Region, Security and the Return of History 9789812306159

Citation preview

Region, Security and the Return of History

Department of History, National University of Singapore The Department of History is one of the oldest departments in the National University of Singapore. Its roots can be traced to 1929, when history was made part of the curriculum of the newly founded Raffles College. Over the years, the Department has grown in size as well as in its research and curricular range. It currently has 23 full-time faculty members and each year approximately 5,000 undergraduates enrol in its modules. The Department’s expertise lies primarily in the history of Asia, with special emphasis on Southeast and East Asia, but there is also a strong selection of offerings in European and American History, Art History, Military History and Historiography. Modules cover a wide range of topics, including maritime history; economic, social and cultural history; science and technology; and Asian business history. Traditionally, the Department has emphasized providing undergraduate education to prepare its students for their future careers, and this task remains a major commitment. However, graduate studies in history are now a priority area for expansion, and the Department currently has a sizeable population of MA and PhD candidates, with a comprehensive graduate curriculum. Raffles Visiting Professor The Raffles Chair in History, last filled in 1983, has been reconstituted as the Raffles Visiting Professorship in History. Scholars invited to fill this position will be distinguished figures in the field of Asian history, in keeping with the focus of the Department and in the spirit of the historical interests of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles. The first holder of the Raffles Visiting Professorship in History is Professor Anthony Milner of the Australian National University. Professor Milner was in residence at the Department between July and December 2002. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies was established as an autonomous organization in 1968. It is a regional centre dedicated to the study of socio-political, security and economic trends and developments in Southeast Asia and its wider geostrategic and economic environment. The Institute's research programmes are the Regional Economic Studies (RES, including ASEAN and APEC), Regional Strategic and Political Studies (RSPS), and Regional Social and Cultural Studies (RSCS). ISEAS regularly copublishes book on topics related to its research programmes.

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

ANTHONY MILNER Region, Security and the Return of History

L5EA5 INSTITUTE OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN STUDIES

Singapore

First published in Singapore in 2003 by Institute of Southeast Asian Studies 30 Heng Mui Keng Terrace Pasir Panjang E-mail: [email protected] Singapore 119614 Website: http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg for the Department of History National University of Singapore 10 Kent Ridge Crescent Singapore 119260 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, for the Department of History, NUS.

©

2003 Department of History, National University of Singapore.

The responsibility for facts and opinions in this publication rests exclusively with the author and his interpretations do not necessarily reflect the views or the policy of the Department of History, the University, the Institute, or their supporters. ISEAS Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Milner, A. C. (Anthony Crothers), 1945Region, security and the return of history. (Raffles lecture, 0129-8177 ; 1) 1. Regionalism—Asia, Southeastern—History. 2. ASEAN. 3. National security—Asia, Southeastern. 4. Asia, Southeastern—Foreign relations. I. Title. II. Series: Raffles lecture series ; 1. DS501 I61 no. 1 2003 sls2003008017 ISBN 981-230-221-2 ISSN 0219-8177 Printed in Singapore by Markono Digital Solutions Pte Ltd

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

CONTENTS Critiquing ASEAN 4 The Convergence Era 7 Security and Talk 15 Regionalism in Europe 21 Recognizing Difference 24 Difference in the Regional Conversation 28 The Historian 31 Excess, Islam 33 Notes 43 Select Bibliography 53 About the Author 57

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

This lecture was delivered by Anthony Milner, Basham Professor of Asian History and Dean of Asian Studies, Australian National University, and Raffles Visiting Professor in the Department of History, National University of Singapore. It was the Inaugural Raffles Lecture, organized by the Department of History, National University of Singapore on 2 December 2002.

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Reproduced from Region, Security and the Return of History (The Raffles Lecture Series), by Anthony Milner (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2003). This version was obtained electronically direct from the publisher on condition that copyright is not infringed. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. Individual articles are available at < http://bookshop.iseas.edu.sg >

Region, Security and the Return of History

REGION, SECURITY AND THE RETURN OF HISTORY Anthony Milner

It is an honour to present the first Raffles Lecture, and it has been a pleasure and a stimulation to work this year with Professor Tan Tai Yong and the Department of History at the National University of Singapore. In talking tonight about “Region, Security and the Return of History”, I will be focussing on ‘talk’ itself in the context of region and security. Some have spoken derogatively about the role of ‘talk’ in this region. I will speak in defence of ‘talk’. Sir Stamford Raffles, it happens, had a considerable interest in the themes I am discussing. He had a good sense of the 1

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Anthony Milner

region itself. He did not use the term ‘Southeast Asia’ but he referred to the Malay Archipelago, Ava (or Myanmar), Siam and Cambodia, together with Cochin China and Tonkin (together, Vietnam) as a region, or rather as a ‘field’. These countries, he said, happen to be situated between the “rich and populous continents of China on the one hand and India on the other”. Their coasts are “washed by the smoothest seas in the world” and the countries possessed, in his words, “large and navigable rivers” that offered “communication with the interior”.1 Raffles, in his way, was a regionalist — or more specifically an open regionalist. Trade, he saw, was a bonding element in the region. There was, he said, a “constant intercourse and circulation ... set in motion by the spirit by commerce”. He wanted to foster that regional, commercial intercourse and, as an open regionalist, to do so in ways that would promote the region’s commerce with the wider world (especially, of course, Great Britain). 2

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Region, Security and the Return of History

Raffles was also concerned about what might be called the talk of the region — about the flow of ideas — and here, as in the case of commerce itself, he saw Singapore playing a special role. Influenced partly by his study of history, Raffles portrayed Singapore as being at “the very centre of this Archipelago”. He wanted an educational institution in Singapore that studied the peoples of what we call today Southeast Asia — with teachers of Siamese, Burmese and Pali as well as Malay, Bugis, Chinese and Arabic. Whether or not Raffles was the true founder of Singapore, he certainly deserves a prominent place in the history of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore and the various Southeast Asian studies enterprises in the National University of Singapore. Raffles, it must be stressed, was keen to see Singapore promote the spread of knowledge from outside the region, as well as the study of the region itself. He was concerned in particular about “moral improvement” — we might think here of 3

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Anthony Milner

the spread of norms. When he spoke of moral improvement he clearly had in mind the communication of Western, specifically British ideas and institutions. Globalization for Raffles had a particularly British flavour, just as it is easily confused today with Americanization. What Raffles emphasized was that “moral and intellectual improvement” was not only good for its own sake; it also helped to promote commerce and, in addition, security. The education he had in mind, he said, would foster the “general security and good order” of the region. So in Raffles’ thinking about Southeast Asia we have region and security, and history as well. We also have a concern for the communication of ideas — as it were, for talk.

CRITIQUING ASEAN My own interest in the matter of ‘talk’ or ‘conversation’ in this Southeast Asian region arises partly from a phrase I have seen repeated in condemnations of 4

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Region, Security and the Return of History

ASEAN and the regional grouping it has fostered, the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). Time and again those disappointed with ASEAN condemn the organization as a mere “talk-shop”.2 This is not the time to examine the balance sheet for ASEAN or the ARF. At the very least, however, it might be suggested that the tests that have been proposed for ASEAN — whether it was able to prevent the Asian Economic Crisis, for instance — to be extraordinarily demanding.3 ASEAN’s achievements in developing the ASEAN +3 process would certainly appear to deserve special recognition and, in fact, over the last few months we have seen commercial and strategic developments that have the capacity to give encouragement to even cynical commentators.4 What I want to focus on here, however, is the line of criticism that is so prominent in the discussion of ASEAN regionalism — the condemnation as a “talk-shop”. The rhetoric associated with this condemnation makes it all the harder 5

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Anthony Milner

to resist. It is said that ASEAN (and the ARF) must “act as a grown up”,5 must be less “mindful of the sensitivities of member countries”, 6 must develop a “more robust institutionalisation”,7 must be reinvented or revitalized.8 The tone of the criticism is tough, and masculine. The “ASEAN model” regarding regional security, for instance, is dismissed by one severe critic as merely one of “multilateral dialogue”.9 It is true that ASEAN faces important practical tasks today, and that the builders of ASEAN have given a lot of attention to the slow and complex process of establishing common norms, and a sense of community, in the Southeast Asian region. And in setting out to defend such processes as being of vital and current importance, I can almost sense one of my colleagues in Canberra in security studies tapping his foot with impatience. But the fact is that there are tough reasons for taking talk seriously in regional relations, especially security relations.

6

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Region, Security and the Return of History

THE CONVERGENCE ERA The first observation that can be made is that to use ‘talk-shop’ in a dismissive manner is in one sense anachronistic. It expresses an attitude that was more appropriate in an earlier era. Impatience with ASEAN and its culture-sensitive, dialogue processes was relatively understandable a decade ago. In retrospect, the early and mid-90s was an optimistic period for globalizers: think of the heady language then about the prospects for APEC’s open regionalism, with its commitment to tariff reduction and the implementation of international standards, international norms and international regimes.10 The mid-1990s was still the time of the miracle economies of Asia, and many commentators believed that such economic progress would necessarily be accompanied by liberal political change. Unlike Raffles, the former Hong Kong Governor Chris Patten thought the link between trade and ideas did not need to be promoted by government. It

7

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Anthony Milner

was automatic, irresistible. You “cannot compartmentalize freedom,” he said. “You may build walls between economics and politics, but they are walls of sand.”11 According to Francis Fukuyama, history had come to an end: there was, he said, “no ideology with pretensions to universality”,12 not even ideology based on Islam, that could possibly challenge liberal democracy. In Australia, the respected Foreign Minister of the time, Gareth Evans, assured us that just as economies were being transformed so English was spreading as a lingua franca in the region, and a cultural convergence was being consolidated around such liberal principles as multiculturalism and democracy.13 From the perspective of such a convergence paradigm — for some a very optimistic vision — there were two prominent spoilers: Prime Minister Mahathir and the eminent American commentator, Samuel Huntington, who opposed the convergence vision with his own dark spectre of a ‘clash of civilisations’.14 8

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Region, Security and the Return of History

In the convergence era it was easy to be neglectful of history. Even historians sensed the danger. In the 1994 edition of his popular history of Southeast Asia, Milton Osborne in fact found “so much evidence of modernity” that, as a professional historian, he felt obliged to warn that we could not necessarily conclude that the “countries and peoples” of the region had “lost their individual identities and succumbed to western and global norms”.15 With such a devaluing of history — such faith in the momentum of liberal convergence — it was understandable that many of the preoccupations of ASEAN were viewed with impatience. The very way in which ASEAN builders described their task would cause irritation. The repeated stress on the “patience, tolerance, non-aggressive attitudes” said to be necessary in order to create “common value systems”;16 the perceived need to identify cultural elements which are “congruent with some values of each of the member states”;17 the oft-declared 9

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Anthony Milner

ambition to create a “true understanding and appreciation of each other’s cultures and each other’s interests”;18 the objective that all the “relevant actors“ in ASEAN should “continuously be exposed to one another”;19 the declared desire to build more than a “mere organisation”, and to cater also for the “spiritual life”20 of the Southeast Asian community — these are the types of aspirations that frustrated the critics. The common value system itself, which the builders of ASEAN carefully assembled — the shared elements that the ideologues identified and reconstructed; the extensive talk about ‘Asian values’ — added to the irritation of the convergenceminded critics. People who were certain of a rapid consolidation of an international, liberal convergence of value systems could only respond with annoyance when they read of the so-called “ASEAN Way” — the intended common value system that stressed not formal structures but a dependence on “kinship, kinlike relations”,21 and that placed a high premium on the careful process of 10

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Region, Security and the Return of History

consensus making and consensus decision, and a strong emphasis on the sensitive refusal to interfere in the affairs of a member state. The ASEAN Way, furthermore, included an ethos that took pride in “sublimating and diffusing conflicts” as well as resolving them.22 To the critic of the 1990s, a period when the liberal convergence of value systems was widely judged to be as unstoppable as the rising economic prosperity, all this sensitivity — all this talk-talk — seemed a waste of time. Today, however, the context has changed greatly. The giant state of the region, Indonesia, has been beset with separatist demands from groups claiming long-established historical identities; an opinion poll taken this year showed the Sultan of Jogjakarta — the ‘feudal’ sultan, let us remind ourselves — to be the most popular leader among young Indonesians.23 The Asian Economic Crisis, to take a further example, provoked a degree of anti-Western sentiment fuelled in part by memories of an anti-colonial 11

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Anthony Milner

past;24 and, in addition, certain Islamist groups are said to have been planning an Islamic state which would reach across the post-colonial borders of island Southeast Asia. 25 On top of these developments we are today, I think, increasingly sensitive to the long-term mistrust between Thailand and Myanmar26 and Thailand and Cambodia,27 and a fair number of other intra-regional tensions, including that between Singapore and Malaysia. Beyond the Southeast Asian region, there is the critical, historical rivalry between China and Japan. Following the September 11 attacks, and the Southeast Asian attacks in Bali and elsewhere, some have begun to take more seriously Samuel Huntington’s spectre of a ‘clash of civilisations’. 28 Such commentators are right to observe that a new era has arrived and the formulations of Fukuyama, ex-Governor Patten, and exForeign Minister Evans are no longer so relevant. But the expression “clash of civilisations” simply does not capture the 12

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Region, Security and the Return of History

fact that a great deal of contest is taking place within civilizations (including Islam and the West); and the idea of ‘civilisation’ tends to disguise the degree to which people and cultures change, and the extent to which members of a community (the Japanese in the late nineteenth century constitute an excellent example) 29 can reformulate their own civilization. Rather than a ‘clash of civilisations’, it seems to me one might more sensibly speak of a ‘return of history’ as a way of conveying the character of this new era. The phrase ‘return of history’ specifically counters the 1990s observation of Francis Fukuyama that we have come to the ‘end of history’, and to stress ‘history’ or, better still, ‘histories’ is a way of acknowledging that the globalizing sweep of liberal economic and value change has by no means swept away the whole range of local perspectives and narratives in this region. National, religious, ethnic, subregional and numerous other perspectives, including those of Southeast Asian regionalism itself, have proved more 13

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Anthony Milner

stubborn than the convergence thinkers anticipated. Furthermore, in using the term “history” rather than “civilisation”, or even “culture”, I think it is fair to say that we are underlining the fact that all these national, religious, and other perspectives are themselves dynamic and subject to extensive refashioning and reinvention. Separatist movements in Indonesia, and even so-called Fundamentalist Islam, are themselves not static but in motion — shaped by the encounters and struggles of the twentyfirst century, as well as by their own pasts. In speaking of the return and potency of history, there is no need to go from one extreme to another and neglect the role of globalizing forces. The point to stress is that globalizing technologies and economies do not necessarily bring cultural homogeneity. They can foster multiple and competing viewpoints. Today, then, a tough-minded view of this region is likely to be an historical rather than a convergence view. And in this era of the return of history, it would 14

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Region, Security and the Return of History

be fair to say, there is good reason to take a more patient view of the talk of the region. I will return to this point, but looking across this troubled region today few would insist that the task of achieving consensus — of establishing shared norms and understandings — has been accomplished. The regional conversation is fortunately ongoing — and it should be listened to, and contributed to, by historians.

SECURITY AND TALK Before considering the specific role of the historian, let me approach the issue of talk and “talk-shop” from another angle — the angle of Security Studies. As I understand it, what was the dominant mode of analysis in security studies until recent times fitted comfortably into the convergence thinking that I have been discussing: the Realist School in security studies has tended to analyse security relations in terms of relations — predictable rivalry relations — between 15

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Anthony Milner

sovereign states. According to the thinking of this school, states are always the units engaging in security relations, and they are always self-interested, selfadvantaging — and always in potential military conflict with one another. Making such universal claims — insisting on a homogenizing view of a world of inevitably competing nation states, all driven by the same motivations — the Realist analysts of security relations (like convergence thinking which takes a generally homogenizing view of international society as well as international economics) were bound to be intolerant of the painstaking processes of consensus making and regional norm construction encountered so often in ASEAN regionalism. An articulate example of this type of Realist assessment is presented by the late, and much missed, Michael Leifer, in an overview of the ASEAN Regional Forum written in the mid-1990s. ASEAN’s “regional security doctrine”, he observed, “has depended on a supporting pattern of 16

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Region, Security and the Return of History

power in which the United States has played the critical role”.30 In the same way, he said, the “pre-requisite” for a “successful ARF may well be the prior existence of a stable balance of power”.31 Again, this was a mid-1990s view. Today we might want to answer — yes, regional security is sustained by a balance of power, but what about the future? Are not ASEAN and the ARF helping to bring China and Japan into a constructive relationship? Is not the regionalism process at least one potentially productive way in which to prepare for the future in which the balance of power, perhaps because of the eventual withdrawal of the United States empire, is radically altered? And today, again, we would surely add the observation that such current crises as terrorism and separatism are at most only partly balance-of-power matters. In attempting to deal with the well-springs of terrorism and separatism, it can be argued, we may (among other strategies) have to resort to exactly the patient talking and consensus building for 17

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Anthony Milner

which ASEAN is known and sometimes derided. A focus on talk — on communication and, in many situations, consensus building — has in fact been an increasingly prominent concern in the field of security studies over the last few years. This turn in security studies — associated to some extent with the word ‘constructivism’ — does not take for granted a world of nation states driven by the same self-serving, universally-held motivations. It is concerned with the capacity or agency of actors to be able to construct conditions of peace. It stresses the constructedness of concepts relating to security, and the way in which actual security decisions can be made and understood in terms of such specific, constructed concepts.32 This turn in security analysis understands that different international actors will operate according to different logics — and that a problem can occur in negotiation and deliberation in security relations when actors working from different logics have to deal with one another.33 Success in 18

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Region, Security and the Return of History

international relations, as some would conceptualize it, is facilitated when the different sides share the same ‘lifeworld’ — that is, possess a ‘shared culture’, a ‘common system of norms and rules perceived as legitimate’, the same ‘social identity of actors being capable of communicating and acting’.34 As explained in one recent essay in this field, it is hard to have effective argumentation if there is no agreement about what is true, or what is morally right, or whether a speaker is telling the truth.35 You will see the direction in which this thinking is moving: the whole issue of ‘lifeworld’, understood by some to be a central issue in security analysis, underlines once again the importance of the ‘talk shop’ activities of ASEAN. It also offers space for close collaboration between historians and security studies. Two points need stressing in this discussion of ‘lifeworld’ and communication in security studies: they both help to explain the importance of talk in the ASEAN process, and to specify the 19

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Anthony Milner

potential contribution of the historian. First, the argument has been made that one way of achieving a common life world is through communication itself. That is, in having to “regularly and routinely explain and justify their behaviour”, actors in the international or domestic public sphere tend to identify “common goods or shared values” with those they are trying to convince.36 Although, this point has been argued in the type of detail that cannot be repeated here, the thrust of the argument is clear enough. “Social space”, to cite a French commentator, “is always curved, even in a state of hostility”.37 The more people engage — the more they talk, even in argument — the more they are likely to be bonded together. The second point that needs to be made about this new-found focus on communication in security analysis is that a prior task in developing communication — indeed the best way to proceed to achieve at least some progress towards a shared perspective, a shared lifeworld — is to identify the actual presence of 20

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Region, Security and the Return of History

difference. Of course, even to define just where different norm systems operate, and how these systems differ from one another, can be a demanding task. Like other aspects of the ‘lifeworld’, norm systems are often taken-for-granted things. They often consist of what has been called “pre-theoretical knowledge”38 — deeplying assumptions which historians and others skilled in the close reading of texts (written or otherwise) happen to have experience in unpacking. One reason why identifying difference assists the prospects for communication, is that merely to define different norm systems and ‘lifeworlds’ can make them amenable to negotiation and even change. In particular, it can make them more abstract; it can have the effect of rationalizing them, and thus making them more open.39

REGIONALISM IN EUROPE There is a further explanation, however, for the importance of defining difference — different perspectives — in the commu21

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Anthony Milner

nication or talk of the region. To consider the reason more carefully, let us turn for a moment to another region, and another regionalism, in today’s world. Pausing to think of European regionalism suggests more grounds for respecting the stress on patience and on talk in ASEAN, as well as for taking very seriously the acknowledging of difference in the security (and other) conversation of this region. Examining European regionalism it should be observed at the outset, immediately draws attention to the likelihood that Asian regionalism must necessarily be a slow undertaking. The regionalist process in Europe, of course, did not begin with the Treaty of Rome in 1957. Recall the Concert of Europe in the nineteenth century, Napoleon’s panEuropean ambitions, the various Habsburg attempts to create a broad European consciousness, and the reign of Charlemagne who took the title “Roman Emperor” and called himself “The father of the Europeans”.40 Recall the presence of a single religion across Christendom, 22

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Region, Security and the Return of History

and the common experience of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Recall the eighteenth-century secular Europe — the European “civilisation of states, commerce, and manners”. 41 Compared to the situation in ASEAN, we find in Europe a long-term consciousness of region. For the present purposes, however, the significant feature of European regionalism is the importance of talk. In the words of the Harvard anthropologist, Michael Herzfeld, “the idea of Europe” has “percolated through the complex populations of the European continent and is ‘refracted’ through the prism of daily interactions”.42 A recent book of collected essays concerning this “idea of Europe”,43 in fact, has given special attention to the role of dialogue in the building up of Europe as a focus of political and cultural allegiance. What is being pointed to in sections of this book — and what has a particular interest for regionalism in Asia — is the possibility that it is not only the obvious commonalties that helped to form 23

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Anthony Milner

“Europe”. It is not merely, for instance, the inheriting of an eighteenth-century secular civilization of states, commerce and manners. The regional conversation of Europe, the book suggests, does not seek always to deny disunity, difference, otherness. The dialogue does not attempt to overwhelm ‘the other’. Rather — and the book quotes the philosopher HansGeorg Gadamer here — the objective can be to experience “the other and the others, as the other of our self, in order to participate with one another”. 44 This observation repeats, or is close to repeating, the earlier comment about ‘social space being curved, even in a state of hostility’.

RECOGNIZING DIFFERENCE In the recent volume, Idea of Europe, various writers approach the issue of difference and talk in different ways. But the thinking of the philosopher Charles Taylor seems to be especially influential45 — and, in my view, deserves to be 24

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Region, Security and the Return of History

considered also in the context of Asian regionalism. Taylor, in examining the handling of different perspectives in dialogue, identifies the fundamental weakness of those who insist on a liberal, homogenizing (or convergence) approach. He demonstrates how people who insist on stressing what is the same — even in the name of a liberal celebration of the equality of man — can in fact be perceived to be oppressive. In adopting a seemingly high-minded, difference-blind approach, they in fact tend to ignore or silence other views. They force people who hold views different from their own — people whom one might say operate in a lifeworld different from their own — “into a homogenous mold that is untrue to them”.46 This situation, Taylor insists, is serious. In the world today, as he explains carefully, the desire for recognition has become a powerful driving force. It is a driving force because we tend to define our identity — itself a potent modern concern — in dialogue with significant 25

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Anthony Milner

others.47 Cultures as well as individuals, Taylor stresses, do not avoid but gain from a politics or a dialogue of difference. They gain recognition, and, in Taylor’s view, the failure to give recognition — something that often arises from a different-blind approach, a homogenizing or convergence approach — will be perceived as a harm.48 It can well be perceived as a harm to such an extent that the failure to give recognition may strengthen the hand of those in the offended culture who happen to be open to compromise in any form. Following Taylor’s argument today, at a time when terrorism is in all our minds, it is difficult to resist wondering whether Islamic Fundamentalists — people who are often deeply disturbed about the secular basis of modern society and the modern state, and seek to review the whole knowledge system of such societies — are being in any real sense recognized. Are they receiving, at the very least, the genuine recognition that would be a prelude to bringing them into a constructive dialogue — a prelude to 26

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Region, Security and the Return of History

making them more serious participants in the conversation of the region? We will return to this issue. But in singling out Charles Taylor’s contribution to the discussion of European regionalism, and regionalism more generally, it should be said that he sees this recognition of difference as a step towards greater communication — a step towards, perhaps, a sharing of lifeworlds. And the phrase he seems to favour is the ‘fusion of horizons’,49 an expression (taken again from Gadamer) that conveys well the twosidedness of the process — the listening as well as talking — in addition to its probable long-term character. The ‘fusion of horizons’, of course, is a phrase that suggests something quite distinct from the type of convergence that Fukuyama, Patten and other liberal globalizers had in mind; or, indeed, from Raffles’ vision of a “moral and intellectual improvement” spreading from the globalizing Britain across Southeast Asia. For the analyst of Southeast Asian regional developments, reading the reflections of Taylor and others 27

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Anthony Milner

in the context of Europe — just like reading the constructivist and some other postrealist approaches in security studies — may well encourage a more sympathetic attitude towards the painstaking, culturesensitive, norm-focussed, region building that has been going on in ASEAN. In ASEAN there are real signs that the ‘fusing of horizons’ has been a genuine aspiration.

DIFFERENCE IN THE REGIONAL CONVERSATION Looking now at the tasks ahead for ASEAN — looking at them today, at a time when we are more ready to admit to a return to history — it might be suggested that the ASEAN builders, from the security angle as well as many other angles, will actually need to engage in more not less talk. The task of bringing the newer ASEAN states into the regional process — if it is to be successful — will itself not merely be a one-way process. The lifeworld of ASEAN, as it were, will be changed by — as well as itself be likely 28

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Region, Security and the Return of History

to change — the value systems, for instance, of Vietnam and Myanmar. The mission that ASEAN leaders have expressed concerning the necessity to reach beyond the élite — to make ASEAN more meaningful to the wider population of the member countries — will also be critically important and demanding. The honesty with which members of the ASEAN élite have admitted that they “may not necessarily represent the value systems and social norms of their societies at large”50 is refreshing. And when one reads a newspaper report of a fairly recent ASEAN Peoples Assembly — where “radical feminists from Mindanao ... sat in veils alongside anti-globalisation activists from Thailand, with the Indonesian businessman Sofy Wanandi in between” 51 — there seems reason for optimism that the conversation of ASEAN is really moving out to a broader constituency. The point should be well understood today, however, that this broadening out is vital — particularly in security terms. 29

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Anthony Milner

The recent growth of terrorism in parts of the ASEAN region draws sharp attention to an observation that has long held true: state governments and their military are not the only actors in the region who have a significance in security terms. It is a disadvantage of ASEAN in this sense that it is an association of ‘nations’; a broader Southeast Asian conversation might be more open to a range of non-state actors, such as panregional ethnic or religious groups. To the extent to which conversation or dialogue, and norm promotion, can assist in the security of the region, it must certainly have a reach well beyond government policy-makers and the second-track élite with which they tend to deal. As Islamic terrorism has demonstrated, and as the governments of islands of Southeast Asia know well, the conversation has to reach, for instance, into Islamic schools. This issue of reach — the reach of ASEAN regionalism — is, in addition, the issue which leads us back to the historian. It is the need to push the conversation of 30

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Region, Security and the Return of History

regionalism beyond the élite that reminds me, at least, of the potential contribution of the particular expertise of the historian.

THE HISTORIAN ASEAN builders have in the past certainly commissioned or appropriated historical writing. They have made use, for instance, of the historical knowledge that fourteenth-century Majapahit claimed the whole of Southeast Asia, excluding Vietnam, and that a ninth-century king of Angkor said he ruled all the lands from the Bay of Bengal to China. ASEAN builders cite work that seeks to demonstrate the presence of unifying features in the region — the strong presence of bilateral kinship structures, the relative prominence of women, the widespread acquaintance with Indian religious texts and Indian religious statuary, the absence of a caste system, the presence of similar housebuilding and other elements of popular culture across the region, and the potentially bonding 31

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Anthony Milner

flow of trade among the member societies.52 This list of bonding elements is meagre, it is true, when we make comparisons with the experience of Europe. It nevertheless helps in Southeast Asia today to create a consciousness of region. It takes its place alongside the formulating of the norm system, the consensus forming and conflict avoidance of the so-called ASEAN way. Even a cursory survey of the texts of ASEAN — ministerial statements, conference proceedings and so forth53 — demonstrates the contribution of the historian to the ASEAN talk-talk. It is, one should add, one of the qualities of Amitav Acharya’s recent studies of the evolution of Southeast Asian regionalism that he notes the historian’s role, and, what is more, that he himself uses such historians as Wolters, Reid, Osborne and Andaya in making his own contribution to what he calls the “quest for identity” in Southeast Asia.54 I am acknowledging here the contribution of historians to the establishing of commonalties in the region, 32

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Region, Security and the Return of History

expressing the hope that these shared experiences will appeal to the imaginations of the broader ASEAN public. But the principal thrust of the argument of this lecture does not highlight the historian’s contribution to the enumeration of ASEAN commonalties. What I am emphasizing is the capacity of the historian to identify difference, and on that basis, to assist in the extension — the broadening of the reach — of ASEAN talk and ASEAN regionalism.

EXCESS, ISLAM With respect to the historian’s contribution, recent discussions in Philippine studies offer a useful perspective. Particularly relevant is the concept of ‘excess’. As Caroline Hau has explained, ‘excess’ — when employed in reference to nationalist writing in the Philippines — is a term that can be used to refer to a whole range of heterogeneous elements — relating, for instance, to ‘the people’, ‘the indigenous’, ‘the Chinese’.55 33

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Anthony Milner

Such elements inform, but also exceed ‘nationalist’ attempts to grasp, intellectually and politically, the complex realities at work in the society of the Philippines. ‘Excess’ is the “condition of possibility of both literature and politics because no writing or political program can exhaust the possibilities of the social reality it seeks to engage”.56 The “space in which writing and action unfold is opened up ... by the excess that slips their grasp”.57 The historian, I think, is likely to be especially sensitive to the problems of excess. In trying to make sense of the past, the historian tends to be troubled or driven by the need to incorporate excess — to account for excess. Potent sentiments, potent hero figures, potent events and potent phenomena that in some sense still remain in the historical record — like old forms of association, of community, of allegiance that still operate in a community’s historical memory — cannot be just ignored. The excess I am talking of makes a claim to be incorporated, made 34

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Region, Security and the Return of History

intelligible, in the historian’s writing. For instance, the historian of nation-building cannot continually ignore the marginal groups, the marginal movements, in writing the master narrative of the building of the nation. These groups — especially if they constitute a potent memory — are a form of excess that has to be accounted for in some way; it has to be incorporated. In accounting for this excess, the master narrative of nation building may have to be adjusted. In examining the modern history of the Philippines for instance, a narrative may have to take account of, or give some role to, the people’s groups, the subaltern groups, the frustrated ideals of the late nineteenth-century Philippine Revolution, the martyrs of the past.58 What, then, is the excess in the broader ASEAN grouping? Which people, which groups, which movements, have been neglected in the broader ASEAN building process? Which sectors have been neglected, even in that relatively patient attempt to build up a system of norms, a 35

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Anthony Milner

lifeworld? Which sectors have not been effectively brought into the conversation of the region? The convergence thinkers of the 1990s, of course, were not much concerned about excess. They believed they knew the dominant, universal narrative — and, as Fukuyama saw it, no ideology could possibly resist the liberal economic universalists. The Realists in security studies were equally unconcerned about the excess. They believed they understood exactly how human society is organized, and how it operates in security matters. Historians, by contrast, have always been troubled by the excess. I recall a policy-advice seminar in Australia in the late 1990s — dominated by international relations specialists and economists — where one historian (a colleague of mine) attempted to introduce the topic of Islam in the Southeast Asian region. Even if Fundamentalist Muslims are not actually controlling governments in Indonesia, he said, it was important to understand what 36

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Region, Security and the Return of History

is going on in the society itself, important to recognize the role and aspirations of a range of Muslim leaders (even at the village level) in Indonesian society. My colleague was ignored — politely enough, I recall. Most of the others in this policy group were not interested in excess. They had the wind in their sails, flying ever onwards (as they thought) to a globalized world built upon firm liberal principles. Today, the more reflective of them regret ignoring what they saw as marginal interests, and acknowledge that even seemingly marginal people — the seemingly powerless — can express their resentment in devastating ways. This is not the time to go into detail about other areas in which the historian, troubled by excess, can help to expand the reach of the regionalism process. But I would want to refer to some recent work on Asian reactions to the economic crisis of 1997/98, especially to the way in which potent memories of the colonial era — potent but seldom expressed anti-Western sentiments — came to the fore in the 37

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Anthony Milner

economic crisis; old images seemed to have been revived and to have influenced behaviour in ways that the convergence thinkers never expected. 59 Fukuyama himself had declared simply that “what the current crisis will end up doing is to puncture the idea of Asian exceptionalism”. It would prove beyond doubt, he suggested, that the “laws of economics have not been suspended in Asia”.60 Fukuyama’s lack of attention to excess would be a disadvantage today in an attempt to explain, for instance, the way in which the experience of the economic crisis — shaped by the earlier anti-colonialism — may have contributed to a reinvigoration of ASEAN, and ASEAN +3, regionalism. A third and final example of excess — one which continues to tug at my mind — my historian’s mind — concerns the language of security relations. I keep recalling the words of a prominent Japanese security specialist, uttered in the 1990s when the so-called international

38

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Region, Security and the Return of History

language and norms of security were being vigorously disseminated across the Asian region. My Japanese colleague commented that he was uncomfortable using some of these terms: ‘confidence building’, for instance.61 The expression, he said, does not convey the complex feeling which people in the region have about one another. He used the expression, he added, but it never seemed true. It never seemed to convey what he felt inside. This observation, made with some passion, continues to trouble me. It continues to make me ask whether recent academic analysis on the concept of security — including important pioneering work in a recently published Asia-Pacific Security Lexicon62 — has given enough attention to this form of excess. Has this work probed in sufficient depth local understandings and conceptualizations of security issues in the Asian region? As an historian I am troubled, and as someone concerned about future security relations in this region it seems vital that the security conversation

39

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Anthony Milner

of the region achieves sufficient reach to take account of my Japanese colleague’s anxieties. Reviewing at this point what I have been saying in this lecture, it is clear that we have moved a good distance from Raffles. Like the convergence thinkers of the 1990s he was interested in the spread of ideas in the Southeast Asian region, but he was impatient with excess. An example here would be Raffles’ particular, antagonistic handling of Islam — a topic which a graduate student in the History Department at NUS 63 is exploring in productive ways. Raffles and the convergence thinkers, however, enjoyed the sense of being able to envision an emerging consensus — a common norm system, a common lifeworld — that they confidently expected would embrace the region in the future. In what I have been saying in this lecture, there seems less prospect today of such a coherent outcome. My stress has been on the necessary two-sidedness — the listening as well as talking — of the encounters, 40

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Region, Security and the Return of History

communication or dialogue. I have underlined the urgency of the task of recognizing difference, of coping with excess. I like the suggestion of genuine two-sided dialogue in the phrase ‘a fusion of horizons’, but I am also worried about the expectation of coherence conveyed in the word ‘fusion’. Thinking about the conversation of the Southeast Asian region, in fact, I am increasingly drawn to the use of the word ‘conversation’ itself. As that interesting philosopher Michael Oakeshott once observed, when considering vocabulary for describing the quality of relationship between members of a ‘community’, ‘conversation’ suggests “acknowledgement and accommodation”.64 ‘Conversation’ is a concept that allows for diversity; the participants in a conversation have the space to claim recognition for their identity and integrity. But what conversation does demand — and here is an objective well worth seeking — is that the participants suspend for a time their exclusive claims to truth, “just to keep the conversation 41

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Anthony Milner

going”. One other thing that helps to sustain conversation, Oakeshott notes, is real knowledge of the other. Learning to participate in a conversation requires the type of concrete knowledge of other participants and their different ‘lifeworlds’ that historians happen to value so highly. To conclude, let me return to my opening comments about the condemnation of ASEAN as a ‘talk shop’. Like everyone, I suppose, I welcome recent declarations (including from the Singapore Prime Minister)65 about reinvigorating ASEAN and the ARF. But it is nevertheless unwise today — in the era of the return of history — to denigrate the talk-talk of ASEAN. The talk has been important in the past; it has drawn upon a remarkable patience and a sensitivity to culture and history that is very likely to be even more important in the future. Fostering a regional conversation with a greater reach and openness — a conversation that reaches more deeply into the new ASEAN states and into the complex societies of 42

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Region, Security and the Return of History

the older member countries, and has the capacity to recognize and in some sense incorporate all types of differences — would be a substantial achievement for ASEAN regionalism. In particular, the security advantage of such an acceleration of the conversation of the region would be obvious.

NOTES For various types of assistance in writing this paper I am grateful to members of a lively graduate seminar at the National University of Singapore, and also to Amitav Acharya, Peter Borschberg, Greg Clancey, Andrea Haese, Rey Ileto, Kwa Chong Guan, Bruce Lockhart, Claire Milner, Sharon Siddique and Tan Tai Yong. 1. John Bastin, The First Printing of Sir Stamford Raffles’s Minutes on the Establishment of a Malay College at Singapore (Eastbourne: Privately printed, 1999). I am grateful to Kwa Chong Guan for drawing my attention to this booklet. 2. The phrase “talk-shop” is used frequently with respect to ASEAN; for a recent example, see Brendan Pereira, “Accord on measures to block terror funds”, Straits Times, 1 August 2002. For a recent comment on the need for ASEAN to move on from ‘talk’, see the statement by Dennis Blair, retired Commander-in-Chief of the

43

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Anthony Milner US Pacific Command, Straits Times, 10 December 2002. Amitav Acharya notes the frequent use of the phrase in Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), p. 6. On the accusation that the ARF (ASEAN Regional Forum) is a mere ‘talk-shop’, see Summary of a Roundtable Discussion on “A New Agenda for the ASEAN Regional Forum” (Singapore: Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, 2002), p. 3. 3. See, for instance, Simon S.C. Tay and Jesus P. Estanislao, “The Relevance of ASEAN”, in Reinventing ASEAN, edited by Simon S.C. Tay, Jesus P. Estanislao and Hadi Soesastro (Singapore: ISEAS, 2001), pp. 3–24. See also James Cotton, “The ‘haze’ over Southeast Asia: Challenging the ASEAN mode of regional engagement”, Pacific Affairs 72, no. 3 (Fall 1999): 331–51. Also note the report of the recent McKinsey and Company study on ASEAN, which complained that few investors saw ASEAN “as a single market” and many were “deterred by the limited integration of ASEAN”, “Group has failed to capitalise on Strengths: Study”, Straits Times, 5 November 2002. 4. Amitav Acharya notes the renewed interest in ASEAN on the part of major powers (China, India, Japan, United States); “An opportunity not to be squandered”; Straits Times, 12 November 2002. For recent developments in co-operation on anti-terrorism, see Brendan Pereira, “ASEAN countries benefit from anti-terror pact”, Straits Times, 3 August 2002; for the ASEAN–China agreement on the Spratlys, see “Consensus

44

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Region, Security and the Return of History

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

reached on South China Sea”, New Sunday Times, 3 November 2002; for a new agreement aimed at facilitating tourism within ASEAN, see “Easier regional travel with pact”, Straits Times, 5 November 2002; for an optimistic view on ASEAN’s economic future, see Narendra Aggarwal, “ASEAN tiger bright once more”, Straits Times, 20 September 2002. Mohamed Ariff, “Trade, Investment, and Interdependence”, in Tay et al., Reinventing, p. 66. Quoted in Michael Hoare, “ASEAN moving ‘too slowly’ to combat Asia’s security risks”, Straits Times, 10 December 2002. Barry Desker, “Preface”, in A New Agenda for the ASEAN Regional Forum, by Tan See Seng et al., IDSS Monograph No. 4 (Singapore: Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, 2002), p. 2. He was referring to the ARF. See, for instance, Simon S.C. Tay, “Preface”, in Tay et al., Reinventing, p. ix. Clark Neher has observed that “ASEAN, as a regional alliance, has accomplished virtually nothing of significance”, review of Amitav Acharya, The Quest for Identity: International Relations of Southeast Asia (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 2000), in Journal of Asian Studies 61, no. 3 (August 2002): 1102. Michael Leifer, The ASEAN Regional Forum, Adelphi Paper 302 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 4. See, for instance, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Ministerial Meeting, 11–12 November 1994, Jakarta, “Joint Statement”,

45

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Anthony Milner

11. 12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

clauses 32, 37, 38; the “Declaration of an APEC standards and conformance framework” of 7 November 1994; and the “Leaders’ Declaration”, Bogor, Indonesia, 15 November 1994. See also John Ravenhill, APEC and the Construction of Pacific Rim Regionalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 107. Chris Patten, East and West (London: Macmillan, 1998), p. 181. The End of History and the Last Man (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1992); Also, “The End of History”, The National Interest 16 (1989): 3–18. “Australia in East Asia and the Asia-Pacific: Beyond the Looking Glass”, Australian Journal of International Affairs 49, no. 1 (1995): 106–7. Samuel P. Huntingon, The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon-Schuster, 1996); “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 3 (Summer 1993), pp. 22–49. Milton Osborne, Southeast Asia: An Introductory History (St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 1994), p. 240. Selo Soemardjan, “Introduction”, in ASEAN: Identity, Development and Culture, edited by R.P. Anand and Purificacion V. Quisumbing (Quezon City: University of the Philippines Law Center and East-West Center Culture Learning Institute, 1981), p. xxiv. See also Abdullah Badawi, quoted in Acharya, Constructing, p. 195. Estrella D. Solidum, “The Role of Certain Sectors in Shaping and Articulating the ASEAN Way” in Anand and Purificacion, ASEAN, p. 133. Selo Soemardjan, “Introduction”, p. xxvi.

46

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Region, Security and the Return of History 19. Ghazali Shafie, Malaysia, ASEAN and the New World Order (Bangi: Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 2000), p. 109. 20. Estrella D. Solidum, “Role of Certain Sectors in Shaping and Articulating the ASEAN Way”, in Anand and Purificacion, ASEAN, p. 138. 21. Solidum, “The Role”, p. 138. On the patient building of trust, see also Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, “Keynote Address”, in ASEAN Towards 2020, edited by Stephen Leong (Kuala Lumpur: ASEAN Academic Press, 1998), p. 15. On the way in which the ASEAN approach is “faithful to the cultures of most, if not all, the countries of Southeast Asia”, see Rodolfo C. Severino, “Reflections on ASEAN: What we did right, where we went wrong – lessons for the future”, in ibid., pp. 90–91. 22. Noordin Sopiee, quoted in Acharya, Quest for Identity, p. 128. 23. The survey polled people aged between 17 and 25; “Indonesian youth want a president who is not a politician”, Straits Times, 10 October 2002. 24. See a report on a seminar on this topic held in Canberra; Anthony Milner, “Asia Pacific Perceptions of the Financial Crisis and the Progress of Globalisation”, in Papers of the 14th AASSREC Biennial General Conference, 5–9 November 2001, Hanoi (Hanoi: Association of Asian Social Science Research Councils, 2002), pp. 3–21. 25. See Michael Vatikiotis’ interview with Lee Kuan Yew, Straits Times, 6 December 2002; International Crisis Group, “Al-Qaeda in Southeast Asia: The case of the ‘Ngruki Network’”, Indonesia Briefing, 8 August 2002.

47

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Anthony Milner 26. Maung Aung Myoe, Neither Friend nor Foe: Myanmar’s Relations with Thailand since 1988 (Singapore: Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, 2002). 27. Kimima Lyall, “Arrests appease Thai PM”, The Weekend Australian, 1–2 February 2003. 28. See, for instance, the comments of Danish Foreign Minister Moeller, quoted in the Straits Times, 26 October 2002. 29. Carol Gluck, Japan’s Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985); Earl H. Kinmoth, The Self-Made Man in Meiji Japanese Thought from Samurai to Salary Man (Berkeley: University of California, 1981). 30. Leifer, ASEAN Regional Forum, p. 15. 31. Ibid., p. 57. 32. See, for instance, Peter Katzenstein, ed., The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996); Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 33. See, for instance, James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, “The Institutional Dynamics of International Political Orders’’, International Organisation 52, no. 4 (1998): 943–69. 34. Thomas Risse, “‘Let’s Argue!’ Communicative Action in World Politics”, International Organisation 54, no. 1 (2000): 10. 35. Ibid. 36. Ibid., pp. 21–22. 37. Kevin Hart, “Shared Silence”, The Australian’s Review of Books, 11 March 1998. Hart was

48

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Region, Security and the Return of History

38.

39. 40.

41. 42.

43. 44.

45.

46.

47. 48. 49. 50.

explaining a point made by Jacques Derrida in his Politics of Friendship (London: Verso, 1997). Jurgen Habermas, in The Habermas Reader, edited by William Outhwaite (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996), p. 278. See also p. 331. Ibid., pp. 280–82. Anthony Pagden, “Europe: Conceptualizing a Continent”, in Idea of Europe, edited by Anthony Pagden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 45. J.G.A. Pocock, “Some Europes in their History”, in Pagden, Idea of Europe, p. 65 Michael Herzfeld, “The European Self: Rethinking an Attitude”, in Pagden, Idea of Europe, p. 145. Pagden, Idea of Europe. Luisa Passerini, “From the Ironies of Identity to the Identities of Irony”, in Pagden, Idea of Europe, p. 45. See especially James Tully, “The Kantian Idea of Europe: Critical and Cosmopolitan Perspectives”, in Pagden, Idea of Europe, pp. 331–58. Taylor, cited in ibid., p. 349. The reference is to Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition”, in Multiculturalism, edited by Amy Gutmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 25–73. Taylor, “Politics”, p. 33. Ibid., p. 65. Ibid., p. 67. Selo Soemardjan, “Introduction”, p. xxiv. See also Jusuf Wanandi, “ASEAN’s Past and the Challenges Ahead: Aspects of Politics and Security”, in Tay et al., Reinventing, p. 34. See

49

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Anthony Milner also Simon S.C. Tay and Jesus Estanislao, “The Reverance of ASEAN: Crisis and Changes”, in ibid., p. 12. 51. Vaudine England, “Alternative ASEAN”, South China Morning Post, 28 November 2000. 52. For examples of the way such historical analysis has assisted the ASEAN builders, see, for instance, Anand and Purificacion, ASEAN, especially the chapters by O.W. Wolters, Selo Soemardjan, Estrella D. Solidum, Sharon Siddique, G.W. and S. Lindsay Gong, and R.P. Anand. Anthony Reid summarizes some of the bonding elements he sees in the region in “A Saucer Model of Southeast ASEAN Identity”, Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science 27, no. 1 (1999): 7–23. In the same journal, see Ananda Rajah’s comment on the need for more research into “endogenous perceptions of Southeast Asia and how these may or may not have changed over time”; “Southeast Asia: Comparatist Errors and the Construction of a Region”, ibid., p. 49. 53. Ibid.; and see, for instance, the “Introduction”, by Singapore Government minister, George Yeo, to Cultures in ASEAN and the 21st Century, edited by Edwin Thumboo (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1996), p. xiii, where he praises Anthony Reid’s two-volume work on Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988 and 1993) as “providing clues to the kind of world we are entering in the 21st Century”. See further, Shaharil Talib, “Uniting the Peoples of ASEAN”, in ASEAN Towards 2020, pp. 125–34.

50

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Region, Security and the Return of History 54. The Quest for Identity; “Imagined Proximities: The Making and Unmaking of Southeast Asia as a Region”, Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science 27, no. 1 (1999), pp. 55–71. 55. Caroline S. Hau, Necessary Fictions: Philippine Literature and the Nation, 1946-1980 (Manila: Ateneo de Manila Press, 2001). I was made aware of Hau’s work in a session discussing a new project being undertaken by Reynaldo Ileto on the history of nation-building in the Philippines. The session was part of the “Workshop on Nation Building Histories”, convened by Wang Gungwu at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, on 23–24 September 2002. 56. Ibid., p. 7. 57. Ibid. 58. I am referring here to the way ‘excess’ is handled in Ileto’s new work. See also Michel Foucault’s reference to the “insurrection of subjugated knowledges”, cited and elaborated in suggestive ways in Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 236. 59. See Milner, “Asia Pacific Perceptions of the Financial Crisis”, pp. 3–21. 60. Cited in Anthony Milner, “What Happened to ‘Asian Values’?”, in Towards Recovery in Pacific Asia, edited by Gerald Segal and David S.G. Goodman (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 59. 61. There is some discussion of the issue in Yukio Satoh, “Emerging Trends in Asia-Pacific Security: The Role of Japan”, Pacific Review 8, no. 2 (1995): 267–82.

51

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Anthony Milner 62. David Capie and Paul Evans, The Asia-Pacific Security Lexicon (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2002). 63. Syed Khairudin Aljunied. 64. Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (London: Methuen, 1962), p. 304. See also Robert Grant, Oakeshott (London: Claridge, 1990), Ch. 5: “The Modes (II): The Conversation Paradigm”. 65. Goh Chok Tong, “Five Steps to move ASEAN forward”, Straits Times, 10 October 2002.

52

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Select Bibliography

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Acharya, Amitav. The Quest for Identity: International Relations of Southeast Asia. Singapore: Oxford University Press, 2000. _____. Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia. London and New York: Routledge, 2001. Anand, R.P. and Purificacion V. Quisumbing, eds. ASEAN: Identity, Development and Culture. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Law Center and East-West Center Culture Learning Institute, 1981. Bastin, John. The First Printing of Sir Stamford Raffles’s Minutes on the 53

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Select Bibliography

Establishment of a Malay College at Singapore. Eastbourne: Privately printed, 1999. Capie, David and Paul Evans. The AsiaPacific Security Lexicon. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2002. Chatterjee, Partha. The Nation and Its Fragments. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. Hau, Caroline S. Necessary Fictions: Philippine Literature and the Nation, 1946-1980. Manila: Ateneo de Manila Press, 2001. Leifer, Michael. The ASEAN Regional Forum. Adelphi Paper 302. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Leong, Stephen, ed. ASEAN Towards 2020. Kuala Lumpur: ASEAN Academic Press, 1998. March, James G. and Johan P. Olsen. “The Institutional Dynamics of International Political Orders’’. International Organisation 52, no. 4 (1998): 943–69.

54

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Select Bibliography

Maung Aung Myoe. Neither Friend nor Foe: Myanmar’s Relations with Thailand since 1988. Singapore: Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, 2002. Milner, Anthony. “What Happened to ‘Asian Values’?” In Towards Recovery in Pacific Asia, edited by Gerald Segal and David S.G. Goodman. London: Routledge, 2000. Oakeshott, Michael. Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays. London: Methuen, 1962. Pagden, Anthony, ed. Idea of Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Reid, Anthony. “A Saucer Model of Southeast ASEAN Identity”. Southeast Asian Journal of Social Science 27, no. 1 (1999): 7–23. Risse, Thomas. “‘Let’s Argue!’ Communicative Action in World Politics”. International Organisation 54, no. 1 (2000): 10. Satoh, Yukio. “Emerging Trends in AsiaPacific Security: The Role of Japan”. Pacific Review 8, no. 2 (1995): 267–82.

55

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

Select Bibliography

Tan See Seng et al. A New Agenda for the ASEAN Regional Forum. IDSS Monograph No. 4. Singapore: Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, 2002. Tay, Simon S.C., Jesus P. Estanislao, and Hadi Soesastro, eds. Reinventing ASEAN. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2001. Taylor, Charles. “The Politics of Recognition”. In Multiculturalism, edited by Amy Gutmann, pp. 25–73. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. Thumboo, Edwin, ed. Cultures in ASEAN and the 21st Century. Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1996.

56

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

About the Author

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Anthony Milner is Basham Professor of Asian History and Dean of the Faculty of Asian Studies at the Australian National University. In 2002, he was Raffles Visiting Professor in the History Department of the National University of Singapore. His writings include Kerajaan: Malay Political Culture on the Eve of Colonial Rule (Association for Asian Studies, 1982); The Invention of Politics in Colonial Malaya (Cambridge University Press, 1995, 2002) and, with Virginia Hooker, Perceptions of the Haj (Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1984). The volumes he has co57

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

About the Author

edited include (with David Marr) Southeast Asia from the Ninth to Fourteenth Centuries (Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1986); (with Drew Gerstle) Recovering the Orient (Harwood Press, 1994); (with Drew Gerstle) Europe and the Orient (Humanities Research Centre, 1994); and (with Patricia Herbert) Southeast Asian Languages and Literatures (University of Hawaii Press, 1988). From 1991 to 1994 Professor Milner was the Director of the Australia-Asian Perceptions Project of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. The Project produced three volumes under the series title “Australia in Asia” (Oxford University Press), a series of data papers and a radio series. Professor Milner is a graduate of Monash University and Cornell University. He has held teaching appointments at both these universities and the University of Kent at Canterbury. He has also been a Visitor at the Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton. He is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social 58

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore

About the Author

Sciences in Australia, and gave the Academy Annual Lecture in 1995. He gave the Fiftieth Anniversary Golay Lecture at Cornell Univesity in 2000.

59

© 2003 Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore