Tag Archive for: ASEAN

Which came first? Strategic trust and maritime confidence building measures

ASPI'sconference on Maritime Conference Building Measures in the South China SeaASPI recently convened a conference on Maritime Confidence Building Measures in the South China Sea. It was attended by 62 participants from 16 countries and considered maritime confidence building measures of a military and non-military nature, as well as examining possible mechanisms for avoiding and managing incidents at sea.

In a post on the conference on the Lowy Interpreter, Rory Medcalf rightly pointed out that we need to get beyond a situation where some countries won’t institute CBMs until they’ve achieved a level of political and strategic trust that would make confidence building measures (CBMs) redundant.

This has become a ‘chicken and egg’ situation. What comes first—trust or CBMs? Some claim that the Chinese position is that CBMs aren’t possible in the South China Sea (SCS) without first building strategic trust. But others believe that when China puts forward proposals such as the ASEAN–China Maritime Cooperation Fund, it’s actually proposing CBMs. ASEAN claimants have been slow to embrace the Chinese proposals: they’re saying that some form of trust is required before there can be cooperation. This might mean some concessions by China with regard to its sovereignty claims in the SCS. Read more

ANZUS, Article 8 – has its time come?

What does the magic eight ball say?

On 5 September 1952, Richard Casey, the Minister for External Affairs, provided the Australian House of Representatives with a report on the first meeting of the ANZUS Council in Honolulu about a month earlier. The report gives an indication of the alliance’s early good health, reflecting engagement by senior policymakers, warm relationships and broad discussions. It also shows something else—the detailed consideration given to the place of Article 8 of the Treaty in the alliance’s future. Today, even among alliance cognoscenti Article 8 features scarcely at all in policy debate or the academic literature. The Article authorises the ANZUS Council

…to maintain a consultative relationship with States, Regional Organisations, Associations of States or other authorities in the Pacific Area in a position to further the purposes of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of that Area.

The single longest paragraph (by far) of the 1952 report covers the decision to focus on ANZUS as a close-knit tripartite alliance, and to put to one side the concept that ANZUS might be a vehicle for broader regional consultations. The broader concept sketched in Article 8 was to be kept under ‘continuous review’, but was deemed to be ‘premature’. The central effort was to go towards nurturing the defence and strategic relationship between the three core members of the alliance. As Casey put it in the report, ‘We felt that the first task was to concentrate on making the treaty work with its original limited membership.’ Read more

Australia: an ASEAN perspective

ASEAN Secretary General, Dr Surin Pitsuwan, at the launch of the Southeast Asia Institute, ANU (Photo credit: Ty Mason, ANU)

‘You [Australia] have found Southeast Asia, don’t lose it.’

These were the words of the highly charismatic ASEAN Secretary-General Dr Surin Pitsuwan, the key-note speaker at last Tuesday’s launch of the Southeast Asia Institute at the Australian National University. Discussing the future of ASEAN, a central theme of his talk is best reflected in the quote above: now that Australia has ‘found’ Southeast Asia, it is in our best interest to continue to focus our cooperation, support and involvement in that region.

According to Dr Surin, Australia’s ‘discovery’ and involvement in the region has been a recent phenomenon. For a long time, Southeast Asian states, and even Australians themselves, viewed Australia as something of an aberration—a European country that just happened to be located in the Asia Pacific. However, as Southeast Asia has grown and changed, it was ‘about time’ for Australia to look towards its neighbours and realise the advantages of being connected with that part of the world. This is particularly important as ASEAN has become increasingly interlinked as an economic bloc, and is attracting world attention as being centred in the ‘new growth centre of the world’. Read more