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ASEAN beyond forty: towards political and economic integration.

Article Excerpt
In August 2007, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) celebrated the 40th anniversary of its foundation. In each of the Association's ten member states, observances were more numerous and elaborate than usual. This was particularly so in Singapore, which held the ASEAN chairmanship at the time of the anniversary. Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong delivered the annual ASEAN Lecture on 7 August 2007, on the eve of the anniversary of ASEAN's founding in 1967. The ASEAN Secretariat and the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) organized the lecture, which was followed by a reception hosted by Prime Minister Lee. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs placed an eight-page supplement in the Straits Times featuring articles devoted to the organization. With the support of Germany's Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES), the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore organized a conference from 31 July to 1 August to commemorate the 40th anniversary of ASEAN's establishment, while on 6-7 August the Singapore Institute of International Affairs (SIIA), in collaboration with the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) of Singapore, put together a discussion forum among regional think-tanks to exchange ideas and insights into a number of issues facing ASEAN. ISEAS published a booklet entitled Know Your ASEAN, made up of forty questions and answers on the basic facts about ASEAN and illustrated by Miel, the senior Straits Times artist and cartoonist. ISEAS has also devoted a special issue of this journal, Contemporary Southeast Asia, to the 40th anniversary. Similar observances have taken place in other countries in the region.

The purpose of this article is to provide a brief review of ASEAN on its 40th birthday, assess its achievements to date and suggest what it needs to do to fulfil its full promise and potential. The article begins by recalling ASEAN's unpromising beginnings, in terms of the political and security situation at the time--at both the regional and global levels--and in terms of the economic-development stage of Southeast Asian nations. It then traces how far ASEAN has evolved from those beginnings. The article turns to how ASEAN has fallen short of the grand ambitions that it subsequently proclaimed for itself from time to time. One of these ambitions is the integration of the regional economy. Another is to assume the role of the "driving force" of East Asian and Asia-Pacific regionalism. The article then examines the question of why, after having largely overcome certain fundamental difficulties encountered in its formative years, ASEAN has sputtered in its journey towards its subsequent and more ambitious goals. It argues that a major reason why ASEAN has fallen short of its declared ambitions is that the Association and its members have treated political and economic considerations too discretely and too independently of each other. It will explain why ASEAN must achieve greater political and economic integration if it is to fulfil its aspirations and promise.

Unpromising Beginnings: A Region Divided

In order to see how far ASEAN has progressed since its foundation, one must first appreciate the political and security environment of Southeast Asia in 1967. Without question, the ASEAN project had been made possible by Indonesia's radical transformation in 1965-66 from its domestically and internationally assertive populism to a more balanced and pragmatic approach to economic and international affairs. Nevertheless, its neighbours continued to view Jakarta with a degree of wariness: after all, Indonesia had only just abandoned its aggressive policy of konfrontasi (confrontation) with Malaysia and Singapore. Malaysia and Singapore themselves had recently separated in bitterness and antagonism. The Philippines maintained its claim to what had become the eastern Malaysian state of Sabah, Indonesia had gone through a massive bloodletting in putting down the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), and Thailand felt itself under threat from communist ascendancy in neighbouring Indochina. Burma and Cambodia had turned down the invitation of ASEAN's founders to join the association-in-the-making, so that after ASEAN's establishment Southeast Asia found itself divided between the five ASEAN members and the four that were not--Burma, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam (if one considers the then North and South Vietnam as one country). Brunei Darussalam had not yet attained independence from the United Kingdom.

More broadly, the Cold War was at its height and the throes of China's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution were spilling over into non-communist Southeast Asia. The United States was struggling with its war effort in Vietnam and other areas of Indochina, an intervention that had profound global and domestic political implications. The antagonistic relations among China, the Soviet Union and the United States and its Asian allies, including Japan, made for great instability and insecurity in East Asia.

As for ASEAN itself, China, the Soviet Union and Vietnam regarded it with deep hostility and suspicion, with Moscow looking upon it as the other side's instrument in the Cold War, Beijing regarding it as part of US-led efforts to "contain" the People's Republic of China (PRC), and Hanoi viewing it as another tool for preventing Vietnam's unification. Many saw ASEAN as yet another attempt at regional organization by five weak and squabbling states. Conventional wisdom at the time predicted the enterprise would be short-lived.

Between ASEAN's foundation in 1967 and its first Summit meeting in Bali in February 1976, ASEAN's members devoted themselves to consolidating the new Association, making sure that it survived, and overcoming the mutual suspicions and animosities that had bedeviled the relations among its members. The first ASEAN Summit was in many ways a watershed for the region. The fact that, after nine years, it finally took place showed both the fragility of the Association in its early years and the determination of its members to move ASEAN to a new stage. The Summit adopted the Declaration of ASEAN Concord, which set the future direction of the organization. The ASEAN leaders signed the Treaty of...

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