by Ambassador R.M. Michael Tene

          ASEAN is currently facing three political-security challenges in Southeast Asia. These challenges also highlighted some shortcomings that have limited the progress of ASEAN political-security cooperation and community building.

          The first type of challenge is internal domestic crisis such as the case of Myanmar.  Despite serious efforts from ASEAN, including the unprecedented steps to limit Myanmar’s participations at ASEAN Summit and ASEAN Foreign Ministers Meeting, ASEAN has so far failed to bring the conflicting parties in Myanmar to negotiate peaceful resolution to the armed conflict. One important factor that inhibited ASEAN from a more active and forceful mediation efforts is its principle of non-intervention. Myanmar’s crisis is internal and domestic in nature and ASEAN is not designed to address internal domestic crisis of its members. Instead, ASEAN’s instruments and mechanisms are primarily developed to promote and manage peaceful inter-states relationships among its members.

          For ASEAN to effectively mediate and contribute meaningfully to address crisis such as in Myanmar, ASEAN first needs to consider a more fundamental question. Namely, whether ASEAN can agree on a set of common ideals as the foundation for its political-security community building. Strictly speaking, the principles of consensus, non-interference, non-aggression, non-use of force and peaceful settlement of disputes are not common ideals, instead they are codes of conduct on how ASEAN Member States should behave towards one another.  Some principles enshrined in the ASEAN Charter that reflects common ideals are among others the principles of democracy, fundamental freedoms, human rights and social justice, as well as a market-driven economy.

To address internal domestic crisis, ASEAN can over-ride its “code of conduct” of non-interference only if there’s a breach of a more fundamental principle of ASEAN, namely the common ideals that serves as the foundation for ASEAN cooperation and community building. The importance of having common ideals is reflected in the substantive progress made by ASEAN in its economic integration. ASEAN achieves such progress because all ASEAN Member States agreed that market-driven economy and its related principles serve as the common ideals for its economic cooperation. While there are many provisions in ASEAN’s economic agreements that required adjustments, deletions and introductions of domestic laws by its respective members, such “ASEAN economic interferences” are considered in line with the ideals and interests of its Member States. In contrasts, while the ASEAN Charter enshrined common ideals for political-security cooperation, they remain confined in the provisions of the Charter and yet to serve as the foundation for ASEAN’s political-security community building. Dealing with challenges such as Myanmar will require ASEAN to uphold the common ideals that have collectively been agreed and enshrined in the ASEAN Charter.

          The second type of challenge faced by ASEAN is inter-states conflict, such as the ongoing border conflict between Thailand and Cambodia. Similar to when the border crisis erupted in 2008-2011, both Thailand and Cambodia so far have refused to use ASEAN peaceful settlement mechanisms to mediate their conflicts. Thailand insists on resolving the disputes through bilateral negotiations while Cambodia prefers to involve the International Court of Justice.  As mentioned above, ASEAN was precisely established to promote peaceful inter-states relations among its members. The Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC) and the ASEAN Charter contain provisions to peacefully managed conflicts between ASEAN members. While both countries have their own reasons, their hesitancy to make use of the ASEAN mechanisms to mediate and peacefully manage their conflict reflect poorly on their confidence on ASEAN. When its own Members don’t have the confidence to rely on ASEAN mechanisms to mediate and manage their conflict, it will be difficult for ASEAN to exert its centrality in managing and ensuring peace, security and stability in Southeast Asia and the wider Indo Pacific regions. The Thai-Cambodia crisis is a reminder for all ASEAN Member States to strengthen their confidences in the ASEAN mechanisms that they have collectively developed and agreed upon.

          The third type of challenge is in collectively navigating the Great Powers rivalry and confrontation in Southeast Asia and the wider Indo-Pacific. The increasingly divisive relations between the Great Powers in the Indo-Pacific region have raised doubts about the effectiveness of ASEAN led regional mechanisms (such as the ASEAN Regional Forum and the East Asia Summit), about ASEAN Centrality and about ASEAN Unity. These doubts arise among others from ASEAN’s inability to strongly project its collective and unified positions regarding some issues affected by the Great Powers rivalry. To be able to project its collective views on global and regional political and security issues ASEAN Members need to closely align their respective foreign policy and security outlooks which currently are quite diverse. To do so ASEAN has to intensify its internal dialogues to better understands the core interests and concerns of its members. Based on such deep understanding, ASEAN then must find ways to collectively addressed some of those core concerns of its members that hinder ASEAN’s ability to formulate its collective common views on some of the pertinent external political and security developments.

          In conclusion, to assert ASEAN Centrality in the current regional and global geopolitics, ASEAN must address three challenges on its political-security community building namely: lack of adherence to its common political-security ideals, lack of confidence in ASEAN mechanism, and lack of close alignment on its members’ foreign policy and security outlooks.

 Ambassador R.M. Michael Tene is Honorary Member of the Romanian Institute for Europe-Asia Studies – IRSEA.

H.E. Ambassador R.M. Michael Tene is a senior Indonesian diplomat. He served at Indonesian Embassies in London (1997-2001) and Washington DC (2005-2009). He was a Spokeperson of the Indonesian MFA (2010-2014) and an Ambassador/Deputy Permanent Representative at the Permanent Mission of Indonesia for the UN and other international organizations in Geneva (2015-2018). He also served as the Deputy Secretary General of ASEAN for Community and Corporate Affairs (2019-2021) and the Deputy Secretary General of ASEAN for ASEAN Political Security Community (2021-2024).

Concurrently, Ambassador Michael Tene is a very fine and deep thinking observer and analyst of the world international developments, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. As a very recently (up to February 2024) Deputy Secretary General of ASEAN for Political Security Community – the first out of the three important ASEAN Communities, his opinions, considerations and suggestions on ASEAN are of an inestimable value.

The opinions expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect the official policy, position or view of IRSEA