefully manage the destabilizing effects of economic, social,
political, and international change.

Indonesia could take the initiative by proposing the
institutionalization of an ARF preventive regime. This regime
must have a multi-layered structure consisting of the (1) ASEAN
mechanism; (2) bilateral cooperation among states, and (3) Non-
governmental Preventive Network.

But Indonesia should first seek to gain support for the
initiative from other major powers. Indonesia should also
exercise its leadership by proposing long-term mechanisms to
provide resources to inter-agency cooperation and NGOs on the
front lines of prevention, providing diplomatic support behind
particular preventive efforts, and providing experienced
individual representatives to mediate incipient disputes under
multilateral auspices.