Building ASEAN

Apart from the already quite firmly established institutions of sovereign equality and national self-determination, thus, Bandung served as a forum to institutionalize peaceful dispute settlement, non-interference and anti-hegemonism as primary institutions of the post-colonial international society. This primary institutional context was fairly consolidated but displayed certain ambiguities, as is evident in the equivocal interpretation of non-alignment and its tension with the principle of non-interference.

While this emerging society slowly began to take contours through the formulation of distinctive primary institutions, it was not yet consolidated and its geographical outlines still quite blurred, constructed as it was in various formats of discourse production ranging from the Indian Ocean-rim format of the Colombo Powers to the vast extension of the Asia-Africa conference. One reason for these poorly defined boundaries was a lack of secondary institutionalization.

135 The first attempt at building a regional organization was SEATO, a counter-piece to the North Atlantic pact, including Pakistan, the Philippines and Thailand.⁶¹ Notably, it was established in 1954, that is, prior to the Bandung conference. The institutionalization of anti-hegemonism clearly constituted a primary institutional context that delegitimized SEATO’s rules and procedures, which provided for close cooperation with major external powers. As a consequence, SEATO cooperation never gained serious traction and became insignificant in Asian security affairs. There was less and less commitment to practices reproducing the organization until it was formally dissolved in 1977.

Evidently, the regional conferences had established an effective regional primary institutional framework that set certain limits for the range of possible secondary institutionalization. For one, anti-hegemonism and the implied rejection of great power management made it virtually impossible for any great power to become a member of such an organization. For those with a more rigid interpretation of the norm, it also precluded the establishment of an organization with a clear anti-communist stance, as is evidenced by the lukewarm reception of the proposal by the then Malayan Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Raman in 1958 to establish a Southeast Asian Friendship and Economic Treaty (SEAFET), which was to codify cultural and economic cooperation in the region. One of the reasons of SEAFET's failure was that the Philippines insisted on an institutional linkage to SEATO, an idea opposed by the Indonesian government, which subsequently abandoned the project. The remaining states involved in the debate over SEAFET – Malaya, the Philippines and Thailand – eventually moved on to create an Association of Southeast Asia (ASA) (Jetschke 2009: 414). All three member states had a declared anti-communist outlook, which strengthened perceptions by other Southeast Asian governments that ASA constituted a pro-Western bloc. Encumbered by the Philippine-Malayan conflict over Sabah in Northern Borneo, the organization was all but stillborn (Narine 2002: 10–11).

Only the initiative for the establishment of ASEAN, which was not susceptible to being a security alliance or overtly pro-Western, eventually proved to be sustainable.

61 The other member states were Australia, France, New Zealand, the UK and the U.S..

136

Statements by the foreign ministers at ASEAN’s founding meeting in Bangkok in 1967 attest the anti-hegemonic sentiment of its member states’ governments:⁶²

Indonesia always wants to see Southeast Asia develop into a region which can stand on its own feet, strong enough to defend itself against negative influence from outside the region. (Adam Malik, Indonesia)

If there are people who misunderstand the proposed grouping, or manifest hostility towards it, […] it can only be because […] outside powers have vested interests in the balkanisation of this region. We ourselves have learnt the lessons and have decided that small nations are not going to be balkanised so that they can be manipulated, set against one another, kept perpetually weak, divided and ineffective by outside forces. (Sinnathamby Rajaratnam, Singapore)

Even ASEAN’s translation of primary institutions into a secondary institutional framework was far from perfect, though. The references to the primary institutions of non-interference and anti-hegemonism in the Bangkok Declaration remain quite vague, mostly because of different interpretations of the primary institutions. Indonesian Foreign Minister Adam Malik had pushed for a formulation prohibiting great power-led collective defence in the region (Sucharitkul 2015: 4). The other states shared Indonesiaʼs scepticism towards external powers in principle but were factually reliant on them in the foreseeable future, as they all entertained some kind of security ties with great powers, and consequently opposed Malikʼs proposal (Narine 2002: 13–14).

The eventual text merely states the founding membersʼ resolve “to ensure their stability and security from external interference in any form or manifestation” and that

“all foreign bases are temporary”, without setting a clear timeframe for their termination.⁶³ The non-intrusive and ambiguous rules and procedures, which form part of what should later become known as the ASEAN Way (Narine 2002: 31–33), served as a way of mediating the tensions between the primary institutions of non-alignment on the one hand and non-interference (into national security policies) on the other. The formal statement but lack of enforcement of non-alignment through secondary institutions can be seen as a political compromise acknowledging the heterogeneity of

62 The quotes are taken from Jorgensen-Dahl (1982: 73–74).

63 A similar ambiguity can also be found in ASEAN's Declaration on a Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality of 1971, which rejected great power interference in the region but stopped short of formalizing actual neutralization and was declaratory, rather than legal, in nature (Narine 2002: 19–

22).

137 member statesʼ positions towards the institutional configuration.⁶⁴ The fact that close security cooperation with the West persisted throughout ASEAN’s history despite the continued proclamation of ideas of neutrality, non-alignment and anti-hegemonism demonstrates that this institutional solution created a pathway that accommodated a considerable amount of ambiguity in the institutional configuration of Southeast Asia’s international society.