Asean at 50, more of a neighbourhood

The ‘Asean Way’ has brought the grouping a long way, but it defines not only how fast but also how far it can move with the community idea.

SOUTH-EAST Asian countries today are far more integrated than they have ever been, but Asean has some way to go before it can call itself a real community.

The 10 member countries are glued together more because of their geographical proximity, and out of that perhaps comes a sense of shared destiny.

But a community, where members have shared values and principles, Asean is not.

For now, it is looking more like a neighbourhood – of nations, big and small, rich and poor, at different stages of economic and political development, and they are already trading with one another more and more.

But they are ruled under vastly different political systems and ideologies, and often they have little in common other than the knowledge that their prosperity is closely tied because they are neighbours.

Asean marks its 50th anniversary on Aug 8, and although the group has officially become the Asean Community since the end of 2015, it is difficult to find the spirit or the sense of being part of an emerging community.

Their governments rarely talk about Asean being a community. Some call it an Asean economic community because of the closer economic integration.

Their peoples, according to most surveys, are mostly ignorant about the community idea. Many do not even know what the Asean acronym stands for, let alone the benefits the association brings.

The Asean motto, “One Vision, One Identity, One Community”, has hardly taken root among the 625 million citizens. Few people sing the Asean anthem, The Asean Way. Few people actually are aware that there is such an anthem.

But at least there is the stated intention of turning the region into a community. As the anthem goes, “we dare to dream, we care to share, for it’s the way of Asean”.

What is grossly missing is the political will of its leaders to take up the community idea more seriously.

This, however, does not take away the value of Asean in the first 50 years of its existence, to the member countries, to their peoples, and to the rest of Asia and beyond.

The association has given five decades of uninterrupted peace which has afforded member countries the time to focus attention on and devote resources to nation-building and economic development.

Asean meetings have expanded with offshoots such as the Asean Regional Forum and the East Asia Summit, that bring all the major powers in the world and the Asian region to discuss political and economic security.

Asean has been dubbed the most successful regional organisation in the world. So successful, in fact, that Asean has often been in the driving seat for some initiatives seen in the Asia-Pacific region.

Fifty years ago, this region of Asia was a zone filled with tensions and conflicts. Every country had some bones to pick with all its neighbours over historical overlapping territorial claims or ideological differences. In the Cold War context, South-East Asia gave the perfect theatre for the big powers to conduct their proxy wars.

The original five founding Asean members – Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand – worked out the perfect way to overcome their differences and their territorial disputes, by putting them aside, a formula that has survived the test of time as the group expanded over the years.

Non-interference in the internal affairs of other members and the decision-making process by consensus make up the elements that created the “Asean Way”, a slow but almost sure and, most importantly, peaceful mechanism. It takes one member to kill any initiative or to slow down the process.

That is the way Asean has grown – some describing it as the recipe for its success.

It is still going to be the way it moves forward for the foreseeable future, but it may become the one factor that slows and limits the process of closer integration.

The integration of their economies has moved far afield with countries investing in one another more than before.

The political integration is moving at a slower pace, if at all.

Asean never had the pretension to replicate the European Union (EU), and the Brexit episode makes it even more unlikely for Asean countries to want to move faster towards political integration.

The EU places more emphasis on members having shared values and principles. Former East European communist states had to work hard at political reforms to strengthen their democracy, freedom and human rights guarantees before they were admitted to the club.

No such requirements in Asean. If the map shows you’re part of South-East Asia, welcome to the neighbourhood. No questions asked.

Unlike the EU, Asean is a collection of diverse political regimes. There was an attempt to write in the principles of democracy, freedom and human rights when Asean was drafting its charter as part of the move to become a community.

The original white paper, prepared by eminent Asean persons, was a very progressive document, but when their officials got their hands on it, they shot down the requirements that member governments must ascribe to on basic democratic principles.

The Asean Charter, enacted in 2008, was a milestone nevertheless for the regional grouping.

The official launching of the Asean Community on Dec 31, 2015, marked the intention of their leaders to bring their countries closer together, if not politically, then certainly economically. Now they look to 2025 as the new target for some of the community ideals to be fulfilled.

But the march towards a community, in the real sense of the word, will likely have to wait until these countries decide to come and live together under some shared principles and values.

For now, let’s be content with Asean being a neighbourhood. It’s not a bad one.