Regional order in East Asia after summits
While Asean-related leaders’ meetings tend to come and go with a lot of spectacle and brouhaha without much lasting substantive impact, the recently concluded summits of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in Vietnam and the United States-Asean and the East Asia Summit in the Philippines will be seen in hindsight as highly consequential. The geopolitical and geoeconomic positions of just about all attending countries were more or less known before hand. This most recent summit season was about the policy orientation and preferences of the US under President Donald Trump.
It was Mr Trump’s geopolitical coming out party, his first major trip to Asia spanning 12 days. What East Asian nations, excluding China and Russia, were looking for was a US counterweight for more geopolitical balance vis-a-vis China.
But instead what they got was Mr Trump’s “omnidirectionality” of sorts whereby the US leader befriended everybody to the hilt without care and caution for geopolitical considerations. By going out of his way to suck up to Chinese President Xi Jinping (whom Mr Trump called “a very special man”) and Russian President Vladimir Putin (whose denial of interfering in the US election last year was accepted by Mr Trump at face value), and by not standing up for American leadership, ideals and principles, Mr Trump is at risk of forfeiting East Asia to Beijing’s expanding orbit.
What Mr Trump has done on this trip bears far-reaching ramifications for Asean, particularly the US leader’s offer to “mediate” conflicts between Asean states and China on the South China Sea. What Asean is looking for from Washington on the South China Sea is not mediation but geopolitical reinforcement and support.
The recent breakdown of Asean unity and erosion its centrality on the South China Sea tensions, based on China’s land reclamation and construction and weaponisation of artificial islands, have been damaging not only to Southeast Asian countries but also to the major powers who otherwise would have no buffer and acceptable broker among them. If Asean no longer works, China will be in a position to dominate East Asia, even with Japan looking on in mainland Southeast Asia and the US prying the depths of the South China Sea.
But because a divided Asean may embolden China to dominate, it could also lead to tension and conflict among the major powers. Certainly, there is always the spectre of the two leading major powers — China and the US — engaging in a grand collusion to dominate and divide East Asia between them. This has been made more plausible by Mr Trump’s trip and accommodation of China but it is still unlikely long term.
US-China geopolitical rivalry is deepseated, and domestic constituencies on both sides might not countenance this superpower collusion. The US foreign and security establishment is as unlikely to opt for a China-US “condominium” as Chinese powers-that-be to accept sharing what they see as their neighbourhood with a faraway Western superpower.
Alternatively, in view of President Trump’s “America First” proclivities, bilateral preferences and transactional outcomes, the US under Mr Trump could revert to its tried and tested hub-and-spokes system in East Asia by shoring up and bolstering its alliances with Australia, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea and Thailand. These bilateral alliances would be complemented by US strategic partnerships with key states such as Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. This is the kind of status quo ante that China would likely oppose. Mr Trump’s Asia trip has not highlighted the role of US treaty allies, and so this modality is not likely.
Yet another option for order would be if regional middle powers stepped up strategic cooperation, particularly Australia, Japan and India. Working closely with these middle powers that are working closely among themselves could be Asean’s optimal way forward as long as it can hem in recent disunity over divisive issues, mainly the South China Sea.
Mr Trump’s trip focused on his “America First” mantra and dwelt on US trade deficits, North Korea’s nuclear threat, and international terrorism. In what was billed by one observer as Mr Trump’s “charm offensive”, the US accommodated the other major powers, particularly China, more than Asean states would have liked to see. But it is still early days, and Mr Trump is not alien to changing positions, such as when he became cosy with Chinese President Xi in their most recent bilateral meeting after alleging just a year earlier before being elected to office that China was “raping” US economic interests.
Mr Trump has been omni-directional towards East Asia in his first year of office but he could still provide support and geopolitical balance if China becomes more belligerent in the face of opposition from some of the Asean states. Overall, Asean will be around but it will not be going many places with any speed as long as it cannot regain its unity for Asean centrality. If Asean is not front and centre in East Asia, its smaller states, even including Indonesia with its 255 million population, the region will be overwhelmed and overshadowed by China.
Asean states that are not firmly in China’s orbit should make it known openly that compromising Asean centrality bodes ill not just for Asean but also for the major powers themselves, which would then be without a regional interlocutor and architectural broker.
The challenges from Asean’s past, from regional divisions and interventions from the major powers, are its conundrum in the future. It has to draw more from within over the past 50 years to persevere, warts and all, and move forward as the paramount and indispensable platform for regional stability and prosperity.
What Mr Trump has done on this trip bears far-reaching ramifications for Asean.