"Enhanced interaction" with Myanmar and the project of a security community: is ASEAN refining or breaking with its diplomatic and security culture?

• Author: Haacke, Jurgen
• Position: Association of Southeast Asian Nations

Introduction

In June 1998, against the backdrop of the Asian economic and financial crisis and serious diplomatic disagreements with neighbouring Myanmar, (1) former Thai Foreign Minister Surin Pitsuwan called on members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to adopt the concept of "flexible engagement" as a corporate policy. (2) "Flexible engagement" was to allow ASEAN governments to publicly comment on and collectively discuss fellow members' domestic policies when these would have cross-border implications, i.e. adversely affect the disposition of other ASEAN states. Surin Pitsuwan's bold proposal constituted a multi-pronged challenge to ASEAN's diplomatic and security culture (Haacke 1999, pp. 583-85). (3) First, "flexible engagement" appeared to challenge the principle of non-interference in the sense that agreement on the concept seemed designed to pave the way for unsolicited involvement in the domestic affairs of other states. Second, the proposal challenged the norm of quiet diplomacy because the concept was to explicitly allow for public discussion and criticism of one ASEAN country by another. And, third, by suggesting that the Association should become involved in intra-state issues if these entailed adverse consequences for other members, "flexible engagement" also challenged the long-standing norm that ASEAN should not take up collectively what for the most part would previously have been regarded as bilateral disputes. Arguably, the proposal also threatened to remove the ambiguity that until then had allowed individual member states to sometimes engage in and/or tolerate perceived instances of diplomatic interference. While noting that "flexible engagement" would indeed amount to a new departure for ASEAN, the Thai Foreign Minister was adamant at the time that "flexible engagement" was not incompatible with the principle of non-interference. Rather, it was an attempt to delimit the range of situations in which individual member states would henceforth still be justified to appeal to the norm of non-interference to ward off outside involvement in their so-called internal affairs. Notably, the "flexible engagement" idea did not amount to the advocacy of a new security model. Nor was it meant to denote for ASEAN a sudden shift from a state-centric view of security to new security referents or a shift to an exclusive preoccupation with a new category of threats.

In the event, the overwhelming majority of ASEAN countries rejected Surin's proposal, mainly because not to do so seemed to potentially open up a can of worms that could endanger intramural stability and, in some cases, jeopardize regime security. Having repulsed "flexible engagement", ASEAN governments nevertheless informally agreed to henceforth allow for "enhanced interaction". (4) This decision reflected the realization of ASEAN decision-makers that they ultimately could not prevent each other from publicly commenting on those intrastate developments that had a perceived detrimental social, economic or political impact on other members or the Association as a whole. Nevertheless, at the time there was (or seemed to be) a subtle but significant difference between "enhanced interaction" and "flexible engagement", insofar as "enhanced interaction" appeared to imply that individual member states could comment on other members' "domestic affairs" although ASEAN should not. In other words, as a compromise, "enhanced interaction" de facto condoned efforts of individual ASEAN leaders to take their colleagues to task on matters heretofore perceived as "domestic affairs" if the issue at hand had cross-boundary implications, while still ruling out the legitimacy of such endeavours being undertaken under ASEAN's auspices. Notably, when put into practice, "enhanced interaction" quickly proved deeply disruptive and divisive within the Association and led to the temporary reassertion of more traditional understandings of ASEAN's diplomatic and security culture (Kraft 2000, Ramcharan 2000, Haacke 1999: 598-603).

However, the Association did not put "enhanced interaction" ad acta. Indeed, its members embarked on a number of procedural innovations in the face of regional adversity and mounting security challenges in the period up to 2001. First, ASEAN agreed on the establishment of a surveillance mechanism that was to help prevent a reoccurrence of the Asian financial and economic crisis primarily by sharing and exchanging data and providing for the possibility to communicate any concerns member states might have in relation to macroeconomic developments in another member. Second, ASEAN embraced Singapore's proposal to organize a foreign ministers' retreat where, it was suggested, frank intramural exchanges would be possible. In the aftermath of international intervention in East Timor in September 1999, ASEAN moreover adopted a Thai proposal for an ASEAN Troika (ASEAN 2000) "to enable ASEAN to address in a timely manner urgent and important regional political and security issues and situations of common concern likely to disturb regional peace and harmony". At the same 4th ASEAN Informal Summit in Singapore in November 2000, an attempt was also made to engage Myanmar's core leader, Senior General Than Shwe, in a dialogue on domestic developments. This was followed by the adoption of rules of procedure for the ASEAN High Council in 2001. Although useful instruments in and of themselves, closer inspection of these innovative steps suggested that in both conceptual and practical terms, none of the measures denoted a major development of ASEAN's diplomatic and security culture overall because they still upheld the status of norms like non-interference, quiet diplomacy and also made it voluntary on members to involve ASEAN in dealing with bilateral disputes. (5) Nevertheless, they also indicated a willingness to pursue "enhanced interaction" in the context of ASEAN's intramural diplomacy along similar lines as outlined in relation to "flexible engagement". (6)

This article attempts to demonstrate that even after 9/11 and members' continuing concerns about the regional fall-out of intra-state, non-traditional and transnational security threats, ASEAN's collective thinking about its shared normative terrain has not been significantly revamped or abandoned. The argument will be developed on the basis of an examination of a major aspect of ASEAN's recent intramural diplomacy, ASEAN's collective stance toward Myanmar, as well as the contestation and final consensus of members on working toward an ASEAN Security Community (ASC). The argument is that ASEAN's censure of Myanmar in the wake of the violence at Depayin on 30 May 2003, although unprecedented in its particularities, did not amount to the Association breaking with the non-interference norm; nor has ASEAN since systematically disregarded other norms of its diplomatic and security culture in relation to Yangon, a point that also applies to the intramural debate about whether Myanmar should assume the chairmanship of ASEAN in 2006/7. It is further argued that Indonesia's original proposal for the establishment of an ASC may have posed a conceptual and political challenge to ASEAN's diplomatic and security culture, but that it met significant intramural resistance before a "sanitized" version was integrated into the Declaration of ASEAN Concord II (also known as Bali Concord II), adopted in October 2003, and, the year after, into the ASEAN Security Community Plan of Action (including its annex) and the Vientiane Action Programme (VAP).

Nevertheless, ASEAN's practical diplomacy vis-a-vis Myamnar in coniunction with some provisions of the three documents concerning the ASC can be interpreted as signalling an acceptance in principle that the Association continue and refine "enhanced interaction". Members now generally consider it to be legitimate for the Association as a whole to take an active interest in members' intra-state developments should these threaten the credibility of the grouping (particularly as regards relations with the Dialogue partners) or the security of the wider region. This view primarily translates into the expectation that governments facing intra-state challenges with regional implications provide updated information on relevant domestic situations at all levels of state interaction. This had not been the ASEAN consensus when Surin Pitsuwan first proposed "flexible engagement". Of course, this expectation should not be confused with the notion of an acceptance by ASEAN members that they are entitled to push for or impose particular solutions to the problem at hand.

The paper is organized into three sections. The first section deals with ASEAN's diplomacy toward Myanmar between June 2003 and April 2005. The second focuses on the ASC proposal, the Plan of Action and the Vientiane Action Programme. Both sections provide a brief introductory account of the issues before analysing their significance in relation to ASEAN's diplomatic and security culture. The third and final section explores the reasons why ASEAN countries have on the whole demonstrated a measure of zeal in further refining "enhanced interaction", but no pressing enthusiasm for abandoning its core norms and developing institutional solutions that would soon allow ASEAN to go beyond diplomacy in dealing with regional challenges.

Myanmar and ASEAN's Diplomatic and Security Culture

Following months of growing tensions in Myanmar between Aung San Suu Kyi (and the National League for Democracy, NLD), on the one hand, and the military regime, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), on the other, the two sides became embroiled in a bloody encounter at Depayin on 30 May 2003. This incident left at least four people dead and saw Aung San Suu Kyi being taken into "protective custody". While shaken by this turn of events, ASEAN nevertheless postponed a formal collective response until the convening...