Non-official diplomacy in Southeast Asia: "civil society" or "civil service"?

• Author: Tan, See Seng

Introduction

Over a decade has passed since the phenomenon of non-official diplomacy emerged as a notable theme in the international affairs of Southeast Asia. (1) The emergence of unofficial diplomats from epistemic communities as well as "Track 2" networks across the Southeast Asian region--such as the ASEAN-ISIS (ASEAN Institutes of Strategic and International Studies) and CSCAP (Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific), among others--has contributed to a more expansive understanding of diplomacy as a multi-tracked enterprise with governmental as well as non-governmental features (Hernandez 1994; Simon 2002; Woods 1993). Moreover, in the light of ongoing (albeit incipient) institutional changes to long-standing regional norms and practices, non-official diplomacy has arguably had some impact in engendering those regional transitions. (2)

Nevertheless, efforts to arrive at some definitive conclusion about the nature and context of this broadened notion of diplomacy have not been entirely successful. This is largely due to the disagreement among analysts over the aims and accomplishments of non-official diplomacy vis-a-vis the Southeast Asian region. For the purpose of this essay, at least two broad observations, both apparently antithetical of each other, are noteworthy. On the one hand, non-official diplomacy in Southeast Asia is seen by some as emblematic of a growing and thriving civil society throughout the region, although it is clear that civil society is more developed in some regional states than others (Acharya 2003; Yamamoto 1995). On the other hand, this diplomatic form has also been viewed more critically as having supported and legitimated regional governments and their policies (Jones and Smith 2002a, 2002b, 2001a, 2001b; Khoo 2004). In this sense, non-official diplomatic agents, in their "licensed" role as "scholar-bureaucrats", ostensibly serve as a sort of shadow civil service, as it were. (3)

Upon closer inspection, however, a more complex picture emerges that calls into question the supposed coherence of that distinction. Against that backdrop, this paper analyses the evolution of non-official diplomacy in Southeast Asia in the post-Cold War era, paying close attention to the multifarious practices and processes in which nonofficial diplomatic agents engage that make them not only civil society participants whose ideas challenge the identity and interests of the state, but, paradoxically, also "civil servants" who promote and protect those very things. Whether this inherent tension is resolvable is open to question. If anything, the heterogeneous "nature" of non-official diplomacy resists efforts to fix and reduce it to an either/or option between civil society and "civil service".

Drawing upon Der Derian's (1987) "genealogical" interpretation of French diplomacy during and after the Revolution of 1789, this study seeks to examine various diplomatic forms and forces that comprise non-official diplomacy in Southeast Asia, including those that lie outside the pale of the modern "common sense" logic that underpins orthodox diplomatic theory but which play an integral part in the ongoing formation and preservation of modern diplomacy. (4) As Maurice Keens-Soper (1973, p. 913) once conceded, it may "be more accurate to say that diplomacy is partly defined by the invasions and distortions which permanently threaten its purposes". In this respect, this article argues that non-official diplomacy embodies and embraces both orthodox diplomatic as well as radical "anti-diplomatic" practices, which coexist in irresolvable tension with one another. By probing the ambiguities and contradictions of non-official diplomacy, we find that the enduring story of diplomacy has been and is being defined more by the demands of a hyper-realist and state-centric reading of diplomacy and less by actual day-to-day activities of which diplomacy consists.

The Many Faces of Modern Diplomacy

James Der Derian's (1987) conceptual categories of "diplomacy", "anti-diplomacy", and "neo-diplomacy" are particularly useful for capturing various diplomatic activities that exceed the representational limits of modern diplomatic theory. (5) "Diplomacy" follows closely the modern conception of diplomacy as essentially state-to-state relations characterized by order and continuity, ruled by common sense, and which preserve the raison d'etat (reason-of-state) principle. "Anti-diplomacy" refers to the vertical or hierarchical relationship between modern state and society. More specifically, it emphasizes the kinds of interactions between official and non-official or between state and society that are anathema to the purposes of modern diplomacy. They include dissident and resistance movements; in the case of revolutionary France, for instance, anti-diplomatic pressures emerged in the form of the bourgeoisie's push for political power. To the extent that interstate relations are affected by anti-diplomatic forces, one may think of the rise of revisionist regimes whose revolutionary experiences are perceived by other states as threatening the international status quo. In this sense, anti-diplomatic threats may arise in terms of the revolutionary regime's newfound international aggressiveness or the possible "spillover" of anti-diplomatic practices to other communities. Finally, "neo-diplomacy" refers to alternative forms of mediation practised by nonofficial diplomatic agents that may prove either instrumental or detrimental to the purposes of diplomacy. (6) Neo-diplomatic forms, such as "people-to-people" diplomacy, are not necessarily new to the extent that historically they have, in effect, been in existence (Woods 1993). That they have attained greater visibility in recent times, as has been the case with non-official diplomacy in Southeast Asia is due to the proliferation of Track 2 and other networks linking various interested individuals and groups throughout the region.

It is entirely possible that the interplay of incipient diplomatic forms, anti-diplomatic resistances, and compromises between those opposites heralded the arrival of modern diplomacy. Revolutionary France is an interesting historical example of how multiple diplomatic forms have clashed, reformulated, regressed, and stabilized, but remain ever "at risk" of further transformations. However, unlike the teleological story of modern diplomacy, such alternating subversions and consolidations did not evolve in a rational course, guided by--in ways reminiscent of Kant's appeal to universal Reason--a common sense at once heroic, universal, and un-beholden to history, and eventuating in the current diplomatic form (Gramsci 1971, p. 326).

In their dealings with anti-diplomatic forces, proponents of old-style diplomacy resort to tactics of accommodation and marginalization that reflect "lowly origins" (Nietzsche 1956). Edmund Burke (1967), we may recall, famously inveighed against threats posed by the French Revolution to the diplomatic culture and enterprise shared by the monarchical European powers as well as to the very identity of Britain. That the Revolution was an estrangement from (if not repudiation of) the social composition, crypto-diplomacy, and power politics of the ancien regime could therefore have meant that the emancipation logic of the Revolution was, in an important sense, anti-diplomatic. (7) Amid these conflicts rose a non-official diplomatic form, neo-diplomacy, which, in accordance with Enlightenment objectives, aimed to transcend the intrigue, suspicions, and machinations of old-style diplomacy. (8) According to that logic, diplomatic agents represent all the people, not simply the aristocracy; it constitutes, as it were, a form of people-to-people diplomacy as well as state-to-state diplomacy. (9) The durability of this post-revolution neo-diplomacy was short-lived, however, for the exigencies, logic, and rhetoric of war, which culminated in the rise of Napoleon in 1799, rapidly obtruded upon the principles and practice of neo-diplomacy. In other words, the neo-diplomacy of revolutionary France was more or less overwhelmed by a hyper-realism wherein the "signs and symbols of realist realpolitik" were circulated in the economy of power and discourse in order to tame the incipient neo-diplomacy. As such, neo-diplomatic forms ended up being domesticated if not colonized by old-style diplomacy such that the former came to be deployed in diplomatic discourse as well as other related social discourses in the service of raison d'etat. (10)

One can therefore say that post-revolution France instituted a form of diplomatic practice suitable for mediating relations with emerging democracies as well as absolutist regimes. From the nouveau regime came the beginnings of a diplomatic culture, expressed in the ongoing inclusion and exclusion of diplomatic forms both clashing and converging, that invokes the modern disposition towards the organizing of space and time along inside/outside divisions, especially the domestic/ international divide of inter-nation-al diplomatic relations. With the co-option of the neo-diplomatic form by old-style diplomacy, the alliance between diplomacy and hyper-state-centrism was again stabilized, if only tentatively (Der Derian 1987, p. 183). In reason-of-state, the Machiavellian strategy for riding the vicissitudes of a crumbling medieval hierarchy comes full circle in the compromise (albeit a never fully settled one) between old Europe and revolutionary France. (11)

Non-official Diplomacy in Southeast Asia

In conceptual terms at least, non-official diplomacy in Southeast Asia may be read in terms not dissimilar to those which (a la Der Derian) defined revolutionary French neo-diplomacy: the supposition that relations between sovereign states, in order to be sound and healthy, ought to be based on relations between individual citizens. The gist of non-official diplomacy, according to one formulation, is...