The Changing Dynamics of Southeast Asian Politics 9781685857677

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The Changing Dynamics of Southeast Asian Politics

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The Changing Dynamics of Southeast Asian Politics Jörn Dosch

b o u l d e r l o n d o n

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Published in the United States of America in 2007 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301 www.rienner.com and in the United Kingdom by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8LU © 2007 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dosch, Jörn. The changing dynamics of Southeast Asian politics / Jörn Dosch. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-1-58826-482-4 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-58826-482-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Southeast Asia—Foreign relations. 2. Southeast Asia—Politics and government. 3. Regionalism (International organization) I. Title. DS525.8.D67 2006 327.59—dc22 2006020880 British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. Printed and bound in the United States of America

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The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992. 5

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Contents

List of Tables and Figures Preface

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Global, Regional, and National Dynamics in Southeast Asian Politics Making Foreign Policy: The Impact of Democratization

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Democracy and Foreign Policy: An Overview of the Debate 20 Formal and Informal Institutions in Foreign Policy Making 30 The Impact of the Military and Civilian Foreign Policy Actors 35 A Role for Legislatures? 51 Public Opinion and Nonstate Actors 62 Conclusion 66

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Security and the Challenge of Terrorism The Challenge of Nonstate Violence 79 A Typology of Conflict in Southern Thailand, Mindanao, and Aceh 83 Paths to Peace 100 Internationalization of the Conflicts: Global and Regional Dynamics 106 Conclusion 111

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Contents

Crossing Cold War Divides: Cooperation in the Mekong Valley

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The Concept and Emergence of Subregional Cooperation 120 The Security Dimension of Subregional Cooperation Within the GMS 126 The Institutionalization of Subregional Relations and Growing Transparency 128 Conclusion 134

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Decentralizing Cambodia: The International Hijacking of National Politics?

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Decentralization: An Overview of the Debate 140 Structural Framework Conditions for Decentralization and Deconcentration in Cambodia 143 Analyzing the Decentralization and Deconcentration Process 150 The Role and Impact of the International Donor Community 156 Conclusion 160

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Rethinking Regionalism: ASEAN and Beyond

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Advocacy of Southeast Asian Regionalism 168 Vietnam’s Interests and Role in ASEAN 173 The Emergence of East Asian Regionalism 180 Interregionalism 186 Conclusion 197

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Conclusion: The Deepening and Broadening of Political Activity

List of Acronyms References Index About the Book

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215 219 253 271

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2.1 Constitutional Provisions on Foreign Policy Making 2.2 Most Important Issues in Philippine External Relations, 1995 2.3 Major Foreign Policy Initiatives and Interventions of the Indonesian Legislature, 2004 4.1 Growth Areas in East and Southeast Asia 5.1 Pros and Cons of Decentralization 5.2 Development Assistance to Four Postcrisis States, 2000

31 48 60 124 144 150

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5.1 Administrative Structure of the Cambodian State

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Preface

THE BROAD FIELD OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN POLITICS IS NORMALLY STUD-

ied with a focus on either domestic political change or the region’s international relations. Since I first became interested in Southeast Asia some two decades ago, I have tried to bring these two perspectives together in an attempt to arrive at a more comprehensive and holistic understanding of the region’s political dynamics. This book is the result of recent research on this nexus of global, regional, and national developments that have reshaped the political landscape in Southeast Asia. Such a project would not have been possible without personal and institutional encouragement and support—particularly from Mark Williams and everyone in the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Leeds, with its very conducive research environment. The main funding for my research was made available by two grants on foreign policy making and nontraditional security in Southeast Asia from the British Academy’s Southeast Asia Committee. I would like to express my gratitude to the committee and its chairman, Jonathan Rigg, for this generous support. I also greatly benefited from a British Academy joint activities grant (for research on cooperation in the Greater Mekong Subregion) and three British Council higher education link programs: with Mahasarakham University and Prince of Songkla University in Thailand, and with Parahyangan Catholic University in Indonesia. My sincere thanks go to Duncan McCargo, the link coordinator on the Leeds side, for involving me in these most rewarding activities. Furthermore, I am grateful to Norbert Eschborn and Colin Dürkop of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, in Jakarta and Singapore respectively, and to Norbert von Hofmann of the Friedrich Ebert

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Foundation, in Singapore, who repeatedly invited me to present my research findings at workshops and conferences in the region. Overall, the conclusions of this book are based on eleven trips to Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Singapore, and Malaysia between 2001 and 2005, and also draw on earlier stays in the region. Various drafts of individual chapters were presented at the 2002 International Studies Association convention in New Orleans, the 2003 British International Studies Association conference in Birmingham, the 2004 European Association of Southeast Asian Studies conference in Paris, the 2005 Association of Asian Studies convention in Chicago, and the 2005 Thai Studies conference in DeKalb, Illinois, as well as at numerous universities and think tanks in Asia, Europe, and the United States. I gratefully acknowledge the funding I received from the University of Leeds and the British Academy for conference travel on various occasions. Substantial parts of the manuscript were completed during visiting fellowships at Ohio University and the East-West Center in Honolulu. I am thankful to Mike Malley, Karla Schneider, and Drew McDaniel at Ohio University, and Sheila Smith, Nancy Davis Lewis, and Eugene Alexander at the East-West Center, for having made these stays possible, and for their tremendous help and assistance during my fellowships. In addition to two anonymous reviewers whose detailed feedback greatly helped me to improve my arguments, Manfred Mols (in his usual very constructive way) and David Boyd read and commented on the entire manuscript, and Michael Connors and Bob Hadiwinata took a critical look at earlier drafts of individual chapters. Their input was essential to the completion of this project. I would also like to thank Oliver Hensengerth, who kindly let me draw on our jointly authored journal article “SubRegional Cooperation in Southeast Asia: The Mekong Basin,” European Journal of East Asian Studies 4:2 (2005), pp. 263–285, for Chapter 4. Further thanks go to Michael Nelson, Srisompob Jitpiromsri, Wattana Sugunnasil, Nyoman Sudira, Aleksius Jemadu, Uwe Solinger, Heda Bayron, and Aurel Croissant, among many friends and colleagues who shared with me their insights into various aspects of Southeast Asian politics. Not least, I am obliged to Elisabetta Linton, Lynne Rienner’s UK commissioning editor, for her encouraging assistance, professional guidance, and patience from the start of this project. I take full responsibility for the views put forward and for any errors that may be present in the book. The necessity—or should I say luxury—of having to spend extended periods of time in distant (but arguably very pleasant) places, only to retreat to the self-isolation of one’s study afterward, often requires the involvement of entire family networks to make a book happen. I am most

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grateful to the Dosch and Salinas families for their priceless contributions and, above all, for keeping the kids and everyone else happy. I am also very thankful to Herta Minne and the late Walter Minne for their support over the years. As always, the people I am most indebted to are my wife, Ana-Lucía, and our children, Nils-Mateo and Amelie, for their love, support, and understanding.

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1 Global, Regional, and National Dynamics in Southeast Asian Politics

WHEN THE ASSOCIATION OF SOUTHEAST ASIAN NATIONS (ASEAN)

came into being on 8 August 1967, the actual birth was a quick affair. After some brief deliberation in the private residence of Thai foreign minister Thanat Khoman, he and his four counterparts signed the Bangkok Declaration, which they followed with a round of golf.1 As unspectacular as this kind of high-level meeting among politicians seems to be at first glance, the founding of a regional organization among small and medium-size states in Asia without the involvement of a hegemonic power was as unprecedented as it was pathbreaking. If one discounts the earlier ill-fated attempt by the Philippines, Thailand, and the Federation of Malaya to form the Association of Southeast Asia (ASA), this was the first time that any of the newly independent Asian states came together in a joint effort to weather the challenges of the international environment and to create a peaceful and stable regional framework for development. At least during its first thirty years of existence, ASEAN stood for the most successful regional cooperation scheme outside Europe, second only to the European Union (EU), and became the model for regionalism in many other parts of the world. ASEAN was the brainchild of an elite group of policymakers who responded to a clear and straightforward international structure. The association came into being as a child of the Cold War, which had just reached a new peak as the result of the Vietnam War. Although never officially stated, ASEAN’s founders saw intensified regional cooperation as a means of strengthening Southeast Asia’s position in the Asia Pacific area and thereby reducing its risk of becoming a victim of great power global rivalry. Over the following three decades the association successfully institutionalized a network of regular meetings among 1

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the member states that enabled the governments of Southeast Asia to liaise on problems or challenges the region faced. ASEAN gained a reputation for having orchestrated Vietnam’s withdrawal from Cambodia and the subsequent Paris Peace Accords of 1991, which ended the Indochina conflict. One of the most remarkable successes of ASEAN has been the ability of its member states to (seemingly) harmonize their foreign policies and often speak with one voice in international affairs. This in turn allowed ASEAN to establish formal relations with the leading regional and global powers, such as the United States, the European Union, China, and Japan. Most decisively, ASEAN seemed to fit Karl W. Deutsch’s model of a pluralistic security community (Deutsch et al. 1957), in which the use of military force as a means of problem solving in relations among members has become highly unlikely (Acharya 2001; Dosch 1995). ASEAN worked well for many years because of the relatively low complexity involved in the political process. From an analytical point of view, the international structure of the Cold War in general and anticommunism in particular were the independent variables, and regional cooperation was the dependent variable. Intervening variables hardly existed, because the political process of managing regional cooperation comprised tiny groups of politicians and government officials who— due to the autocratic or at best semidemocratic environment of the polities in which they maneuvered—were able to follow and implement narrowly defined national interests unconstrained and unchallenged by competing political actors, civil society groups, or critical media. Simultaneously, the policy agendas tended to remain constant and were hierarchically structured: horizontally, foreign policy was separated from domestic politics; vertically, security enjoyed highest priority within the realm of foreign relations, understood as “hard” security, or the management of threat to the integrity of the nation. The political process in Southeast Asia did not seem to resemble what Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye famously labeled “complex interdependence.” Although military force was not used by ASEAN governments toward other member states (the absence of military force within a region is the third element of complex interdependence), this was due neither to the existence of multiple formal and informal channels and networks connecting governments and elites as well as nongovernmental actors and transnational organizations (the first feature of complex interdependence), nor to an adequate, multilevel coordination of holistic policy agendas characterized by fluid boundaries between domestic and foreign issues (the second element) (Keohane and Nye 1977, pp. 24–25). For example, although separatist movements have existed for many decades in places such as southern Thailand, Mindanao, and Aceh, until very recently few would have acknowledged any foreign policy ramifications of local violence.2

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In the predominantly nondemocratic setting of Southeast Asian politics, peace and stability prevailed not despite but because of, first, the relative insulation of policymaking and, second, well-defined international structures that required little policy adaptation over many years. These were the two pillars of quick and overall effective intraelite policy coordination and conflict management. It can be concluded that during its first three decades, ASEAN largely remained a network-facilitating framework for government elites. Throughout the Cold War and in some instances well into the 1990s, the political process at both national and regional levels in Southeast Asia could be described as static, highly centralized, and one-dimensional. “Static” refers to the largely constant nature of the policy agenda over time, “highly centralized” describes the fact that policymaking was the domain of a small number of elite actors, and “one-dimensional” implies the absence of major linkages between policy areas. Due to the manifold structural changes in the post–Cold War era and political change at domestic levels, the political process has moved in the direction of a pluralist, less centralistic (though not necessarily decentralized), and multidimensional model that is characterized by a growing number of political actors, increasing tendencies toward dispersed decisionmaking, and an intertwinedness of global, regional, and national dynamics never seen before in Southeast Asian politics. According to Anthony McGrew, this change is threefold and can be described as a stretching, deepening, and broadening of political activity. “Stretching” refers to the fact that decisions and actions in one part of the world can come to have worldwide ramifications, “deepening” means that developments at even the most local level can have global implications and vice versa, and “broadening” refers to the growing array of issues that surface on the political agenda, combined with the enormously diverse range of actors involved in political decisionmaking processes at all levels, from the local to the global. This three-dimensional process “transcends the traditional distinction between the international and the domestic study of politics, as well as the statist and institutionalist biases in traditional conceptions of the political” (McGrew 1992, p. 3). Globalization—in the broadest meaning of the concept—is the most obvious and broadest structure, and is probably the first that comes to mind in explaining why the distinction between domestic and foreign issues in Southeast Asia has increasingly become blurred. Recent travelers to Indochina will know the story. As soon as the thirsty visitor sets foot in a bar or pub in Hanoi or Phnom Penh, he or she is immediately approached by a girl dressed in the brownish colors of Tiger Beer and another one wearing a green and white Carlsberg dress. The obvious mission of the “beer girls” is to promote the respective brands of

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lager in a very polite but persistent way. Sometimes a third girl representing Bell’s Whiskey enters the scene. Multinational companies are fighting for their share of the booming Southeast Asian markets. Beer gardens appear beside Christmas markets in Bangkok and elsewhere in the region. According to the popular cliché, McDonalds, Starbucks, MTV, and Hollywood are the faces of globalization or indeed Americanization. The Asian crisis of 1997 fostered this image. Donald Emmerson asks, tongue-incheek, “With Asian values out of the way, what was left but the goodness and power of the capitalist and democratic virtues undergirding American success?” (1998, p. 48). Globalization seems to have turned Western ways of life into a global model (Prasert 1996, p. 3; Logan 2002, p. xv). This, of course, is a simplifying metaphor, but a very powerful one that, at first glance, seems not far from reality. Is it appropriate to assume that the processes of globalization have reshaped Southeast Asia and above all left a big footprint on politics in the region? To start, there is no academic consensus on the origins of the process that we today call “globalization.” Roland Robertson (1992), one of the pioneers in the study of this phenomenon, differentiates between five phases of globalization, with the earliest being the so-called germinal stage. This represents the beginnings of modernity, which Robertson places in the period 1400–1750. For David Harvey (1996), the origins of globalization are closely associated with the Renaissance, because of the great discoveries and voyages that took place during this period and radically extended the ideas of space. Most important for Harvey is the arrival of the mechanical clock, which, he argues, “annihilates” space because it constructs time as linear and universal. For the first time, so the argument goes, people all across the globe had the potential to synchronize their watches. In this sense the idea of time is central to the idea of modernity itself. Anthony Giddens (1999b) explains globalization as a continuation of developments that have their roots in early-eighteenth-century Europe, where modernization replaced the older traditional forms of societies based on agriculture. If we accept that globalization is not just a recent phenomenon, Southeast Asia’s first taste of large-scale global developments dates back to the nineteenth century and is related to, first, the region’s exposure to European imperialism and Southeast Asia’s integration within the colonial structure of international trade and, second, the gradual emergence of universal patterns of political power and governance. In the latter sense, “‘monarchy’ became a semi-standardized model. . . . [Thai King] Rama V sent his sons and nephews to the courts of St. Petersburg, London and Berlin to learn the intricacies of the world-model” (Anderson 1991, p. 21).3 Later on, in the first half of the twentieth century, nationalism, whose idea and ideology

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had originated in Europe, became a powerful global force and formed the basis for resistance and independence movements in most parts of Southeast Asia, with the notable exception of Thailand, which had never been colonized. Although the phenomenon stretches back centuries, globalization as an academic concept began to receive recognition only in the early 1980s (Robertson 1992). Today it is closely associated with the post–Cold War international order. The “global village,” a term coined by Marshall McLuhan as early as 1969 (McLuhan 1969, p. 302), or the “borderless world,” a catchphrase for globalization in Thai public debates (Reynolds 2001, p. 253) and many other places, best describe the essence of the concept. While a commonly agreed definition of globalization does not exist, the lowest common denominator in the debate seems to be the minimalist view, according to which “globalization is an increase in interconnections, an acceleration of global flows, or greater interdependence” (Mittleman 2001, p. 213). Or, according to Giddens’s more detailed definition: Globalisation is the intensification of world-wide social relationships which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by distant events and, in turn, distant events are shaped by local happenings. It is a process which has led to the reduction of geographical, spatial, and temporal factors as constraints to the development of society. It has resulted in an increased perception of the world as a whole, and a readjustment of societal thought and action away from national, and towards international and global spheres. (1999a)

A main focus of the discourse has been the nexus of globalization and the sovereignty of the state, centered on the argument that the manifold and simultaneous processes of globalization were undermining the foundations of national sovereignty and reducing the capacity of policymakers to act autonomously or effectively within national jurisdictions (Beeson 2003, p. 357). According to a popular standpoint, which is often echoed by civil society organizations, the erosion of national sovereignty is mainly the result of the influence of global interactions among transnational actors, such as big private corporations and economic and financial players. Their interests and actions are believed to have narrowed the ability of governments and people to choose economic, social, and cultural policies (Khor 2000, pp. 4–5). It is of course equally possible to reverse the argument and see the very same phenomenon of diminishing state sovereignty in a predominantly positive light. In his often-cited book End of the Nation State, Kenichi Ohmae (1995, p. 21) proposes that economic activity in the era of globalization was

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no longer structured—and, most importantly, no longer restricted—by the political boundaries of the traditional Westphalian state, but instead followed information-driven efforts regardless of national borders and discrete cultural areas. The benefits of this presumably borderless world for Southeast Asian actors seemed obvious. The liberalization of financial markets gave firms unprecedented and easy access to sources of capital and opened the door to a fairytale land of quasi-unlimited trade and investment flows. One could even go a step further by arguing that Asian actors were among the movers and shakers of globalization rather than their objects. A little more than a decade ago the Asian developmental state and, linked to it, governance models and work ethics based on a crude understanding of political Confucianism, conveniently constructed by the region’s authoritarian elites to legitimize autocratic or pseudodemocratic rule, almost emerged as the gold standard for the efficient management of opportunities and challenges in the dawning, globalized twenty-first century. Nowhere else did the three main pillars of globalization in the mainstream understanding of the concept—economic integration, domestic economic deregulation, and rapid advances in technology—manifest themselves more clearly than in the post–World War II economic history of Northeast and Southeast Asia (Coclanis and Doshi 2000, p. 61). When the Asian crisis of 1997–1998 shattered the dream of globalization as a never-ending profit-generating phenomenon and forced the region into an economic downturn that also had far-reaching political, social, and ecological ramifications, the self-perception of Southeast Asia quickly changed, from being the champion of globalization to being the first “victim” of the borderless, information-driven world. To many, the Asian crisis, often dubbed the first crisis of globalization, demonstrated in great clarity the link between national and regional corporate activities, and global economic organizations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). According to a widespread Indonesian view, for example, globalization implies the loss of state sovereignty and economic domination by foreigners (Murphy 2000, p. 210). This way of thinking was reflected by Indonesian national planning minister Kwik Kian Gie’s outburst that the IMF wanted to “choke and ruin” Indonesia economically (quoted in Antara, 20 September 2003). In a similar extreme way, former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad identified globalization, perceived as an idea “coined by the rich countries” (Mahathir 2002, pp. 13–14) and a great Western conspiracy, as the cause “for undercutting the benefits of the Malay community” (quoted in Welsh 2000, p. 243). Seen from this angle it was only logical to blame the Asian crisis on the predatory integration of the world economy, the resulting large capital flows that overwhelmed the region’s financial system, and particularly the

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malicious work of currency manipulators and speculators (Dato’ Mustapa 2000, p. 5). Even those who do not subscribe to the idea of the IMF’s sole responsibility for Malaysia’s or indeed Southeast Asia’s economic misery of the late 1990s, would probably agree that the Asian crisis has had a fundamental impact on the perception of globalization. One “psychocultural impact” of the 1997 economic debacle on the region’s middle classes “was the transformation of their collective imaginings of ‘globalization’ from rosy to thorny” (Tejapira 2002, p. 331). However, it would be too narrow a perspective to reduce the Southeast Asian manifestation of globalization simply to the emergence and the destruction of “miracle economies.” Some Southeast Asian countries have witnessed a lively discourse on the various meanings and implications of globalization (Mols 2004c)—perhaps most prominently in Thailand, where the term lokanuwat became a buzzword, a neologism coined at the end of the 1980s meaning “turning with the world” (Kim 2000, p. 19). In Thailand, globalization has been the subject of an intense debate between “globalizers,” “nationalists,” and “localists,” and is associated with the undermining of Thai cultural standards and values, but also with the constructive search for an alternative development path that draws equally on local wisdom and the structural realities of the international system (McCargo 2001, p. 103; Hamilton-Hart 2000; Hewison 2002, p. 152). In other countries, however, the debate is still in its very early stages or has not even begun. In Vietnam, until the mid-1990s, the term “globalization” was largely avoided in public discourses, and official documents, including those of the Vietnamese Communist Party as well as academic journals, were referring to “internationalization” instead. This has changed in recent years, as Vietnamese academics have begun to publish widely and explicitly on globalization. Furthermore, the concept is no longer a political taboo (Binh 2001, pp. 3–4), although the definition of the phenomenon is mostly limited to developmental aspects and the “strong state–weak state” dichotomy. For example, in a keynote address to the sixth ASEAN summit in Hanoi in December 1998, Vietnam’s Prime Minister Phan Van Khai made these statements: Developing countries, including ours, are faced with intertwined opportunities and challenges. Great achievements in science and technology have created boundless opportunities and challenges for mankind, but at the same time challenged developing countries with the danger of lagging further behind industrialized and developed countries. Rapid economic globalization is bringing about greater market access and new partners for development, but also putting the weaker economies in a more vulnerable disadvantageous position, and in an uneven competition. (quoted in Binh 2001, p. 4)

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The beginning of Vietnam’s new openness to the debate on globalization coincided with the country’s achievement of quintupling its international relationships in the first half of the 1990s. In 1995, Vietnam scored a triple diplomatic success by joining ASEAN, establishing official relations with the United States, and signing a framework cooperation agreement with the EU. At the same time, for other nations in the region, any discourse on globalization is still unknown territory. Government officials in Burma seem to ignore the phenomenon of globalization, which they consider to be associated with the old regime of Westernization. No Burmese word is used or translated for “globalization” (Suvajee 1998, pp. 328–329). In a similar vein, in Laos, the word “global” has neither been properly translated nor is it widely used by the media or the public. “Globalization” as a term seems to be known only to the elites in Vientiane, to high-ranking government officials, to businesspeople, and to some intellectuals, and in most instances the meanings and translations of the term are adopted directly from Thailand through the Thai media (Suvajee 1998, pp. 74–75). Globalization does not mean only a freer flow of goods, services, and technology. The phenomenon also includes the global diffusion of culture and values, social, political, and economic concepts, consumer patterns, aesthetic tastes, fashion trends, lifestyles, and so forth. Like elsewhere in the world, social structures as well as political and economic institutions are exposed to these processes and are rapidly changing in response to them. Globalization can be seen as the trigger for the universal spread of “technological consumerist mass societies” as the defining criterion of an emerging “planetary civilization” (Mols 2004a) and is, according to some, the main factor behind the democratization of authoritarian polities. The expansion of democracy around the globe began with the demise of dictatorship in Portugal, Spain, and Greece in the mid-1970s. This process has been most prominently described as the “third wave of democratization” (Huntington 1991). It has extensively reshaped the modern world. After reaching Latin America, the “wave” crossed the Pacific, reaching the shores of Asia: the so-called People’s Power Revolution of 1986 in the Philippines was followed shortly after by democratic transitions in South Korea and Taiwan. Thailand and Indonesia have been undergoing (re)democratization processes since 1991 and 1998 respectively. According to Freedom House, a nongovernmental organization (NGO), less than 30 percent of the world’s countries were democratic in 1974. The “Freedom in the World” survey showed that, in 2004, eighty-eight countries were consolidated democracies, representing 44 percent of the world’s population. Fifty-five countries were considered “partly free,” representing 21 percent. Political rights and civil liberties are more limited in these countries, in

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which corruption, dominant ruling parties, and in some cases ethnic or religious strife are often the norm (Freedom House 2004). Although it is questionable whether democracies can be clearly and easily identified and enumerated, democratization is nonetheless a significant phenomenon that cannot be ignored as a decisive factor in the post–Cold War era. Most studies on the impact of globalization and democratization explain the latter (dependent variable) as a local response to the challenges of the former (independent variable). Kim Kihwan views democratization as the immediate consequence of globalization: “Globalization will lead to greater democratization. . . . With easier and greater access to information, constituents will want to participate more actively in the decision-making process. The upshot will be not only more democratic decision making in all organizations but also a change in the nature of democracy itself, from a representative to a participatory one” (2001, p. 26). Discussing the case of Thailand, Neil Engelhart argues that economic globalization directly contributed to democratization in the 1990s by impinging on politics “in a way that advantaged those who already advocated greater democratization” (2003, p. 254). He asserts that economic hardship in the wake of the 1997 crisis made core actors afraid of undemocratic intervention in politics, particularly military pressure on the elected government, the appointment of an unelected prime minister, or in extreme cases a coup d’etat, and subsequently motivated them to press even harder for the consolidation of democracy (p. 266). Without establishing a clear causal link between the processes of globalization and democratization, Anders Uhlin, in reviewing the cases of Thailand and Malaysia, nevertheless concludes that “globalization opens a new space for political contestation” (2002, pp. 162–163). In Indonesia, the economic crisis of 1997–1998 may not have caused but triggered the downfall of President Suharto and accelerated the process toward democratic reform. In their discussion of the reform process in Vietnam, Claudia Derichs and Thomas Heberer emphasize that the Asian financial crisis discredited authoritarian political concepts and thereby opened the door for gradual, albeit very cautious first steps toward political liberalization under the 1998 decree on “the exercise of democracy” (2002, pp. 154–156). In a detailed case study on the impact of globalization on the Malaysian state of Sarawak, Sabihan Osman explains that the local economy’s integration into a more open and free market system with its various implications, such as the expansion of urban areas, road building, impact from development of hydroelectric power, and the resulting displacement and relocation of indigenous peoples to new areas, “has triggered greater awareness among the indigenous peoples of self-empowerment and democratization, which are important forces in capturing globalization” (2000, p. 987). In a more general sense, Jean Grugel

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stresses that “under conditions of globalization, democracy becomes desirable because it is thought to be the pathway to development and social peace and because it appears as an ordering device conducive to global stability and growth” (2003, p. 261). As readers will recall, in the lively debate on Western versus Asian values in the early 1990s, “democracy” was sometimes used by Asian contributors as a synonym for Western culture in general and therefore rejected as not suitable for their own societies. Some East and Southeast Asian governments had accused the West of trying to impose on them alien concepts derived from post-Renaissance liberal Western traditions. However, the idea that cultural differences make the Western concept of democracy inapplicable to East and Southeast Asia has never been commonly shared. For example, Kim Dae Jung, who has always been one of the major opponents of Lee Kuan Yew and Mahathir Mohamad in the debate, has argued that Asia has always been rich in democratic ideals and institutions. At any rate, the problem of dealing with democracy is the normative character of the concept. In his thoroughly stimulating deconstruction of the “Western democracy” concept, Edward Friedman explains, “While the potential for democracy is universal, its practice is idiosyncratic. Every democracy is sui generis. If a democracy is not indigenized to fit particularities of culture, history and society, a democracy would never flourish” (2002, p. 59). Indeed, democracy is deeply rooted in specific cultural and historical experiences. In the mainstream European view, democratic political rule is prominently associated with the welfare state ideal, whereas in the United States, pluralism of decisionmaking processes and power structures is central. In Latin America, the concept of civil society became a core element of the young democratic order. In East and even more in Southeast Asia, the notion of democracy had long been based on the principle of harmony and consensus building, materialized for example in Indonesia’s so-called Pancasila democracy under the rule of Suharto. Another strand of the debate perceives democratization as a global strategy of the West. According to this argument, rather than being a direct result of globalization, democratization turned into a global discourse in the 1990s when the promotion of democracy became a cornerstone of US and European foreign policies (Grugel 2004, p. 31). The very moment democracy had emerged as the only acceptable game in town after the end of the Cold War, the member states of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) intensified their efforts to propagate and promote the transition to liberal democratic systems on a larger scale than ever before (see, e.g., Whitehead 1996a, 1996b; Rotfeld 2000). At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the vast majority of European, US, and Japan-

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ese donor organizations and aid agencies follow a global strategy of fostering processes of democratization and good governance (Kurtenbach and Weiland 2003; Dosch and Kurtenbach 2003). Whatever view one prefers concerning the relationship between democracy and globalization, there seems to be at least widespread agreement that “the shape of democracies in Asia, as elsewhere, bears the powerful imprint of global forces” (Cotton 2003, p. 342; see also Loh Kok Wah and Öjendal, 2005). Larry Diamond even identifies the “globalization of democracy [as] one of the most historic and profound global changes of the past several decades” (2000, p. 413). However, the “globalization of democracy” does not necessarily imply a deterministic relationship between the two phenomena. From an analytical point of view it seems impossible to isolate globalization from other variables such as the internal dynamics of the respective political systems that have become democracies or are currently in a process of consolidation. The perceived implications of globalization on Southeast Asian politics will be mentioned and discussed at various points in the following chapters, but the analytical framework needs to be much broader in order to capture the dynamics of change in national and regional politics. Taking globalization as the core analytical unit and indeed as the independent variable would wrongly suggest that the process of political change is monocausal and one-dimensional. While global events can prominently contribute to structural and behavioral alterations and transformations in domestic contexts, global factors are hardly ever the sole triggers of change, nor is the internationalnational nexus a one-way road where global spheres impact on national and local areas but not vice versa. Hence, rather than adopting a narrow approach of trying to discuss the specific impact of globalization on Southeast Asian politics, I will argue in a much broader sense that structural changes at the international and domestic levels in Southeast Asia are bound in a reciprocal and mutually reinforcing relationship that has increasingly taken the shape of complex interdependence. This complex interdependence is characterized by the multiplication of ties among state actors as well as between state and nonstate actors and the intertwined, nonhierarchical nature of policy areas.

Structure of the Book

As already hinted, the key proposition of this book is that the political process in Southeast Asia has moved from a static, highly centralized, and one-dimensional setting to a pluralist, less centrist, and multidimensional

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framework due to a stretching, deepening, and broadening of this process. Of course, this change does not constitute an absolute shift from one ideal model to the next. The progression between the static and pluralist endpoints on a hypothetical policy process scale has been gradual and reached different positions in the case of each individual Southeast Asian polity. For example, over the past few years the policy process in democratizing Indonesia has been subject to more dramatic transitions than has the one in communist Laos. However, to some degree the political process has stretched, deepened, and broadened even in the most reform-resistant state, Burma. No political system in the region is completely immune to structural changes, and this has major implications for both national and regional politics. In the following chapters, I will analyze five cases that give evidence of increasing complex interdependence and reflexive linkages among national, regional, and global dynamics in the policy process. In analytical terms, such an endeavor requires crossing the divide between international relations and comparative politics. Most work on Southeast Asian politics either looks at the region from the international relations perspective, particularly in the case of the myriad publications on ASEAN, or focuses on domestic political change, especially the topic of democratization in Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines. Not many analysts have tried to unite both perspectives. This book tries to narrow the research gap by following a cross-disciplinary approach. Chapter 2 discusses foreign policy making as probably the most visible evidence for a move from a statist to a pluralist setting in the policy process. There is one common experience that all young democracies share regardless of the respective cultural background they are embedded in: the wave of democratization that has washed over the globe for three decades has principally opened international relations and foreign policy making to a larger number of actors compared with authoritarian regimes. The greater openness and complexity of foreign policy making is due to electoral competition, a prominent role played by parliaments, greater transparency, and not least, broad access to independent sources of information. In many cases a stronger participation of nonstate actors, such as NGOs and other organizations of civil society, in foreign policy making is not only a quasiinevitable consequence of democratization but also a development actively supported by governments. The making of foreign policy in Southeast Asia and indeed the region’s international relations have mostly been seen and analyzed as isolated policy areas, unrelated to the structures and dynamics of the countries’ political systems. This approach seemed to be acceptable during the periods of autocratic rule, when the foreign policy arena was the playground of small political elites who were defining and implementing

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narrow national interests without taking into account broader societal interests or being subjected to institutionalized checks and balances. However, the processes of democratization in the Philippines (since 1986), Thailand (since 1992), and Indonesia (since 1998) have not only resulted in new national political orders but also impacted foreign policy making and, more specifically, changed the way the respective governments perceive global challenges and react to them. Based on an analytical framework that mainly draws on the metaphor of the two-level game in foreign policy decisionmaking as introduced by Robert Putnam (1988) and the statist/pluralist model developed by David Skidmore and Valerie Hudson (1993), Chapter 2 discusses whether formal and informal mechanisms and patterns exist to open the decisionmaking process beyond the special foreign policy interests of small political elites and to make those interests subject to intrasystemic checks and balances; to what extent democratization has resulted in a broadening of actor participation in the formulation and implementation of foreign policy interests and strategies; and whether postauthoritarian political change has resulted in new foreign policy priorities and strategies in the regional context, the global context, or both. It is assumed that the new democratic environment in Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines has opened up the foreign policy arena to a large number of actors, mainly to the benefit of ministries, other government officials, and a civilian diplomatic service, while at the same time reducing the impact of the military on foreign policy. Special emphasis is given to the role of the legislature in foreign policy decisionmaking and to public opinion as a factor in pushing the executive toward the prominent consideration of business, human rights, and religious issues. The nexus of global, regional, and national and local developments and structures is of particular relevance to security. As Chapter 3 shows, the structural changes of the post–Cold War era have resulted in new views on the definition and nature of security. In the early 1990s, economic development and military security became intertwined in a way never before seen. Among the most important contributions to this discourse is the concept of human security, which has emerged as the core of a new and broader understanding of security. According to this new approach, security comprises aspects of so-called soft (nontraditional) security, in addition to the established hard (military) security. The chapter begins with an overview and discussion of some hard security challenges, such as the conflicts in the South China Sea, and an elaboration of the concept of nontraditional security, and then returns to the book’s main argument, the mutually reinforcing relationship between international and national events, structures, and processes, as illustrated in the context of nonstate violence.

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Since the events of 11 September 2001 and the widespread perception that East and Southeast Asia were destined to become “terrorism’s next battleground” (Kurlantzick 2001, p. 36), discussion of the insurgency hotspots in Southeast Asia under the header of the global “war on terror” has emerged as a popular discourse. Today, violence in Southeast Asia is often seen simply as the local manifestation of the same universal phenomenon, the Al-Qaidaization of international relations. While some radical Islamic groups in Southeast Asia may find it useful to ride the global jihad bandwagon, and while it is not impossible that they have received financial and logistic support from Al-Qaida, I hypothesize that the origins and main agendas of separatism and insurgency tend to have a local or national rather than an international nature. Chapter 3 also highlights a significant feature of the debate on globalization: the normative distinction between presumably “positive” impacts of globalization, such as the global extension of liberal market economies, and “negative” counterreactions, ranging from various manifestations of localism and nationalism to religious fundamentalism and terrorism. I analyze the various facets of violence in southern Thailand, in Mindanao, the Philippines, and in Aceh, Indonesia, and argue that all three conflicts share some crucial similar structural framework conditions: they (1) date back to colonial or even precolonial times and have been affected by the legacy of colonialism; (2) involve ethnic and religious minorities; (3) are legitimated and inspired in religious terms; (4) are confined to the poorest regions within the respective nations; and (5) have been fueled by a long history of neglect from their respective national governments, and marginalized in the nation-building process or even worsened due to failed policy approaches. In a further step, I discuss different approaches—partly mutually exclusive and partly complementary—to conflict management and resolution that have been applied in the three instances, including policy strategies directed to the decentralization and devolution of political power; attempts at the economic development of formerly neglected provinces and regions; the temptation to apply military solutions; and international and regional contributions, mainly the feasibility of US involvement and the role of ASEAN. Chapter 4 focuses on a further example of the fading boundaries between policy areas—in this case, economic development, management of natural resources, and security—and a new nexus between national and international dynamics in policy processes in the context of subregional cooperation in the Mekong valley. This case study is interesting not only because the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) is among the most successful subregional approaches to community building, or what Donald Weatherbee calls “developmental regionalism” (2001, p. 155), but more importantly because

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even the remaining nondemocratic states of Southeast Asia—Vietnam, Laos, and Burma—have undergone changes from static and one-dimensional to pluralist and multidimensional foreign policies, though to varying degrees, due to stretched, deepened, and broadened policy processes. The Mekong river is the world’s twelfth largest waterway, and Southeast Asia’s largest. The GMS covers some 2.3 million square kilometers and a population of about 245 million. Explorers, traders, and more recently politicians have traditionally seen the Mekong valley as a natural geographic region, whose peoples shared not only the resources of this mighty river, but also some distinctive cultural features. However, for many decades the implementation of institutionalized subregional integration was halted by war and conflict in the region. The process only gained momentum in 1992 when, with the assistance of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the six riparian states of the Mekong river—Burma, Cambodia, China (Yunnan and Guangxi provinces), Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam—entered into a program of formalized subregional cooperation. I discuss the various achievements and shortcomings of cooperation within the GMS, and argue that while the GMS has not yet developed into a pluralistic security community (as first defined by Karl W. Deutsch and colleagues in 1957) that would be characterized by the general absence of military conflict as a possible means of problem solving in intermember relations, the achievements of cooperation in the Mekong area have significantly reduced tension and conflict. The case also shows a growing convergence between national and international policy agendas in Southeast Asia. The implementation of enormous infrastructure projects, mainly funded and driven by the ADB, has resulted in an increasing overlap of local, national, and international political spheres. However, while the ADB has not directly interfered in the domestic affairs of GMS member states, in other cases of Southeast Asian politics, active international intervention has increasingly become a reality. Among the most striking examples for growing linkages between global and local political dynamics is the Cambodian polity. As Chapter 5 outlines, the degree of Cambodia’s exposure to external influence over domestic political structures is second to none in Southeast Asia. The country’s political system has become a playground for the international donor community in its attempt to strengthen good governance. Within this context, the decentralization of governance, or the “shift in decision-making and spending power from central to regional and local governments” (Campbell and Fuhr 2004, p. 11), is the core area of external sponsorship. The chapter takes a critical look at the achievements and shortcomings of decentralization in Cambodia, and discusses the contribution of external actors in particular. Interestingly, “external” in this case means mainly the

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West and Japan. The role of regional actors in or vis-à-vis Cambodia is neglectable. This holds particularly true for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which has neither mandate nor authority to involve itself in the political affairs of a member state. Chapter 6 explores ASEAN’s strict adherence to the principle of noninterference, the traditional “ASEAN way” of informal, consensus-driven consultation and the categorical rejection of any legalistic approach to regional cooperation, which has increasingly become a burden in the process of community building. I delve into the transition from a static, highly centralized, and one-dimensional policy process that proved to be a fertile ground for the efficient elite management of regional affairs in Southeast Asia, to a pluralist, less centralist, and multidimensional environment for decisionmaking, and how this transition has affected and shaped regionalism. The chapter examines the various approaches to regional cooperation in Southeast Asia and the wider Asia Pacific area under the impact of blurred divides between domestic and international structures, diminishing boundaries between individual policy areas, and the emergence of new groups of political actors. The cases include the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA), the proposed ASEANChina free trade area, the ASEAN Plus Three (APT) forum, the East Asian summit, attempts at monetary cooperation, and finally interregionalism, particularly the relations between ASEAN and the European Union. In Chapter 6 my central interest is not so much the “academic ASEAN,” or the way regionalism in Southeast Asia has served—sometimes in a rather overstretched, theoretical fashion—as a major object of scholarly research and playground for the testing of various international relations paradigms. Rather, I focus on the “practical political ASEAN,” or the manner in which political actors have perceived and developed regional cooperation. From a practical political perspective, ASEAN, which was tailor-made as a network facilitator for small and unaccountable government elites operating in an untransparent policy environment, has struggled to adapt to the new realities of more pluralistic and complex policy processes. ASEAN’s problem is not the absence of a working framework for intergovernmental communication, but the organization’s own claim of being able to effectively and efficiently address regional challenges and to embark on economic and political integration with the given institutional mechanisms. In other words, ASEAN likes to bark on the international stage but has lost its ability to bite. In short, this book neither claims to cover the entire empirically observable spectrum of changing political dynamics in Southeast Asia, nor does it try to establish a one-size-fits-all analytical methodological approach to the presented case studies. What I do attempt is to discuss some core examples of the rapidly growing nexus of global, regional, and national dynamics in

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Southeast Asian politics, focusing on developments—mainly from a comparative perspective—in Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, ASEAN as a collective actor, and to a somewhat lesser extent Singapore, Malaysia, Laos, and Burma. The regional roles and influence of China, Japan, the United States, and the European Union are also prominently taken into account. While each of the following chapters features its own case-specific framework for analysis, research questions, and propositions from the interdisciplinary toolbox of comparative politics, international relations, and area studies, the various analytical perspectives are (loosely) bound together by the argument that the political process in Southeast Asia has moved from a static, highly centralized, and one-dimensional setting to a pluralist, less centrist, and multidimensional framework (in other words, complex interdependence) as the result of a stretching, deepening, and broadening of political activity.

Notes 1. Thanat Khoman shared his personal recollection of events with me in Bangkok, August 1993. 2. This is not to suggest that Southeast Asian politicians had been completely ignorant of any domestic-international linkages. At least in very general terms, the notion that national resilience and regional resilience were tied in a mutually reinforcing relationship became an important raison d’être for cooperation within ASEAN. However, beyond the political rhetoric, this credo has had few practical implications. 3. For studies on this active self-integration of Thai monarchs into world-level structures, see also Peleggi 2002, Thongchai 2000, and Reynolds 1999.

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2 Making Foreign Policy: The Impact of Democratization

ASSUMING THAT THE PROCESSES OF DEMOCRATIZATION IN THE PHILIP-

pines (since 1986), Thailand (since 1992), and Indonesia (since 1998) have not only resulted in new national political orders but also impacted foreign policy making and, more specifically, changed the way the respective governments perceive global challenges and react to them, this chapter will delve into the following questions: 1. On the structure of foreign policy making: Do formal, institutionalized, and informal mechanisms and patterns exist to open the decisionmaking process beyond the special foreign policy interests of small political elites, and to make those interests subject to intrasystemic checks and balances? 2. On the actors involved in foreign policy making: Has democratization led to the broadening of actor participation in the formulation and implementation of foreign policy interests and strategies? Who are those actors? 3. On the issues in foreign policy making: Has postauthoritarian political change resulted in new foreign policy priorities and strategies in the regional and the global context? The understanding of democracy used here is based on Wolfgang Merkel’s concept of “embedded democracy,” which goes beyond Robert Dahl’s definition of polyarchy (Dahl 1971) and “consists of five partial regimes: a democratic electoral regime, political rights of participation, civil rights, horizontal accountability, and the guarantee that the effective power to govern lies in the hands of democratically elected representatives” 19

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(Merkel 2004, p. 36). However, I will not discuss the degree of democratic consolidation in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand, but rather analyze how and to what extent democratization—that is, the transition from authoritarian or semiauthoritarian rule to a democratic political system (independent variable)—has changed the structures of, and actors involved in, the process of foreign policy making (dependent variable) in these three polities. The chapter begins by developing an analytical framework based on the existing literature on domestic sources of foreign policy.

Democracy and Foreign Policy: An Overview of the Debate

In 1967, British political scientist Peter G. Richards complained about the lack of academic research on the various actors involved in the process of foreign policy making. In his view, the neglect of parliaments and societal forces in most analyses, for example, was partly due to the fact that foreign affairs “tend to be overlaid by other issues” and “are generally considered a matter for the executive branch of government” (1967, p. 13). Two years later in 1969, James N. Rosenau’s pathbreaking edited volume Linkage Politics, on the convergence of national and international systems, was published. In great analytical and empirical depth, Rosenau and the volume’s contributors investigated the reciprocal relationship between external and internal variables in policymaking. This attempt at a “systematic conceptual exploration of the flow of influence across the . . . boundaries of national and international systems” (Rosenau 1969, p. 3) can still be considered the benchmark for crossing the international-domestic divide. Rosenau introduced a matrix featuring no less than 144 areas in which national-international linkages can be formed (p. 49). However, with the notable exception of Ole Holsti’s and John Sullivan’s chapter on France and China, the volume was more concerned with the impact of international inputs on domestic policy outputs than the influence of actors and structures on a given state’s foreign relations. Equally if not more important, Rosenau’s earlier “pre-theory” framework (1966) served as the methodological basis of a series of studies (e.g., Rosenau and Hoggard 1974; Rosenau and Ramsey 1975) that tried to assess the relative importance of domestic and external variables in foreign policy making by juxtaposing the internal factors of size, economic development, and political accountability with the relational attributes of distance, homogeneity, and power. Rosenau and his colleagues came to the general conclusion that internal factors are dominant while the external (e.g., relational)

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cluster contributes much less to the explanation of conflictual and cooperative foreign behaviors (Wilkenfeld et al. 1980, p. 126). At the same time, many influential contributions to the analysis of foreign policy of the 1960s and 1970s (e.g., Wallace 1971; Epstein 1964; Frankel 1963; Waltz 1967; see Geller 1985 for a summary) maintained that in both democratic and authoritarian systems, executive decisionmakers were only marginally constrained, if at all, by competing actors. A significant research gap in the study of the domestic dynamics in foreign policy making continued to exist. Although the domestic-international nexus and the president-versusCongress pattern in US foreign policy making are well documented, other case studies and general theoretical contributions are rather small in number. There are a few notable exceptions though. One of the most influential post1970s contributions to foreign policy analysis has been the metaphor of the two-level game as introduced by Robert Putnam (1988) and developed further by many others since (especially Evans et al. 1993).1 The two-levelgame framework is the “central analytical device . . . to span the domesticinternational divide” (Caporaso 1997, p. 567). It follows the idea that “the relationship of states to the domestic and transnational social context in which they are embedded—have a fundamental impact on state behavior in world politics” (Moravcsik 1997, p. 513). The two-level game links the national and international context of decisionmaking. At the national level, domestic constituencies pressure the government to adopt policies they favor. At the same time governmental actors seek power by building coalitions among these constituencies. At the international level, governmental actors seek to satisfy domestic pressures while limiting the harmful impact on foreign relations. Thus, political leaders must simultaneously play both the international game and the domestic game. The requirement that decisionmakers satisfy both domestic constituencies and international actors is what produces constraints on foreign policy behavior. In sum, while the two-level game emphasizes negotiating behavior, it also serves as a metaphor for understanding the impact of domestic influences on the broad spectrum of foreign policy decisions (Trumbore and Boyer 2000, p. 680). Joe Hagan amends Putnam’s approach by introducing a further analytical layer. He correctly stresses that political leaders “must engage in two, not one, domestic political games involving diverse opposition actors with different goals and interests” (Hagan 1993, p. 4). The first imperative of this dual domestic game is coalition policymaking, or the requirement that agreement is to be achieved among actors who share the authority necessary for committing the resources of a nation to a particular course of action in foreign policy. The necessity for coalition building is rooted in what Vincent Pollard calls “stretched organizational pluralism,” which “generically refers to the extent

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to which the foreign policy power is shared, willingly or unwillingly, with other individuals and institutions” (1998, p. 5). The second feature of the twofold domestic embeddedness of foreign policy making is retaining political power, or the imperative to maintain and, if possible, enhance the political support base necessary for holding on to political power (Hagan 1993, pp. 4–5). In other words, “Foreign policy decision-makers are not simply agents of the national interest but political animals who must worry about their survival in office and the viability of their overall set of political goals, domestic and foreign” (Skidmore and Hudson 1993, p. 3). The two-level-game approach does not explain the impact of domestic factors on foreign policy making in different regime types. It does not differentiate between democracies and autocracies but explains that regardless the respective political system, no senior governmental actor is completely immune from intrastate pressure. In principle, strong government agencies, insulated groups of technocrats, or rival actors (the military for example) can challenge and influence the foreign policy making of authoritarian leaders as effectively as can societal forces, NGOs, or parliaments in liberal democracies. However, while both authoritarian and democratic leaders generally face a similar pattern of constraints when confronted with decisions about their countries’ external relations, the degree of pressure on decisionmakers seems to vary greatly according to the overall structure in which foreign policy making is embedded. The influence of nongovernmental actors in the foreign policy arena is prominently related to the way in which regime accountability constrains the government’s latitude of decisionmaking in foreign affairs. In an authoritarian state regime, accountability tends to be low because the procedures for power transfer are not institutionalized. The continuity of a regime is not linked to the legislative process, elections, judicial decision, or even the regime’s performance. Hence, accountability does not impose a significant limitation on foreign policy making in authoritarian polities. In contrast, democratization increases regime accountability and, as a result, restricts the regime’s leeway in determining and implementing foreign policy goals (Park, Ko, and Kim 1994, p. 173). In this regard David Skidmore and Valerie Hudson (1993) differentiate between two ideal models, the statist and the pluralist approach, which show that while regime accountability is a crucial variable, the differences between authoritarian and democratic polities can be blurred as far as foreign policy making is concerned.2 The statist model is most likely to be found in a nondemocratic environment, but is not necessarily restricted to a certain regime type. In extreme cases, foreign policy is guided by a national interest that is narrowly defined and, over time, very consistent. Given their almost absolute, insu-

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lated position within the state and its political system, foreign policy decisionmakers can safely ignore societal interests and even opposition. As a result, the conduct of foreign policy is almost free of domestic constraints (Skidmore and Hudson 1993, pp. 7–8). The statist model and its subtypes are more widespread than might appear at first glance. In fact, the belief in the primacy of foreign policy and a commitment to strong government in the management of foreign policy are the very essence of the realist school of thought in international relations. The idea that a potentially hostile international environment and the anarchic struggle for power among nations require insulated policymaking that is not shaped by mass sentiment is as old as the study of international relations itself. The concept goes back to Thucydides’ views on the Peloponnesian war, can be found in the writings of Niccolo Machiavelli, John Jack Rousseau, John Locke, Leopold von Ranke, Friedrich Meinecke, and Alexander de Tocqueville, and represents a core argument of Hans Morgenthau’s work:3 Thinking required for the successful conduct of foreign policy can be diametrically opposed to the rhetoric and action by which the masses and their representatives are likely to be moved. The peculiar qualities of the statesman’s mind are not always likely to find a favourable response in the popular mind. The statesman must think in terms of national interest, conceived as power among other powers. The popular mind, unaware of the fine distinctions of the statesman’s thinking, reasons more often than not in the simple moralistic and legalistic terms of absolute good and absolute evil. The statesman must take the long view, proceeding slowly and by detours, paying with small losses for great advantage; he must be able to temporise, to compromise, to bide his time. The popular mind wants quick results; it will sacrifice tomorrow’s real benefit for today’s apparent advantage. (Morgenthau 1948, p. 168)

In the antipodal pluralist model, the case of a quasi-unlimited, open, and responsive democratic system, foreign policy choices are inevitably linked to their perceived effect on the decisionmaker’s political standing in his or her constituency. In such an environment the vast majority of foreign policy options go along with societal division and political mobilization either because the material interests of various groups are affected differently—producing both winners and losers—or because foreign policy choices provoke ideological conflict over values and purposes. By that, any given policy choice on an important international issue will stimulate a range of support and opposition. A very good example of the pluralist element in foreign relations is the strong impact of Japanese public opinion and local politics toward the US military presence in Okinawa on the state

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and future of the US-Japanese security alliance (S. Smith 2000). Overall, the pluralist model “assumes that foreign policy interest groups are large in number, that cross-cutting cleavages exist among them, that coalitions shift easily across issues and over time, and that power is dispersed rather than concentrated. On issues where domestic salience is high, political leaders select policies which attract the support of domestic coalitions. Since coalitions change over time and across issues, policy consistency and coherence are rare” (Skidmore and Hudson 1993, pp. 9–10). From a hard-core realist position, the pluralist model would be inferior to the statist approach because, according to this view, it harms the pursuit of foreign affairs in the quasi-anarchic world of states (see Harriott 1993, p. 220, for a critical discussion of this argument). Walter Lippmann and others have challenged the idealist’s view that peace is in the interest of the people more than in that of the ruling elite and the related hypothesis: “The more responsive foreign policy is to popular influence, the more peaceful it is likely to be.” The realist counterassumption is in essence: “Peace is best served by a foreign policy too sophisticated to be comprehensible to the general public. Popular intervention in foreign policy risks inhibiting that rational adjustment to new situations which is a prerequisite for peace” (paraphrased in Goldmann 1986, pp. 9–10). On the one hand, empirical evidence indeed suggests that even the political elites of consolidated Western democracies successfully applied statist approaches at critical junctures of world politics. The Washington-Beijing rapprochement of the early 1970s, which began with secret meetings between Henry Kissinger and Zhou Enlai, is a prominent example. US president Richard Nixon “gave Kissinger unprecedented control of the foreign policy process and to be an independent operator in foreign policy (i.e., to negotiate secretly with Chinese officials). The back channel allowed them to act decisively in the area and to circumvent bureaucratic and congressional opposition” (Garrison 2002, p. 24). On the other hand, a radical realist position ignores that the recipe of strong government, insulation, and a deliberate lack of transparency as a means of keeping the statesmen’s strategies out of the public domain has often resulted in crisis rather than contributed to an efficient management of international relations. The circumstances that led to the outbreak of World War I are a case in point. Overall it seems safe to assume that in the post–Cold War era the pluralist element in foreign policy making is on the increase, for a combination of two reasons. First, the less clear and straightforward international structures require more complex processes of foreign policy making and the evaluation of a larger set of alternative options than was the case in the (relatively simply structured) bipolar world. Second, as already hinted, the democratization of authoritarian-ruled polities has made the area of foreign

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policy more accessible for a growing, and often diverse, group of actors. At the same time, democracy per se does not guarantee a significant societal input. Due to the complexity of foreign relations and the fact that, in general, citizens are personally less affected by international than domestic affairs and consequently do not rank foreign policy issues very high, the public still looks for “guardianship”4 in this policy area (Dahl 1985), and responsibilities are likely to be placed in the hands of an expert minority (Kahler 1997, p. 5). The best-researched example in this respect is the United States. In 1992, at a time of massive structural changes in the international system, only 9 percent of the American electorate cited foreign affairs as the most important or second most important policy area that had had an impact on their vote in that year’s presidential elections (see Lieber 1997, p. 11). Despite the proliferation of new technologies and information sources, most Americans seem to be poorly informed about most aspects of international affairs (Holsti 1996, p. 215). Then again, foreign policy making in the United States is not at all monopolized by the president or small groups of experts within the administration. The core principle of checks and balances, or intermixture of power, in the US Constitution provides for a prominent involvement of Congress in foreign policy making and thereby, as an indirect result, opens the process to the interests of numerous lobbies, pressure groups, and NGOs that are informally linked to actors within or close to the legislature. In general terms, state autonomy in policymaking consists of two categories: autonomy from social elites and autonomy from the masses.5 While authoritarian regimes are normally characterized by a strong state autonomy from popular influence and a weak autonomy from elite influence, especially that of military and business actors, democratization changes this relationship by increasing state autonomy from social elites and reducing state autonomy from the public. The latter phenomenon is related to the rapid emergence of civil society actors, such as labor unions, political parties, interest and pressure groups, and the mass media. However, as Tong Whan Park, Dae-Won Ko, and Kyu-Ryoon Kim (1994) demonstrate in the cases of South Korea and Taiwan, despite the mainstream proposition that increased state autonomy from social elites and the simultaneous expansion of societal input in the political arena generally boost a nation’s overall policy performance, the impact on foreign policy capacity is not as clear-cut. Hence the interesting questions: • Which groups of actors and how many of them are actively trying to put their mark on foreign affairs in a democratizing political system?

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• And, once the actors have been identified: How effectively are they shaping the process of foreign policy making and influencing their respective governments, assuming that the executive is the lead actor in the vast majority of, if not nearly all, existing political systems, regardless of the specific regime type? In order to address these points, the fact that relations between the executive and other actors, such as the legislature, political parties, or NGOs, can follow formal and informal patterns must be taken into account. Although the outcomes can be similar, the process is different and depends on whether the two-level game is embedded in formal regime structures (such as constitutional provisions) or driven by informal mechanisms of control and veto. The political system of Canada provides a striking example in this respect. The Canadian parliament possesses no formal, legislative authority over the shaping of foreign policy, which is the exclusive domain of the prime minister and a very small number of governmental agencies, including the Privy Council and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. At the same time, however, the parliament has significantly affected foreign policy making on the basis of nonlegislative, informal means and procedures—for example, committee hearings, interparliamentary groups, study tours abroad, or individual efforts by members of parliament (McCormick 2002). The formal-informal nexus is of particular importance for the analysis of foreign policy making in new democracies or—depending on the terminology and perception one prefers—in transitional regimes where a certain degree of formal institutionalization (a new constitution, for example) or the stability of the newly created democratic institutions might not have been achieved yet. While “even the modest degree of political liberalization may influence foreign policy” (Kahler 1997, p. 12),6 initial changes of foreign policy interests, priorities, and strategies of postauthoritarian regimes are more likely to result from the new open environment for policymaking than from the set of formal institutions-in-the-making. In a newly democratized polity, the domestic institutional framework for foreign policy making seems to become “more concerned with ‘open,’ and often ethical-moral . . . aspects. Actors such as political parties, interests groups and the mass media, are, therefore, increasing in influence compared with the more ‘closed’ specialist and bureaucratic-process features [of a nondemocratic regime]” (Sanford 1999, p. 769). These actors gain additional importance due to their potential ability to influence or, in the case of the mass media, shape public opinion, which can be a powerful tool in the foreign policy process. Even in the 1960s, the impact of the British media on London’s

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foreign policy, for example, was probably more decisive than the foreign policy role played by the parliament (Richards 1967, p. 174). The media’s power has increased ever since, and any decision on whether or not the UK will adopt the euro is likely to be heavily influenced by the battle for public opinion fought out in the newspapers, particularly the tabloids. In the case of Canada, to give a second example, “the growth of media outlets as sounding boards of public opinion has in part drowned out the parliamentary and caucus debate that Question Period or other parliamentary exchanges might have provided the government in the past” (McCormick 2002, p. 25). Thomas Risse-Kappen (1991, p. 510) concludes, on the basis of analyzing foreign policy making in the United States, France, Germany, and Japan, that politicians in democratic polities do not decide against an overwhelming public consensus. Mass public opinion sets broad and unspecific limits to the foreign policy choices. One might even agree with Farrell, who suggested that foreign policies are often primarily designed for domestic ends: “it is not unknown for senior political decision-makers seeking reelection to high office to espouse foreign policy positions with an eye to the ballot box rather than in accordance with their considered judgments” (1966, p. 184). Despite the growing role of the media and NGOs, parliaments often emerge as one of the most influential foreign policy actors, particularly in transitional regimes. Although the formal institutional setting may not provide for extensive decisionmaking power over foreign policy issues other than the ratification of international treaties (which is the case in most countries, though Canada, for example, is an exception), parliaments nevertheless often actively pursue foreign policy interests. In fact, as Lisa Martin assumes, “it appears that legislatures are most insistent on asserting their right to influence foreign policy early in the process of liberalization. Because this process is about establishing property rights to policymaking, legislators are reluctant to concede in the institutional power struggle by allowing the executive much discretion. In contrast, in established democracies we typically see extensive delegation (but rarely abdication) to the executive branch” (1997, pp. 68–69). She gives seventeenthcentury England, and postcommunist Russia, as examples. The prominent involvement of parliaments and, consequently, political parties in foreign policy making can even start well before the institutionalization of a democratic system. Hungary is a case in point. The principal foreign policy aims and strategies of the Hungarian Democratic Forum, which won national elections in 1990, were formulated previously to the national elections. Following their legalization, the opposition groups and parties, including the forum, more and more put their mark on the government’s for-

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eign and domestic policies, even if only indirectly. In the twilight period of the communist government after May 1989, all major foreign policy moves, including decisions involving the Warsaw Pact, were discussed with the opposition. The forum, then the largest of the opposition parties, even sent representatives to the United States and other countries to discuss with policymakers Hungary’s prospects under a democratic regime (Kun 1993, p. 60). Furthermore, as the case of most postauthoritarian political systems in Eastern Europe has demonstrated, unlike members of the legislature in consolidated democracies, parliamentarians in many newly democratized states cling to the ideal of grassroots democracy and therefore maintain close relations with actors from civil society. This increases the potential impact of NGOs on policymaking. NGOs are not in themselves democratic organizations, but they often represent democratic values and have the ability to mobilize public support for their causes. As a report by the East West Institute points out, “NGOs in Eastern Europe have been especially successful in promoting specific issues, such as human rights, which challenge the international system based on the rights of sovereignty and non-intervention” and thereby confront traditional realist concepts of foreign policy as pursued by the old authoritarian political elites (EWI Strategy Group 1998, pp. 6–7). The new postauthoritarian governments can no longer afford to focus solely on security and survival. No longer is foreign policy “a separate and special area of government linked to the security and the fundamental values of the state” (Wallace and Patterson 1978, p. 3). As Vincent Pollard shows in the particular case of the Philippines, but also regarding Asia in general, nonstate actors with political commitment, expert knowledge, media savvy, and organizational agility have been able to put their mark on foreign policy making. Simultaneously, governments have learned to channel the interests and activities of NGOs toward attainment of objectives sought by presidents and foreign ministers (2004, p. 155). The wider framework of the two-level game in a democracy also increases the potential for academic policy consultation and the influence of think tanks. In the United States, more than a thousand private, nonprofit think tanks try to contribute their expertise to the governmental decisionmaking process. The more the influence of think tanks and academics in the foreign policy process grows, the more they are integrated in epistemic communities, or so-called track-two activities, that bring them together with government officials who often attend these kind of meetings in their private capacity. Joseph Nye illustrates the way academic-governmental networks work: A couple of books [such as on Japan, in the aftermath of the Gulf War, etc.] were undertaken when I was directing a group we called the Aspen

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strategy group, which has about thirty members including academics and former government officials, plus people from the Congress. The Aspen Strategy Group included Brent Scowcoft, Les Aspin, Bill Perry, Jim Woolsey, John Deutch—these were people who wound up in government positions but who spent the time before that talking to each other, thinking through some of these problems. So the ideas that were in the books were also put directly into the minds of people who then wound up in policy positions. So you can think of academic ideas affecting government policies by what you might call a trickle-down effect. . . . The most powerful way is when you develop ideas with people who actually then go in and have their hands on the lever, or you get your own hands on the lever. And then ideas are directly related to power. (quoted in Kreisler 1998)

In most European democracies, academics are less influential compared with their US colleagues. As well, whether in the United States, Europe, or elsewhere, the link between academia and governmental decisionmaking does not always work properly. “In fact, many efforts to build bridges between research and policy have suffered from unrealistic predictions of traffic volume, poor or misleading traffic signs, ignorance of drivers’ motivations and decision-making processes” (Trostle et al. 1999, p. 103). Despite or maybe because of the lack of systematic research on the role of think tanks in transitional regimes, it seems interesting to address this question in the context of Southeast Asia. While the opening up of the foreign policy arena in new democracies will change the dynamics of decisionmaking and probably the issues involved, the participation of new actors does not necessarily improve the quality, efficiency, or outcomes of this process. The example of South Africa’s attempts to sort out its China policy illustrates this point. The question of recognizing the People’s Republic of China was the first substantive foreign policy decision promulgated by the postapartheid government. The difficulties experienced in institutional transformation, with regard both to personnel and to introducing a more open decisionmaking process, constrained policy formation and implementation by the new government to a significant extent. Lingering distrust between members of the old and the new regime hampered the capacity of the country’s foreign affairs department to function optimally within the international environment. The introduction of an open foreign policy raised the profile of interest groups in a society that had little experience in public debate of international issues. At least during the early transitional phase of South Africa’s democratic era, this tended to cause confusion in the management of the formerly elite-exclusive domain of foreign relations (Alden 2001, p. 134). The following analysis of foreign policy making in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand is based on the proposition that democratization

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in these polities has altered the two-level game due to (1) gradually changing formal and informal rules and procedures that govern foreign policy making; (2) increasing regime accountability, which imposes a significant limitation on the government’s decisionmaking power; and (3) growing state autonomy from social elites, especially the armed forces and cronies, and decreasing state autonomy from civil society and intermediate actors, such as NGOs, business groups, and above all parliaments, that try to exert influence over foreign relations. As the result, one can observe a shift from a statist to a pluralist model of decisionmaking.

Formal and Informal Institutions in Foreign Policy Making

Provisions concerning the conduct of foreign policy can be found within the formal institutional architecture of both the authoritarian and the democratic regimes of Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines. As one would expect, their respective constitutions are the main sources for norms and rules related to foreign affairs, including the respective roles and duties of the executive and legislature in areas such as the negotiation and implementation of international treaties, declaration of war, and command and control of the armed forces. However, as Table 2.1 shows, a comparison of predemocratic and democratic constitutional provisions reveals significant differences in Indonesia and the Philippines. Different formal concepts of foreign policy are partly due to informal institutions, such as traditional perceptions of the head of state’s role and specific experiences in the respective nation’s history. In Indonesia, the constitution of 1945 institutionalized a very strong role for the president. Nine of the thirteen articles of the pre-1999 constitutional text that dealt with the presidency provided powers to the president. Limitations and checks and balances on the president were not given. As Juwono Sudarsono observed in 1994 toward the end of the Suharto regime, Indonesia’s autocratic leader took maximum advantage of this institutional framework: “Even more than in most presidential systems, in Indonesia it is the President—not the foreign minister—who is the chief diplomat. It is President Soeharto who has set the tone and decided on the timing of various foreign policy initiatives that have been taken over the last 25 years or so” (reprinted in Sudarsono 1996, p. 66). Although two amendments made after the downfall of Suharto in 1998 have strengthened the role of the Indonesian parliament (the House of People’s Representatives [DPR]), core provisions related to foreign policy remain unchanged.

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Constitution of 1987 Article 2, Section 7: The state shall pursue an independent foreign policy. Article 6, Section 23: 1. The Congress has the sole power to declare war, with the approval of two-thirds of both houses, jointly assembled but voting separately. 2. In time of war or national emergency, the Congress may authorize the president to exercise powers necessary to carry out national policy, with the same restriction as in Article 7, Section 15, of the 1973 constitution. Article 7, Section 18: The president is the commander in chief of the armed forces and, whenever necessary, may order them to prevent or suppress lawless violence, invasion, or rebellion.

Philippines Constitution of 1973 Article 7, Section 14: 1. Treaties must be approved by a majority of all members of the National Assembly. 2. The National Assembly has the sole power to declare war, with the approval of two-thirds of all its members. Article 7, Section 15: In time of war or national emergency, the National Assembly may authorize the prime minister, for a limited period and subject to its restrictions, to exercise powers necessary to carry out national policy. Unless sooner withdrawn by resolution of the National Assembly, such powers cease upon its next adjournment.

Democratic Regime Amendments of the 1945 constitution (four rounds, 1999–2002) do not directly affect Articles 10 and 11 (i.e., foreign policy making). Article 13: 2. When appointing ambassadors, the president must take into account the considerations of the House of Representatives. 3. When receiving the credentials of foreign ambassadors, the president must take into account the considerations of the House of Representatives.

Predemocratic Regime

Constitutional Provisions on Foreign Policy Making

Constitution of 1945 Article 10: The president is the supreme commander of the armed forces. Article 11: The president has the power to declare war, make peace, and conclude treaties with other states, with the agreement of the House of Representatives. Article 13: 1. The president appoints ambassadors and consuls. 2. The president receives the credentials of foreign ambassadors.

Indonesia

Table 2.1

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Constitution of 1991 Section 180: The king has the power to declare war, with the approval of two-thirds of all members of the National Assembly. Section 181: The king has the power to conclude peace, armistice, and other treaties with foreign countries or international organizations. A treaty that changes Thai territories or state jurisdictional area, or that requires enactment of legislation for its implementation, must be approved by the National Assembly.

Predemocratic Regime

Continued

Constitution of 1997 Section 223: Same provisions as in Section 180 of the 1991 constitution. Section 224: Same provisions as in Section 181 of the 1991 constitution.

Article 7, Section 21: Treaties must be approved by a twothirds majority of the Senate.

Democratic Regime

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Article 11 gives the president almost unrestricted authority over foreign policy. Neither international treaties nor a declaration of war require the formal consent or any other formalized participation of the Indonesian parliament. Article 11 only asks for the “agreement” of the legislature without institutionalizing any rules specifying the procedure of how any agreement should or must be reached. The hegemonic position of the Indonesian president can only be understood and explained within the context of informal institutions and structures, particularly cultural factors and the influence of history on the nation’s political system. First, the strong position of the chief executive corresponds with the traditional Javanese concept of absolute power. At least until the end of the Suharto regime, large numbers of Indonesians, especially Javanese, perceived the president essentially as a king: “On numerous occasions presidential behaviour is more easily understandable in cultural terms as that of a traditional monarch [rather than as] a modern head of state” (Surbakti 1999, p. 62). Second, the constitution and the role of the president are rooted in the anticolonial struggle and a strong sense of nationalism, including a wide range of sacrosanct national symbols. In the view of both the drafters of the constitution and subsequent political elites, a successful process of nation building required strong political leadership in all policy areas, including foreign policy (for details, see Leifer 2000a; Weinstein 1972). One of the most important national symbols and a core element of the consensus-driven and nonnegotiable blueprint for Indonesia’s external relations has been the doctrine of a free and active foreign policy (politik bebas dan aktif) introduced by the first vice president, Mohammad Hatta. Rather than prescribing a neutralist stance, “the foreign policy doctrine was designed to keep Indonesia’s independence to a maximum, by allowing the country to pursue whatever course deemed best to serve its national priorities, without being tied up to the external commitments it could not control” (Anwar 1994, p. 18). Third, politics in Indonesia are characterized by a distinct interrelationship between foreign policy and domestic politics. For example, except for a short period during the national revolution, Indonesian governments have been keen to avoid the influence or even dictates of Islamic considerations in foreign policy: “They have sought to avoid incautious engagement in international issues which might be exploited either to advance claims presented by Muslim groups or to enhance the political standing of Islam in the Republic” (Leifer 1983, p. xvi). In sum, foreign policy of both the Sukarno regime and the Suharto government fell into the statist model and can be described as a blocked two-level game, because structural factors, both formal and informal, prevented, as far as possible, the participation of actors other than the president and a very small group of political elites.

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Although the respective constitutional provisions in Indonesia have not been changed since 1998 (with the exception of Article 13, which institutionalizes the DPR’s participation in the process of ambassadorial appointments), foreign policy making in the era of democratization no longer seems to be guided by the once powerful informal institutions of the authoritarian past. It will be shown below that, despite the lack of new constitutional procedures in the area of foreign policy, actors outside the executive are already successfully influencing the management of Indonesia’s external relations. Unlike political change in Indonesia, the redemocratization of the Philippines has brought about important implications for formal procedures of foreign policy making. On 21 September 1972, then-president Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law, closed the Philippine Congress, and assumed its legislative responsibilities. During the 1972–1981 martial law period, Marcos, invested with dictatorial powers, issued hundreds of presidential decrees. The constitution of 1973 further strengthened his position. The newly established National Assembly, which succeeded the Congress, was nothing more than a rubber stamp of the authoritarian ruler. In order to restrict the power of future presidents and reduce the risk of dictatorship, the democratic constitution of 1987 introduced an elaborate system of checks and balances partly modeled on the US political system. The Philippine Congress is one of the most powerful legislatures in the Asia Pacific, as far as its role in foreign policy making is concerned, and has played its cards on several occasions. In particular, Article 7, Section 21 (“No treaty or international agreement shall be valid and effective unless concurred in by at least two-thirds of all the Members of the Senate”) has proven to be a strong and decisive instrument of the legislature. Of the three states analyzed here, it is in the Philippines that the two-level game in the foreign policy process comes closest to Putnam’s model. In Thailand, political change in the aftermath of the 1991 coup d’etat has not resulted in any new formal framework conditions for foreign policy. Although Thailand’s constitution of 1997, the sixteenth since 1932, brought about far-reaching implications for the nation’s political system (see Croissant and Dosch 2001), the content and wording of the two sections related to foreign policy have remained practically unchanged compared with the previous, military-oriented constitution of 1991. The king as head of state has the prerogative to declare war with the approval of the bicameral National Assembly (Sections 180 and 223 respectively), and to conclude international treaties. Treaties that provide for a change in the Thai territories or the jurisdiction of the state, or that require the enactment of legislation for implementation, must be approved by the National Assembly (Sections 181 and 224

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respectively). However, judging foreign policy making in Thailand solely on the basis of formal constitutional structures would be too simplistic a view. The almost identical constitutional passages hide the fact that today’s decisionmaking process is open to a wider spectrum of actors. During the times of imperialism and the Cold War in Southeast Asia, Thailand’s foreign policy followed a realist pattern based on the primacy of security. This, and the role of the military as a legitimate instrument of state policy, contributed to a preeminent position of the armed forces in foreign policy making. Even more, the military regularly monopolized the decisionmaking process, excluding the parliament and even the foreign ministry at times. As a result of the democratization process, the institutionalization of civilian control over the armed forces and the subsequent decline of the military’s power to intervene in politics have significantly reduced the generals’ authority over foreign affairs (see Rüland 2001c, p. 1027). Regime change in all three states has resulted in new formal and informal structures that influence, channel, or even determine foreign policy decisionmaking. Although the respective heads of government, the president in Indonesia and in the Philippines, and the prime minister in Thailand, continue to play the main part, the process of democratization has opened the two-level game and resulted in a trend from rather statist to more pluralist models of foreign policy making in all three cases.

The Impact of the Military and Civilian Foreign Policy Actors

One of the most visible results of regime change in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand has been the diminishing role of the armed forces as a major foreign policy actor and the revival of foreign affairs as a civilian domain. During Suharto’s “New Order,” Indonesia’s foreign policy decisionmaking was “determined by major input from the President, particularly on matters considered vital by him” (Suryadinata 1996, p. 16; see Vatikiotis 1993, pp. 180–187, for details). Former foreign minister Mochtar Kusumaatmadja once admitted that all strategic foreign policy decisions, such as the normalization of Indonesia’s relations with China in 1990, were made by Suharto without any significant contribution from other actors.7 At the same time, this preeminent position would not have been possible without the strong backing of the 275,000-strong military. The involvement of the Tentara Nasional Indonesia (TNI; National Armed Forces of Indonesia) in politics dates back to the early 1950s, and is legitimized by its decisive contribution to the emergence of the Indonesian nation. But it was the 1965 coup

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that particularly strengthened the army’s sociopolitical role and marked “the beginning of a large scale ‘militarization’ process” (Suryadinata 1996, p. 35) during Suharto’s New Order. On the basis of the dwi fungsi (dual function) doctrine, stipulating a dual political and security function for the military, the armed forces claimed the right to be represented in the government, the legislature, and the state administration. In the area of foreign policy, this claim resulted in a military-dominated Ministry of Foreign Affairs, despite the fact that all three foreign ministers of the New Order were civilians. According to Bob Hadiwinata, “although some diplomats of civilian background (Ali Alatas, Nana Sutresna, Hasyim Jalal and some others) did make a good career in the foreign service, it does not necessarily say that civilians had their grip in foreign policy-making.”8 Other military agencies were also involved in influencing, if not determining, New Order foreign policy, including Hankam (Ministry of Defense and Security), Bakin (Intelligence Body), BAIS (Intelligence and Strategic Organization), Lemhanas (Institute of Defense and Security), and Setneg (State Secretariat) (Suryadinata 1996, p. 30; see also Singh 1994). Although the dwi fungsi doctrine is still alive in postSuharto Indonesia, and although the military has not yet surrendered its selfproclaimed traditional role as a domestic stabilizer of last resort, the TNI’s impact on policymaking in general and foreign affairs in particular is diminishing. The shift toward civilian supremacy first gained momentum with the selection of Abdurrahman Wahid as president in October 1999. Wahid immediately asserted his authority over the military with a series of bold appointments and rotations at the highest levels of the TNI.9 Among other measures, the president took the following actions (Robinson 2001, pp. 244–245): • Appointed a civilian, Juwono Sudarsono, as minister of defense, and a navy officer, Admiral Widodo, as TNI commander. • Dismissed the TNI’s spokesperson, Major-General Sudrajat, after he made statements questioning the president’s authority over the military. • Ordered that the four active military officers in the cabinet retire from the TNI (all did so without objection). • Suspended former TNI commander General Wiranto from his cabinet position, pending investigations into the general’s role in East Timor. • Resisted strong military demands for a declaration of martial law in Aceh. The inner circle of the TNI itself began to perceive the need for reform. At a special meeting in April 2002, TNI leaders expressed the view that the

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military should begin to withdraw from its involvement in political affairs and instead focus on its external defense obligations (Robinson 2001, p. 245). A document summarizing a seminar held at the military’s staff and command school (Sesko TNI) in Bandung in September 1998 described the future of the dwi fungsi doctrine as a fourfold process comprising the following changes for the military (Bourchier and Hadiz 2003, p. 305): 1. 2. 3. 4.

Assuming a position and method not necessarily at the forefront. Adopting a concept of influence rather than occupation. Using indirect rather than direct methods of exerting influence. Sharing political roles (joint decisionmaking on important national and governmental issues) with other political actors of the nation.

However, the removal of one of the forerunners of the reform movement within the TNI, Major-General Agus Wirahadikusumah, from his post as head of the Sulawesi military command in December 1999, indicated the TNI’s reluctance to surrender the dwi fungsi doctrine. Agus charged, “clinging to dual function is an anachronism. The armed forces have delved too deeply into practical politics” (Wirahadikusumah 2003, p. 307). The gradual reduction of the TNI’s sociopolitical role during the Wahid presidency did not reach the stage of a “pact” between civilian and military actors that would have taken away the TNI’s footing in political interventions. Furthermore, the reform process came to a standstill if not a drawback after Megawati Sukarnoputri became president in 2001. Although Megawati’s Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) had emerged victorious from the parliamentary elections in 1999, with 35 percent of the votes, the result fell clearly short of a majority of seats in the House of People’s Representatives. As Megawati could not take for granted the support of the second strongest political force, Golkar, she turned to the military as her principal political ally. Megawati’s maneuvering did not restore the military to its former political role, but it indicated that domestic stability was placed above reform. “The military may have lost its political control, but not its influence” (Nischalke 2002). Although Megawati came to power on the back of widespread popular support and enjoyed a higher degree of legitimacy than her predecessor, Wahid, the political authority of her administration as a whole was not sufficient to implement and carry forward any far-reaching reforms of the armed forces. On the contrary, the antiterrorism laws passed after the attack in Bali in October 2002 gave the military and the police new scope for action, in ways that might be damaging to democracy. The government defines terrorism rather broadly, so that secessionist movements and individual cases of opposition can also be classified as terrorism. Suspects may be

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detained for up to six months without charge. The election of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono—Indonesia’s first directly elected head of state—in the October 2004 landslide win against Megawati, seems to pave the way for a continuation of Wahid’s reform program despite Yudhoyono’s military background. Yudhoyono, the country’s sixth president, who is popularly known as “SBY,” is a retired general from TNI’s “reformist” wing and has not been involved in any human rights violations committed by the armed forces in East Timor and elsewhere under the New Order regime. SBY led the Indonesian UN peacekeeping contingent in Bosnia in the 1990s, and served as minister of mines and energy under Wahid before becoming coordinating minister for political affairs, security, and social welfare in the Megawati administration, where he was “the only person in the Cabinet who did not have his reputation tarnished” (Smith 2003, p. 99). While there is little doubt about his commitment to professionalizing the TNI and clearly reducing the military’s political role, there are structural obstacles to a far-reaching reform, as Hadi Soesastro (2003) explains: “TNI is totally different than it was before. Helping TNI to professionalize is good. But the fundamental problem is that the military is driven by the necessity to meet its financial requirements. It was publicly stated by then defense minister Juwono Sudarsono that the military gets no more than 30 percent of its funds from the national budget. The necessity of the military to look for its own money is the source of much evil in the country. Similarly, the inability of the government to finance the military limits the ability of the government to impose effective civil control.” The TNI is “a state within a state, the most powerful institution in the country” (Little 2003). Notwithstanding the TNI’s status, a major achievement of the postSuharto reformasi era since 1998 has been the revitalization of a professional diplomatic corps. Under Suharto, Indonesia’s Department of Foreign Affairs (Deplu) was de facto subordinated to the TNI, and senior ambassadorial appointments went to generals rather than career diplomats. The most prominent dispute between the TNI and Deplu was over the status of East Timor. The ministry had for years urged for a settlement on the issue, primarily because East Timor had been the major impediment to Indonesia’s aspiration to play a significant role on the global stage. However, the military took the final decision on this matter (A. Smith 2000, p. 500). The opening up of the foreign service to civilians started under Wahid and resulted in the gradual restructuring of Deplu. This ongoing process is expected to bring about tremendous consequences for the making and implementation of Indonesian foreign policy (Jemadu 2002, p. 20). In January 2002, Deplu committed itself to a new bureaucratic and policy structure. The aim of the restructuring is to involve “the entire Government and all

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sectors of society” in Indonesia’s diplomatic profile and to reflect “the ferment for reform in Indonesia [that] has made its constituencies more and more pluralistic” (Foreign Minister N. Hassan Wirajuda, cited in Cullen 2002). Although “Indonesia has elected to embrace a (radical) Western model of diplomacy, one that utilizes the nation’s historical tendency to include and deploy its citizens (most often organized, normally voluntarily but sometimes mandatory, into constituencies) to fulfill the very diplomatic and political tasks the State is not able to perform” (Cullen 2002), Deplu, like most actors in post-Suharto Indonesia, has yet to firmly establish its proper role within the political system and adapt to the new structures of decisionmaking and the changing political culture. Deplu, as the civil service as a whole, now reflects a “multi-party environment where it must be neutral and learn to serve changing administrations” (Jemadu 2002, p. 20). While it is likely that the TNI will try to hold on to the main principles of the dwi fungsi concept and maintain political power and influence over decisionmaking in domestic politics for the time being, the military’s reduced leverage over the conduct of foreign policy is already visible—for example, with regard to Indonesia’s participation in the “war on terror.” The military’s attempt to develop a hard-line approach in the fight against terrorism has been markedly softened if not overruled by the SBY government’s reluctance to upset Indonesia’s Muslim groups. And despite the muscle-flexing of the armed forces in the dispute between Indonesia and Malaysia over overlapping territorial claims in the Sulawesi Sea—the oil and gas-rich “Ambalat Block”—in 2005 (Kassim 2005), civilian politicians rather than generals have taken the lead in trying to de-escalate and resolve one of the country’s potentially most explosive diplomatic conflicts in decades. As a further indicator of the military’s reduced grip on foreign relations, senior ambassadorial appointments no longer go to senior officers of the armed forces, but to career diplomats. High-ranking personnel in Deplu agree that foreign policy making is now much more complex than during authoritarian days. When in the past Deplu would simply follow the unitary opinion of the president and Lemhannas, officials now have to listen to different opinions from the president, the parliament, and the military. As the Indonesian legislature has embarked on playing an active role in shaping the country’s foreign relations, the termination of the TNI’s special representation in parliament is a further indication of the military’s diminishing influence in the making of foreign policy and indeed a powerful symbol and a further step toward a possible depolitization of the TNI in general. In August 2002 the People’s Consultative Assembly, Indonesia’s highest legislative body, passed a crucial constitutional amendment that came into effect with the 2004 general elections and terminated the

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practice of reserved seats for the TNI in the unicameral House of People’s Representatives five years sooner than originally planned. In 2004, for the first time, all seats in the parliament were contested. In the first democratically elected parliament of the post-Suharto era, 38 of the 500 members of the House of People’s Representatives were appointed from the ranks of the military. Their number had already been reduced from 100 to 75 before the 1999 elections. In Thailand, as in Indonesia, the involvement of the armed forces goes back a long way. Thailand’s democracy is the result of a long-term transitional process characterized by frequent alternations of authoritarian regimes since the end of the absolute monarchy in 1932. However, the authoritarian elite, the civil bureaucracy, and the military have been in office almost uninterruptedly since the 1930s. Although semidemocratic regimes alternated with periods of autocracy, the civil and military bureaucracy retained firm political power until the late 1970s. Since that time, the processes of economic and social modernization have weakened the position of state actors—the political instabilities of the 1970s were a distinct signal in this respect (Wyatt 1984, pp. 299–307)—leading to a careful opening up of the “bureaucratic polity” (Riggs 1966). Due to this development, a “soft” authoritarian regime was institutionalized, described by some authors as a “demi” or “semi” democracy (see Likhit 1992; Chai-Anan 1995). Semidemocracy in Thailand was characterized by a strong government with a nonelected prime minister at its apex, most often a former military man, controlling the political process. A democratically elected House of Representatives had to share its political power with the Senate, but the Senate had no democratic legitimacy because its members were nominated by the military and mostly came from the state bureaucracy and the ranks of the armed forces.10 The periods of authoritarian rule and semidemocracy were also characterized by the dominant position of the military in foreign policy decisionmaking. Under the second administration of Chuan Leekpai (1997–2000), the withdrawal of the military from politics became visible when, for the first time since the end of the absolute monarchy in 1932, Thailand had a civilian minister of defense. Prime Minister Leekpai decided to hold the defense portfolio himself (Kusuma 2001, p. 191). The fading role of the military in politics is unmistakably linked to the democratization process. A series of political and administrative reforms aimed at the weakening of the military have taken place since 1992 and particularly as the result of the 1997 constitution, including the following (Ganesan 2001, p. 11): • Gravitating power away from the Senate and toward the Legislative Assembly. Previously, active and retired military officers consti-

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tuted as much as two-thirds of the Senate, and the speaker of the parliament was often drawn from the Senate. The new constitution prevents the military from exercising such discretionary privilege, as the Senate is now elected. • Discontinuing the appointment of senior military officers to lucrative directorships in state agencies. For example, in the past, leading officers from the Royal Thai Air Force were automatically appointed to the board of the country’s civilian air carrier, Thai International. Other areas in which the Thai military has lost control are budget allocation, arms procurement, and senior military appointments. The military previously had access to budget allocations, including a secret budget that was not subject to civil audit. In addition, lucrative kickbacks were obtained through equipment procurement. That source of revenue has been significantly weakened, and procurements are subject to greater scrutiny and severe reductions. An incident in 1993 became the test case for military involvement in foreign policy. The first Chuan government allowed eight Nobel Prize laureates (among them the Dalai Lama) to visit Thailand. Their objective was to demand that the Burmese junta release Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the country’s opposition and 1991 Nobel Prize winner. In the run-up to this high-level visit, a conflict emerged between the government and armed forces, in particular army chief General Wimol Wongvanich. The armed forces did not agree to the visit, because they wanted to maintain a smooth relationship with the Burmese army. Furthermore, as Surachart Bamrungsuk (Surachart 2001, pp. 80–81) explains, the Thai army was determined to keep its “special relationship” with China, because of the uncertainty of war and peace in Cambodia at that time and China’s past assistance to Thailand during the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia. The generals thought that the presence of the Dalai Lama in Thailand could have a negative impact on relations with China, but this disagreement did not lead to a confrontation as in the past. The military made its position clear and sent a message of disagreement to the government. However, the moment the cabinet announced its decision, the army stopped speaking. “This was a good [omen] for Thai democratization. The military could voice its opinion so long as it did not threaten to overthrow the government. And the military agreed to stop voicing its opposition when the cabinet made its final decision—indicating a certain degree of civilian control over the military as well as military professionalism” (p. 80). As well, the 1992 transition to democratic rule incidentally occurred alongside the end of the Cold War in Southeast Asia. The main and powerful symbol of the changing international structures was the withdrawal of Vietnamese forces from Cambodia, resulting in a normal-

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ization of relations between Thailand and Vietnam and, consequently, the diminishing of a major threat to Thai national security. No longer did the nation’s armed forces have a major enemy to fight; neither internal nor external threats seemed to exist any longer in the post–Cold War era. In this new security environment the military needed to adjust its role and mission (p. 81). In sum, the 1992 watershed in Thailand’s political development helped take control over the ideological content and direction of foreign policy away from the Thai army, which, during the final decade of the Cold War, was preoccupied with the Vietnamese threat from Cambodia (Kislenko 2002). Similar to the Indonesian case, the declining political role of the military in Thailand has contributed to a rising profile for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. While the foreign minister is traditionally not among the most powerful members within the hierarchy of the Thai cabinet, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has the most modern leadership structures and the besteducated bureaucrats of all Thai ministries.11 Apart from short periods, the ministry had been in the shadow of the armed forces in past decades (Funston 1998, p. 293). However, the ministry did not immediately reemerge as the central foreign policy player with the beginning of redemocratization in 1992. Due to frequent changes of governments and foreign ministers— during the 1990s Thailand had eleven different foreign ministers—the position of the ministry was not as strong as it might have been in the case of continuity at the top (Rüland 2001c, pp. 1027–1028). Finally, however, under Foreign Minister Surin Pitsuwan (1997–2001), the ministry established itself as the undisputed lead actor in most foreign policy areas. Surin’s charisma, his outspokenness, and his fresh ideas about a reform of ASEAN, which materialized in the lively debate about the organization’s sacrosanct principle of noninterference and the establishment of the ASEAN Troika,12 contributed to the ministry’s increased influence within the government. As a result, Thailand emerged as a new unofficial leader of ASEAN in the wake of the 1997 Asian economic crisis, which abruptly ended thirty years of Indonesian guidance. At the same time, the armed forces have managed to retain some impact on the conduct of foreign relations with Thailand’s neighboring countries as a result of the close personal and economic ties that Thai generals had established in the 1980s with Burmese and Laotian generals, as well as Khmer Rouge leaders during the pro-Vietnamese regime in Cambodia. These links helped the military to dominate relations with Cambodia and Burma—and to a lesser degree with Laos—long after the foreign affairs portfolio passed to civilian hands in the early 1990s. “Relations between the Thai and Burmese generals remained so close that when the Burmese gov-

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ernment arrested some Thai and other foreign protesters in 1998, it was not the Ministry of Foreign Affairs but the army commander General Chettha who successfully negotiated their release. When Gen. Surayud Chulanont was named army commander in 1998 . . . he visited Burma, Cambodia, Singapore, and the Philippines. The Senate Military Affairs Committee lent sanctions on the ongoing role in foreign policy, arguing that for some neighboring countries with a strong military influence, there were opportunities for the military to form relationships rapidly and efficiently, and such opportunities should be pursued” (Ockey 2001, p. 203). Among the Thai military’s network of special relationships within the region, the close links between the Thai and Burmese armed forces have had the most visible effect on Thailand’s foreign affairs. In the wake of increasing numbers of Burmese refugees in Thailand, in June 1997 the Thai army began implementing a new policy whereby it closed the border to all new arrivals, thus denying asylum to those fleeing Burma. In the view of the armed forces, the recognition of refugees from Burma would prove problematic when securing economic cooperation and trade deals with the Burmese government (Hyndman 2002, p. 42). While between 1962 and 1988 the Thai army had more direct relations with Burma’s ethnic insurgents along the border than with the government in Rangoon, this changed after the August 1988 violent suppression of the prodemocratic uprising in Burma and the subsequent reestablishment of military rule in the following months. Thousands of students and protesters fled to ethnic minority–held areas in Burma’s frontier regions, mostly on the border with Thailand. Thailand’s General Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, then commander in chief of the army and foreign minister, was the first foreign high-ranking politician to meet with the newly formed State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) in Rangoon in December 1988. The main reason for his trip was the negotiation of lucrative timber and fishing deals for Thai companies in Burma to take advantage of the SLORC’s announcement to end Burma’s economic isolationism. The timber agreements were especially important, since a seemingly unlimited supply of wood in Burma enabled Thailand to impose a moratorium on the felling of its own hardwood trees. There was strong domestic pressure in Thailand at the time to cease logging, because of the severe flooding caused by excessive deforestation. Chavalit’s visit set the tone for Thailand’s foreign policy toward Burma: the neighboring country was seen as a potentially lucrative source of natural resources and opportunities for Thai companies, especially those linked to the Thai military. In exchange for the Burmese concessions, Chavalit promised Thailand’s withdrawal of support from ethnic insurgents (Human Rights Watch 1998; Lintner 1995; Hyndman 2002).

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The Thai-Burmese Joint Commission, which was formed in 1993 to foster bilateral cooperation, also bore the handwriting of the armed forces, as did Thailand’s ultimately successful attempts to pave the way for the admission of Burma into ASEAN. This goal was achieved in July 1997, despite mounting criticism from the United States and the European Union. At the same time, the issue of Burma’s ASEAN membership has given evidence of emerging rifts between the three main actors in post-1992 foreign policy making (in addition to the prime minister): the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the military, and the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee. Officials of the foreign ministry did not make a secret of their discontent with ASEAN’s hasty embrace of Burma, for two reasons.13 First, continuous US and EU opposition to Burma’s membership significantly reduced the association’s status and leverage in international relations. Second and even more important, ASEAN’s strict adherence to the principle of noninterference in the domestic affairs of its member countries prevented the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from embarking on any meaningful dialogue with the Burmese junta destined to bring about peaceful political change in the neighboring country. In the second half of the 1990s, Thailand’s civilian foreign policy elite was the driving external actor trying to push Burma in the direction of democratic change (Ganesan 2004). Against this backdrop, Foreign Minister Surin started his initiative for a reform of ASEAN. Repeated skirmishes since 1997 along the tense 2,400-kilometer border between Thailand and Burma, of which only 58 kilometers are legally demarcated (Kislenko 2002), further demonstrate a lack of coordination among foreign policy makers, if not the existence of parallel foreign policies. While core actors among the civilian foreign policy elite, most vocally the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, favored strong military responses to Burmese incursions into Thai territory, the higher ranks of the armed forces played down the incidents in order to protect the military’s economic interests in its relations with Burma. In May 2001, General Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, by then defense minister, declared that “repeated incursions by Burmese and Red Wa soldiers on Thai soil were a very small matter and should not be taken seriously” (Bangkok Post, 10 May 2001, and author interviews). Chavalit’s view eventually prevailed. In the Philippines, military-civilian relations were different compared with Indonesia and Thailand, at least until martial law was imposed in 1972, ending an unbroken tradition of civilian control of the military. According to Article 2 of the 1987 constitution, civilian authority is again, “at all times, supreme over the military.” Quite the contrary was the case during the presidency of Corazón Aquino (1986–1992), as she was unable to reassert civilian control over the armed forces. There was a strongly held view in the

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Philippine military that the president owed her position to the rebel officers who had turned against Marcos; if Aquino failed to govern the country effectively, the military might then seek to oust her from power. The reality of this threat was brought home by the August 1987 coup attempt. The president refrained from punishing the plotters, fearing the possible consequences. It was apparent almost from the outset that Defense Minister Enrile, whom Aquino had “inherited” from Marcos, was plotting against the president in the hope of destabilizing the government. Each of the seven successive coup attempts left the government more beholden to the military. As James Putzel argues, “the most profound change in relation to the preMarcos political system to emerge from Aquino’s period in office was the enhanced role of the military at the level of the state and the determination of public policy” (1993, p. 8). A main reason that the president remained so dependent on the armed forces was Aquino’s lack of a political base. Although she had technically run under the banner of Salvador Laurel’s United Nationalist Democratic Organization party, she and Laurel were scarcely on speaking terms soon after February 1986, and Aquino had no political party of her own. Suspicious of party machines, Aquino preferred to trade on her personal popularity and reputation for moral integrity. A decisive subordination of the armed forces to the national legislature and local politicians as well as a marked reorientation from an internal police force to a narrowly defined external defense posture was only achieved in the early 1990s during Fidel Ramos’s presidency (1992–1998) (Hedman 2001, p. 181). Generally, most military leaders found this more difficult to accept with respect to the domestic order than in the case of foreign relations. Since the Philippine Senate had blocked the renewal of the Military Bases Agreement with the United States in 1991, the Philippine armed forces had “for the first time, assumed primary responsibility for external defense” (Hedman 2001, p. 185). During previous decades the armed forces had primarily played the role as a police force, mainly in terms of internal defense against insurgency movements, such as the anti-Huk campaign. While the US-supported post–11 September 2001 fight against terrorism in the Philippines, particularly the crackdown on the Abu Sayyaf group in Mindanao, has once again endowed the Philippine armed forces with a domestic mission, the civilian supremacy over the military is firmly institutionalized. That many former military officers succeeded in making the transition to second careers in electoral politics, most prominently President Fidel Ramos, who served as the deputy staff of the armed forces under Marcos, is not a contradiction. And it was particularly the Ramos administration (1992–1998) that appointed dozens of retired military officers to core civilian positions, including powerful posts in the Department of Defense and

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the National Security Council. One of the best-known examples is retired brigadier-general José Almonte, a major power broker under Ramos who served as head of both the National Security Council and the National Intelligence Coordinating Authority, and who held many ambassadorial posts (Hernandez 1997, pp. 56–57). Almonte has also been among the most active and influential foreign policy makers of the democratic era by putting his mark especially on Philippine external relations within Southeast Asia and ASEAN affairs. While leaders like Almonte, former military members who have become bureaucrats or politicians, have decisively shaped the country’s foreign policy since 1986, they have done so as individuals driven by general strategic motivations other than the aim to safeguard or even enhance the position of the military as an institution in foreign affairs. This is mainly due to the fact that, first, compared to the armed forces in Indonesia and Thailand, the armed forces in the Philippines were involved to a much lesser degree in foreign policy making during authoritarian days. Consequently the military did not see the need to defend a domain that it had never “owned”—unlike the armed forces in Indonesia and Thailand. Second, and again in stark contrast to these two countries, the personal stakes of individual military generals in Philippine foreign economic policies have been negligible. On the whole, since the beginning of redemocratization, foreign policy decisionmaking in the Philippines has been dominated by the president, the Department of Foreign Affairs, and the Senate. Shortly after taking office, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, the fourth president since 1986, indicated that foreign affairs would be given priority during her administration. This could further strengthen the position of the Department of Foreign Affairs as “the premier department of the Philippine government” (Manila Standard, 27 January 2001). The foreign policy elite in the Philippines comprises the Congress (i.e., members of the Senate and House of Representatives) and senior bureaucrats of the Department of Foreign Affairs (Romana 1995, p. 59). In all three states both the demilitarization of foreign policy and the structural forces of economic globalization have resulted in a shift from a realist to a more liberal perspective. In the Thai and Philippine cases, security or the defense of the state’s integrity, generally the overriding strategic aim of previous authoritarian regimes, have given way to a strong—but not necessarily primary—focus on trade diplomacy (Wolfe 1997) or, in a broader sense, foreign economic policy, which also includes policies aimed at attracting larger inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI) and the reduction of external debt. The gradual reshaping of the Thai regime in the direction of “civilian rule and business hegemony” since the 1960s, when the

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government adopted a World Bank plan, has provided a fertile ground for a shift from a nationalist strategy built around numerous state enterprises to a relatively open Thai political economy and its gradual integration into the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) trading system (Connors 2004, p. 5). “Thai liberalism in foreign policy was further accelerated after the onset of the economic crisis in 1997. The resignation of the Chavalit government [in 1997] led to the return to power of a coalition led by Chuan’s democrats. Pressed by capital outflows and depreciating baht, and pressure for structural reform, the Chuan government largely implemented many of the IMF imposed measures agreed by the previous government. In part, this was an act of resignation, but for some within the government it was also a chance to push forward liberalization and to internationalize further the Thai economy” (Connors 2004, p. 13). While the economic program of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was driven more significantly by domestic demand than had been the FDI-centered economic strategy of the preceding government, “Thaksinomics” was not a complete repudiation of Chuan’s foreign economic policy as some have suggested (see, e.g., Montesano 2003, p. 80),14 given Thaksin’s leadership in various regional free trade initiatives, including the ASEAN Free Trade Area, the proposed ASEAN-China free trade area, subregional cooperation in the Greater Mekong Subregion, and the proposed bilateral US-Thailand free trade area. In a similar vein but overall less successfully than Thailand (despite some impressive sectoral achievements), the Philippine government has pursued major structural economic reforms in the past decade and a half. One of the sectors where reforms have been vigorously pursued is foreign trade. Wide-ranging policies of tariff reduction, simplification of tariff structure, and “tariffication” of quantitative restrictions have been implemented. While some of these reforms have been pursued unilaterally, others have been pursued under various multilateral organizations such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) as well as under regional ASEAN initiatives such as AFTA. As a result, the ratio of exports to gross domestic product (GDP) increased from 23.2 percent in the first half of the 1980s to 47.3 percent in the second half of the decade, and then declined slightly to 45.4 percent between 2001 and 2003. Overall growth has been dominated by growth in manufactured exports, particularly semiconductor and related products (Dosch, Bores Lazo, Cororaton 2004). A mid-1990s survey of Philippine Congress members and Department of Foreign Affairs senior bureaucrats (see Table 2.2) showed that “all groups in the Philippines foreign policy elite rated as most important of overall issues the need to control the external debt, improve export performance, and attract foreign capital into the country, generally in that order” (Romana 1995, p. 68).

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Senior Foreign Affairs Senators Representatives Bureaucrats (n = 14) (n = 95) (n = 21) Average Controlling external debt Making exports more competitive Attracting foreign capital Maintaining good relations with the United States after turnover of Subic Naval Base Alleviating the plight of Filipino migrant labor Becoming more active in ASEAN Improving relations with Japan Improving relations with Middle East countries Becoming more active in the United Nations Opening the country to more imported goods

26.2 23.8

22.8 22.5

22.2 25.4

23.7 23.9

21.4 4.8

22.1 11.9

28.6 4.8

24.0 7.2

7.1

10.5

11.1

9.6

11.9

4.6

4.8

7.1

0.0

2.1

0.0

0.7

2.4

1.4

0.0

1.3

0.0

0.7

3.2

1.3

0.0

0.7

3.2

4.4

Source: Romana 1995, p. 69. Note: p > 0.05.

The top three priorities of the mid-1990s still ranked very high on the agenda of foreign policy makers in 2004, due to the fact that, most importantly, the external debt problem had not been solved but had worsened, to the extent that even an Argentine-style economic crisis in the Philippines does not seem to be impossible.15 There are indeed some striking similarities between today’s Philippines and Argentina in 2001. The external debtto-GDP ratios are almost identical (51 percent for Argentina in 2001, 50 percent for the Philippines in 2003), and the Philippine total debt-to-GDP ratio (domestic and foreign debt) in 2003, at 85 percent, even surpassed Argentina’s, at 65 percent.16 Foreign direct investment also remains a main concern. Overall FDI as a percentage of GDP in the Philippines is one of the lowest in East and Southeast Asia. Total FDI reached US$1.8 billion in 2002, but dropped by some 30 percent in 2003. By comparison, Vietnam currently attracts roughly twice and Thailand roughly three times as much

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FDI as the Philippines. At the same time, ASEAN as a whole also experienced a decline in FDI inflows from both the United States and the European Union. The sharpest downturn took place between 1998 and 2001, when ASEAN’s share of total European Union FDI declined from 3.3 to 1.8 percent.17 The main reason for the deteriorating FDI trend is related to a lack of economic competitiveness. The Philippines is the second least competitive country in Asia, owing to a high level of corruption, inadequacies in basic infrastructure, and concerns over the government’s use of public funds. Of sixty countries surveyed, the Philippines’ competitiveness ranking slipped from forty-ninth in 2003 to fifty-second in 2004, making it less attractive to foreign investors. Only Indonesia came out worse than the Philippines in the region. This was the fifth straight year of decline for the Philippines, which started in 2000 with a competitiveness ranking of thirtyfifth. By comparison, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and India all registered steady improvements in their competitiveness rankings (Institute for Management Development 2004). In Indonesia, where national cohesion is still the overriding policy priority, a new focus on a more articulated foreign economic policy did not emerge under Wahid, and only gained importance under Megawati’s presidency. When Megawati became president in 2001, she inherited a very weak economy that was still grievously suffering from the 1997–1998 crisis. Relations with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the donor consortium had reached their lowest point. At the same time, the government was seeking more debt relief from Paris Club and London Club creditors instead of phasing it out, while essential structural reforms of the Indonesian economy were blocked as the result of a power struggle between the previous administration of Wahid and the parliament. By contrast, the cabinet appointed by Megawati was less political and more technocratic than the preceding one, and effectively linked the country’s domestic recovery to an active foreign economic policy. Although the “dream team,” as the cabinet was quickly called, led by Coordinating Minister Dorodjatun Kuntjoro-jakti and Finance Minister Boediono, initially did not live up to public expectations, it eventually managed to set the stage for a successful 2004 economic transition out of IMF balance-of-payments financing and debt relief. This signaled a major step in recovering from the 1997–1998 financial crisis and returning to normal relations with official and private sources of external financing (Rieffel 2004; Smith 2003, pp. 98–99). All of Indonesia’s macroeconomic indicators improved from mid-2001 to late 2004, despite internal shocks such as the terrorist attacks in Bali and Jakarta. In addition to a significant reduction of government debt, from 100 percent of GDP in 2000 to 70 percent at the end of 2003, declining inflation, rising foreign exchange

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reserves, and GDP growth in the region of 5 percent in 2004, the attraction of more FDI proved to be particularly successful. For the first nine months of 2004, FDI was up 24 percent over the same period in 2003 (Rieffel 2004; AsiaInt October 2004). However, the tsunami disaster of December 2004 put new stress on the economy and forced the new SBY administration to request a moratorium on the country’s debts until 2007, to give the government more time to cope with the impact of the catastrophe in Aceh and North Sumatra. With regard to Indonesia’s post-Suharto foreign economic policy, an element of economic nationalism, more specifically an anti-IMF/World Bank sentiment, emerged during the Megawati presidency, as expressed by cabinet ministers, especially minister for national development planning Kwik Kian Gie: “It took some time for us to realize that the IMF actually was forming a mafia through the disbursement of World Bank and Paris Club financial assistance. The IMF itself really wanted to choke and ruin our nation economically” (quoted in Antara, 20 September 2003). This posture was widely supported by Indonesian NGOs. The government decided to terminate the five-year IMF program at the end of 2003. Since the democratically elected governments in all three countries have put strong emphasis on the improvement and strengthening of external economic relations, foreign policy and foreign economic policy have partly merged. However, the partial overlap of these two policy areas does not constitute a complete amalgamation—far from it. In the wake of 11 September 2001, the subsequent “war on terror,” the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the bomb attacks in Bali, Jakarta, and southern Thailand between 2002 and 2004, security in general and political-security relations with the United States in particular have prominently resurfaced as foreign policy priorities. Since it is obvious that major alterations to the structure of international relations, such as the Asian economic crisis and 11 September 2001 with all its implications, have largely determined the general thrust of the external relations of Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines in recent years, where do domestic political change and democratization fit in as variables to explain foreign policy making? As Skidmore and Hudson’s pluralist/statist model and Putnam’s two-level game explain, and the empirical evidence from newly democratized polities in various parts of the world suggests, the structural and institutional framework for the making of foreign policy under the condition of democracy is on the whole fundamentally different from the way authoritarian regimes shape their relations with their external environment. In the absence of institutionalized checks and balances within the respective political systems, independent legislatures that were more than rubber stamps of the governments, a free media, and a proactive civil society (with the partial exception of the Philippines), the small circles of actors in-

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volved in the drafting and conduct of foreign policy in Indonesia under Suharto, in the Philippines under Marcos, and in Thailand under subsequent military regimes, normally did not need to respond to nongovernmental concerns. Consequently, autocratic regimes could implement foreign policy strategies based on narrowly defined national interests. In the 1980s, for example, Indonesia’s overriding foreign policy strategy was aimed at regional leadership, mainly in the context of ASEAN, while the Philippines’ superseding foreign policy focus was the alliance with the United States, and Thailand’s main priority was the containment of Vietnam. Since the beginning of (re)democratization, the process of foreign policy making has opened up to the extent that actors from outside the executive and the armed forces (in the cases of Indonesia and Thailand) have forced their governments to include new issues on foreign policy agendas, such as human rights and environmental matters, blocked or significantly reshaped governmental initiatives in relations with other countries, and most significantly, confronted the executive with competing and often contradictory interests vis-à-vis the international system and its players. Among the three countries, democratization has had the largest impact on foreign policy in the Philippines and the smallest in Thailand. Indonesia, where the transformation of the political system is ongoing and power struggles for political influence among the key actors are still the rule, occupies a middle position. But even in Thailand, where Thaksin seemed to have monopolized decisionmaking in all core policy areas, the prime minister’s foreign policy is not free from the pressure of public opinion and the interests of the legislature and civil society organizations.

A Role for Legislatures?

Is Lisa Martin (1997) right in assuming that legislatures are particularly insistent on asserting their right to influence foreign policy early on in the process of democratization? At least in the case of Thailand, the hypothesis cannot be verified. There has not been any indication yet for a decisive active foreign policy role of the bicameral National Assembly as a collective actor or as an institution. According to Kraisak Choonhavan, chairman of Thailand’s Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, a foreign policy interest of the Senate is almost nonexistent. Not more than two or three senators are keen to become involved in foreign affairs.18 The same holds true in the Thai House of Representatives and its Committee on Foreign Affairs. The Rotary Club Bangkok has established itself as a prominent stage for workshops and debates on foreign policy issues, which are regularly attended by senior officials of the foreign ministry, ambassadors, and academics, but

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seldom see the participation of more than just two or three parliamentarians. The first explanation for the legislature’s lack of initiative in the area of foreign policy relates to the historical institutional setting of the Thai political system. Although Fred Riggs’s characterization of Thailand as a “bureaucratic policy” (1966) is no longer a suitable description of the country’s current political system, government ministries have generally been more powerful than the National Assembly.19 “There is a general consensus among observers of Thai politics that most lobbying of the government focuses on ministries not the National Assembly. Second, weakness in the legislative branch has characterized much of Thailand’s political history since [the abolishment of absolute monarchy] in 1932. During various periods of military dictatorship, the legislature was either a rubber stamp body or the military rulers replaced it with an appointed (and compliant) National Legislative Assembly” (Stern 2002, p. 150). While the 1997 constitution has empowered both the House of Representatives and Senate vis-à-vis the executive branch of government, the realpolitik of executive-legislative relations have only gradually and slowly been changing, and this is particularly the case for foreign policy, as it is the traditional domain of the executive in most parliamentarian systems, even in those with more powerful legislatures. The second argument is a more practical one, as it is based on the observation that foreign affairs rank low within the National Assembly’s committee hierarchy in terms of prestige and, clearly relatedly, political influence. As Uwe Solinger, a former adviser to the National Assembly, explains, “membership in the National Assembly’s Foreign Affairs committees is not attractive to most legislators as the Committees have nothing to distribute in terms of material resources.”20 Despite the obvious differences of the two political systems, Michael Clark’s assessment of foreign policy in Britain could easily be applied to Thailand’s National Assembly: “The most obvious unchanging reality which persists over the years is the fact of executive dominance in the foreign policy process. . . . Foreign Policy was always, and remains, in the hands of the executive” (1988, pp. 72–73). The minimal foreign policy impact of the National Assembly in institutional terms, however, has to be seen separately from the strong input of individual parliamentarians, mainly and most prominently Senator Kraisak Choonhavan. The chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs has developed a strong personal interest in Thailand’s relations with Burma and human rights issues, and is well represented in the national and international media. In a randomly selected period between February 2001 and September 2002, forty articles in the Bangkok Post reported on Kraisak’s activities and statements, of which twenty-two articles dealt with Burma, including the following topics:

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• A campaign against Burma’s treatment of ethnic minorities (7 September 2002). • Investigations of reports of violence by Burmese troops against Shan ethnic people in Burma (17 August 2002, 6 September 2002). • A call for the release of Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi (8 May 2002). • A call for the Thai government to “refrain from giving excessive help to Rangoon and opt instead to push democratic principles in negotiations” (30 April 2002). • A call for a tough government stance on Burma in the wake of the latter is an alleged violation of Thailand’s sovereignty and skirmishes at the Thai-Burmese border (e.g., 24 May 2001). However, there seems to be little if any coordination between Kraisak’s foreign policy agenda on the one hand, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the prime minister on the other, to the extent that Kraisak often stands for an alternative or even “parallel foreign policy”21 in Thailand’s external relations, as his position on Burma demonstrates. As outlined above, mainly for economic reasons and due to the prevailing influence of the armed forces in the domain of Thai-Burmese relations, the Thaksin government retained an appeasement policy toward Burma and signed several bilateral agreements to provide grants and long-term loans to improve the neighboring country’s infrastructure. Kraisak has promoted the exact opposite position and urged the government to “halt all forms of assistance to Burma and suspend bilateral cooperation until the new Burmese leadership makes a firm commitment to national reconciliation and democracy” (The Nation, 21 October 2004). This view has been supported by parts of the Englishlanguage (and Thaksin-critical) media in Thailand. For instance, Nation Multimedia assistant group editor Kavi Chongkittavorn charged that the “country’s policy on Burma was a shame because it was initiated by only one leader without taking into consideration the interests of the whole country or sufficient consultations” (quoted in The Nation, 21 October 2004). Personal rivalries, such as the one between Thaksin and Kraisak (who is the son of former prime minister Chatichai Choonhavan),22 are of course not uncommon in politics in Thailand, or anywhere else in the world, and are often as much related to policy issues as they are to long-standing competition among political clans and dynasties. What makes the Thai case almost unique is the choice of foreign policy as the battlefield. While legislative foreign affairs committees (and their chairpersons) in democratic systems may challenge the interests and strategies of the executive, develop alternative visions, or even block decisions, the activities of parliamentarians do

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not normally reach the stage of openly contradicting the government’s official foreign policy in international relations, as the primacy of the national interest ultimately requires protracted consensus over the general direction of a country’s external relations. The term “parallel foreign policy” seems appropriate to describe the case of Thailand because the international media often present Kraisak’s views and initiatives as if they constituted elements of Thailand’s official foreign policy rather than alternative options. Coverage of the ASEAN summit in Laos in November 2004 illustrates this point. The summit was dominated by the controversial issue of Burma’s forthcoming ASEAN chairmanship and the organization’s general approach toward the military regime in Rangoon. On the eve of the summit, an ASEAN parliamentarian conference in Malaysia discussed the “unjust restrictions on the freedom of movement of Burma’s opposition leaders by the military junta” (Philippine Daily Inquirer, 6 December 2004) and “urged the regional grouping not to pass its chairmanship to Burma in 2006” (Straits Times, 28 November 2004). This gathering was attended by some of Southeast Asia’s most prominent parliamentarians, most of whom represented oppositional political parties in their respective state legislatures, such as Kraisak, minority leader of the Philippine Senate Aquilino Pimentel Jr., and Malaysian opposition leader Lim Kit Siang. The meeting received extensive media coverage and in some instances its outcome was (wrongly) interpreted as an indication that the ASEAN member states were about to abandon their “softly-softly” approach toward Burma and adopt a tougher stance aimed at committing the junta to serious political change.23 Predictions that Burma’s prime minister, Lieutenant-General Soe Win, “will likely face intense questioning in private from colleagues about his military-ruled country’s professed quest for democracy” and that, “in a departure from protocol, Myanmar political situation is likely to be cited in this year’s summit statement” (Associated Press Worldstream, 24 November 2004) materialized only to the extent that ASEAN’s heads of state and government indeed discussed Burma’s situation, but in the usual polite, consensual, and face-saving ASEAN way without openly criticizing the junta or imposing any conditions on the regime. In sum, while the Thai Senate seems to be exerting influence over foreign policy making, this is not primarily due to institutional changes in the wake of democratization, particularly the 1997 constitution, but rather to the initiative of a single senator. Foreign policy making in Thailand is characterized more by personalization than institutionalization. In contrast, the Philippine legislature more closely resembles the US model of an intermixture of power, given the Philippine Congress’s, particularly the Senate’s, substantial institutionalized share of authority and

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blocking role over the foreign policy architecture. For example, the Philippine Congress alone can declare a state of war, and only the Senate is empowered to ratify international treaties. “The letter of the law seems to vest more power on the Congress than on the president in the conduct of external relations. In reality, however, there is much room for political and diplomatic initiatives and innovations by all members of the foreign policy elite within the constitutional framework through combinations of political alliances, deals and consensus between the president, the [Department of Foreign Affairs] . . . and politicians in the Senate and the House” (Romana 1995, p. 59). One of the most decisive involvements of the legislature in foreign affairs took place in September 1991, when the Philippine Senate blocked the renewal of the Military Bases Agreement with the United States, which would have extended the US military presence in the country for another ten years in return for US$203 million a year in aid.24 In November of the same year the US Navy turned over Subic Naval Base to the Philippine government. Subic had been the largest overseas naval base and supply depot for the US Seventh Fleet. The second US military base in the country, Clark Air Base, was one of the biggest overseas US airfields. Together the bases were staffed by 15,400 military and Defense Department personnel, supplemented by 9,000 Seventh Fleet sailors in port at any given time (Schirmer 1986, p. 1). Since Clark Air Base had suffered extensive damage from the eruption of Mount Pinatubo and was subsequently abandoned by the US Air Force in June 1991, the controversy was only about the future of Subic. Then-president Corazón Aquino initially considered leading a referendum to overturn the Philippine Senate’s decision, but later backed away from the plan and respected the legitimate act of the legislature as granted by the 1987 constitution. This decision strengthened the democratic political system. Although the Subic example dates back to the early years of (re)democratization, the Philippine Senate did not primarily oppose the treaty for the sake of opposition in order to strengthen its position vis-à-vis the executive. The controversial decision was rather driven by strong nationalist sentiments and a powerful anti-Americanism, popular with some of the nation’s most prominent intellectuals but not necessarily the majority of the public at that time. The Philippine Senate Committee on Foreign Relations issued a resolution describing a new lease on Subic as “a one-sided, unequal agreement that does not provide for reciprocal rights” and that tends to perpetuate “Philippine dependence on the United States for defense and security” (quoted in Shenon 1991, p. A1). The debate on the presence of the US military in the country is as old as contemporary Philippine democracy. As A. R. Mango explained in 1989:

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The issue of a continued American presence has served to draw the battle lines between contending ideologies and political groups . . . the internal debate has been laden with much ideological symbolism and sentimental imagery. Opposition to the presence of the bases has provided the various factions of the Filipino left with a visible symbol of American imperialism. On the other hand, major political personalities and parties have produced little explicit support for retaining the bases, partly because national posturing has always aroused a more favourable public response, so that it would be costly for serious politicians or parties to appear to be taking antinationalist stances. (p. 151)

The controversy over the US military presence did not end with the withdrawal of the US forces in 1991. It resurfaced in the context of US support for the Philippines in the fight against the Abu Sayyaf bandits and militant insurgency movements in Mindanao. Members of the Philippine Congress took the lead in voicing concern over the possibility of the 1999 Visiting Forces Agreement and 2002 Military Logistics and Support Agreement becoming stepping-stones for the eventual establishment of a larger and more permanent US military presence in the Philippines. In a more recent case, in April 2005 the Philippine Senate passed a motion calling on ASEAN to ban Burma from assuming the organization’s rotating chairmanship in 2006. The Philippine and Malaysian legislatures have been instrumental in leading the push to exert greater pressure on Burma, in the hope of securing a timetable for democratic reform and the release of prodemocracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi. While the latter has not been achieved yet, the initiative was successful insofar as the Burmese government eventually—in a tactically clever move—renounced its claim to chairmanship. Unlike in Thailand, where, as in any parliamentarian system, the division between the legislature and executive is blurred, the more clear-cut separation of powers in the presidential system of the Philippines prescribes parliamentary leverage over foreign relations. At the same time, foreign policy initiatives usually rest with the executive, mainly the president and the Department of Foreign Affairs rather than the Senate. However, the latter plays a proactive role in establishing and maintaining interparliamentary relations with other national legislatures and the European Parliament.25 Only the Indonesian case seems to support Martin’s assumption that newly democratized legislatures are particularly trying to enhance their authority over foreign policy. Following this argument, legislators are keen to establish property rights to policymaking, not out of a genuine interest in foreign affairs but simply because they are reluctant to concede in the institutional power struggle by allowing the executive much discretion.

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There is reason to assume that the Indonesian parliament challenged President Gus Dur (Wahid) whenever possible in order to strengthen its position in what is widely perceived as an ongoing zero-sum game for political power not only in legislature-executive relations but also between the competing political parties and their leaders. As Arief Budiman explained at a time when Gus Dur was still in office, the president “seemingly ignores the power composition of Parliament . . . which is controlled by members of other parties. Thus, the Wahid administration is subject to much turbulence, because it is constantly being attacked by the political forces that control the legislature” (2001, p. 150). For example, Wahid’s inability to give formal recognition to Israel was the result of opposition from the parliament, which in turn was influenced by demonstrations and societal forces (A. Smith 2000, p. 504). Since 1999 the House of People’s Representatives, the lower house of the Indonesian legislature, has established a strong interest in foreign policy issues, mainly in the following areas: • Indonesia’s relations with the newly independent state East Timor. • Indonesia’s bilateral relations, in particular with the United States, Australia, China, Israel, Palestine, Malaysia, Singapore, and Burma. • Responses to terrorism in the wake of 11 September 2001 and the Bali bombing of 12 October 2002. • Preservation of the territorial integrity of the nation (in the cases of Aceh and West Papua). When Megawati took office, it first seemed that the DPR would adopt a more passive role than during the previous government. A report by the Jakarta-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) identified three reasons for an observed sudden change in approach. According to this view, first, most members of the parliament wanted to slow down after the long process of impeaching President Wahid. Second, since there was no political indication that Megawati had been involved in any wrongdoing in terms of collusion, corruption, and nepotism (referred to as “KKN” in Indonesia), the parliament found it difficult to attack the new president. Third, immediately after Megawati’s inauguration, the national policy agenda required the full concentration of the parliament, which had to focus on the annual session of the People’s Consultative Assembly in early November 2001 (CSIS 2002, p. 13). After a brief period of passivity, however, the DPR quickly reestablished a powerful role in foreign policy making as an effective means of strengthening its institutional position within the political system. Commission I, which oversees foreign affairs

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and defense issues, has been the center of gravity of the parliament’s claim to actor status in foreign relations, and the commission’s head, Yasril Ananta Baharuddin of Golkar, has been among its most prominent faces. The commission challenged Megawati especially on the issues of Indonesia’s relations with East Timor and Australia. The DPR urged Megawati to reject the invitation by East Timor’s president-elect, José Alexander “Xanana” Gusmão, to visit the former Indonesian province on the occasion of its official independence ceremony in May 2002 (Jakarta Post, 2 May 2002). East Timor, a former Portuguese colony that was annexed by Indonesia in 1975, voted for independence in 1999. The territory had been under UN administration until it formally achieved national sovereignty three years later. East Timor’s independence was a bitter pill to swallow for many if not most key players in Indonesian politics, as it questioned the integrity of the Indonesian nation. Most decisively, the painful “loss of East Timor” was perceived as a humiliating defeat for the armed forces. Pro-Indonesian militias went on a rampage after the independence referendum, in which the former province was systematically destroyed. Megawati eventually attended East Timor’s independence ceremony, despite mounting opposition from parliamentarians, for at least three reasons. First, Megawati recognized the need for a sunshine policy in relations with East Timor as an important contribution to the improvement of Indonesia’s image and status on the international stage. Until the referendum, Indonesia’s foreign relations had been significantly constrained by the East Timor issue, particularly after the 1991 Dili massacre. Second, since East Timor occupies only half of the island of Timor, and the rest will unquestionably remain a part of Indonesia, uninterrupted trade and communication across the border is vital for the people living on both sides. Third, the Indonesian government was keen for thousands of East Timorese refugees living in Indonesia to return to their home country and consequently needed good relations with the former province. East Timor was also among the reasons for a deterioration of Indonesia’s relations with Australia. In 1999, the intervention of an Australian-led peacekeeping force into East Timor, which at that point was still regarded as sovereign Indonesian territory by the government in Jakarta, caused widespread antiAustralian sentiment. In the following years prominent Indonesian politicians, including Yasril Ananta Baharuddin, had accused Australia of backing the independence movement in the Indonesian province of Irian Jaya (West Papua). It is widely believed that Yasril’s radical political stance on Australia and East Timor was primarily a convenient weapon to attack the Megawati government and to increase Golkar’s bargaining power vis-à-vis the administration and Megawati’s Indonesian Democratic Party of Strug-

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gle, the largest faction in the DPR (Laksama, 21 July 2002).26 Unlike in Thailand, however, where the parliament’s role in foreign policy is tied to the interests and activities of one senator, the position of the Indonesian legislature is to a significantly higher degree embedded in the overall institutional context of the political system and involves a larger number of key actors. Neither has Yasril been the sole legislative voice of opposition, nor has the parliamentary interest in foreign relations been confined to Commission I of the DPR. For example, when in September 2002 the commission called for Australian prime minister John Howard to postpone a visit, citing the concerns outlined above, both Amien Rais, speaker of the People’s Consultative Assembly, and Akbar Tanjung, speaker of the House of People’s Representatives, immediately rendered support and refused to meet Howard. This was a powerful statement of the entire legislative branch vis-à-vis the executive. At the same time, the parliament’s foreign policy interest cannot entirely be reduced to the quest of establishing property rights in executivelegislative relations. The DPR also sees itself as the savior of Indonesia’s free and active (bebas dan aktif) foreign policy, which was espoused in 1948 by the first vice president, Mohammad Hatta, and has served as the core doctrine ever since. Following the popular understanding of this guiding principle, the policy is independent because Indonesia does not side with world powers. As a matter of principle, doing so would be incompatible with the country’s national philosophy of Pancasila (pancasila means “five principles” in Sanskrit; according to the Indonesian constitution, these principles are belief in one supreme God, humanitarianism, nationalism expressed in the unity of Indonesia, consultative democracy, and social justice). At the same time, Indonesia’s foreign policy is active to the extent that the government does not maintain a passive or reactive stand on international issues but seeks active participation in their settlement. “Indonesia’s bebas dan actif foreign policy complements Pancasila. In effect, the two guiding philosophies combine to give Indonesian leaders maximum latitude in foreign policy while preserving national unity. In essence, Indonesian foreign policy must be perceived to serve domestic interests. In this sense, the bebas dan actif policy does just that” (Ang Kheng Leong 1998). Table 2.3 lists central parliamentarian foreign policy initiatives and responses to governmental actions in Indonesia’s external relations during 2004. It shows that, unlike during the Wahid presidency and the early stages of the Megawati government, the DPR did not primarily challenge or even try to block major governmental foreign policy initiatives but rather saw its main role as supporting or advising the administration on crucial issues.

Relations with Singapore

Relations with East Timor

Resolve deportation of Indonesian nationals from East Timor, step up diplomacy with East Timor, and give legal protection to Indonesians living in East Timor. Place an ambassador in East Timor, which since separation from Indonesia has become a strategic center for foreign interests. Complete an extradition treaty with Singapore and settle borderline issues with neighboring countries. Commission I, DPR

Tjahyo Kumolo, chairman of PDI-P

continues

Questioned the “awkward and slow process of concluding” the treaty with Singapore.

Advice to government.

Supportive of government. Critical of slow government response.

DPR speaker Agung Laksono Commission I, DPR

Advice to government.

Critical of government.

Commission I, DPR

Hapy Bone Zulkarnaen, member of Commission I

Indonesia must overcome its “inferiority complex” when dealing with other countries, particularly the United States, and its reluctance to criticize their policies. Encourage Burma to resolve its problems democratically. Continue Indonesia’s one-China policy.

Advice to government.

Position vis-à-vis the Government

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Relations with Burma Relations with China Relations with East Timor

Commission I, DPR

Ensure Papua remains an integral part of Indonesia.

Initiative

Initiator or Spokesperson for Initiative

Major Foreign Policy Initiatives and Interventions of the Indonesian Legislature, 2004

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Indonesia’s national integrity Indonesian foreign policy in general

Issue

Table 2.3

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Initiative

DPR, MPR

Advice to government.

Aisayah Aminy, member of Commission I Yasril Ananta Baharuddin, chairman of Commission I

Sources: Agence France Presse, 23 March 2004; Antara, 19 April 2004, 22 June 2004, November 2004, 9 December 2004; Jakarta Post, 10 December 2004; Kompas, 13 November 2004; Global News Wire–Asia Africa Intelligence Wire (BBC Monitoring International Reports), 27 January 2004, 12 February 2004, 28 June 2004, 16 September 2004, 13 October 2004; Asia-Pacific–Political (BBC Monitoring International Reports), 28 April 2004.

Increase Indonesia’s role in Middle East affairs, including Palestinian independence.

Advice to government.

Commission I, DPR

Supportive of government (Indonesia does not have diplomatic relations with Israel). Supportive of government.

Questioned seriousness of government efforts.

Position vis-à-vis the Government

Commission I, DPR; especially Arif Mudatsir Mandan (United Development Party)

Initiator or Spokesperson for Initiative

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Situation in the Middle East

Investigate the foreign minister’s efforts to help Indonesians on death row for criminal offenses committed in Singapore and Malaysia. Relations with Firmly reject the US government’s intention the United to deploy marines in the Malacca Strait, States which would undermine Indonesia’s sovereignty. Situation in Iraq Oppose “colonization” of Iraq by the United States; Indonesia should not send troops. Situation in Israel Condemn Israel for its “blatant” assassination of Hamas spiritual leader Shaikh Ahmed Yassin.

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Relations with Singapore and Malaysia

Issue

Table 2.3

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Public Opinion and Nonstate Actors

As suggested by the preceding examples, such as the DPR’s jumping on the bandwagon of anti-Australian sentiments among the Indonesian electorate, the interests of legislatures in the process of foreign policy making and public opinion are often interrelated. The following two Philippine cases show that policymakers in democracies do not normally decide against public consensus (Risse-Kappen 1991).27 In the Philippines in 1996, the administration of then-president Fidel Ramos wanted to pass an antiterrorism law, citing the threat of international Islamic groups, which it claimed were linked to a continuing insurgency in Mindanao. The law would have allowed telephones to be tapped, bank accounts to be inspected, and arrests to be carried out without warrants. The proposal was already as good as dead before the Philippine Congress had even seriously considered it. For many in the Philippines the plan evoked memories of martial law. Ramos was accused of harboring similar dictatorial ambitions. Hostility to the bill was voiced in the streets as well as in the Senate (The Economist, 17 February 1996, p. 33). An even more striking example was the response of freshly reelected President Gloria Arroyo to the Iraq hostage crisis in July 2004. Despite immense pressure from the United States and its allies, particularly Australia, not to give in to the demands of Iraqi militants, Arroyo decided to withdraw Philippine troops from Iraq in exchange for the life of Filipino hostage Angelo de la Cruz. De la Cruz’s kidnappers, from the Khaled ibn al-Walid Brigade (Islamic Army of Iraq), had demanded that the Philippine government pull out its fifty-one troops by 20 July, which it did, one month ahead of schedule. “Unfazed by the criticism that she pandered to cheap populism, Ms Arroyo left no doubt that she gave higher priority to domestic interests over the widely embracing stakes of the Philippines’ major partners in the coalition. . . . Filipino authorities, when torn by competing pulls of domestic stability and of alliance cohesion, make decisions that reflect domestic public opinion and that galvanize public support behind government” (Doronila 2004, p. 15). There is little doubt that increasing openness and transparency of foreign policy decisionmaking have also contributed to a stronger societal input in Indonesia and Thailand, too. Anthony Smith observes that “postSoeharto Indonesia is more politicized than it has been in decades. The growth of civil society means that foreign policy can no longer be made in isolation by a small number of insulated political elites” (2000, p. 504). Kusuma Snitwongse confirms the same for Thailand. “Prior to the decades of the 1980s and 1990s, Thai foreign policy had been formulated independently of the public domain to the extent that the Foreign Ministry was

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dubbed ‘the twilight zone.’ Pressures, both external and internal, have opened up foreign policy decision-making to greater public scrutiny, to the extent that one can say that the ‘twilight zone’ no longer exists” (2001, p. 189). The democratic environment in Thailand has resulted primarily in a stronger influence of business-related interest groups on foreign relations. At the same time, the activities of prodemocracy and human rights NGOs and movements, which have emerged in large numbers since the late 1980s, have clearly contributed to the shaping of foreign policy. The Chuan administration’s foreign policy pronouncement to the parliament in November 1997 outlined an almost Wilsonian vision of foreign policy by announcing Thailand’s participation “on the international stage in the protection and promotion of democratic values and human rights” (quoted in Kusuma 2001, p. 191). Six years later, in September 2003, under the succeeding government of Thaksin Shinawatra, the vision materialized when Thailand sent 420 soldiers to Iraq in an effort to rebuild the war-wracked country. Unlike in most other countries that sent troops to Iraq, the military mission was not controversial in Thai public opinion, and was widely accepted and supported as the inevitable international duty of a country that wants to play a prominent and useful role in international affairs. Even the killings of two Thai soldiers in their camp in Karbala—the first Thai soldiers to be killed on an overseas battlefield since the Vietnam War—did not change the overly positive attitude toward the mission.28 In a similar vein, to give an example from a Southeast Asian (semi)democracy that is not discussed here in detail, K. S. Balakrishnan stresses the “humanitarian aspect of Malaysia’s foreign policy.” He emphasizes the role of civil society as a contributor to foreign policy in promoting humanitarian and Islamic causes. While there are Islamic-based NGOs and other actors in civil society that have opposed the government (e.g., on issues such as Burma’s admission into ASEAN in 1997), generally most societal actors go along with the official foreign policy line. At the same time, the presence of civil society groups is important in sustaining indirect pressure on the government to ensure that Islam and the plight of Muslims remain at the forefront of foreign policy. Furthermore, Malaysian NGOs are said to have contributed to the upgrading of environmental and development issues on the government’s foreign policy agenda (2003, p. 44). While civil society organizations in Thailand and Malaysia, on the whole, do not tend to challenge foreign policy makers to the extent that it would force the respective governments to compromise on key agendas, the Indonesian government’s reaction to the “war on terror” has provided an excellent example of the executive’s dilemma created by the two-level game in a democracy. Apart from refocusing Indonesian foreign policy on

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ASEAN, further improvement of Indonesia’s overall good relations with the United States had been Megawati’s main foreign policy concern, not least for economic reasons. The president managed to secure US$530 million in new financial aid that was promised when she visited Washington, D.C., soon after the events of 11 September 2001. To avoid any damage to Indonesia-US relations, it had been in the interest of the Megawati government to support the Washington-led war on terror in Afghanistan. However, pressured by anti-American demonstrations in the streets of Jakarta and elsewhere, the administration could not go beyond vague political rhetoric without risking the escalation of public unrest. To Anak Perwita, “massive reactions of some elements of Indonesian Muslim society toward the war in Afghanistan and the wave of anti-Western (the US) mass demonstrations were clear examples of people’s strong willingness to participate in Indonesia’s foreign policy” (2001, p. 377). Despite Megawati’s initial intention to support a proposed Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) declaration condemning international terrorism, the declaration did not materialize, particularly because domestic constraints prevented the Indonesian (and Malaysian) government from officially sponsoring and signing such a document. Instead, the APEC summit in Shanghai in October 2001 produced only a very general statement on terrorism. At the same time, the Indonesian government was concerned that the war in Afghanistan could increase domestic support for radical Islamic groups, such as the Pembela Islam (Islamic Defenders Front) and Laskar Jihad (Jihad Troops) (Perwita 2001, p. 377). Laskar Jihad, a Java-based paramilitary group, was founded in early 2000 and has been most active in Maluku, where the militant extremists intervened on behalf of local Islamic groups in the violent conflict between Muslims and Christians. Although Laskar Jihad has not been able to attract mass support among Indonesian Muslims and is unlikely to change the character of the country’s overall moderate approach to Islam, the government takes the group extremely seriously. What makes Laskar Jihad particularly dangerous from the ruling elite’s point of view is the fact that as many as 80 percent of its 3,000–10,000 members could be TNI soldiers, as some observers have suggested (Davis 2002, p. 22). In a situation that resembled a typical twolevel game, the Indonesian government, in formulating its official foreign policy responses in the wake of 11 September 2001 and Washington’s subsequent replies, had to deal with two conflicting positions and realized that it would soon have to undergo a delicate balancing act. On the one hand, government officials loyal to President Megawati were greatly aware that the devastating event of 11 September 2001 would become a serious international issue with wide-ranging global policy implications. Hence it was

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assumed that Indonesia might not have many choices outside expressing its support for the US call to counter the threat of terrorism. On the other hand, the Indonesian administration strongly perceived the need to carefully weigh its position against possible domestic reactions, particularly from the Muslim community. There is no doubt that the Megawati government was aware that Indonesia’s support for the US call for a global war on terrorism was likely to be construed at home as an act of submission to the United States (Sukma 2003b, p. 132).29 By contrast, under the presidencies of Habibie and Wahid, Islam as a core issue had entered foreign policy only in form, not in substance. Even though Islam became a significant factor in national politics after the fall of Suharto, foreign policy continued to be subject to constraints imposed by the reality of domestic weakness and the dilemma of dual identity, namely the fact that Indonesia is a secular state whose government cannot ignore the fact that the vast majority of the population are Muslims. “Therefore, any government in Indonesia is obliged to move beyond strict secularism by taking into account Muslim aspirations but short of moving toward the establishment of an Islamic state” (Sukma 2003b, p. 22). While the governments of both Habibie and Wahid sought and bore strong Islamic credentials, they continued to pursue a foreign policy dictated by the imperative of maintaining good relations with the West. Consequently, the nonreligious character of Indonesian foreign policy was sustained (Sukma 2003b p. 121). This dilemma of dual identity continued to leave its marks on Indonesian foreign policy under Megawati, when the nonreligious character of foreign policy was preserved and reinforced further. Rizal Sukma concludes: “The Islamic factor serves as a ‘control mechanism’ rather than a primary motivating factor in Indonesian foreign policy” (2003b, p. 142). While a strong impact of public opinion on foreign policy formulation is obvious, the degree and importance of think tank consulting is difficult to assess in the absence of extensive academic research on the topic. In general terms, a small number of mostly semigovernmental research and university institutes have influenced especially ASEAN-related policies in most member states for at least two decades, and also during times of authoritarian rule. The most prominent role has been played by the Institutes of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS), which are part of the ASEAN-ISIS network, such as the CSIS in Jakarta, the ISIS in Kuala Lumpur, and the ISIS in Bangkok. ASEAN-ISIS was instrumental in outlining the concept of the ASEAN Free Trade Area and the establishment of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). In a very rare study on policy advisory institutions in Southeast Asia, Dewi Fortuna Anwar concludes for Indonesia, “it is premature to argue that the presence of think-tanks has really made a significant contribu-

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tion to the larger political process and outcomes, for their numbers are still limited and many have only been established in the last several years. The case of think-tanks shows that institution-building in Indonesia is still in a highly formative, transitional stage” (1999b, p. 251).

Conclusion

In all three cases, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines, the process of democratization has had a far-reaching impact not only on the respective domestic order but also on the structure, actors, and issues in foreign policy making. Due to the traumatic experiences of martial law under Ferdinand Marcos, the Philippine constitution of 1987 established an extensive system of legislative checks on the president, including the area of foreign affairs. In contrast, redemocratization in Thailand has not influenced the formal structures of the foreign policy process. The same applies to Indonesia, where the provisions on foreign policy making in the 1945 constitution have mainly been left untouched, with the exception of ambassadorial appointments, which now require the president to consider the parliament’s views. At the same time, the formal institutionalized rules that govern the management of foreign affairs say little about the real power relativities and patterns of influence among the actors involved. The new democratic environment in all three states has opened up the foreign policy arena and gives access to a larger number of actors compared with the days of authoritarian rule, mainly to the benefit of ministries, other government officials, and a civilian diplomatic service. All three cases are characterized by a significantly reduced impact of the military on foreign affairs. At the same time, public opinion has proved to be a decisive factor pushing the executives in these states toward the prominent consideration of business, human rights, and religious issues. The role of the legislature differs from country to country. Whereas according to the letter of the constitution the Philippine Congress is the most powerful legislature of the three in foreign affairs, in real political terms the Indonesian House of People’s Representatives is the most active in putting its mark on foreign affairs. Lawmakers have successfully challenged or even vetoed major foreign policy decisions of the post-Suharto administrations. The bicameral National Assembly of Thailand, as a whole, has not developed a decisive interest in the country’s external relations, but the chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs regularly succeeds in getting international attention for his Thaksin-critical suggestions for a “better” Thai foreign policy. In sum, general cross-regional assumptions about the role of parlia-

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ments in foreign policy decisionmaking of newly democratized states cannot be made in the case of Southeast Asia. It can be established, however, that the wider spectrum of actors and the multiplication of special interests pose a major test to the often inexperienced executives in newly (re)emerging democratic systems as far as the making of foreign policy is concerned, a finding that is best explained with the metaphor of the two-level game. Foreign policy change clearly is not entirely and exclusively driven by internal dynamics. Global developments, such as the vanishing of old threat perception and the growing overlap between the policy areas of security and economics, play their part, too. After all, the foreign policies of China and Vietnam have also seen adjustments despite the absence of farreaching political liberalization. As this chapter has shown, what differentiates autocracies and democracies is the way in which regime accountability constrains the government’s latitude of decisionmaking in foreign affairs. In the case of the authoritarian regimes in Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines, regime accountability tended to be low, because the continuity of the respective governments was not linked to the legislative process, elections, judicial decisions, or even regime performance. Hence, accountability did not impose a significant limitation on foreign policy making. In contrast, democratization increased regime accountability and, as a result, has increasingly restricted the postauthoritarian governments’ leeway in determining and implementing foreign policy goals. In short, while the conduct of foreign policy was almost free of domestic constraints in an authoritarian regime, in a democracy foreign policy choices are linked to their perceived effect on the decisionmaker’s political standing and the views of constituencies. The making of foreign policy in the democratizing polities of Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines shows the extent to which the political process has broadened beyond small political elites and narrowly defined national interests and, as a result, moved from a static, highly centralized and one-dimensional setting to a pluralist, less centrist, and multidimensional framework. Notes 1. George Tsebelis (1990) introduced the term “nested games of multiple arenas” for the same phenomenon, which he approached from a rational choice angle. While Robert Putnam (1988) deserves credit for conceptionalizing and operationalizing the domestic-international nexus in foreign policy making, the idea as such is not new. For example, John Steinbrunner’s characterization of foreign policy as a “complex decision problem” (1974) is based on similar propositions. 2. The authors also introduce and discuss various subtypes.

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3. See Nincic 1992 and Goldmann 1986 for a comprehensive evaluation of the realists’ reflections and hypotheses on foreign policy making. 4. As Robert Dahl explains in the context of controlling nuclear weapons during the Cold War: “The argument is that . . . the average person is not sufficiently competent to govern, while, on the other hand, a minority of persons, consisting of the best qualified, are distinctively more competent to rule, and so ought to rule over the rest. This is, in essence, Plato’s argument in The Republic for a system of guardianship. Leaders who proclaim this view usually contend that they, naturally, are among the minority of exceptionally able people who ought to exercise guardianship over the rest” (1985, pp. 1–2). 5. See Crone 1988 for an early discussion of state autonomy in the Southeast Asian context. 6. Vietnam is one of many examples. Even though Vietnam has not yet entered a process of democratization, modest reforms aiming at political liberalization have already resulted in a more pluralist environment for foreign policy making (see Dosch and Ta 2004). 7. At a seminar at Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta, in September 1987. 8. Author e-mail conversation with Hadiwinata, August 2005. Hadiwinata is a professor of international relations at Parahyangan Catholic University in Bandung, Indonesia, and a leading expert on Indonesian foreign policy. 9. The weakening of the armed forces, however, is not a process that started only after the ousting of Suharto in 1998. The first steps to reduce the political power of the armed forces date back to the early 1990s and were taken by Suharto himself in an attempt to lessen his dependency on the military while at the same time empowering Islamic organizations and thereby broadening his popular support basis. 10. In 1979, of 225 senate members, 173 (77 percent) were serving in the military; in 1981, of 225 senators, 155 (69 percent) were serving in the military. The representation of the armed forces in the Senate declined significantly in the first half of the 1990s, from 51 percent (149 of 292) in 1991 to only 22 percent (56 of 260) in 1996 (Chaiwana 1998, pp. 124–125). 11. This assessment is based on various author interviews conducted between December 2003 and February 2004 in Thailand and among European Thailand experts. 12. In 1998, when Thai foreign minister Surin Pitsuwan proposed replacing the group’s noninterference policy with “flexible engagement,” most of his ASEAN colleagues demurred. But the idea gained ground. In 2000, ASEAN’s foreign ministers formally approved Thailand’s proposal for the ASEAN Troika, a new mechanism to enable the sitting chair to formally consult with his immediate predecessor and successor to tackle specific problems with regional implications. In the past, flexible engagement was tested when Malaysian prime minister Mahathir was challenged by comments from Philippine president Estrada and Indonesian president Habibie about the way he handled Anwar Ibrahim. However, as will be shown in Chapter 6, noninterference has prevailed over flexible engagement. The reluctance of ASEAN members to embark on any substantial initiatives in settling conflicts such as the ones in Aceh, Mindanao, and southern Thailand reflects the sensitivity toward any departure from the traditional approach of noninterference.

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13. Author interview with Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials, Bangkok, August 1998. 14. For a detailed assessment of the Thaksin premiership, see McCargo and Ukrist 2005. 15. This finding is based on some thirty author interviews with senior officials of the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Department of Trade and Industry, as well as members of both chambers (House of Representatives and Senate) of Congress in July and August 2004. 16. However, while these numbers should be taken very seriously, overall the Philippines is still in much better condition economically than was Argentina on the eve of its crisis. The national currency is a case in point. Whereas the Argentine peso was significantly overvalued, most agree that the Philippine peso’s value is just right, if not undervalued. 17. AsiaInt (London), “The Philippines: Asia’s Argentina?” Economic Intelligence Review (June 2004); European Union 2003, p. 11. 18. Statement, “Third Southeast Asian-European Think Tank Dialogue on Global Power Play in the Asia-Pacific,” Bangkok, 15 October 2001. 19. The bureaucratic approach was first developed by Fred Riggs in the 1960s, but remained a major paradigm for analyzing Thai politics up to the 1980s. Riggs (1966) argued that following the bloodless 1932 “revolution,” carried out by a group of elite civilians and military officers, Thai politics were dominated by the bureaucracy. Essentially it is government by the bureaucrats and military, for the bureaucrats and military. External institutions such as the parliament and political parties were seen to have little influence over the state’s policy decisions. The mass of the population, the rural peasantry, were seen as “passive,” apolitical, and not represented in the capital. 20. Author interview, Wiesbaden, Germany, February 2004. 21. I owe the term “parallel foreign policy” to Uwe Solinger. Not all necessarily agree, though. Duncan McCargo puts it this way: “Kraisak was responsible for a ‘parallel foreign policy’ on Cambodia when he worked as an advisor in Ban Phitsanulok during the 1980s, but at that time he was in a position of real influence. The phrase overstates his position today.” Author e-mail conversation with McCargo, August 2005. 22. Kraisak is a senator for Khorat (Nakhon Ratchasima) and gained his seat through his father’s old vote-buying and patronage networks in that province. In other words, his privileged position within the Senate reflects his role as the scion of a Thai political dynasty. 23. For example, in the BBC’s coverage—both radio (BBC Worldservice) and television (BBC World)—on the eve of the summit, 28 November 2004. 24. “U.S. Won’t Replace Philippine Base,” Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report no. 49 (28 September 1991), p. 39. 25. Author interview with Senator Ralph G. Recto, who is a member of the Philippine Senate’s Committee on Foreign Relations, Manila, July 2004. 26. http://www.laksamana.net/vnews.cfm?ncat=22&news_id=3244. 27. Among the few documented examples of the opposite behavior was the decision of the British government to support the United States in the Iraq War de-

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spite the fact that, according to most opinion polls, a majority of the country’s electorate opposed this policy. 28. This assessment is based on author research conducted in Thailand in December 2003 and January 2004. 29. The balancing act that resulted from Megawati’s indecisive attitude toward the war on terrorism was driven not least by the fact that, as a leader of a political party in a democratic environment, she realized her party to be dependent on support from Muslim voters. Thus, in order to save her position in the next election, she tried to avoid upsetting Muslim voters and, as a result, did not engage in an all-out war against terrorism—that is, against the members and sympathizers of Jemaah Islamiya. This argument applies not just to Megawati and the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle. Other presidents may adopt a similar strategy.

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3 Security and the Challenge of Terrorism

THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER HAS SHOWN HOW POLITICAL PROCESSES, IN

this particular case the making of foreign policy, have changed as the result of a gradual and ongoing shift from a static, highly centralized, and one-dimensional setting to a pluralist, less centrist, and multidimensional framework in some Southeast Asian states. Political change at the domestic level in Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines has had significant implications for the formal and informal structures, spectrum of actors, and issue areas that shape the foreign policy arena. This chapter will broaden the debate on the nexus between national, regional, and international dynamics by focusing on new multidimensional understandings of security and the related implications for political processes. Special emphasis will be given on three hotspots of violence, or “terrorism” according to widespread perception, in Southeast Asia: southern Thailand, Mindanao, and Aceh. These three cases are prime examples for the intertwinedness of international and national structures and processes, which did not seem to exist until very recently. While in the long aftermath of the events of 11 September 2001 and the “war on terror,” fighting and hostility in Southeast Asia are often perceived mainly as the manifestations of the global Al-Qaidaization of international relations, the root causes of these conflicts are rather of a local nature. The perceptional boundaries between global and local threats to national security have become blurred as much as the former dividing lines between state and nonstate violence have diminished. What exactly is security and how does it come about? Security is not the product of any predictable rules, it depends on individual threat perceptions, it differs greatly according to an actor’s status and position within 71

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the international system, and most important, it is subject to interpretation. Historically, security was understood in terms of threats to state sovereignty and territory. During the Cold War and particularly after the Vietnam War, it was generally thought that any further serious armed conflict in Southeast Asia would take place either as the result of conflicts between the great powers or their clients or due to unresolved territorial and border disputes, for example between Malaysia and the Philippines over the status of Sabah. While many territorial conflicts still remain unresolved, the overall security threat to the region has changed substantially since the late 1980s. At the same time, globalization has produced a simultaneous emergence of localization with more emphasis on local issues and revival of traditional local or intranational conflicts, which had been suppressed by the ideological divide of the Cold War and nuclear deterrence. Such tensions inevitably impact regional stability. Among the most important contributions to the post–Cold War discourse on security is the concept of human security, which to many presented not only a useful alternative to the traditional concept of security but also a welcome departure from the rather narrow debate on human rights that had emerged as one of the central soft security rallying points in international relations in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War (Sudarsono 1996, pp. 69–73). As fostered by the UN Development Programme (UNDP), “human security” usually means freedom from fear and want. The UNDP’s 1994 Human Development Report stressed: The concept of security has for too long been interpreted narrowly: as security of territory from external aggression, or as protection of national interests in foreign policy or as global security from the threat of nuclear holocaust. It has been related to nation-states more than people. . . . Forgotten were the legitimate concerns of ordinary people who sought security in their daily lives. For many of them, security symbolized protection from the threat of disease, hunger, unemployment, crime, social conflict, political repression and environmental hazards. (UNDP 1994, pp. 22–23)1

Security in a traditional sense can be understood as a “top-down” approach, which is associated with protection of the state from physical or ideological subversion. “‘Human security,’ by contrast is a bottom up approach: what matters is the people and their well-being” (Evans 1999, p. 59). The idea of human security rapidly moved to occupy center stage in discussions of foreign policy and made its way onto the agendas of the EU, the UN, the Group of Eight (G8), and eventually international organizations and also individual actors in the Asia Pacific. During the late 1990s,

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Japanese foreign minister and later prime minister Keizo Obuchi referred to the concept of human security in many of his speeches and defined it as “the keyword which encompasses the notion of arresting all the menaces that threaten the survival, of daily life and dignity of human beings” (quoted in Hoshino 1999, p. 43). Regional problems such as the haze crisis of 1997–1998, which was created by hazardous forest fires in Indonesia and resulted in diplomatic quarrels in relations between Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia as well as an estimated US$9.3 billion in economic losses to the region, and particularly the Asian economic crisis, highlighted the need to look beyond the traditional notion of security. Writing in 1999, Michael Wesley rightly predicted that the Asian crisis would have a long enduring and fundamental impact on the approach to security: First, the maintenance of security is likely to become even more important to countries which already highly valued security, sovereignty, and independence. Second, the concept of security itself will inevitably change, expanding to include, in addition to traditional concerns such as physical attack or ideological subversion, subnational factors such as social and economic security factors—the prosperity, well-being, and productivity of societies. Third the concept of the security environment will also probably undergo change, to include forces of “globalisation” as well as traditional security strategic concerns. (p. 24)

In Southeast Asia, the change of perspective on security became particularly visible at the fifth meeting of the ASEAN Regional Forum, held in Manila in July 1998, where the organization’s foreign ministers discussed the economic crisis in great detail and arrived at the conclusion that poorly designed reforms could negatively affect less privileged sectors of society and “impact on the peace and security of the region” (Burke 2001, p. 218). Although critics have questioned the significance of addressing developmental agendas and problems of governance as security issues, and have stressed that human security or generally nontraditional security was simply too broad a concept to be a useful analytical tool, “it is precisely because of its broad definition and its stress on the well-being of humanity as a whole that the concept of human security has an important political appeal that can transcend national boundaries” (Anwar 2003, p. 541). The conceptionalization of security dynamics in Southeast Asia, in terms of both academic analysis and real-life policymaking, requires multidimensional perspectives and approaches. Tsuneo Akaha (2002, p. 3), Dewi Anwar (2003, pp. 542–543), Allan Collins (2003, pp. 93–126), Sheldon Simon (2001), and Alan Dupont (2005), among them, identify nine nontraditional security complexes in the

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Asia Pacific that have appeared on the radar screen of policymakers in the region and started to impact Southeast Asian security: • Environmental deterioration and its deleterious effects on human health and transboundary pollution problems. • Growing pressures on natural resources due to expanding market demand, particularly with respect to forestry and fishery resources. • Developmental policies. • The broad field of democracy and human rights. • Legal and illegal migration and resulting ethnic tensions. • Increasingly violent criminal acts, prostitution, human trafficking (people smuggling), and drug trafficking. • Increasing gaps in wealth and income within and between neighboring regions, in part as a result of international and transnational economic exchanges. • Mismanagement of national economies and their vulnerability to the intensifying forces of globalization, resulting in major economic and social dislocations among the local populations. • Separatism, insurgency, and terrorism. In addition, maritime piracy is one of the most pressing issues in the field of nontraditional security. Incidents of piracy worldwide have increased significantly since the late 1990s. A large share of the reported incidents have occurred in Southeast Asian waters, increasing from 22 in 1997 to 164 (or about 44 percent of all cases worldwide) in 2002. Indonesian waters alone accounted for 103 of the 370 worldwide incidents in 2002 (Young and Valencia 2003, p. 271). As anywhere in the world, events since 11 September 2001 probably have had the most dramatic impact on security perceptions in Southeast Asia. The war on terror’s perceived spillover to the region led to the view that the manifold and devastating impacts of terrorism are among the most decisive nontraditional security challenges. Initially after 11 September the vast majority of Southeast Asian politicians and academics expressed deep concern that the United States was overreacting in Southeast Asia by putting pressure on the predominantly moderate Muslim societies in the region and declaring Southeast Asia to be the “second front” in the war on terrorism. While US officials mostly resisted such a characterization, there is no doubt that Southeast Asia quickly moved into a central position on Washington’s geostrategic antiterrorism agenda in the wake of 11 September. The mainstream perception within the region of terrorism as a lowlevel threat substantially changed following the terrorist attacks in Bali, In-

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donesia, on 12 October 2002, during which members of the Jemaah Islamiya group bombed two nightclubs in the tourist district of Kuta and killed more than 200 people. To some the escalation of terrorist violence did not come as a surprise. In February 2002, for example, Lee Kuan Yew warned that the people of Southeast Asia were exposed to a continuing security risk because the ringleaders of extremist cells roamed freely in Indonesia (Associated Press, 17 February 2002). The threat of terrorism in Southeast Asia has also had direct implications for US economic interests. Since 11 September 2001 the United States has viewed extremist movements in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand as a potential hazard to world commerce flowing through the region’s important sea-lanes of communication. “The nightmare for the United States is that a supertanker will be hijacked and driven into Singapore port, or some larger port, or sunk in the Malacca Strait by use of weapons from afar, thus seriously disrupting or detouring the flow of oil to East Asia and potentially blocking US naval mobility and flexibility as well” (Young and Valencia 2003, pp. 276–277). Furthermore, according to the Washington, D.C.–based Maritime Intelligence Group, AlQaida is believed to operate fifteen to twenty-five vessels transporting weapons and personnel in the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. This has led to concerns in US defense circles that weapons of mass destruction could be shipped through the Malacca Strait (TuckerJones 2004). To be sure, the emergence of a broader security culture that increasingly includes nontraditional elements does not mean the disappearance of “hard” security issues—or what Sheldon Simon calls “classical concerns” (2001, p. 3)—such as the territorial disputes in the South China Sea and particularly over the Spratly Islands. In many regards, the dispute over the South China Sea is typical of the post–Cold War security situation in East Asia in general. As both the US-Soviet and Sino-Soviet competition lost their significance, territorial disputes, which received little attention during the Cold War, began to reemerge. The Spratlys are a collection of mostly barren coral reefs, atolls, and sand bars—many of which disappear at high tide—that cover an area of some 70,000 square miles. This area is claimed, in whole or in part, by China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and the Philippines. The other major area of dispute in the South China Sea concerns the Paracels, which are claimed by China and Vietnam. With the exception of Brunei, all of the disputants maintain a military presence on some of the islands. Since 1978, when the Philippines set out its “exclusive economic zone,” formally including the island Kalayaan, which had been claimed by Manila, all parties to the dispute have held generally consistent

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claims since. However, the controversy itself lay relatively dormant until 1988 when China and Vietnam clashed over Fiery Cross Reef. Since then, hostilities in the South China Sea have erupted regularly, most prominently between China and the Philippines. The Philippines considers China’s occupation of Mischief Reef in 1995 and repeated Chinese incursions into Scarborough Reef since 1997 as direct assaults on Philippine territory (Odgaard 2003, p. 16). Although a resolution of the disputes is not in sight, a first step toward a peaceful settlement could be the “ASEAN Declaration on the South China Sea” of 1992, which was also signed by China in 2002. One has to remain skeptical, however, that ASEAN’s multilateral approach based on consensus building and the voluntary, nonbinding commitment to the nonuse of force will provide a sustained institutional framework for conflict resolution.2 Samuel Sharpe (2003) argues that ASEAN has not yet been able to establish sufficient leverage in seeking a wider code of conduct with China. For the time being, bilateral agreements seem to provide a more efficient strategy toward the settlement of territorial and border disputes. Most important, Vietnam signed a land border treaty with China in 1999, and another treaty on the demarcation of the Gulf of Tonkin in 2000, which came into effect in June 2004 after more than three years of negotiations on how to implement the agreement. These treaties have narrowed down the scope of territorial disputes, at least between these two countries, relating to the Paracel and Spratly Islands. Given the prevalence of hard security conflicts such as the South China Sea dispute, William Tow questions “the likelihood of the ASEAN elite to shift their focus from traditional security postulates (state-centric territorial, diplomatic and territorial concerns) to a broader set of referents incorporating ‘unstructured’ threats (those emanating from beyond boundaries or state structures) of a non-military and personal nature” (2001, p. 268). Anwar (2003, pp. 536–537) believes that due to a persistent statecentered and community-oriented approach in Southeast Asian politics, combined with predominantly inward-looking security preoccupation of many Asian countries, human security and indeed any extended approach to security are of secondary importance. At the same time, this assessment only partly holds true. While most national security doctrines in Southeast Asia still subscribe to a traditional realist approach and perspective, there can be little doubt that the vast majority of governments in the region have long de facto acknowledged the relevance of a multidimensional approach to security—at least implicitly.3 Singapore is a case in point for a national security culture comprising military, economic, and social factors. The city-state is extremely—and to a significantly higher degree than most of its regional neighbors—con-

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cerned about its position and status within the international system. The perception of vulnerability is the main structure of Singapore’s foreign and security outlook. “That vulnerability is a function of a minuscule scale, a predominantly ethnic-Chinese identity associated with a traditional entrepôt role and also a location wedged between the sea and airspace of two larger neighbors with which Singapore has never been politically at ease” (Leifer 2000b, p. 1). This “deep security complex” also drives Singapore’s foreign economic policy. The feeling of insecurity has forced Singapore to pursue aggressively economic advancement to protect itself, not simply to improve the lives of its people. Singapore’s recent initiatives to establish bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) on a global scale have been very successful. By mid-2005, Singapore had concluded eight FTAs while ten more were under negotiation.4 This drive to FTAs is not just economic, by any means. From the government’s point of view, the agreements enhance the city-state’s political recognition and profile and serve a direct security purpose, for example as a means of keeping the United States engaged in the region. Singapore views the US presence as vital to the security and stability of Southeast Asia (Rajan et al. 2001, p. 76). The security-economic nexus is also present in Vietnam’s policies. In December 1986, Vietnam’s foreign policy took a new course when the sixth National Congress of the Vietnamese Communist Party adopted a strategy of doi moi, or renovation. Although the new approach was primarily directed toward reform and liberalization of the national economy, it had decisive implications for Vietnam’s foreign policy and security outlook. The political elite concluded that the international isolation of Vietnam following its occupation of Cambodia in 1979 had contributed significantly to the country’s deep socioeconomic crisis (Dosch and Ta 2004). In sum, doi moi was driven by the realization that the main security challenges to Vietnam were not primarily the result of aggressive behavior on the part of foreign powers, but stemmed from the poor state of the economy with all its consequences, such as poverty and economic degradation (Tan and Boutin 2001, p. 3). In Thailand, as mentioned in Chapter 2, the political and economic changes of the early 1990s have distorted the dominant role of the military elite in defining Thai concepts of national security. Among the most visible results has been the broadening of traditional security conceptions to include economic development, equality, liberty, and justice, with a special focus on political reform, decentralization of the bureaucracy, human rights, and environmental issues (Panitan 1998, p. 429). Indonesia’s traditional doctrine of national resilience (Ketanahan Nasional) is perhaps the oldest explicit concept of a flexible and open

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approach to security, which was later also adopted at the regional level as the “rhetorical centerpiece” of ASEAN’s approach to regional security (Emmerson 2001, p. 95). The doctrine is based on the assumption that “comprehensive security, involving ‘ideology, politics, economy, sociocultural and military’ strength . . . combined with a cooperative approach at the ‘economic, social and cultural’ levels, would . . . lead to regional resilience” (Ferguson 2001, pp. 124–125), with this being the precondition for a stable and secure international environment. Southeast Asia’s changing discourse on security is most visible at the regional level and particularly with regard to initiatives to counter transnational crimes and terrorism. A long-standing taboo was broken when ASEAN adopted a road map for a regionwide human rights commission in May 2003. Despite its nonbinding nature (in customary ASEAN fashion), the road map marks the crucial first initiative to address the issue of human rights in intraregional relations. Furthermore, ASEAN has established the Southeast Asia Regional Center for Counterterrorism in Kuala Lumpur, which organizes training programs, workshops, and seminars to help the region implement counterterrorism efforts. Having already agreed on a plan of action to combat transnational crime, ASEAN members are currently working on a regionwide treaty on antiterrorism legal procedures. In a drive against terrorism, drug trafficking, money laundering, and other cross-border crimes, the proposed agreement aims to reduce legal impediments to cooperation in tackling such problems. In addition, ASEAN and China have identified priorities of cooperation against transnational crime, namely terrorism, sea piracy, human and drug trafficking, and international economic crimes. At the same time, we should not blind ourselves to the fact that all these institutional agreements are of a nonbinding nature. Whether or not multilateral cooperation on nontraditional security issues will be efficient and successful greatly depends on the goodwill of the actors involved to agree on collective norms and procedures in response to the existing security challenges. This is particularly the case with regard to the broad issue of nonstate violence. If one believes the enumeration efforts of the RAND Corporation, terror in Southeast Asia is not a recent phenomenon but has increased significantly in importance in the post–Cold War era. The RAND terrorism chronology counts 90 international terrorist attacks in the region of Southeast Asia and Oceania during the eighteen-year period 1968–1985. In the following eighteenyear period (1986–2002), international terrorist attacks in the region more than doubled, to 194 (Swanström and Björnehed 2004, p. 329). Is the recent wave of violence and terror in Southeast Asia mainly the result of global developments?

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The Challenge of Nonstate Violence

In the continuous aftermath of 11 September 2001, violence in Southeast Asia is often seen simply as the local manifestation of the same universal phenomenon, the Al-Qaidaization of international relations. According to Peter Chalk, “groups and militants based in the region are known either to have passed through training camps formerly under the charge of the Taliban or to have established links with Osama bin Laden and his global terror network” (2005, p. 19). Rohan Gunaratna presents one of the most detailed accounts of the alleged Al-Qaidaization of Southeast Asia: Al-Quaeda and its associate group JL [Jemaah Islamiya] have divided their responsibilities, personnel, infrastructure, and areas of operation into territorial organizations called mantiqis. Mantiqi 1 or M1 is based in Malaysia and covers Malaysia, Singapore, and southern Thailand. Mantiqi 2 or M2 is based in Solo, Central Java, and covers the whole of Indonesia except for Sulawesi and Kalimantan. Mantiqi 3 or M3 is based in Camp Abu Bakar, Mindanao, Philippines, and covers Borneo, including Brunei, the east Malaysian states of Sarawak and Sabah as well as Kalimantan and Sulawesi in Indonesia and the Southern Philippines. Mantiqi 4 or M4 covers Irian Jaya and Australia. (2005, p. 70)

In implicit support of this description, a Congressional Research Service report claims that, “by 2002 . . . roughly one-fifth of Al Qaeda’s organizational strength was centered in Southeast Asia” (2005, p. 2). National governments have fueled the popular perception of extensive links between local insurgencies and the Al Qaida–Jemaah Islamiyah network. Thailand’s defense minister, Chettha Thanajaro, alleged that foreign Muslim organizations transferred over 100 million baht (US$2.6 million) to Thai separatists in the south (Chua 2004, p. 2). Zohar Neuman (2005) believes that the beginnings of the local-global nexus date back to the 1990s, when the separatist movement in southern Thailand “became more radically Islamic and blended the local goal with the global Islamist revolutionary movement. Teaching of the strict Saudi brand of Islam known as Wahhabi Islam gained ground in the privately-run Muslim schools in the south.” The arrest of three Jemaah Islamiya members and Jemaah Islamiya operational chief Riduan Isamuddin (aka Hambali) in Thailand in 2003 further contributed to the view that international terrorists were operating from within Thai borders and had linked up with local movements (Liow 2004, p. 535). According to Zachary Abuza, Jemaah Islamiya might not be directly involved in southern Thailand, but “local insurgents had received the technological assistance from the group” (quoted in The Nation, 7

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March 2005). Generally, however, Prime Minister Thaksin insisted that revived local separatist movements that had no relations with international terrorism were to blame for the violence. In the Philippines, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo happily called Basilan Island in Mindanao her “little Afghanistan” (Philippine Daily Inquirer, 21 October 2001) and enthusiastically enlisted for the war against terrorism. The roughly twenty-by-thirty-mile island in the southern part of the Philippines, a province of the Mindanao region, is the stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf group, which is said to be linked with Al-Qaida. The larger, older, and more important Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which has been fighting for an independent state in Mindanao, allegedly received substantial financial and logistical support from Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law, in the early 1990s (Abuza 2003b). Both Arroyo and Thaksin were among the first state leaders in the region to embrace President George W. Bush’s global campaign against terror. In Indonesia, according to “Asian Intelligence sources,” the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) was working with Al-Qaida, which had considered shifting its base from Afghanistan to Aceh. Osama bin Laden’s second in command, Egyptian Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Al-Qaida’s former military chief, Mohammed Atef, allegedly visited Aceh in June 2000 (Chew 2002; Ressa 2002). Unlike in the Philippines, however, the Indonesian government, more specifically the Megawati administration, long rejected allegations about possible links between radical groups’ operating in the country and international terrorist networks (Sukma 2003a, p. 63). The recent debate has also focused on emerging intraregional linkages between insurgency movements in addition to the contacts that terror groups may or may not have established with extraregional counterparts. Members of Jemaah Islamiya have allegedly been training in the Philippines since 1998 (Ressa 2003; Hernandez 2004, p. 34). Jemaah Islamiya, as an international organization, and local Islamic groups such as Abu Sayyaf and the MILF, are said to have increasingly become amalgamated in the southern provinces of the Philippines. At the same time, the debate on the international and regional linkages of insurgency and separatist movements in Southeast Asia is not new and clearly predates 11 September 2001. Writing in 1990, Kenneth Bauzon claimed that various international Islamic organizations such as the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the Islamic Development Bank, the Islamic Solidarity Fund, and the World Islamic Call Society of Libya, among others, assisted or influenced in varying degrees the struggles of Muslims in Pattani and Mindanao as part of their global activities to preserve and strengthen the ummah (p. 175). Back then, of course, the term “terrorism” was not used to describe these kinds of activi-

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ties. Chalk discussed allegations of “a possible Islamic insurgent ring operating in Southeast Asia, linking Pattani radicals with extremists in Mindanao and Aceh” (Chalk 2001, p. 242) before the mainstream began to pay attention to these conflicts from an international relations perspective.5 The difference between the pre- and the post–11 September debate is that, while remarks on the international dimension of violence in Southeast Asia used to be made almost in passing, this aspect now often seems to take center stage. It is hard to deny, though, that global events or—to use the terminology of the core argument—the “stretching” (actions in one part of the world can come to have worldwide ramifications) and “deepening” (developments at local levels can have global implications and vice versa) of political activity, have changed the dynamics of local separatist and insurgency movements and resulted in the radicalization of individuals and groups among Muslims in Southeast Asia. The military operation in Afghanistan generated momentum for radicals to assert themselves more strongly, and this process was further fueled by the Iraq War. Furthermore, the arrest of suspected Islamic terrorists in Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines significantly contributed to many Muslims’ bitterness and anger toward the United States and a growing perception of the superpower’s “imperial arrogance” (Azra 2003, p. 46). A myriad of hastily assembled books and pamphlets, but also some well-researched and comprehensively argued studies such as After Bali (Ramakrishna and Tan 2003) or Militant Islam in Southeast Asia: Crucible of Terror (Abuza 2003b), have sometimes given the impression that the local embeddedness in global terrorist networks was the main unifying pattern of cases such as southern Thailand, Mindanao, and Aceh. To be sure, some radical groups might have found it useful to ride the global jihad bandwagon out of religious fanaticism or in response to a crude perception of US imperialism, and it is not impossible that they have received financial and logistical support from the Al-Qaida network. For instance, methods of terrorist attacks and violence have become more sophisticated in southern Thailand, suggesting that new international ties are the cause. Until early 2004 the targeted killings had generally involved the use of rather unsophisticated hand-held weapons, such as revolvers, pistols, and other locally fabricated arms. As far as weapons technology and terrorist tactics were concerned, not much, if any, evidence pointed to links with jihad terrorists in other parts of the world. However, since February 2005, car-bomb explosions, the detonation at Hat Yai airport, and the attacks of 3 April 2005, when three bombs exploded across southern Thailand in coordinated blasts, and other such attacks, seem to indicate a more “professional level” of tactical coordination, orchestration, and technical sophistication (the utilization of

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modified cell phones as triggering devices is a case in point), as does the emergence of explosives not previously used in southern Thailand. This soft evidence suggests either that those responsible for the attacks must have received some training outside southern Thailand or that there is a new group of terrorists involved who are linked to external organizations. At the same time, any hypothesis along the lines of “the higher the level of technological and technical sophistication of terror attacks, the more likely is the involvement of globally operating terrorist groups as transnational actors in local separatist conflicts” would be premature; much more research would be needed to establish such a linkage. As well, from an analytical point of view, it is extremely difficult to draw exact lines between local, national, and international contexts. For example, within the village communities in the Pattani area it is not uncommon to define “local” in the religious and linguistic terms of the Yala-speaking Muslim community of the Thai-Malaysia border region. Local actors would not normally consider cross-border transactions (trade, investment, social interactions, or the trafficking of weapons) as “international.”6 In other words, while the alleged involvement of Malaysian actors in the conflict in southern Thailand is part of this conflict’s international dimension, to many Thai Muslims this is just one of the various local dynamics. The boundaries between local, national, and global have become indistinct, and it would be hard to determine the definite point at which a local separatist conflict transforms into an international one. What can be established, though, is that the origins and main agendas of separatism and insurgency tend to be of a local and national rather than international nature. Consequently, any comparison of religiously or ethnically driven violence in Southeast Asia, while not ignoring the international post–11 September dynamics, seems to be more accurate in taking the local and national focus as a starting point. While the local-national nexus can be identified as the independent variable and violence as the dependent variable, international structures and actions of external agents, such as colonialism and, today, global terrorist networks, form intervening variables.

* * * In the remainder of the chapter, I first present a typology of violence in southern Thailand, Mindanao, and Aceh, and argue that all three conflicts share some similar crucial structural framework conditions, namely: • They date back to colonial or even precolonial times and have been affected by the legacy of colonialism. • They involve ethnic and religious minorities.

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• They are legitimated and inspired in religious terms. • They are confined to the poorest regions within the respective nations. • They have been fueled by a long history of neglect from the respective national governments and marginalized in the nation-building process or even worsened due to failed policy approaches. In a second step, I discuss different approaches to conflict management and resolution—partly mutually exclusive and partly complementary—that have been applied in the three cases, including: • Policy strategies directed to the decentralization and devolution of political power. • Attempts at the economic development of formerly neglected provinces and regions. • The temptation to apply military solutions. • International and regional contributions, mainly the feasibility of US involvement and the role of ASEAN.

A Typology of Conflict in Southern Thailand, Mindanao, and Aceh Clash of Identities

The conflicts between Muslim separatist movements and the respective central governments in Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia were not so much caused “by guns and bullets as by conflicting conceptions of nationality, each of which forms part of a larger set of beliefs” (Bauzon 1990, p. 165). Today, after decades if not centuries of violence, these clashes of identity in the nation-building processes still seem to be the main root causes for conflict. In the case of southern Thailand, three main pillars (Chalk 2001, p. 242; Christie 1996, p. 174) underscore local identity in the four southernmost provinces—Satun, Pattani, Yala, and Narithiwat—where some 76 percent of the population are Muslims (but only 4.6 percent of the total population of Thailand adhere to the Islamic faith), according to the 2000 government census (Thailand National Statistical Office 2000): • The historical legacy of the Kingdom of Pattani (Pattani Darussalam) and particularly the belief in its traditional virtues and greatness.

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• The identification with the Malay ethnic community and its language, the Malay dialect Yawi. This identification is being reinforced by repeated cross-border contacts such as trade and intermarriages with ethnic kin in the northern Malaysian state of Kelantan. • The religious orientation based on Islam.7 This threefold identity of the Malay-Muslim minority is incompatible with the concept of “Thai-ness,” the constructed, state-driven collective identity of the Thai population centered on the idea of ethnic homogeneity and, more specifically, three principles: chat, or “nation” (speaking Thai as the manifestation of membership in the Thai nation), satsana, or “religion” (being Thai as being Buddhist), and phra mahakrasat, or “the king” (devotion to the monarchy).“While Chulalongkorn provided the basis for a modern bourgeois administrative state, his son and successor Vajiravudh (reigned 1910–25) provided the ideological content of the new state formation. By articulating an ideology of ‘Nation, Religion, and Monarchy,’ he provided successive regimes with the cement that was to bind the people to elite images of Thai society” (Connors 2001, p. 42). Benedict Anderson has referred to Thai-ness as the “endless affirmations of the identity of the dynasty and the nation” (1983, p. 95). In a similar vein, the collective identity of the Moro population in the southern Philippines has clashed with the concept of a Filipino nation that is based on the majority religion, Catholicism (a concept that, compared to Thailand, is less sophisticated and formalized but nevertheless strong). The southern Philippine island region of Mindanao is the ancestral homeland of the country’s 5 million Muslims, known as Moros by their Spanish name, which is still in use. The Moros have not become assimilated into the mainstream of Philippine society. “Muslims view the present government as gobirno a sawang tao (government of foreign people) and the Christian Filipinos themselves as Bangsa Pilipino (Filipino nation), and distinct from the Bangsa Moro (Moro nation)” (Bauzon 1990, p. 149). The situation in Aceh is more complex at first glance, as the conflict between the Acehnese and the centralized state prominently involves a fight over economic resources and takes place within an environment of religious and ethnic pluralism rather than pretended homogeneity. At the core it is nevertheless a struggle between conflicting identities that, just as in southern Thailand and Mindanao, is rooted deeply in the minority’s resistance to assimilation under the banner of an invented idea of the inclusive nation. To many Acehnese nationalists, the concept of an Indonesian national identity based on secularism and religious pluralism as enshrined in the Pancasila state ideology is “inherently absurd and unstable, a mask for Ja-

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vanese colonialism” (Aspinall and Berger 2001, p. 1024, n. 66). Statesponsored schemes to relocate people of the majority ethnic and religious group to the minority areas have been among the most visible expressions of internal colonialism. Government programs to relieve population pressure in the central and northern Philippines resulted in the migration of millions of Christians to Mindanao. This process once and forever transformed the ethnopolitical and religious landscape (Russell et al. 2004, p. 3). In Indonesia, a similar approach to ease the problem of overpopulation on the main island of Java during Suharto’s New Order was called transmigrasi (transmigration) and effectively resulted in the gradual Javanization of Indonesia. In Thailand, under the military government of Phibun Songgkram, previously appointed Muslim administrators in the south were replaced by Thai bureaucrats from Bangkok. These clashes of identity and the respective minority groups’ rejection of assimilation came to the fore in the early nation-building processes, but the main structures were already present before the modern nation-states of Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia came into existence. Colonialism intensified these conflicts in their nascent state. The impact of foreign domination during the imperial age was the first of a series of intervening variables. In his study of the southern Philippines and southern Thailand, W. K. Man (1990, p. 173) concluded that the ability of the two Muslim communities to resist Philippine and Thai domination was affected to a large extent by the intervention of the Western colonial powers. One can speculate that without the interference of the United States in Mindanao and of Great Britain in Pattani, the Moros and Muslim Malays might not have been set upon their present course of history. In these two cases and also with regard to Aceh, the contemporary resistance struggles began in earnest when the three communities were subjected to US, Thai, and Dutch rule respectively. The Legacy of Colonialism, Incomplete Nation Building, and the Anatomy of Conflict Southern Thailand. In Thailand, attempts at a political incorporation of the Muslim Malay areas date back to the late thirteenth century. By 1832, the King of Siam’s conquest of the sovereign Muslim Kingdom of Pattani was complete and the Muslim dynasty ceased to exist. In the 1890s, the Siamese state subjugated the Muslim Malay areas in tandem with bureaucratic reforms instituted by King Chulalongkorn, which included the replacement of Sharia and Adat law with Thai civil law. However, only an international event eventually cemented Pattani Darussalam’s domina-

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tion by an external power. The signing of the Anglo-Siamese treaties in 1904 and 1909 once and forever defined the boundaries between Siam and British Malaya. As a consequence, the Muslim Malays of Pattani became part of the terrestrial Thai state, regardless of the fact that their cultural legacy and identity remained with the Malay world (Liow 2004, p. 533). Since then, the resistance struggle has taken place in roughly four phases. A series of resistance movements and uprisings broke out almost immediately after the Siamese government had divided the area of the former Kingdom of Pattani into seven provinces, which were governed by appointed bureaucrats under a centralized administrative structure. On the whole, however, this first period of assimilation was characterized by a laissez-faire policy toward the Muslim Malays. The leadership of the early rebellions against what was perceived as Bangkok’s attempts of “Siamifying” the Malay community, comprised mainly the former royal families and religious leaders who were keen to recapture the authority of the deposed Malay sultans (Man 1990, p. 173). Probably the most unpopular element of Bangkok’s early assimilation policy was the implementation of compulsory national education for Malay-Muslim pupils conducted in the Thai language, and the related closing of Islamic schools (Pondok schools) in 1921 (Liow 2004, p. 533). The second phase began in 1938 when the ultranationalist regime of Phibun came to power. It followed a policy of enforced assimilation of the various minority cultures into the mainstream concept of Thai-ness. In the 1940s, this provoked the emergence of a separatist movement fighting for an independent Pattani. In 1948, the League of Malay for a Great Patani (Gampar) was formed as the first overt organization for the Malay-Muslim cause, followed by the establishment of the Pattani National Liberation Front (BNPP). The Pattani United Liberation Organization (PULO) was the largest and most prominent separatist group of the various organizations that mushroomed out of the environment of resistance and alienation in southern Thailand in the 1960s. The decade saw a sharp increase in violent clashes between insurgents and the security forces, which became the rule in the southernmost provinces. In the mid-1970s more than twenty separatist organizations agitated on both sides of the Thai-Malaysian border (Croissant 2005, p. 2; Liow 2004, p. 536; Chalk 2001, p. 243). The main pillars of PULO’s ideology were race, ethnicity, and religion. The political agenda of the resistance movement rested on these foundation stones. Violence as carried out by the organization’s militant wing, the Pattani United Liberation Army (PULA), was central to the strategy (Liow 2004, p. 537).

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In the 1980s, the third phase, the conflict ground to a halt in the second half of the decade, and only a few small splinter groups continued to put up a fight into the 1990s, although some observers believed that a “thousand guerrillas” were still active in the southern provinces in the late 1990s (Mookherji 2000, p. 144). The main reasons for the rollback in violence were, first, new policies of the governments under Prem Tinsulanonda (1980–1988), the first prime minister from the south, and Chatichai Choonhaven (1988–1991), which were aimed at the economic development of the deep south and the support of cultural rights and religious freedoms for the Malay-Muslim community. This substantially revised strategy vis-à-vis the southern provinces effectively ended Bangkok’s assimilation policy of earlier decades. Second, the democratization of the Thai polity opened the door for the political participation of the Malay-Muslim community, particularly within the Democratic Party, which had established a near-hegemonic dominance in the south by 1992 (McCargo 2004, p. 13). A visible materialization of the southerners’ integration into mainstream politics was the appointment of Malay-Muslim Surin Pitsumwan as foreign minister in 1992. He served in this position until 2001 in the governments of Anand Panyarachun and Chuan Leekpai, who is also a southerner. In Surin’s own words: “The fact that a small person like myself coming from a small, Muslim community in Nakorn Sri Thammarat, could become Foreign Minister, Spokesmen of this country, representing this country around the world in different forums and stages is also a testimony to the successful relationship that has evolved between the people down here [in the south] and the Thai State” (Surin 2003).8 The honeymoon in relations between the center and the periphery did not last. A raid on an army depot on 4 January 2004 signaled a return to the violence and the beginning of the fourth and current phase. Four soldiers (but also some thirty attackers) were killed, and more than a hundred guns were stolen from an army weapons depot in Narathiwat province. Eighteen schools were also torched by another group of armed attackers during raids in Narathiwat and Yala provinces the same day. The next day, two policemen were killed while trying to defuse a bomb in Pattani. Following these incidents, the Thai authorities declared martial law in Pattani, Narathiwat, and Yala provinces. Since then, violence has escalated and there have been more than 300 incidents in which symbols of the Thai state, including police officers, teachers, and Buddhist monks, have been targeted by gunmen. By mid-2005 some 700 people had been killed in the spiraling process of violence. On 18 February 2005 an unprecedented car-bombing, one of the deadliest single bombings, took place, killing six and injuring forty-four people in Sungai Kolok, a town on the Malaysian border just

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hours after then–prime minister Thaksin had left the region. No hard evidence exists as to who is ultimately behind the acts of violence. The Thaksin government initially blamed bandits and mafia-style crime bosses for the violence, but eventually acknowledged that separatist groups were responsible. Zachary Abuza believes that the organizations such as the National Revolution Front (BRN) and PULO had already died out and the militants who were behind the escalating of violence in the deep south were not these old actors, as portrayed by the Thai government (cited in The Nation, 7 March 2005). Aurel Croissant (2005) takes the opposite view, arguing that several of these well-established actors remained at the heart of the insurgency, including the BRN as the largest, the Pattani Islamic Mujahidin Movement (GMIP), which may have a large area of operations, the relatively small New PULO, and the original PULO, which does not seem to have retained much military power.9 In mid-2005, information emerged that the insurgency was run by a unifying body called the Dewan Pembebasan Pattani (DPP), comprising some 15,000 members. The organization, which is said to operate in absolute secrecy and has not revealed the identity of its leader to the militants on the ground, allegedly finances itself from events such as local football matches, a membership fee of one baht a day, as well as unknown foreign sources. The best-organized group within the DPP is believed to be the Barisan Revolusi Nasional–Coordinate (BRN Coordinate) (Singapore Institute of International Affairs 2005). As in southern Thailand, the conflicts in Mindanao and Aceh are directly linked to the perception of internal colonialism, which accompanied the respective nation-building processes. Although an inevitable linkage between minority ethnic identity and the obstruction of political integration does not exist, when “nationalist success becomes equated with majority dominance then political alienation will follow and the prospect for integration will be abstracted as ethnic particularism is reinforced through the actions of those who seek to deny it” (Thaib 2000, p. 105). In Mindanao and Aceh, internal colonialism followed the imperial involvement of the Netherlands in Indonesia and Spain and the United States in the Philippines. From a Moro perspective, for example, since Philippine independence in 1946 the national government has continued with the “‘colonization’ of their homeland that makes their existence marginal and peripheral” (Magdalena 1997, p. 248). Muslim Mindanao. The history of the Moro insurgent movements dates back to Spanish rule in the sixteenth century. The mainstream view concerning the origins of the Muslim resistance movement in Mindanao pres-

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ents it as a sustained centuries-long defense of religion and territory (Majul 1999). The Spanish colonial power made periodic inroads into the southern islands—assisted by Filipino conscripts—but failed to fully convert the natives to Christianity and to establish authority there during its three centuries of colonial rule. Resistance to colonization was especially strong among the Muslim population of southwestern Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago, where Moros fought Christian and foreign domination in a battle for independence. The current Muslim rebellion is generally traced to US colonial rule from 1898 to 1946, when the autonomy of Muslim sultanates and datuships effectively ended. In its attempt at nation building, the US colonial administration was confronted with the problem of governing the “non-Christian tribes” before they were to be integrated into the secular, Christianized north. The US colonial government’s attempt to administer Mindanao separately from the rest of the Philippines and develop the region’s infrastructure, education, and other social services, while recognizing their indigenous religion and culture (Glazer 1941), was never entirely successful. Following independence, Filipino Muslims continued to resist political domination by the new power center, the national government in Manila, leading to widespread conflict in the 1970s. In the Moros’ perception, the national regime followed essentially the same strategies and policies as the Spanish and later US colonial rulers, who had tried to reshape the indigenous society of Mindanao in their own image. Today the 12,000-strong Moro Islamic Liberation Front is the country’s main Muslim separatist force. It split from the original movement, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), in 1978. Initially a small movement, it rose to power after the 1996 peace treaty between the government and the MNLF, when the MILF de facto supplanted the demobilized MNLF. Like the original movement, the MILF has been fighting for an independent Islamic state in the southern Philippines, to liberate “illegally and immorally annexed” land belonging to the Muslim people in Mindanao and to regain Muslim peoples’ freedom and self-determination. The MILF views the Moro problem as rooted in the US unilateral integration of Muslim land into the sovereign territory of the independent Philippines in 1946. Various governments have tried but eventually failed to end decades of separatist fighting and rebellion in the Philippines. The first attempt at a political solution was made in 1976 when the Marcos government, under martial law, forced an agreement with the MNLF, known as the Tripoli Agreement. Due to the vagueness of its provisions, the government’s unilateral and dictatorial approach to the interpretation and definition of core provisions and lack of unity within the MNLF, the agreement

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was never implemented. After the ousting of Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, the democratically legitimized administration of Corazón Aquino resumed peace negotiations on the basis of the Tripoli Agreement. Soon, however, the talks stalled when both parties disagreed on the details of autonomy and maintained their hard-line positions. For its part, the MNLF scaled up its demand by asking that the entire island of Mindanao, Palawan, and the Sulu archipelago be covered by the autonomy. This position was unacceptable to the government. Since the new constitution recognized two regions, the Cordilleras in Luzon and Muslim Mindanao,10 for the possible granting of autonomy, the government nevertheless worked toward the creation of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). In 1989 a plebiscite was called to ask the inhabitants of the area if they wanted their provinces or cities to become part of ARMM. Of the thirteen provinces to be covered by the autonomy, only four voted for inclusion in ARMM. The result dissatisfied many Moros and did not bring an end to the separatist cause. It took another ten years until the government, now under the presidency of Fidel Ramos, was finally able to conclude a peace agreement with the MNLF. The roles of Indonesia and Libya had been instrumental in brokering the deal. The peace agreement, signed in 1996, called for the establishment of a Moro provisional government and the integration of the MNLF forces into the Philippine armed forces (Magdalena 1997, pp. 249–251). Although initially praised as a landmark agreement, the deal failed to tackle the roots of the problem. The implementation of the agreement was successful insofar as it resulted in the integration of almost 6,000 MNLF guerrilla fighters into the military and 1,750 into the Philippine national police, thereby paving the way for the lasting demobilization of the MNLF. Beyond this, Mindanao benefited little from the peace dividend, particularly in terms of a noticeable impact on poverty alleviation efforts and bringing basic services directly to the MNLF communities (Kreuzer 2003, p. 35). Furthermore, dissatisfied members of the resistance movement used the existing structures of the MILF, a small and unimportant splinter group at the time, to regroup. Within a short period the MILF managed to fully supplant the MNLF and even developed a better organizational structure; it is considered more powerful in terms of its military strength and capabilities than the original group. While the MILF has principally continued the MNLF’s struggle, its ideological base is different. The former is mainly focused on the religious cause of Islam, whereas the latter fought for independence under the banner of ethnonationalism (Kreuzer 2003, p. ii). MILF founder Hashim Salamat wanted an Islamic paradigm to the Muslim struggle, in contrast to the Marxist-leaning revo-

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lutionary approach of MNLF chairman Nur Misuari. Hashim’s ultimate aim is the establishment of an independent Islamic state. He is often construed as an extremist but in fact has, over the years, taken a more flexible position on the MILF’s demands. Hashim has suggested solutions ranging from federalism (Lingga 1995) to a referendum modeled on that of East Timor in 1999. The emergence of the Abu Sayyaf group, the most radical and militant among the resistance fighters in Mindanao, is also related to the peace process of the 1990s. While the origins of the group can be traced back to the 1980s when its leadership was allegedly trained by the US Central Intelligence Agency in Afghanistan to help fight the invading Soviet troops (Crisostomo 2002, p. 180), Abu Sayyaf was officially formed in 1991 in response to the MNLF’s decision to embark on peace talks with the government. Unlike the MNLF with its moderate Islamic stance, Abu Sayyaf believed in armed struggle (Balakrishnan 2001, p. 39). “Abu Sayyaf was initially accepted by many in the Muslim community. It seemed like it was going back to the ‘pristine’ definition and practice of Islam. . . . Neither the military nor the MNLF was bothered by its inception; both regarded the group as a youth arm of the MNLF” (Dañguilan Vitug and Gloria 2000, p. 212). At the end of the day, the peacebuilding process of the early 1990s failed to bring the armed conflict to a halt. The decision of the Estrada administration (1998–2001) to declare an all-out war against the MILF intensified the debilitating cycle of violence, and was one of the main reasons why the country’s economy drifted into a downward spiral, a process from which the Philippines has yet to fully recover. The abrupt end of the Estrada government in January 2001 opened a window of opportunity for a new peace momentum under the succeeding government of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. With the help of Malaysia and Libya, both sides agreed to resume peace talks in March 2001 and a peace agreement toward a “lasting political settlement” was signed in June 2001. The agreement stipulated, among other things, that the peaceful resolution of the conflict must involve consultations with the Muslim people free of any impositions, that members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference will monitor the implementation of all agreements, and that the MILF will determine and lead rehabilitation and development projects in conflict-related areas, except when public money is used.11 After the first promising steps toward the establishment of an institutional-organizational framework for the implementation of the agreement, in February 2003 the government started a new military campaign aimed at the destruction of the MILF (Kreuzer 2003, p. 46). When, as in the past, the strategy of defeating the MILF on the battleground failed, Arroyo tried to revive the peace process. A fresh

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round of talks with the MILF began in early 2004, again hosted by the Malaysian government in Kuala Lumpur.12 For the time being, however, Arroyo has ordered troops to keep confronting the insurgents in Mindanao. Nearly 5,000 soldiers have been fighting about 800 militants from Abu Sayyaf and members of the MILF. Since the 1970s, more than 120,000 people have died in the civil war in Mindanao (Russell et al. 2004, p. 4). The ongoing fight in Mindanao resembles the situation in Aceh, where peace talks between the separatist movement and the government in Jakarta had been equally unsuccessful for many decades. Likewise, attempts at a military solution had not only failed but also significantly worsened the conflict. Aceh. Indonesia has a long history of conflicts involving religious groups

dating back to the days of Dutch colonialism. One of the hotspots of communal violence has been Aceh, the northernmost province of Sumatra, with a population of about 5 million. Before the Dutch colonial government defeated the Acehnese in 1903, Aceh Dar al-Salam was an independent political entity—among the oldest premodern states in Southeast Asia—that had been governed by a succession of sultans. After their long history of confronting the colonial masters, the Acehnese first eagerly supported Indonesian nationalism and independence. The enthusiasm was fueled by President Sukarno’s promise of 1947 that Aceh would be given autonomy within Indonesia and allowed to implement Islamic law if Aceh joined the Republic of Indonesia (Sulistiyanto 2001, p. 438). However, when it became apparent that Aceh would not be granted a certain degree of autonomy and was incorporated into North Sumatra instead, political and social unrest soon took hold. The discontent led to the rise of the secessionist movement, known as Darul Islam (House of Islam). Contrary to widespread myth, Darul Islam did not originate in Aceh but started from West Java and was led by a West Javanese, S. M. Kartosuwiryo. Frustrated with Sukarno’s unmaterialized promise to grant Aceh full autonomy, the influential leader of the Aceh liberation movement and governor of the province, Tengku M. Daud Beureuh, joined forces with a movement comprising Darul Islam and Tentara Islam Indonesia (Islamic Armed Forces of Indonesia). In 1953 he launched a rebellion against Jakarta and declared Aceh an Islamic state. The Sukarno administration reacted by sending troops to suppress the rebellion. After years of fighting and heavy casualties on both sides, Jakarta realized that a military solution was unlikely to bring the rebellion to a halt (Effendy 2003, p. 38). Sukarno granted Aceh separate province status in 1959, followed by special region status (Daerah Istimewa) in 1961. In the following year, Beureuh gave up his rebellion

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(Sulistiyanto 2001, p. 439). Although at first glance it seemed that the central government had made important concessions, including promises of autonomy in the areas of religion, customary law, and education, Jakarta established order on its own terms. Ever since the ultimately failed Darul Islam rebellion, “Acehnese history has been a history of military repression and political and economic injustice” (Azra 2002, p. 80). As Douglas Ramage summarizes: The single greatest consequence of the Darul Islam revolts is that the “Islamic threat” was given concrete form. The Darul Islam reinforced in the minds of many “Pancasilaists” in the Konstituante the manifest danger of national integrity in efforts to establish Islamic government in Indonesia. Moreover, the army’s successful operations against the Darul Islam clearly proved to the military both the threats posed by the “extreme right” (the term officially used to refer to Islamic fundamentalism in the New Order) and indispensability of the armed forces in defending the non-Islamic Pancasila state. The Darul Islam has given the military, as well as others, the pretext for their anti-Islamic politics, thinking and behavior for over thirty years. (1995, p. 17)

During the New Order regime of President Suharto (1966–1998), hardline Islamic groups were perceived as a threat to political stability and the fragile process of nation building, and became a major target of state surveillance and repression. Bloody incidents such as the Tanjung Priok riot of 1984 are still fresh in many people’s minds. Up to 200 Muslim demonstrators were killed in the port area of Jakarta in a clash with the military. The protests were triggered by a widely held view within Muslim circles that the state was banning political Islam by requiring all sociopolitical organizations to accept Pancasila as their sole ideological foundation. However, the emergence of an explicit separatist organization in Aceh was not primarily the result of religious and cultural oppression but rather was mainly related to the intensified modernizing and centralizing efforts of the New Order regime or, in other words, the “Javanization” of the Indonesian economy. The growth of the massive oil and natural gas zone around Lhokseumawe in North Aceh created a widespread perception that Acehnese natural wealth was being drained out of the province, a perception that was crucial to the early appeal of the Free Aceh Movement. GAM was officially set up in December 1976 by Hasan di Tiro, a US-educated expatriate businessman. He left Aceh in 1979 and established an exile government in Sweden. Despite the popularity of its course, GAM was initially a relatively isolated group in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Mass support only grew as the result of the brutal tactics employed by the Indonesian armed forces to repress

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the movement from the time it was formed (Aspinall and Berger 2001, pp. 1016–1017). It first appeared that the armed forces were able to crush the separatist movement, but GAM regained strength in the late 1980s. In a direct response, the Suharto government put Aceh under operational military status in 1991, and it became an occupied military territory similar to East Timor. The operational military area lasted until 1999 and saw the most violent period in Aceh’s history. It is believed that almost 2,000 people disappeared, more than 1,000 were killed, and more than 3,000 were tortured during the period (Sulistiyanto 2001, p. 442). Probably more than 12,000 people have died in the civil war since 1976. After the ousting of Suharto, communal violence, ethnic unrest, and regional separatism intensified throughout Indonesia, particularly in Aceh, East Timor, Papua, and Ambon, in an explosive reaction to decades of authoritarian centralization under the New Order regime. In search of an effective response, the post-Suharto governments of Habibie, Wahid, and Megawati began implementing, from 1998 onward, various measures to reduce the degree of centralization. Acehnese expectations of concessions from Jakarta increased following President Habibie’s 1999 agreement to a referendum on East Timor’s independence, his offer of “special autonomy” to Aceh, his apology for human rights abuses in Aceh committed by the TNI, and afterward by President Wahid’s apparent agreement to hold an Acehnese referendum. These expectations were manifested in mass demonstrations for a referendum in Aceh, and in the escalation of support for the GAM, which renewed its attacks on military and police targets (Brown 2004, p. 1–2). The Wahid administration embarked on peace talks with GAM in 1999. After some ups and downs, the negotiations eventually resulted in the signing of a peace accord in Geneva in December 2002 (the “Cessation of Hostilities Framework”). When this agreement collapsed in May 2003 following unsuccessful peace negotiations in Tokyo, Megawati Sukarnoputri, who succeeded Wahid as Indonesian president, responded by immediately imposing martial law and launching a new military campaign. On 19 May, Jakarta deployed some 35,000 troops to Aceh—the largest military operation since the annexation of East Timor in 1975—for an offensive against GAM (Nguyen and Richter 2003, p. 10). The military commander in chief, General Endriatrono Sutarto, ordered the troops assembled in the province to “launch a ‘Security Restoration Operation’ aimed at ‘destroying GAM forces down to their roots.’ Their job, he said, was simple: ‘They have the task of finishing off, killing, those who still engage in armed resistance’” (Aspinall and Crouch 2003, p. 1). The government estimated the number of GAM combat forces to be around 3,000 in 2003, although they seemed

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to have only 2,000 weapons among them (Crouch 2003, p. 37). It took one of the deadliest natural disasters in recent human history to bring the parties in the conflict back to the negotiating table. On 26 December 2004, Aceh suffered an earthquake and tsunami of almost unthinkable impact. Fatalities surpassed 120,000, with hundreds of thousands severely affected physically, psychologically, and through loss of livelihood. At the same time, the devastating impact of the tsunami disaster almost immediately raised the prospect of a reconciliation and eventual peace in Aceh between the government and GAM. Partly due to international pressure, peace talks in Helsinki eventually resulted in a memorandum of understanding between the Indonesian government and GAM, signed in August 2005. The agreement paves the way for the new Law on the Governing of Aceh, which will grant Aceh limited autonomy in political, economic, cultural, and judicial areas. Among the most important provisions is Aceh’s entitlement to retain 70 percent of oil and gas revenues and other natural resources in its territory and surrounding waters. However, what looks good on paper might be difficult to achieve in reality, even with the support of the European Union and ASEAN, which will form an Aceh monitoring mission to observe the implementation of the commitments taken by the conflict parties. The most crucial aspects of the peace deal are the demobilization of GAM’s 3,000 troops, the decommissioning of all arms held by GAM, and the withdrawal of the Jakarta-deployed military and police forces from Aceh. The memorandum states, “the relocation of non-organic military and non-organic police forces will . . . be executed in four stages in parallel with the GAM decommissioning immediately after each stage has been verified by the [Aceh monitoring mission]” (para. 4.6, emphasis added).13 Initially this arrangement seemed to be doomed to failure, as there was the real possibility that it would open the door for a vicious circle of blame games in which the TNI was likely to accuse GAM of not having fulfilled its commitments and vice versa, resulting in a stalled decommissioning-for-relocation process. Although such a scenario has not materialized, lasting peace and stability in Aceh are all but guaranteed. And while Thailand and the Philippines have to deal with one major regional conflict each, Aceh is just one case among myriad local problems that grip Indonesia. Since the beginning of the post-Suharto reformasi era in 1998, Indonesia’s struggle for political stability and order and a just and prosperous society has been marred by insurgencies, bomb attacks, sectarian conflicts, ethnically and religiously motivated violence, and terrorism. Although Zachary Abuza believes that, for example, “there are groups [in Aceh] that have very clear, direct ties to Jemaah Islamiyah” (quoted in Council on

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Foreign Relations 2005), the various conflicts in Indonesia have to be seen and analyzed separately from each other, as there is not much of a connection between them other than the generally fragile basis of the uncompleted nation-building process and perhaps the legacy of the Darul Islam movement. The original Darul Islam rebellions in the 1950s and 1960s in West and Central Java, South Sulawesi, Aceh, and South Kalimantan came together to some extent in the early 1960s. Darul Islam was the only radical Islamic movement in postindependence Indonesia that had tried to build a national structure using armed struggle to create an Islamic state. Some links (rather weak) between past movements, including the rebellions in Aceh, and today’s “terrorist” movements, can be constructed by arguing that Jemaah Islamiyah “is an heir of the Indonesian Darul Islam movement,” as indicated by the organization’s “willingness to work with various offshoots of Darul Islam in waging jihad” (International Crisis Group 2004).14 With the notable exception of Jemaah Islamiya, which first appeared on the scene in the late 1970s and probably has no more than 500 members (Abuza 2003a, p. 169)—150 were arrested in April 2003—most of the radical groups that make today’s headlines emerged only after the ousting of Suharto in May 1998. Among them are Laskar Jihad (Holy War Warriors), Pembela Islam (Islamic Defender Front), and the Indonesian Mujahidin Council. Laskar Jihad, a Java-based paramilitary group, was founded in early 2000 and has been most active in the province of Maluku, where the militant extremists have intervened on behalf of local Islamic groups in the violent conflict between Muslims and Christians. The end to authoritarian rule in Indonesia was followed by a new political pluralism not known in Indonesia for more than four decades. Hard-line groups could organize themselves and operate freely without much restriction. Equally if not more important was the impact of the 1997–1998 Asian crisis. The severe economic decline prepared the ground for a successful recruiting campaign, and an increasing number of poor, unemployed young men have willingly followed the new movements. Development Gaps: Poverty and Social Exclusion

Identity clashes and incomplete if not failed nation-building processes have been identified as vital structural causes for the conflicts in southern Thailand, Mindanao, and Aceh. A further and equally important reason that is relevant in all three cases is economic marginalization, or, if this is too extreme a view, a growing development gap between these three regions and their respective national averages. As Lily Rahim (2003, pp. 213–214) notes, secessionist struggles waged by Muslim communities tend to be

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more pronounced in resource-rich but less-developed regions such as Mindanao and Aceh.15 Both regions—and the same applies to southern Thailand—are characterized by higher than average levels of unemployment, poverty, and illiteracy. Within the communities of Muslim Mindanao this situation of relative deprivation has led to a sense of alienation toward the postcolonial state (Rahim 2003, p. 214). For example, according to a government survey, in 1973 only 12 percent of the population of Muslim Mindanao had electricity as compared to 17.5 percent for the whole of Mindanao and the national average of 28 percent (George 1980, p. 224). Since then the gap has widened rather than narrowed. In 2002 the per capita income in the National Capital Region (NCR), centered in Manila, was nearly ten times that in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), the poorest region in the Philippines. In the same year, the Human Development Index (HDI) score for Sulu, one of the Muslim provinces, stood at only about half the national average and just over one-third of the HDI for the NCR (Economist Intelligence Unit 2004). In 2003 the three regions with the highest proportion of poor families were all in Mindanao, with ARMM being at the bottom. Of all families in ARMM, 45.7 percent lived below the poverty line, compared to 5.0 percent in the NCR and 13.7 percent in Central Luzon (Philippine National Statistical Coordination Board 2005). Despite the fact that ARMM comprises the five poorest provinces in the entire country, in 2003 the national government appropriated only 0.6 percent of the annual Philippine budget (5.6 billion pesos of 980 billion pesos [US$105 million of US$18.4 billion]) to this region (Russell et al. 2004, p. 7). At the same time, mass poverty and social exclusion in Muslim Mindanao is not exclusively related to systematic and deliberate neglect on the part of the central state, but also is at least partly driven by a lack of coordination within and between government agencies, by clan politics, by the high level of corruption that eats away at millions of pesos from public coffers, and generally by the weak Philippine state. The example of Aceh is even more striking, as it is one of the most resource-rich regions in Indonesia, though the population remains among the poorest by national standards. Oil and gas production is mainly concentrated in 7 districts and cities, out of a total of 350 districts and cities, which are located in four natural resource–rich provinces: Aceh, Riau, East Kalimantan, and Papua. These four regions contribute about 72 percent to the national GDP from oil and gas. These are also the places where public expression of dissent is strongest in Indonesia (Tadjoeddin 2003, p. 11). The multinational giant ExxonMobil Oil has been operating for years in Aceh. The profitable oil and gas business earns the Indonesian government

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about US$1 billion per year. Aceh also has abundant wealth in several commodities, notably palm oil, sugar, chocolate, and copra (Suryana 2003). Given such rich natural resources, the province should have been able to raise the living standards of its people. However, of the twenty-six provinces for which Human Poverty Index (HPI) trends between 1990 and 1998 are available (the most recent data), Aceh is among only five Indonesian provinces that have not been able to improve their HDI score during this period.16 Unlike most other provinces, Aceh has not managed to advance the provision of basic education, access to safe water, and the nutritional status of children under age five. Instead, a deterioration of access to health services and a reduction in people’s longevity could be observed (UNDP 2001, p. 74). The situation in southern Thailand bears striking similarities with Mindanao and Aceh. Although not a resource-rich region when compared to Aceh, for example, it should be assumed that southern Thailand benefited from the long period of sustained economic growth in the country between 1960 and 1997. Quite to the contrary, however, existing regional imbalances deepened during this period (Croissant 2005). Although absolute growth rates have been increasing, “the region remains underdeveloped relative to other parts of Thailand, ‘enjoying’ an average per capita income of at least 7,000 baht [US$183] less than neighboring provinces” (Chalk 2001, p. 246). Data presented by Aurel Croissant (2005) show a high level of absolute and relative deprivation among the local population in the four Muslim-Malay majority provinces—Satun, Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat—which are among the least developed of the kingdom. In the early 1960s the south was better off than other parts of Thailand. The mean household income was one-fifth higher than the average national household income, and the regional GDP per capita was one-quarter above the national average. Since then, however, economic disparities between the south and the national average have increasingly come to the fore. Although income levels have increased in absolute numbers, the income gap between the south and the rest of the country has been widening. In 2000, household income by region in the south was only 91.8 percent of the average household income for the whole kingdom. Even more striking, the gross regional product accounted for a mere 68.7 percent of the national average in 1999. Establishing economic inequality and relative deprivation as a cause of violence is based on the assumption that economically disadvantaged groups are fully aware of the disparity between poverty in their region and the national average of income and wealth. Are the nearly 50 percent of people living below the poverty line in Mindanao busy researching the national average to determine whether they feel deprived or

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not? While most Moros, Acehnese, and Muslim Malays certainly do have other worries than constantly placing their personal economic situation within the national context, at least the local elites and opinion leaders (village heads, religious leaders, local businesspeople, university lecturers, etc.) are well aware of the fact that their respective communities have benefited less than other regions of their nations from economic growth, access to education, infrastructure development, and the like. Although GDP growth and increases in HDI scores have also taken place in southern Thailand, Mindanao, and Aceh, the gap in relation to national averages, and even more so with regard to urban standards of living, has significantly widened. And it is precisely this perception of growing inequality that has further fueled alienation from the central state. Governmental strategies directed toward the reduction of poverty and improvement of the overall economic situation in the three deprived regions are caught in a vicious circle. While the decade-long economic neglect of the minority provinces by succeeding central administrations contributed to the growth of resistance movements, the resulting violence has in turn created an environment of insecurity that hinders the efficient implementation of development projects. As M. Abdud Sabur observes in the case of Thailand: “Though the government declared an allocation of more resources to redouble efforts for local development it is difficult for government officials who are working in an environment of insecurity. One of their principal challenges is to mobilize local people and effectively implement the developmental projects. Due to continuing violence there is reluctance on the part of investors to work in the South which is limiting prospects for economic strengthening and jobs creation” (2005, p. 8). Even more important, both domestic investment and foreign direct investment, which are urgently needed to build and strengthen the local economies, have suffered substantially due to persistent violence. In the case of the Philippines, failure to reach a peace agreement in Mindanao and the widespread perception that insurgency was linked to international terrorism have had a negative impact on the national economy as a whole. The perception of an insecure environment for investment is among the main reasons why overall FDI as a percentage of GDP in the Philippines is currently one of the lowest in East and Southeast Asia. Total FDI reached US$1.8 billion in 2002 but dropped by some 30 percent in 2003 (Dosch, Bores Lazo, and Cororaton 2004). In Aceh, the number of medium-size and big companies decreased by 34 percent to 75 in 2000, down from 114 in 1998. Likewise, the value of approved domestic and foreign investment has continued to decline since 1998. Approved domestic investment fell from 1.3 trillion rupiahs (about

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US$150 million) in 1998 to only 1.2 billion rupiahs in 2000. Approved FDI plunged from US$6.2 million in 1998 to zero in 2002 (Suryana 2003). In a best-case scenario, the inflow of investment in response to the tsunami disaster will result in the rebuilding of the pre–26 December 2004 infrastructure, but it is unlikely to have a long-term impact on the improvement of Aceh’s economic structure in general. Furthermore, the post-tsunami reconstruction program in Aceh has created new problems in addition to the existing ones, including a growing concern among the international community as well as Indonesians of possible corruption and nepotism in this large-scale project. The Indonesian media have been very critical toward the appointment of contractors for such an immense task, and point to the involvement of Vice President Jusuf Kalla’s companies in the reconstruction program. The prominent involvement of the armed forces in allocating assistance to those in need of food, medicine, and shelter is also of concern, as this decisive role might further increase the power of the military and could be used as a strategic tool to discriminate against tsunamiaffected communities that are believed to support and sympathize with GAM.

Paths to Peace

While the structural patterns of conflict in southern Thailand, Aceh, and Mindanao are strikingly similar, the strategies toward conflict resolution also seem to show some resemblances. Decentralization and Autonomy

As already briefly mentioned, at different junctures in the 1990s all three national governments embarked on policy processes directed to the decentralization and devolution of political power. Particular emphasis was given to the granting of special rights to crisis-ridden regions following the realization that local conflict was directly linked to the weaknesses of heavily centralized administrative structures. It was of course no coincidence that decentralization followed (re)democratization, as decentralization in the three polities under study here, like in most democratic polities, is perceived as the quasi-natural and quasi-logical counterpart of democratization (see Chapter 5). While a consensus on the ultimate purpose and desirable degree of decentralization has yet to emerge—according to the “pragmatic approach,” decentralization increases the efficiency of service delivery, whereas the “political approach” stresses broader opportunities

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for public participation (Malley 2003b, p. 103)—there seems to be widespread agreement that the consolidation of democracy requires some level of decentralized political power. As Duncan McCargo assesses in the case of Thailand: “At the core of structural impediments to reform in Thailand lay the extraordinary degree of centralization. With the honourable exception of the Bangkok Metropolitan Authority, Thailand had no local government truly worthy of the name in 1997. While liberalism and pluralism were flourishing at the national level, out in the countryside provincial governors and other state officials continued to exercise an exceptional degree of political control” (2002, p. 8). Comparable observations apply to Indonesia and the Philippines. As far as the former is concerned, for several decades the empowerment of citizens to participate in local government and hold rulers at the subnational levels accountable was not on the agenda of authoritarian governments in Jakarta. Quite to the contrary: subsequent administrations crafted policies directed toward the erosion and limitation of local influence over local government. These efforts were guided by a strategy to preserve and enhance a colonial legacy, namely the subordination of local government and politics to national administration. Throughout the archipelagoes, governors, bupati, and mayors chosen by the rulers in Jakarta represented and defended the interests of the central state in the provinces (Malley 2003b, p. 106). In a similar vein, ever since the arrival of the Spaniards in 1521, the Philippine islands have been ruled from the national capital, to a point that, because of the excessive centralization, they have been derisively referred to as imperial Manila. In the early twenty-first century, highly centralized administrative and bureaucratic procedures as well as hierarchical and organizational arrangements, which are exacerbated by a culture predisposed to dependency, remain the main features of governance in the Philippines (Brillantes and Moscare 2002, p. 2). Despite the long-standing tradition of the centralized state and, almost inevitably, resistance by veto actors to any far-reaching reforms, decentralization has nevertheless been attempted in all three countries. In Thailand, local government reform has been a core element of the fundamental reconstruction of the Thai state as enshrined by the new constitution of 1997. In general terms, the constitution mandates a wide-ranging rearrangement of political institutions as well as new ones.17 In Indonesia the 1999 law on regional government was based on the dual approach of democratizing local governments and enhancing their autonomy from Jakarta. The decentralization process represents the most decisive transformation of the administrative infrastructure in the country’s history. Central civil servants were reassigned, over 16,000 public service facilities were handed over to

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the regions, and a new intergovernmental fiscal system was put in place. In the Philippines, attempts at decentralizing government date back to 1959, but various laws failed to change the status quo of power being concentrated in Manila, with local units heavily dependent on the central government. Only the 1991 Local Government Code (also known as the Local Autonomy Act), which was enacted in accordance with the provision stipulated in the 1987 constitution, seriously addressed the decades-old problem of the highly centralized politico-administrative system (Brillantes and Moscare 2002, p. 2). Due to space constraints it is not possible to discuss the specific results of, and obstacles to, the respective decentralization policies, but it seems fair to conclude that the impact has been rather limited in all three polities. While political participation at regional and local levels has increased, and subnational governments—democratically elected for the first time—enjoy greater political, administrative, and fiscal autonomy than ever before, decentralization does not seem to have improved the structural conditions for efficient and effective governance. Furthermore, the new political elites at the subnational levels are often closely linked with the center via formal and informal networks, and decisionmaking power in core areas, even in those that nominally fall under the authority of local governments, de facto rests with the center. The limited success (at best) and complete failure (at worst) of granting special rights to the Malay-Muslim provinces of Thailand, Aceh, and Mindanao demonstrate the limits to decentralization in general and the implementation of regional autonomy in particular. As already outlined, the establishment of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao was a failure, mainly due to a perceived lack of legitimacy among the Muslim population and the absence of almost any measurable impact on the regional economy and living conditions. Before the Helsinki Agreement and the Law on the Governing of Aceh, the centerpiece of Jakarta’s strategy in dealing with the province was the Special Autonomy Law of August 2001, which was negotiated by the Wahid government. It went beyond the scope of the nationwide regional autonomy laws that have been implemented since January 2001 as part of the overall decentralization policy. Among the most important provisions, the law guaranteed the return to the province of 80 percent of petroleum and natural gas revenue, in contrast to only 15 percent of petroleum revenue and 30 percent of gas revenue under the national autonomy laws. It also provided for a ceremonial head of state, to be known as wali nanggroe, and the direct election of the provincial governor and district heads. The governor was made responsible for peace and order, and the governor’s approval was needed for the appointment of the regional chief

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of police and the head of the regional prosecutor’s office. The law also established the basis for a court under which sharia would be implemented. However, it specifically stated that sharia would not be applied to nonMuslims (Crouch 2003, p. 28). The autonomy law has not been implemented due to the breakdown of peace talks in 2003 as the result of conflicting perceptions and interpretations of the autonomy. “GAM viewed the law as the starting point for future talks, while Jakarta saw it as the end point” (Malley 2003a, p. 140). While both sides made important tactical concessions, neither the Indonesian government nor GAM were prepared to compromise on what both saw as the fundamental issue: Would Aceh become an independent nation or would it remain an Indonesian province? (Aspinall and Crouch 2003, p. 2). The failed negotiations highlight an important feature of the conflict dynamics. Although national governments bear some responsibility for the escalation of violence due to the decadeslong tendency of applying politics of the stick while offering few if any carrots to resistance movements, the postcolonial state (or post-1932 state in the case of Thailand) is not the only one to blame for spiraling hostility in relations between the center and the periphery. The uncompromising posture of separatist groups has an equal share in building hurdles for a positive-sum resolution of the respective conflicts. Mindanao and Aceh, and to a lesser degree southern Thailand, have seen a Columbanization of civil war or the emergence of generations of indoctrinated quasi-professional fighters who have spent their entire adult life—and often also as adolescents—resisting the state power and putting up an armed struggle for a cause they believe is just and legitimate. These actors at the center of separatism are not easily convinced by compromised solutions that fall significantly short of optimal expectations, regardless of whether these expectations are rational or irrational. Until recently, the Thai government seemed to have found the comparatively most successful formula in dealing with separatism. Unlike the cases of Aceh and Mindanao, the revised policy toward Thailand’s deep south predated the national decentralization policy and, while it became partly embedded in it, can be described as a tailor-made approach. Since the late 1980s the Thai government has made some significant concessions to the Malay-Muslim provinces, including a greater tolerance of religious pluralism, improved education, and socioeconomic development packages, and the increased recruitment of Muslims into the state administrative structure. While the Thai government has shown no inclination to explore autonomy as a solution to the problem of separatism, until recently the concessions made to the southern provinces seemed to be appropriate and sufficient in keeping the situation under control (Searle 2002, p. 7–8).

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However, the new cycle of violence since January 2004 demonstrates the limits to the rapprochement strategy of the 1990s. According to Surin Pitsuwan, the policy failure is related to the national government’s persistent misperception of the real interests and concerns in the south: “Buddhist Bangkok still fails to understand the reason for southern discontent. People in the south don’t object to the government or its administrative and security representatives. They object to the oppressive and exploitative nature of these entities’ presence. What most people want is a not a separate state. They want a state that can guarantee equal opportunity and equal justice” (2004, p. 22). On various occasions Surin has blamed the “CEO-Bangkok-knowsbest mentality” for the failure of the central government to react to the situation in the south in an appropriate way.18 If Surin is right, the reaction by the Thaksin government to the post–January 2004 events fits the picture. Only in a second step did the government announce an economic package to create employment and improve the southerners’ economic condition. The immediate response was to declare martial law to restore order in the south (Sabur 2005, p. 8). Attempts at Military Solutions

In the absence of any significant successes at the negotiating table, subsequent Philippine and Indonesian governments resorted to military means in search for a quick fix to the problem of separatism. None of the attempts to use military might against rebel groups has ever been successful, and rather than solving the problems, military involvement caused the conflicts to worsen. The government in Manila regularly underestimated the resilience of first the MNLF and later the MILF. It has almost become a ritual for Philippine presidents and ministers of defense to announce a quick victory in the armed fight against the rebels, which never materializes. Instead, the MILF responds to military action with frequent hit-and-run assaults and occasional bomb attacks. This in turn provides the armed forces with sufficient legitimacy to continue and extend their fight. The usual result is the escalation of violence (Kreuzer 2003, p. 47). This was demonstrated, for example, by the bombing in February 2004 of a ferry in the Philippines, which killed over a hundred passengers and was the worst act of Islamic terror in Southeast Asia since Bali, comparable to the Spanish train attack shortly afterward (Thompson 2004, p. 1088). While it could be argued that at least the government in Manila is in control of its armed forces and has established a certain degree of (but not complete) civilian supremacy over the military, the Indonesian army, or

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TNI, was almost fighting its own private war in Aceh. Human rights abuses committed in Aceh when it was declared a military operational area only fully came to light in the reformasi era, prompting a major outcry against the TNI (Anwar 1999a, p. 42). Even the Suharto regime had limited control over the actions of the armed forces in Aceh. In response to international pressure, the New Order government cautioned the military and, for instance, granted the International Red Cross access to Acehnese detainees, despite opposition from the armed forces. None of this had a “moderating impact on the military’s strategy, which stuck obstinately to the credo that any threat to the unity of the state must be ruthlessly dealt with” (Vatikiotis 1993, p. 186). After the failed attempt by the Wahid administration to reach a negotiated peace in Aceh, the succeeding Megawati administration opted again for a military solution. François Raillon claims that Megawati’s “hyper-nationalism prompted a realist approach that turned into a close relationship with the military, allowing them to (re)commence large-scale operations in Aceh, among other concessions” (2004, p. 48). Seen from a different angle, it appears more accurate to explain the president’s closeness to the TNI as the result of her complete dependency on the military for political survival. Regardless of the individual perspective, the outcome for the situation in Aceh is the same. In accordance with the dwi fungsi (dual function) doctrine, the TNI traditionally considers itself to be not only the guarantor of the country’s territorial integrity, but also the guardian of Indonesia’s internal order and the stabilizer of last resort. In the view of the armed forces, Aceh’s independence from Indonesia or even far-reaching autonomy would be unacceptable. In addition to this official viewpoint and the TNI’s self-legitimization of its mission, it can be assumed that economic interests, more specifically the TNI’s involvement in the province’s lucrative oil and gas business, play an equally important if not more decisive part. In the case of Thailand, large-scale military involvement in the deep south is a new and unprecedented development. In February 2005 the Thai cabinet approved the establishment of a 12,000-strong infantry division, to be permanently based in the predominantly Muslim southern provinces, in order to foster what it termed “better relations between the military and Muslim residents.” According to the defense minister, General Sumpan Boonyanun, “this regiment is not to combat but to develop the region, thus staff must fully understand the tradition, culture of Thai Muslims before deploying in the area. But if necessary, we have to be sure that we have enough troops for combat operations” (quoted in Agence France Presse, 15 February 2005). To some extent, southern Thailand today resembles the situation of Aceh in the early 1990s, when the oppressive use of military

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force transformed a relatively small resistance movement into a massbased popular insurgency.

Internationalization of the Conflicts: Global and Regional Dynamics

The deployment of the armed forces in southern Thailand is at least partly the result of the increasing internationalization of the conflict, particularly US concerns. At the same time, the perception that the conflict in the south forms a part of the global terrorist threat provided the Thaksin government with a legitimate reason for the use of military force. The Role of the United States

As with Indonesia, about which the United States and some Asian countries had long been concerned given Indonesia’s vulnerability to Muslim militarism even before the Bali attack of 2002 (without, however, pointing directly at the conflict in Aceh), in Thailand the government has been pressured by the United States to step up the campaign against “international terrorism.” Even before the escalation of violence in the south, in response to a request by the George W. Bush administration, the Thai government implemented antiterrorism legislation, causing concern among the MalayMuslim population of the south that they could fall victim to the new laws (Horstmann 2005). The government’s decision to commit troops to the Iraq War further confirmed an ongoing process of alliance building in USThai relations. Rather unsurprisingly, Thaksin’s policy of aiding the US antiterrorist campaign led to worries among human rights groups concerned about the actions of the Thai government, already responsible for an estimated 2,000 deaths during a violent crackdown against alleged drug lords in 2003 (Thompson 2004, p. 1088). When the Thaksin regime engaged in a violent crackdown of alleged insurgents and protesters in the Tak Bai massacre of 25 October 2004,19 these worries seemed to have materialized. The massacre invited international condemnation and, in particular, tense relations with Malaysia, but the US reaction was mild: These developments would have led to substantial friction in the US Thai relationship just several years ago. Yet the Bush administration has loosened the strings on what counts as alliance-threatening behaviour. While Congress might be critical of the Thaksin regime, Bush has embraced it because of its central role in the US security architecture in Southeast

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Asia and its willingness to join, belatedly, the US operation in Iraq. Thus, Thailand’s move away from the democratic liberalism it embraced in the post 1997 crisis period comes at little cost to its relations with the US. (Connors 2004, p. 27)

The US administration has followed a carrot and stick approach toward Thailand, with a clear emphasis on the carrot side of things. As with the Philippines, Thailand was granted “major non-NATO ally” status, which entitles it to special access to US intelligence, among other privileges. Thailand has also embarked on negotiations for a bilateral free trade agreement with the United States within the framework of President Bush’s “Enterprise for ASEAN Initiative,” which offers free trade negotiations to the Southeast Asian states based on a concept of “countering terror with trade” (Zoellick 2001, p. A35). It was no coincidence that Bush announced his initiative in October 2002 shortly after the Bali bomb attack. From a US perspective, not only are free trade agreements with the Southeast Asian states aimed at intensifying moves toward closer economic integration of East Asia, but they are also intended to bind the United States more tightly to the region in the fight against terrorism (Gilson 2004, p. 82; Dent 2003a, p. 77). However, even direct US involvement in Thailand does not seem to be completely out of the question anymore. The situation in the southern Thai provinces of Narathiwat, Yalla, and Pattani seems to have become so worrisome to the US government that in December 2004, Larry Salmon, the regional security officer at the US embassy in Bangkok, visited the commander of police in Narathiwat province and told him: The United States is concerned about the situation in Thailand’s southern border area. It feels that there is backing for international terrorist groups in the problem there and that there is a possibility that international terrorist groups, including Jemaah Islamiyah and al-Qaeda, might use the three border provinces as a base for terrorist acts. If Thai authorities feel that the violence is difficult to control the United States is ready to provide assistance. (quoted in Neuman 2005)

It is unclear, however, how US support or even direct US military involvement in southern Thailand could contribute constructively to peacebuilding. While a second antiterrorism front in Southeast Asia might serve Washington’s general geostrategic interests, there is little indication of a direct benefit for the southern provinces. The establishment of the first front in the region, in Mindanao, was already highly controversial. At the same time, however, the “enemy” was known, as US involvement followed the

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clearly defined aim of destroying the Abu Sayyaf group. Such a clear target does not exist in southern Thailand, where various groups, with their respective roles still subject to speculation, operate. In January 2002, 650 US soldiers began arriving in the southern Philippines, the first substantial deployment of US troops in the country since the closure of the US military bases in 1991. Originally labeled a training exercise, the joint mission, which included 3,800 Filipino troops, was later referred to by the US side as “Freedom Eagle—Philippines,” a continuation of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. The mission has been extended various times, and the reestablishment of a permanent base does not any longer seem impossible, although it would create a constitutional problem. The 1987 Philippine constitution prohibits the stationing of foreign troops. Even the joint operation in Mindanao has been problematic. The Visiting Forces Agreement of 1998, under which the US military presence is possible in the Philippines, bans US forces from engaging in combat while in the country or quelling insurgencies and criminal activities. The governments in Manila and Washington have simply ignored this provision, because the joint mission enjoyed public opinion approval in both nations. It would be too simplistic a view, however, to assume that the US government was supporting or even favoring a purely military solution of the Mindanao problem. When President Arroyo made a state visit to Washington, D.C., in May 2003, expectations were high that she would return with a US State Department international terrorist designation for the MILF. The United States instead supported a more pacifist track, offering diplomatic support (through the US Institute of Peace) and financial support (through the United States Agency for International Development) to Mindanao should a peace agreement between Manila and the MILF be reached.20 In effect, the United States emerged as an unlikely third party in the Mindanao peace process. The kind of involvement in the peace process raised by President Bush was unprecedented from the US government. The United States had distanced itself from the Moro problem since Philippine independence. US involvement is clearly part of Washington’s wider strategy in Southeast Asia, where concerns of increasing Islamic terrorism were becoming more pronounced after the Bali attacks in October 2002. Containing possible sources of Islamic terrorism in the region would help it win the war on terrorism. As articulated by James Kelly, assistant secretary of state for Asia and Pacific affairs, the United States is “interested in a sustainable peace that will address the legitimate grievances of the Muslim population, a peace that will calm the situation in Mindanao and make the area less attractive to radical influence.”21

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Theories of third-party conflict intervention argue that powerful parties can provide breakthroughs in stalemates, because they are able to manipulate the interests of the opposing parties to induce concessions by compensating one party with rewards and providing guarantees that will make it difficult for the other party to exploit those concessions (Hopmann 1996, p. 227). The United States fits that role because of its ability to formulate a carrot and stick strategy for both the MILF and the Philippine government. US promises of multimillion-dollar aid in exchange for an end to violence constitute a crucial incentive for the MILF to commit to a peaceful political settlement. There is also pressure on the Philippine government to reciprocate with a solid and realistic response beyond the military approach. The US strategy toward the Philippines is not a unilateral one, but is supported and paralleled by multilateral initiatives. The EU and governments of European states have committed themselves to contribute to the “Multi-Trust Donor Fund for Mindanao,” an initiative between the World Bank and the Philippine Department of Finance. The establishment of the fund, which is pegged at US$540 million, is conditioned upon the signing of a peace accord between the MILF and the government of the Philippines (Dosch, Bores Lazo, and Cororaton 2004). Such incentives are missing in the case of southern Thailand, due to the absence of peace talks but possibly also Thaksin’s open hostility toward any kind of potential foreign involvement in a peace process, particularly within a regional framework. Regional Approaches

Shortly before the ASEAN summit in November 2004 in Laos, Thaksin threatened to walk out if the topic were to turn to the Tak Bai bloodshed. “If that happened, I would fly back immediately as that would be a breach of etiquette. It is not right to interfere with a country’s internal affairs at a multilateral meeting” (quoted in Bangkok Post, 26 November 2004). This was probably the first time in ASEAN’s history that the organization had to act under threat. Interestingly, however, it was the Thai government—the preceding Democratic administration of Chuan Leekpai—that in 1998 suggested ASEAN’s strict adherence to the noninterference policy was outdated and should be replaced by “flexible engagement.” While Thaksin insisted on noninterference, he was in open breach of another cardinal ASEAN rule, namely quiet diplomacy, when he openly declared that Malaysia and Indonesia were linked to the violence in Narathiwat, Yala, and Pattani. In the case of Malaysia, Thaksin charged that “separatists rebels had received training deep in the forests of Malaysia’s Kelantan state bordering Thailand’s southern province of Narathiwat.” As for Indonesia, the Thai prime minister was

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convinced that some of the Thai Muslims arrested for fueling violence in the south had “studied Islam in Indonesia, where they fell under the spell of extremists” (Inter Press Service, 19 December 2004). Even if Thaksin had been more diplomatic, any regional attempt to conflict resolution in southern Thailand would still have been extremely unlikely. Neither with regard to Mindanao nor Aceh has ASEAN ever played any kind of a role. This seems surprising at first glance, given that the organization has embarked on various activities to deal with the pressing issues of local hotspots of violence. For example, the fourth ASEAN Chiefs of Army Multilateral Meeting (ACAMM), which took place in 2003 in Kuala Lumpur, called for solidarity among the armies of member countries in fighting terrorism in the interests of the region. Nine ASEAN countries participated. Although the army chiefs agreed that the ACAMM should work toward forging stronger ties among ASEAN armies, such as networking among ASEAN military intelligence and exchanging methods of how to combat terrorists, no specific actions were agreed upon.22 This approach is typical for ASEAN, as it reflects the organization’s core norms and principles: soft institutionalization, nonbinding and nonconfrontational decisionmaking, and consensus building. ASEAN’s response to the perceived threat of terrorism in general and radical Islamic groups in particular provides a good illustration of this socalled ASEAN way and its ineffectiveness.23 For example, the 2001 “ASEAN Declaration on Joint Action to Counter Terrorism” commits the member states “to counter, prevent and suppress all forms of terrorist acts in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and other international law, especially taking into account the importance of all relevant UN resolutions,” without prescribing a specific institutionalized pattern for dealing with the problem. Although ASEAN has established a regional framework for fighting transnational crime and adopted an action plan outlining a regional strategy to prevent, control, and neutralize transnational crime, the organization’s overall response to the threat and realities of terrorism clearly mirrors its traditional policy for not committing its members to any specific responsibilities. The action plan is based on the principle of voluntary contribution. The cautious approach of some ASEAN states to antiterror cooperation is also prominently reflected by the “US-ASEAN Joint Declaration for Cooperation to Combat International Terrorism” (US Department of State 2002b). The document includes a paragraph that the US side was initially unwilling to accept: “Recognizing the principles of sovereign equality, territorial integrity and non-intervention in the domestic affairs of other states.” The paragraph was added to the declaration at the request of Indonesia and Vietnam, which feared that such an antiterror ac-

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cord with the United States could lead to the basing of US troops in Southeast Asia. In sum, both documents reflect the lowest common denominator and do not create any binding obligations for ASEAN members, because of a missing consensus on an exact definition of terrorism and, equally important, because the issue touches on the sensitive field of national sovereignty. All these and related initiatives have to be seen in the light of ASEAN’s obligation to ride the antiterror bandwagon and respond to international pressure concerning the region’s worrisome security situation. ASEAN’s actions, however, are little more than window dressing. Despite accelerating processes of globalization and regionalization, the cases of separatism in southern Thailand, Mindanao, and Aceh falsify the hypothesis of the “end of the nation state” (Ohmae 1995). The respective conflicts are rooted deeply in problems created by, and associated with, the nationstate, and the main responsibility for conflict resolution rests with national governments. External actors, such as Malaysia and Libya in the case of Mindanao, and Finland with regard to Aceh, might be of assistance, but are ultimately unable to provide solutions on behalf of the parties to their respective conflicts.

Conclusion

Local conflicts and their root causes have changed appearance in light of global perceptions of terrorism, which in turn have prompted international responses and frantic but toothless activities on the part of ASEAN and the United States. National security challenges stemming from violent separatism still require primarily national policy solutions. This chapter has shown that despite a widespread perception to the contrary, violence in Southeast Asia is not primarily the result of global terrorism in the wake of 11 September 2001, but prominently related to clashes of identity between ethnic-religious majorities and minorities, failed or incomplete nationbuilding processes, halfheartedly implemented approaches to the decentralization of central power structures, economic inequalities, the prominent involvement of the military in domestic affairs, and, related, the temptation of governments to rely on “military repression in an effort to maintain national integration” (Jemadu 2003, p. 1), even in democratizing polities, as well as the uncompromising posture of separatist movements. The conflicts in southern Thailand, Mindanao, and Aceh are strikingly similar, with regard not only to their structural root causes and patterns of escalation, but also to the political processes in response to violence. Just as in the area of foreign policy making, static, centralized, and one-dimensional policy approaches,

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as formally applied by relatively insulated and unaccountable government elites, have become insufficient and inappropriate to deal with the changed dynamics of separatism. First, the processes of democratization in all three countries have created a more open environment for political discourses on the shortcomings of previously sacrosanct nation-building doctrines and opened a window of opportunity for the political participation of minority groups as the result of both democratic electoral politics and the political empowerment of civil society actors. Second, the structural modification to international relations as provoked by the events of 11 September 2001 and their long aftermath has put local conflicts under a global spotlight. Given the new pluralist and multilayered context in which decisionmaking has to be embedded, national governments are caught in a two-level game in which they must balance the often contradictory interests of domestic actors and constituencies while simultaneously playing to the international audience in an attempt to demonstrate that terrorism is duly being contained. The international perception of the global dimensions and implications of violence in Southeast Asia is crucial, even though the alleged AlQaidaization of originally local-national conflicts has not yet taken place to the extent it is often presented. However, the assumption of international network building among terrorist groups could become a self-fulfilling prophecy if the respective national governments fail to provide suitable policy frameworks for the effective decentralization of political power and the economic development of the crisis-ridden regions as the only sizable and sustainable approach to conflict resolution. While the traditional separatist groups in southern Thailand—like the Acehnese—have tended to reject any involvement in a wider global jihad and tended to reject AlQaida’s help, if it was ever offered (Andrew Tan, cited in Kor and Seto 2005), a deterioration of the security situation in the Thai deep south might provide the Al-Qaida–Jemaah Islamiya complex with opportunities to strengthen its relationship with separatist groups, following the pattern it allegedly established in the Philippines (Singh 2004). Srisomphop Jitpiromsri believes that the growing violence could attract foreign Islamic militant groups like Al-Qaida, which might become increasingly tempted to seize the opportunity and recruit southern Thais, those who are poor, unemployed, and have no confidence in the existing system, to join their cause.24 In a similar vein, Chaiwat Satha-anand has little doubt that terrorist organizations could be constructed and that the seeds are present in Thailand’s deep south.25 These assessments show that threat perceptions and challenges to peace and order in Southeast Asia have increasingly changed from a state-

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centered, hard, or military security approach to a nonstate, nontraditional perception of security. While the classical security concerns persist, such as border disputes and particularly the Spratly Islands conflict, horizontal linkages between transnational problems that affect different states at the same time (such as environmental and economic challenges, human and drug trafficking, piracy, etc.) and vertical linkages between domestic and international arenas (such as separatism, insurgencies, and terrorism) have become key to the concept of security. Security is nested in a multilayered setting in which national, regional, and global dynamics have become amalgamated. The next chapter further deepens this debate by explicitly examining the economic-security nexus in building order at regional levels, and broadens the geographical scope of this book by extending its focus to the Indochinese states.

Notes 1. While the UN deserves credit for promoting the concept of human security, the idea as such was not a new one in 1994. For example, a few years earlier, Barry Buzan had already emphasized “the security of human collectives is affected by factors in five major sectors: military, political, economic, societal and environmental” (1991, p. 19) and had discussed in detail the notion of individual security (1991, chap. 1). 2. See Chapter 6 for a more detailed discussion of ASEAN, the “ASEAN way,” and regional attempts at conflict management and resolution. 3. Surprisingly, a relatively recent volume on Southeast Asian security perspectives (da Cunha 2000) discusses regional security almost exclusively in a traditional military sense, and mentions the ongoing debate over nontraditional security only in passing. 4. The eight concluded FTAs were with Australia, the European Free Trade Association, India, Japan, Jordan, New Zealand, South Korea, and the United States. The ten FTAs under negotiation are with Bahrain, Canada, Egypt, Kuwait, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Qatar, Sri Lanka, and the United Arab Emirates. 5. Chalk’s manuscript was submitted in 2000—long before the events of 11 September 2001. 6. Based on my visits to village communities in the Pattani area in January 2004. 7. There are regional differences, however. For example, people in Satun speak Thai. Songkhla is also considered a southern province, but the Muslim proportion of the population is about 19 percent. Some of the villages bordering Pattani and Yala speak Yawi. One should also keep in mind that the life of most rural Thai Buddhists in the south is similar to that of Muslims in terms of occupation and economic livelihood. Although the Malay-Muslim population is best described as a vibrant Muslim culture, local customs and traditions such as marriage,

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dance, and art show a complex mix of Buddhist, Muslim, and early Langkasuka Hindu cultures (Sabur 2005, pp. 1–2). 8. Surin certainly likes to play the role of a spokesman and ambassador of the south. This role, however, is not necessarily appreciated by activists and academics in Pattani and elsewhere in the region, based on the argument that Surin was not from the deep south and was very much part of the Bangkok establishment. 9. The BRN was formed in 1963. The GMIP was formed in the mid-1990s by a group of veterans of the war in Afghanistan, following their victory over the Soviet Union. New PULO split as a dissent faction from PULO in 1995, but formed a tactical alliance with PULO two years later. PULO was founded in 1968. 10. Muslim Mindanao is defined as areas where a significant proportion of Muslims live. Muslim Mindanao originally comprised eight of the twenty southern provinces. By 1975, it had grown into an eleven-province complex, and the southern Philippines as a whole had grown into a twenty-three-province complex (George 1980, pp. 223–224). 11. As stated in the “Agreement on Peace Between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front,” http://www .mindanao.com/kalinaw/peaceproc/grp-milf-agrmnt.htm. 12. Separate negotiations have also taken place with the New People’s Army, the armed wing of the CPP’s National Democratic Front. 13. http://www.acheh-eye.org/data_files/english_format/peace_process/peaceprocess_cmi_data-eng/peace-process_cmi_agreement_eng/peace-process_ cmi_agreement_eng.pdf. 14. In March 2005, a Jakarta court sentenced Jemaah Islamiya leader Cleric Abu Bakar Ba’asyir to two and a half years in prison for his role in the conspiracy that led to the terrorist carnage in Bali in October 2002, but acquitted him on more serious terrorism charges. 15. In the case of Indonesia, a similar pattern exists in other parts of the nation. “Vertical conflict, defined as conflict between central and regional government, is strongest in the four provinces rich in natural resources: Aceh, Papua (Irian Jaya), Riau and East Kalimantan” (Tadjoeddin 2003, p. 4). 16. The other four are Jambi, Bengkulu, Lampung, and Central Sulawesi. 17. See Nelson 2000 for a detailed analysis of the local government reform in Thailand. 18. Surin made this accusation, for example, at the ninth International Conference on Thai Studies, DeKalb, Northern Illinois University, 3–6 April 2005. 19. The Tak Bai massacre became another black chapter in Thai history. Seven Muslim youth were shot dead and seventy-eight were killed by suffocation during transport from Tak Bai to the detention centers in Pattani and Songkhla. 20. See “Joint Statement of the United States of America and the Republic of the Philippines,” 19 May 2003, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/05/ 20030519-3.html. An estimated US$70 million was pledged in financial support. 21. “Speech to the Industrial College of the Armed Forces of the United States,” 25 September 2003, http://usembassy.state.gov/posts/rp1/wwwhr125.html. 22. “Armies Against Terror,” Asian Defence and Diplomacy (October 2003), pp. 47–49.

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23. For a more detailed discussion on ASEAN’s response, see Collins 2003, pp. 200–211. 24. Srisomphop Jitpiromsri is a Thai scholar based at Prince Songkla University, Pattani Campus, who has worked extensively on the causes of conflict in southern Thailand. This is a summary of views he expressed to me in various meetings between 2003 and 2005. 25. Statement on 4 April 2005 during the “Asia Foundation Roundtable Discussion: Crisis in the South,” ninth International Conference on Thai Studies, DeKalb, Northern Illinois University, 3–6 April 2005.

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4 Crossing Cold War Divides: Cooperation in the Mekong Valley

ALTHOUGH FAR-REACHING DOMESTIC POLITICAL CHANGE HAS NOT

yet taken place in mainland Southeast Asia, excepting Thailand and, to a very limited extent, Cambodia, with its fragile on-paper democracy, a stretching, deepening, and broadening of political processes is nevertheless evident. Centralist elite politics have survived in Vietnam, Laos, Burma, and even Cambodia, but political processes are no longer static or one-dimensional. Economic and security spheres increasingly overlap and a clearly defined margin between national and regional domains of governance no longer exists. The end of the Cold War terminated the existence of international structures, in terms of both power and ideology, which had prevented neighboring states from engaging in meaningful cross-border cooperation and the joint management of common resources. The Mekong valley is a case in point.1 The Mekong river is the world’s twelfth largest waterway, and Southeast Asia’s largest. It originates in Tibet and flows through the Chinese province of Yunnan before continuing southward, touching the territories of six countries (China, Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam)2 and ending in the South China Sea. The Greater Mekong Subregion covers some 2.3 million square kilometers and a population of about 245 million. For many decades, if not centuries, explorers, traders, and more recently politicians have seen the Mekong valley as a natural geographic region, whose peoples not only shared the resources of this mighty river, but also some distinctive cultural features. Unlike many postcolonial states of Africa and the Americas, those of the lower Mekong basin were established political entities long prior to European colonization (McElwee and Horowitz 1999, p. 118). The post–World War II history of cooperation within the Mekong valley dates back to 1957, when the 117

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Mekong Committee was established at the initiative of the UN’s Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE) and four riparian countries of the lower Mekong basin (Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and South Vietnam). The principal policy goals of the Mekong Committee were to tackle the pressing problems of poverty and political instability along the lower river basin and to promote peace, progress, and prosperity through the effective joint utilization of the Mekong’s resources (Hori 2000, p. 103). This approach was taken in conjunction with general development strategies, as outlined by W. R. Sewell and Gilbert White in 1966: “International river basin development will undoubtedly be one of the major means of accomplishing economic growth and social change in the next decades, especially in the developing countries. Most of the world’s major rivers are international rivers, and most flow through the developing countries. Approximately 150 river basins straddle international boundaries, and together they cover almost one-half of the world’s land surface, excluding Australia and Antarctica” (p. 5). Among the various initiatives for river basin development, the “Mekong project” was one of the most ambitious in the world alongside the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Compagnie Nationale du Rhone, and the Damodar Valley Corporation (Croizat 1967, pp. 1–2). For more than three decades, however, the implementation of subregional integration was halted by the prevalence of Cold War structures, or more accurately hot wars and armed conflict, in the region. The process only gained momentum in 1992 when, with the assistance of the Asian Development Bank, the six riparian states of the Mekong river entered into a program of formalized subregional cooperation. Since then, the ADB has been the “catalysing force” (Hirsch 2001, p. 237) for most cooperative initiatives. The GMS program has been directed to the facilitation of sustainable economic growth and improvement of the standard of living in the Mekong region through factor input specialization and greatly expanded trade and investment. One priority has been cooperation by public and private sectors related to transportation, especially cross-border roads, as well as power generation and distribution. Since 1992 the ADB has loaned US$280 million to the priority projects and disbursed US$7.6 million for technical assistance to study suitable programs and projects and encourage project consultation activities. The ADB is expected to mobilize more than US$2 billion for GMS assistance. Moreover, other UN organizations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and sponsor countries such as Japan, France, Australia, and the United States also support various initiatives within the broader context of GMS cooperation (Le Bo Linh 2005).

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In addition to and in support of GMS projects, the lower Mekong countries—Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam—set up the Mekong River Commission (MRC) in 1995 to coordinate development efforts in the region. In 1996 the ASEAN Mekong Basin Development Cooperation (ASEAN-MBDC) was founded to focus on multilateral infrastructure projects and other cross-border activities. The Mekong might not have fully transformed yet from a “Cold War front line into a flourishing corridor of commerce” (Bakker 1999, pp. 209–210), but the example certainly shows that the static Cold War–driven approaches to the management of subregional order, which had been trapped in the tight corset of narrowly defined national interests and ideology, have given way to more flexible political methods. Furthermore, while economic incentives seem to be the Mekong states’ main motivation to intensify subregional cooperation, security has been an equally if not more important dimension. Economic and security agendas increasingly overlap, creating multiple linkages between formerly strictly separated policy areas. The idea of linking economic and security dimensions—from both an analytical and a practical political point of view—is not new. However, during the Cold War the concept remained an academic one, as its political implementation was simply not feasible. In an early essay on Mekong cooperation written against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, Eugene Black argued that “the most important aspect of the development of the Mekong Basin is to provide a means for inhibiting violence in the region, and evoking among the riparian countries a sense of what is possible if they cultivate the habit of working together” (1969, p. 12). The notion that cooperation among the Mekong countries could essentially contribute to a permanent stabilization of the region had many supporters in the US government, who pushed the idea that multilateral economic cooperation would set the framework for political rapprochement and reduction of tensions. This concept was put forward as an alternative policy to safeguard US interests in the region without the necessity of heavy military engagement. This strategy dated back to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “peace initiative” of 1965, which aimed at turning the lower Mekong valley—with the help of development aid and in cooperation with the United Nations—from a battlefield into a busy developing region as a counterbalance to China. While military approaches to building regional order prevailed at the time, the vision of subregional cooperation as the most promising strategy for sustained peace and stability has survived. Since the Mekong river no longer functions as a dividing line, a window of opportunity has opened for the riparian states’ joint management of the subregional security arena, which includes issues such as military buildups, border disputes, migration,

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environmental degradation, and resource management (Adam 2000, p. 2). For instance, the establishment of the Mekong River Commission was primarily guided by security considerations, namely Thailand’s and Vietnam’s interest in building fruitful relations in the aftermath of the Cold War and containing conflict over water resources (Browder 2000). Overall, “the Mekong resource regime is linked to more general concerns for political security and stability and may in fact reflect political concerns for subregional neighbourhood maintenance” (Makim 2002, p. 5). This chapter delves into the question of whether GMS cooperation has resulted in more stable and peaceful subregional relations due to emerging multidimensional linkages between economic and security arenas on the one hand, and national and regional policy agendas on the other. Has the GMS yet reached the stage of “political regionalism”? That is, have there been “integral formations of transnational policy-networks, the expression of shared political interests amongst the region’s leaders, advancements in policy co-ordination and common policy enterprises, and the creation of regional-level institutions to manage any common ‘political sphere’” (Dent 2002, p. 2)? Has the GMS even reached the stage of a “pluralistic security community” that, according to Karl W. Deutsch’s definition (Deutsch et al. 1957), would be characterized by the general absence of military conflict as a possible means of problem solving in intermember relations? First, the chapter places the Greater Mekong Subregion within the academic debate on subregionalism. Second, it outlines important security-related achievements and implications of subregional cooperation. Last, it assesses the level of security building in the Mekong basin. Overall, the chapter shows how economic cooperation is followed in the pursuit of security and stability in a formerly conflict-ridden area, and discusses the relevance of the GMS toward the issue of conflict reduction in the Mekong basin.

The Concept and Emergence of Subregional Cooperation

The new structural opportunities for cooperation that emerged on the horizon in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War resulted in a strong push for collaboration within subregions. The incentives aimed at mitigating the problems of larger regional or transregional schemes such as ASEAN or APEC, guarding against what many saw at that point as a possible failure of the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations, and easing potential disadvantages arising from the strengthening of trading blocs such as the EU and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The appearance of

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subregional schemes was itself a manifestation of the intensified intraregional investment flows and the accompanying trade flows in the Asia Pacific region (Chia and Lee 1993, p. 226). Seen from this angle, the new subregional schemes in East and Southeast Asia materialized due to difficulties in forming trading blocs in East Asia (Tang and Thant 1995, pp. 7–8), namely: • An insufficient volume of internal trade and a general export orientation of Asian economies toward the United States and the European Community/European Union. • Differences in laws and regulations governing trade and investment, and diverse economic systems. • Disparate income levels. • Lack of geographical proximity, making communication and transport difficult. • Insufficient political commitment and policy coordination due to different political interests, historical backgrounds, and social and economic systems. The idea of subregional cooperation in Asia is closely associated with the concept of “growth triangles,” a term first used in the late 1980s by Singaporean deputy prime minister Goh Chok Tong to circumscribe economic cooperation among Singapore, the Malaysian state of Johor, and the Indonesian province of Riau, a triangle that was officially proposed in December 1989 as a new type of cooperation in Southeast Asia, through investment rather than through trade (Chia and Lee 1993, p. 229). In the following years, the term “growth triangle” was applied to other existing subregional schemes within ASEAN as well as to new ones. The literature offers congruous analyses of what a growth triangle, also known as a “subregional cooperation scheme” (the two terms are often used synonymously), characterizes.3 The most basic definition is that of “a few neighbouring provinces of different countries interlinked closely through trade, investment, and personal movement across national borders” (Yamazawa 1994, p. 262). So-called special economic zones within state borders, citystates, and free ports are also subsumed by the concept (Chen 1995). For Kenichi Ohmae, these economic zones, or what he calls “region-states,” “may or may not fall within the borders of a particular nation. Whether they do is purely an accident of history” (1995, p. 81). According to the Asian Development Bank, the growth triangle concept refers to the “exploitation of complementarity among geographically contiguous countries to help them gain greater competitive advantages in export promotion. Growth tri-

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angles help solve the practical problems of regional integration among countries at different stages of economic development, and sometimes, even with different social and economic systems” (Krongkaew 2000, pp. 34–35). Growth triangles may be established quicker and at lower cost than are regional trading blocs, and the influx of FDI, low labor costs, and the involvement of neighboring regions have the potential to make them more attractive and competitive than large trade initiatives. Furthermore, the benefits may spread to other parts of the region and economic failure may be confined to adjacent areas (Hasan 2000, pp. 2–3). In a similar vein, Joel Rocamora stresses that governmental actors perceive subregionalism as an increasingly attractive strategic alternative to larger or mega-regional integration schemes, since growth areas “bring together parts of countries without having to go through the laborious process of forming trade and investment blocs such as the European Union . . . which unite whole countries” (1994, p. 33). The most comprehensive and best-compressed definition of what a growth triangle must involve in order to be an effective means of cooperation is given by Chia Siow Yue and Lee Tsao Yuan (1993, pp. 232–236): economic complementarities (or a common resource such as a river, which has to be exploited peacefully and effectively); geographical proximity; the policy framework, politically and economically (or in other words, political commitment and policy coordination [Tang and Thant, 1995, pp. 9–14]); infrastructure development to support geographical proximity; and access to world markets. Jose Tongzon (1998, p. 94) adds the presence of a catalyst, for example a multilateral institution, in order to “facilitate the consultative process in forming the [growth triangle].” Edward Chen and Anna Ho (1995, pp. 40–41) also emphasize cultural affinity as a supporting (but not necessarily decisive) success factor for cooperation between Chinese cultural regions, as in the Southern China Growth Triangle, which covers parts of Greater China. More important, most if not all subregional cooperation initiatives seem to have in common the fact that economic and natural factor endowments need to be supported by favorable government policies in order to start and successfully develop an economic cooperation scheme, that is, a linkage of public and private sector initiatives. The nature of the political economy and the political framework of the individual country, as well as the rationale behind the forming of a particular growth triangle, are responsible for whether private sector initiatives dominate public initiatives or vice versa. In other words, subregional cooperation schemes tend to emerge as the result of deliberate government policy efforts to generate closer integration within a small regional area. Governments play a central role in the

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planning, establishment, and implementation of policies within growth areas (Islam and Chowdhury 1997; Thambipillai 1998, p. 251). Table 4.1 provides an overview of the current growth areas in East and Southeast Asia (leaving out the question of viability). Two broad lines of analysis have emerged in the study of subregional economic cooperation. The first argument has been summarized as the economy-based view, which perceives global and regional political change as a means of enhancing economic cooperation for improving comparative advantages vis-à-vis large trading blocs. At the same time, according to the second argument, the security-based analytical angle, enhanced opportunities of cooperation are a means for inducing political rapprochement. Both arguments are usually combined—as are the rationales for states to engage in subregional economic cooperation. This is especially apparent in the case of Singapore and the Singapore-Johor-Riau subregional cooperation scheme. Being “trapped” between two large neighbors, Singapore traditionally acts out of a perceived position of vulnerability vis-à-vis Malaysia and Indonesia. Singapore pursues a foreign policy that “is rooted in a culture of siege and insecurity which dates back from the traumatic experience of an unanticipated separation from Malaysia in August 1965” (Leifer 2000b, p. 4). The character of vulnerability generating from the separation is twofold: first is the perceived isolation of a state with an ethnic-Chinese majority surrounded by the big ethnic-Malay neighbors Malaysia and Indonesia, with differences in economic performance as sources of mutual mistrust; and second is the absence of a natural hinterland, as demonstrated by Singapore’s dependence on Malaysia for drinking water and a lack of self-sufficiency in food supply. Although the favorable location at the crossroads of international trade and commerce has served Singapore very well, the perception of domestic fragility due to geographic circumstances has contributed to worst-case thinking in foreign policy. As a result, since independence the political elites have devoted momentous diplomatic resources and energy to multilateral cooperation efforts as a way of mitigating a vulnerability arising from geopolitical structures (Leifer 2000b, pp. 2–8; Chang 2004, p. 4, which discusses the promotion and development of tourism within the Singapore-Johor-Riau triangle as an important part of this strategy). One such multilateral initiative is engagement in economic networks within and beyond the region. Within the region, the growth triangle approach acts as a link for Singapore with Malaysia and Indonesia; and “[a]part from the economic advantage anticipated from such a formal trilateral economic arrangement, there was also the expectation that such an institutionalised economic interdependence would help to defuse recurrent political tension with both neighbours” (Leifer 2000a, p. 140).

continues

Joint development of natural resources and infrastructure.

North Korea: Rajin-Sonbong Free Economic Zone; People’s Republic of China: southern Jilin; Russia: southern Primorskie Krai; South Korea; plus the wider area extending from China’s Yanbian Autonomous Prefecture into eastern Mongolia

Hong Kong; Taiwan; southern People’s Republic of China: parts of Guangdong, Fujian

Burma; Laos; Thailand; People’s Republic of China: Yunnan

Joint development of natural resources and infrastructure. Joint development of natural resources and infrastructure. Joint development of natural resources and infrastructure. Metropolitan spillover into the hinterland.

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Brunei; Indonesia: Irian Jaya, Kalimantan, Maluku Sulawesi; Malaysia: Labuan, Sabah, Sarawak; Philippines: Mindanao, Palawan Burma; Cambodia; Laos; Thailand; Vietnam; People’s Republic of China: Guangxi, Yunnan

Joint development of natural resources and infrastructure.

Metropolitan spillover into the hinterland.

Cooperation Type

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Indonesia-Malaysia-Singapore Growth Triangle (IMS-GT) (formerly SingaporeJohor-Riau Growth Triangle [SIJORI]) Indonesia-Malaysia-Thailand Growth Triangle (IMT-GT) (also known as Northern Triangle, Northern Growth Triangle, and Northern ASEAN Growth Triangle) Brunei Darussalam–Indonesia–Malaysia– Philippines East ASEAN Growth Area (BIMP-EAGA) Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) (also known as Greater Mekong Economic Subregion) Golden Quadrangle (also known as Quadripartite Economic Cooperation)

Members Indonesia: Bengkulu, Jambi Lampung, Riau, South Sumatra, West Sumatra, West Kalimantan; Malaysia: Johor, Melaka, Negri Sembilan, Southern Pahang; Singapore Indonesia: Aceh, North Sumatra; Malaysia: Kedah, Perlis, Penang, Perak; Thailand: Narathiwat, Pattani, Satun, Songkhla, Yala

Growth Areas in East and Southeast Asia

Cooperation Scheme

Table 4.1

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Continued

Sources: Adapted from Low 1996, p. 4; Tang and Thant 1995, pp. 2–3; Chia and Lee 1993, p. 227; Tongzon 1998, p. 85; Evangelista 2000, pp. 61–89.

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Japan Sea Economic Zone

Cooperation Type

Japan: western and northern parts of Kyushu and Yamaguchi; Common geopolitical People’s Republic of China: coast of Bohai (Liaodong and interests and geographical Shandong peninsulas); South Korea proximity. People’s Republic of China: Guangdong, Hong Kong, Macao, Metropolitan spillover into with extension into Fujian, Guangxi, Guizhou, Hainan, the hinterland. Hunan, Jiangxi, Sichuan, Yunnan Eastern Russia; Japan; North Korea; northeastern China; Common geopolitical South Korea interests and geographical proximity.

Members

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Yellow Sea Economic Zone (also known as Yellow Sea Economic Cooperation)

Cooperation Scheme

Table 4.1

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A very similar point can be made in the case of the Greater Mekong Subregion. While the GMS’s main and most visible objective is to jointly develop natural resources and infrastructure, the related security goal is political stabilization through economic cooperation. If security is seen to include the fields of soft or nontraditional security (i.e., the broad area of comprehensive security covering nonmilitary areas such as human security, economic security, and environmental security), some recent achievements of Mekong cooperation point toward growing subregional stability and, related, the surfacing of political regionalism.

The Security Dimension of Subregional Cooperation Within the GMS

Cooperation in the Mekong basin was established to reduce conflicts over ownership and utilization of a common water resource, and to take advantage of the economies of agglomeration (Chia and Lee 1993, p. 236; Grundy-Warr, Peachey, and Perry 1999, p. 306). With that rationale, the element of conflict minimization among the Mekong countries shifts into the analytical focus, making economic development a substantial part of security considerations. Many analysts seem to agree that the existence of subregional cooperation per se has contributed to a more peaceful and stable regional situation in the Mekong valley. One is certainly inclined to concur with Mya Than that “the political benefits of ADB-led GMS cooperation are enormous . . . there is now peace and stability in most of the subregion, where this has rarely existed [before]” (1997, p. 45). However, as in the case of ASEAN, which seems to have significantly contributed to the avoidance of military conflict among its member states by simply existing, it is difficult to establish a strong empirical link between cooperation in nonsecurity areas and regional stability and peace. Then again, following Karl W. Deutsch’s work (1957) on the building of security communities, historical evidence suggests that stable and peaceful interstate relations are indeed the result of quantitatively and qualitatively increased transnational activities in multiple policy areas and related intergovernmental institution building. ADB sponsorship of the GMS and additional funding by various OECD states, most prominently Japan, seem to follow this logic, as demonstrated, for example, by one of the subregion’s most ambitious infrastructure projects—a road link that will connect central Thailand to southern Vietnam through Cambodia. As part of the US$77.5 million project, with the ADB contributing a US$50 million loan, 350 kilometers of highway and almost a hundred bridges will be reconstructed. In sum, cooperation in the Mekong

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basin is primarily concerned with minimizing potential conflicts over a common resource; the scheme works as a multidimensional confidencebuilding measure. Following again Deutsch’s assumption on the link between growing transaction volumes and increasing prospects for peace and stability, most achievements of cooperation in the Mekong basin are likely to have an impact on subregional security, including but not limited to the following initiatives and developments within the GMS remit: • The 400-kilometer East-West Corridor project, linking northern Thailand, central Laos, and eastern Vietnam, is expected to double container traffic to 1.6 million metric tons per year. • In November 2001, Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos agreed to build a major highway, including a bridge over the Mekong river, to connect the three countries in order to boost economic development. The bridge will link the Thai province of Mukdahan with Savannakhet in Laos. From there, the existing road to the Vietnamese deep-sea port of Danang will be upgraded. The highway could later be extended to Burma. The opening of Cambodia’s first bridge across the Mekong, a massive, one-mile span, in December 2001 as part of the GMS scheme, stands as a significant symbol of the political resolve to bring the countries and peoples of the region closer together. • As a major step toward the joint management of the third largest international river, China, Laos, Burma, and Thailand, signed an agreement on commercial navigation on the Mekong in April 2001.4 After implementation of the treaty, commercial ships from the four countries will pass freely along an 893-kilometer stretch of the “golden waterway,” from China’s Simao to Louangphrabang in Laos. The agreement will open fourteen ports and docks for commerce and will most certainly result in a further major increase in trade and tourism. Commodities transported abroad from Yunnan province on the Mekong rose from only 400 tons in 1990 to 200,000 tons in 2000. This is a significant achievement given that the “existence of natural barriers and the impediments these place on easy navigation of the river underline the extent to which the Mekong has until very recently failed to play a unifying role for the countries that lie along its course” (Osborne 2000, p. 430). • In 2000, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand signed an agreement to facilitate the movement of people and goods across national borders. China and Burma are expected to join the treaty

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soon. The agreement simplifies and harmonizes legislation, regulations, and procedures governing cross-border transport. • Also in 2000, the Mekong riparian states established a business forum to promote the role of private capital in spurring intraregional investment. In April 2002, the Mekong Enterprise Fund was launched. The US$13 million venture capital fund aims to invest in private companies founded and managed by private entrepreneurs, with a focus on export industries and local service providers (ADB 2002b). • The increasing trade between Thailand and China, mainly as a result of their strategy of using the GMS as a framework to develop the Thai North and Yunnan provinces, is expected to boost intraregional trade within the Mekong valley. According to official Thai sources, between 1998 and 2001 the Thai-Yunnan trade volume grew sevenfold, though starting from a very low level.5 Although trade between Thailand and southern China via the Mekong still stands at a mere 1 percent of the two countries’ total bilateral trade, this route is expected to grow markedly in importance (Siriluk 2004, pp. 314–315). If we understand “security” in a broad sense, some recent achievements of cooperation in the Mekong basin—particularly in the areas of general foreign policy strategy and transparency, environmental security, and energy security—point toward growing subregional stability.

The Institutionalization of Subregional Relations and Growing Transparency

The GMS stands as a powerful international symbol for cooperation among former Cold War adversaries, particularly with respect to relations between Vietnam and China, and Thailand and Vietnam. It also represents a major pillar of Vietnam’s new foreign policy outlook as outlined in Politburo Resolution no. 13 of May 1988, which was—at least partly—forced by the global collapse of communism and Mikhail Gorbachev’s reform program, prescribed as a policy of “diversification” and “multilateralization” of Vietnam’s foreign relations. The implementation of the resolution has resulted in a more transparent, predictable, and responsible Vietnamese foreign policy (Dosch and Ta 2004). This new, omnidirectional foreign policy approach was developed alongside a concept of internationalizing the economy. Both approaches have materialized not only in Vietnam’s engagement

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in regional organizations (ASEAN, ARF), but also in a multitude of subregional cooperation schemes in the Mekong basin—most importantly the Greater Mekong Subregion and the Mekong River Commission. In a similar vein, GMS cooperation is a core element of China’s policy outlook. China’s interests in the Mekong region can roughly be divided into two realms of importance: domestic policy and foreign policy. The domestic interest consists of the development of China’s western landlocked provinces and the promotion of border trade with the adjoining countries of Burma, Laos, and Vietnam. A further domestic strategy aims at narrowing the gap between the ethnic Chinese Han population and ethnic minorities. And last, the government envisions that an economically emerging West will reduce the internal migration from western China to the booming coastal cities. As far as Beijing’s foreign policy strategy is concerned, the GMS serves China’s interest in strengthening relations with ASEAN in the policy areas of political, social, economic, and security cooperation and can be used as vehicle to promote development of the proposed ASEAN-China free trade area. The support of international antinarcotic efforts in a region that includes the infamous “Golden Triangle” is a further pillar of China’s interest in the GMS. Probably most important, Beijing seeks amicable relations with Southeast Asia in order to counterbalance US influence in the region. The latter is part of a general foreign policy strategy to create a multipolar world not dominated by the United States (You and Jia 1998, pp. 127–128; Zheng 1999, p. 125). A strong emphasis is put on the Asia Pacific in order to create peace and stability in the region and to be able to carry out the domestic reform program without disturbances (State Council of the People’s Republic of China 2000, foreword), the success of which is essential to Beijing in order to maintain internal social and hence political stability. Economic power is thus being turned into more regional and global leverage (You and Jia 1998, p. 128), possibly at the expense of the United States. Furthermore, cooperation within the GMS has served both to channel and to institutionalize Thailand’s, Vietnam’s, and China’s respective decades-long attempts to pursue (sub)regional leadership or even hegemonic ambitions. In other words, the multilateralization of international relations in the subregion has reduced the risk of the reemergence of any hegemonic actor. The GMS states are also formally linked with other actors: Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, various EU states, ASEAN, the ADB, the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, and the MRC. As a result, the formerly rather isolated and conflictridden subregion is further integrated within the structures of global international relations. Today, subregional relations are more transparent and

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better monitored than during the Cold War period (Hourn and Chanto 2001). As a resulting positive development, pragmatic thinking is continuously superimposing old patterns of behavior and deep mutual distrust. Economic development has become the main priority, replacing ideology (Than and Abonyi 2001, p. 159). The Bagan Declaration of 20036 and the announcement by Cambodia and Thailand to further open their border only a few months after the sudden outbreak and toilsome containment of mutual hostilities in January 2003, show that residual conflicts no longer necessarily stand in the way of fostering economic ties within the subregion. Even though pragmatism has not yet fully replaced adversarial images in foreign and security policy, the countries in the region make efforts to overcome political differences. Not least, China and Vietnam view regional security as a prerequisite for national security and thus domestic stability. Therefore, diplomatic action has largely replaced hostility and attempts at containment. Economic development and political stability—with increasing economic cohesion rather than political cohesion—might be achievable in the not too distant future. Environmental Security

Among the most pressing nontraditional security issues is environmental management, because the sustainable utilization of water and natural resources in the Mekong basin is directly and inevitably linked to human survival in the region. The Mekong valley is the second richest in biodiversity among the world’s river basin areas. In the GMS, 45–50 million people are employed in the agriculture sector. Rice is the most important crop, but fisheries follow rice cultivation almost invariably (Myint 2003, p. 297). The river basin has long experienced flooding, saltwater influx, depletion of forests, deterioration of groundwater, water pollution, and other problems. Among the most pressing environmental issues are: • Flooding. In 2000 alone, more than 800 people died and over US$400 million of property was damaged as a result of floods. While during the dry season saltwater can flood 500 kilometers inland and damage crops, during the monsoon season the Mekong’s flow can increase as much as thirty times, flooding 12,000 square kilometers of the river delta. • Deforestation. Approximately half the entire lower Mekong basin was covered by forests some three decades ago. Since then, forests have been pushed back as a result of population growth and a significant increase in logging. As a result, forests now cover no more

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than 27 percent of the lower Mekong basin. The rapid pace of deforestation has resulted in serious problems, for example in Thailand and Cambodia, involving a sharp increase in flood damage, soil erosion, and depletion of fishery resources (Hori 2000, p. 51–52). • Legacy of war. During the Vietnam War, most coastal mangrove areas of the Mekong delta were defoliated to eliminate military hideaways for the communist forces (McElwee and Horowitz 1999, p. 119). Various agreements deal with the task of reducing environmental risks and threats and increasing the degree of environmental security. Most prominently, the 1995 “Agreement on the Cooperation for the Sustainable Development of the Mekong River Basin,” the founding document of the Mekong River Commission, aims to “protect the environment, natural resources, aquatic life and conditions, and ecological balance of the Mekong River Basin from pollution and other harmful effects resulting from any development plans and uses of water and related resources in the Basin” (MRC 1995). In November 2001, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam signed an agreement to deal with the annual flood problem in the Mekong area. Under a flood management and mitigation agreement, the four governments coordinate land-use policies, share water management information and resources, and intensify cooperation in cross-border flood rescue operations. The Chinese government has agreed to provide the downstream countries with the information on river levels during the flood season. The Mekong could become a serious source of tension unless the six states can agree on rules for developing the river. Hence, although it seems to be a marginal concession at first glance, China’s promise to send the readings from two monitoring stations on its section of the Mekong, more than 1,000 kilometers upstream from Phnom Penh, has to be considered an important step toward the establishment of a river resource regime. On the basis of the technical cooperation agreement between the Mekong River Commission and China of April 2002 (implemented since 2003), China has been sending twenty-four-hourly water level and twelve-hourly rainfall data to the MRC to help in the forecasting of floods. On China’s side of the river, a result of the cooperation was the establishment of a data center at the Provincial Bureau of Hydrology and Water Resources in Kunming, and improvement of the two hydrological stations in Yunnan. In addition, in 2004, Burma signaled its willingness to share hydrological data from its own station on the Mekong. The design of an early flood warning strategy ranks very high on the agenda of both policymakers and donor organizations. Various initiatives

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have been taken, especially since the 2000 and 2001 Mekong floods, at the national level. Particularly the Cambodian government, in collaboration with various NGOs, has been engaged in developing disaster mitigation and management capacities in the country. However, subregional initiatives have been less successful, given both the technical and institutional complexities of a cross-border early flood warning strategy. Little agreement seems to exist among the riparian states, with their different systems of governance, as to whether warning systems should fall in the realm of the state or rather involve the active participation of NGOs and local communities. Furthermore, a Mekong-wide early flood warning strategy can only be efficient if information freely flows across borders and, equally important, warning indicators are standardized and accurately interpreted by the multitude of actors involved in the warning chain (Affeltranger 2002). While these complex issues are indeed being addressed, there has been a tendency among the GMS members to focus primarily on the broader picture of environmental security, as it is easier to reach consensus on key goals. For example, in January 2002, representatives from Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam, together with donor institutions, organized a workshop on sustainable development of the Mekong basin, including discussion of issues such as fish production, food security, irrigation, agriculture, and agroforestry. Despite these and other initiatives, most environmental problems continue to occur in the river basin. These include depletion of natural resources, overpopulation of cities, resettlement of refugees, and social problems such as relocation of inhabitants and the securing of their employment accompanying the establishment of infrastructure. The GMS states face the dilemma of having to balance “the need for increased food production and other development needs against the maintenance and management of resources in the Mekong River Basin, where the population is growing rapidly” (Hori 2000, p. xx). Energy Security

Compared with rivers of a similar size like the Nile and the Mississippi, the Mekong is still relatively untouched. The first Mekong bridge (between Thailand and Laos) was opened only in 1994, and the first mainstream dam, the 1,500-megawatt Manwan, was completed only in 1995 in Yunnan, China. Since then, hydropower has been one of the main priorities of international river development in general and the GMS project in particular. One GMS infrastructure project, the 210-megawatt Theun Hinboun Hydro-

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power Project in Laos, was completed in 1998, and various others are under implementation or are being studied. However, according to Karen Bakker, “the figures given for hydroelectric . . . potential vary widely, depending on the area, the institution, and the optimism of the consultant involved, but there is general agreement that Laos and Yunnan have the greatest hydropower potential. Figures on numbers of planned projects vary, due in part to the speed with which new sites are being added to the lists of feasibility studies” (1999, p. 214). In the late 1990s, Laos had sixty dams planned or being built, Vietnam had thirty-six, and Cambodia had seventeen. China considered building fifteen on the Mekong itself, and many more—the exact number is not known—on tributaries (Bakker 1999, p. 214). With few exceptions, such as the relatively small hydropower exports from Laos to Thailand, the six countries have based their energy development on a self-sufficiency approach. In the case of Vietnam, for example, the country’s hydropower generation already approaches a share of 40 percent of the total national power capacity of 11,400 megawatts (Do 2005). Since the founding days of the GMS, the Asian Development Bank has promoted a shift to a more integrated approach, particularly in the electric power subsector through grid interconnection, and in the gas subsector through gas trade. The ADB believes that this gradual shift from national self-sufficiency to a regional, integrated approach will lead to the buildup of mutual trust and stability among the GMS states (ADB 1994, pp. 10–11). Since the 1960s, myriad scientific studies have outlined the economic advantages of dam construction beyond energy production, including its significance for food security (see, e.g., Bardach 1968, p. 4). At the same time, energy security in particular and economic development in general, involving the construction of high dams, have become increasingly contentious areas. Peter Gosling’s 1979 study warned that the numerous dams that had been built in developing countries since the 1950s appeared not to have generated any real economic returns to the economies concerned. In some cases, the benefits had fallen significantly short of the benefits predicted by economic feasibility studies. Furthermore, the environmental impacts of the dams had differed markedly, qualitatively and quantitatively, from those envisioned (p. 6). While some more recent studies have confirmed these findings, the main concern today is less with the economic viability of hydroenergy than with the long-term environmental impact of dam building. Yunnan province alone is said to have a potential of producing more than 90,000 megawatts of electricity. A cascade of dams on the Mekong, the Lancang Cascade, is directly affecting the parts of the river flowing in the downstream countries. The cascade, when finished, will encompass eight dams,

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taking advantage of a 700-meter drop in the 750-kilometer stretch along the middle and lower Mekong (McCormack 2001, pp. 15–18). The lower part of the Mekong, from the “Golden Triangle” seaward, contains a catchment area of 606,000 square kilometers, or 77 percent of the whole basin area, and covers almost the entire territories of Laos and Cambodia, onethird of Thailand, and one-fifth of Vietnam (Do 2005). In 2004, Thai fishermen in Chiang Rai complained about a sharp depletion of fish stocks in the Mekong and directly linked this decline to China’s hydropower dams. The decline in fish stocks is said to have started following the completion of Manwan dam, the first Chinese dam on the Mekong (Yow 2004, p. 353). Naturally, politicians and senior officials from the lower Mekong states have regularly expressed concerns about China’s proposed dam-building activities, albeit more indirectly and in private than openly and in official intergovernmental meetings.7 Some perceive China’s ambitious hydropower plans as a zero-sum game in which China’s economic gains would be paid for by the lower Mekong states’ environmental costs, mainly falling water levels and their manifold implications, such as declining fish stocks and rising salinity levels. China’s gain in terms of cheaper electric power might directly be the lower Mekong states’ loss in terms of decreases in productivity and increases in ecological costs. At the same time, there does not seem to be a more cost-effective or environmentally friendly alternative to hydropower in the case of the riparian states of the Mekong. Overall and on balance, within the GMS hydropower appears to be the most feasible solution for the enhancement of energy security.

Conclusion

While the Greater Mekong Subregion is unlikely to play any decisive role in shaping or altering regional realpolitik from the realist’s point of view, any believer in liberal institutionalism will conclude that the wide range of cooperative efforts as part of GMS and related intergovernmental activities have had an impact on fostering subregional peace and stability. Indeed, the declaration that “our most important achievement has been the growing trust and confidence among our countries”—from the joint statement at the first GMS summit in November 2002 (Asia Pulse, 7 November 2002)—is more than sheer political rhetoric. However, the GMS has not yet developed into a pluralistic security community, which, according to Karl W. Deutsch’s definition, would be characterized by the general absence of military conflict as a possible means of problem solving in intermember relations. Unresolved disputes in intraregional relations among GMS countries

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remain, in recent years most prominently between Thailand and Burma. As a legacy of the colonial past, the maritime boundaries between Vietnam and Cambodia are still not defined, and parts of the land borders between Thailand and Laos, and between Thailand and Cambodia, are indefinite. While large-scale military conflict that goes beyond occasional skirmishes at the Thai-Burmese border, for example, seems unlikely among ASEAN member states, it cannot be ruled out in Sino-Vietnamese relations, given both countries’ involvement in the dispute over conflicting territorial claims in the South China Sea. Most important, the uncoordinated construction of power plants and irrigation systems by the upper Mekong countries, particularly China, which plans to build more than a dozen power plants, poses a serious challenge to intraregional cooperation, since it could result in a potentially explosive competition between the upper and the lower Mekong states for water resources. Despite the general cooperative mood in intraregional relations as far as official foreign policy agendas are concerned, some predict a rise rather than a decline in conflict. At the same time, bureaucrats of the Asian Development Bank may have raised expectations for community building within the GMS too high and pushed governments too fast (Weatherbee 1997, p. 182). The complexity of GMS cooperation constitutes a certain obstacle for a faster path of subregional integration. More specifically, several donor agencies are usually involved in funding the same projects, partially resulting in the inevitable and time-consuming process of having to conclude multilateral agreements before projects can be carried out (Sakai 2000, p. 17). This adds to the multifarious cooperation schemes found within the GMS, which essentially make the GMS look more like a collection of many subregions, instead of one cohesive subregion, that experience varying participation of GMS member countries in their respective projects. A further stumbling block for the emergence of a sustained stable and peaceful subregional order is the very limited societal involvement in intraregional affairs. GMS activities have been predominantly centered on the rather small political elites of the Mekong riparian states. An Oxfamsponsored NGO forum on the Greater Mekong Subregion and the Asian Development Bank, which took place parallel to the GMS summit in November 2002, made the charge that, a decade into the ADB’s GMS program, more than 65 million people, whose way of life was being radically affected, were still excluded from crucial decisionmaking processes, while consultants, corporations, and local elites had been the prime beneficiaries (cited in Renton 2002). Furthermore, these elites do not seem to have developed extensive, shared political interests beyond the functional GMS agenda, which would justify the classification of Mekong cooperation as

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political regionalism, as defined by Christopher Dent (2002). On the one hand, the stretching, broadening, and deepening of political processes in mainland Southeast Asia has resulted, first, in the partial harmonization of national policy agendas and their spillover to the subregional level, and second, in rapidly growing linkages between economic and security spheres. It seems safe to argue that both processes have made the subregion a less conflictual place than it used to be a couple decades ago. On the other hand, given the relative lack of domestic political change in most of the Mekong polities, the multilayered transborder management of the water resource has remained the domain of traditional elite politics. Whether or not Mekong cooperation will evolve into a stable subregional community will depend on two main factors: first, the willingness of state actors to develop a wider set of integrative formal and informal institutions (e.g., agreements, treaties, codes of conduct, commissions, regular highlevel meetings on various issues and policy areas) using the existing and politically promising institutions built within the GMS framework as a nucleus; second, a more prominent participation from societal actors, ranging from the private sector to NGOs. It remains to be seen whether these will transpire in a full and effective sense. This chapter has shown how governmental strategies and policies change as the result of the international environment’s new structural opportunities. Regardless of whether or not GMS cooperation in its current form provides a sustainable basis for efficient joint resource management and ultimately peace and stability in the subregion, the Mekong case is indicative of a growing convergence between national and international policy agendas in Southeast Asia. Due to enormous infrastructure projects, formerly impassable borders between local, national, and international spheres have become literally more diffuse. At the same time, linkages between national and regional political processes have grown to a significant extent due to the interests, strategies, and activities of the Asian Development Bank as an external actor. Although highly speculative, it is hard to imagine how the current level of subregional cooperation could have been achieved without the ADB’s role. Though the ADB has facilitated the framework for most political and economic key aspects of subregional cooperation in the Mekong valley without directly trying to steer governments into changing national political processes, there is a fine line between promoting an international agenda vis-à-vis state actors and actively intervening in national politics. The globalization of democracy—read: the promotion of democracy as mainly driven by the OECD world—is among the most powerful materializations of what Anthony McGrew (1992) describes as the stretching, deepening, and broadening of political activity

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and is thereby one of the most striking examples of the nexus between global and local political dynamics. Nowhere in Southeast Asia is the process of exerting external influence over domestic political structures more obvious and far-reaching than in Cambodia. The next chapter outlines how this country’s political system has become a playground for external actors, and more specifically the international donor community, in their attempt to strengthen good governance.

Notes 1. While this chapter draws heavily on Dosch and Hensengerth 2005, the following discussion has been extended, revised, and updated. 2. China’s participation in the Greater Mekong Subregion was confined to Yunnan province until mid-2005, when Guangxi province officially became a GMS participant. 3. The abundance of subregional cooperation schemes in East and Southeast Asia led to a similar abundance of terms other than “growth triangle.” Especially for cooperation schemes with more than three members, some authors have offered terms such as “growth quadrangle” and subsume them under the term “geometric polygons” (Low 1996). Donald Weatherbee (1997) uses the term “hexagon.” Growth triangles are also referred to as “natural economic territories” (Scalapino 1991–1992), as well as “extended metropolises” and “extended metropolitan regions” (MacLeod and McGee 1996). 4. The four countries also form the Quadripartite Economic Cooperation, also called the “Golden Quadrangle.” 5. The trade volume grew from 386 million baht (US$10.6 million) in 1998, to 2,772 million baht (US$62.7 million) in 2001. However, while data from the Office of Commercial Affairs in Chiang Rai show that Thailand has a significant trade surplus, data from China’s Commercial Section in Kunming show a Chinese surplus (Siriluk 2004, p. 315). 6. The Bagan Declaration—also called the “Ayeyawady-Chao Phraya-Mekong Economic Cooperation Strategy” or ACMECS—outlines the plan for intensified economic cooperation among Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Burma in order to “generate greater growth” and “enhance peace, stability and shared prosperity” among the four countries. http://www.boi.go.th/english/how/press_releases_detail .asp?id=230. 7. Le Van Sang (2005, p. 144) reports a rare example of explicit criticism of China at an official function. At the Mekong Subregional Conference, 5–6 July 1999, “Cambodian Prime Minister, Hun Sen and other representatives from Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Myanmar indirectly criticised the Chinese plan for building a huge dam for a hydroelectric power plant at the upper reaches of the Mekong River in the Yunnan district. Although Hun Sen did not directly speak on China’s hydroelectric plant, he mentioned the previous proposal for a project outlined by Cambodia’s dictator, Pol Pot, in 1977. He highlighted Pol Pot’s plans to channel

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water from the Mekong River into Cambodia’s big irrigation system and to dig a canal to the sea. If realised, this project would destroy water sources in Vietnam. Hun Sen judiciously concluded, ‘I think we should abandon such dangerous thinking because if Cambodia has the right to change the streamline of the Mekong River, then all countries at the source also have the right to do the same. In the end, Cambodia would become a victim of itself.” Hun Sen also charged that conflicts over water resources were harmful to the current spirit of cooperation in the GMS, as they would most likely engender unexpected regional clashes.

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5 Decentralizing Cambodia: The International Hijacking of National Politics?

AN IMPORTANT STRAND OF THE DEBATE ON THE LINKAGES BETWEEN

international and national political processes, more specifically between the two metaphenomena globalization and democratization, identifies the latter as a global strategy of the West. According to this perception, rather than being a direct result of globalization, democratization increasingly turned into a global discourse in the 1990s, when the promotion of democracy became a cornerstone of US and European foreign policies (Grugel 2004, p. 31). When democracy emerged as the only game in town after the end of the Cold War, the OECD world intensified its efforts to propagate and promote the transition to liberal democratic systems on a larger scale than ever before (see, e.g., Whitehead 1996a, 1996b; Rotfeld 2000). Today, all major Western and Japanese donor organizations and aid agencies follow a global strategy of fostering processes of democratization and good governance. The decentralization of governance, understood as “the shift in decisionmaking and spending power from central to regional and local governments” (Campbell and Fuhr 2004, p. 11), is a core feature of this approach that has become a key theme of the neoinstitutionalist mainstream development debate spearheaded by the World Bank and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) (Hadiz 2004, pp. 697–698). In this discourse, decentralization and democratization are seen as two sides of the same coin (Yabuno 2003). While attempts at decentralization in one way or another have followed regime change in most young Northeast and Southeast Asian democracies (South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines), Cambodia is the most striking empirical example. Paradoxically at first glance, many Cambodians perceive the decentralization reform in their country “as part of a greater power play involving players who are intrinsically uninterested in 139

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local-level development and democracy” (Öjendal 2004, p. 288). The early stages of the decentralization and deconcentration (D&D) process in Cambodia—together with Thailand, traditionally the most centralized state in Southeast Asia (White and Smoke 2005, p. 11)—date back to 1996, when the UN Development Programme initiated a large-scale project to empower political actors on the provincial level. However, it took another five years until the government formally committed itself to a decentralization policy and created the legal framework for its implementation. As the most decisive step in the process, local elections were held in 2002, which resulted in the establishment of more than 11,000 democratically legitimized commune councils. This chapter is based on the threefold argument that (1) unlike processes of decentralization in most other countries, Indonesia for example, decentralization in Cambodia is not primarily driven by the interests and strategies of the national government or civil society actors; (2) first and foremost, decentralization has emerged as an international development project drafted and managed by multilateral and bilateral donors such as UNDP, the Asian Development Bank, the UK’s Department for International Development, and the German and French development agencies; and (3) this international engagement is based on the proposition that successful decentralization strengthens democracy and good governance. But in view of the different and partly contradictory approaches to decentralization by the various international actors involved, decentralization is a fragile process. The chapter evaluates the achievements and shortcomings of decentralization in Cambodia and particularly analyzes the contribution of external actors.1 Following a general overview of the discourse on decentralization, the chapter summarizes the structural framework conditions for D&D reform in Cambodia, discusses the achievements and shortcomings of the decentralization process, and finally elaborates on the specific role and impact of the international donor community.

Decentralization: An Overview of the Debate

Decentralization refers to various forms of the allocation of power, authority, and responsibility from the center to the periphery for political, economic, fiscal, and administrative systems. The ultimate evolutionary stage of decentralization is federalism, which gives a high degree of constitutional protection to the constituent units, but less extensive or legally secure arrangements for delegation or transfer of power are more common (Ghai 1998, p. 31). The Cambodian understanding of decentralization in a

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narrow sense is best described as “devolution”: powers are given to legal entities in their own right, with their own elected bodies or councils and their own sets of competencies. In other words, devolution involves the transfer of functions, and requisite power and resources, to subnational authorities that are democratically accountable to their citizens and—in the ideal case—have considerable autonomy from higher level government. The second and simultaneous element of the Cambodian reform is “deconcentration,” or the delegation of power to lower levels of the same hierarchical organization. Accordingly, deconcentration is the transfer of authority and responsibility from central agencies in a country’s capital to dependent field offices of those agencies at a variety of levels. These agencies are neither autonomous nor directly democratically legitimated.2 While the definition of decentralization is a useful starting point, from an analytical perspective the more interesting and important aspect of the discourse is its normative character. A decentralized structure is supposed to improve public service delivery, foster democratization, and strengthen national integration (Steinich 2000). The failure of state-led policy strategies toward development in the so-called third world, but also in communist states, and the crisis of the welfare state in the industrialized West, “produced a world-wide consensus that highly centralized decision-making processes are inefficient, and tend to retard economic development and diminish social welfare” (Malley 2003b, p. 103). Based on this consensus, two schools of thought have emerged, sometimes described as the “pragmatic approach” and the “political approach.”3 The former draws heavily on the theory of fiscal decentralization (Smoke 2001) and underpins most international donor assistance. The UNDP stresses that fiscal decentralization empowers local governments to finance capital investments on their own through responsible borrowing in private markets. By reducing the need for grants from the state budget or loans from international financial institutions, the autonomy of both local and central governments is strengthened (cited in Guess 2005, p. 218). The pragmatists—particularly economists and specialists in public administration—regard decentralization as a strategy to increase the efficiency of service delivery. It is assumed that local governments can provide more responsive and innovative services than can national centralized government structures. This approach tends to emphasize the need to improve the technical and administrative capacity of local governments to design and implement programs, for example in the area of poverty reduction, which is a priority in countries such as Cambodia (ADB 2002c). In contrast, the political school considers decentralization as the quasi-natural counterpart to democracy. Consequently, the main aim of decentralization is not necessarily increased efficiency, but

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broader opportunities for public participation in politics. Equally important, local entities, so the argument goes, can be held more accountable for operations by voters than can nationally provided services (Guess 2005, pp. 217–218). Despite their differences, the two schools agree on one core aspect: both regard popular participation in local government as crucial, based on the assumption that local governments cannot know the public’s needs and interests without input from the people they govern (Malley 2003b, pp. 103–104). “Decentralization may . . . bridge the state-society gap by involving people in decision-making. In this way, the dynamics of change would be enhanced toward increasingly addressing the broader segments of society” (Cambodia Development Resource Institute 2003, p. 28). A further link can be established between decentralization and the nation-building process. In the ideal case, local government can . . . be seen as the training ground for a participatory/democratic culture that grants a certain autonomy and political integration to minorities. A decentralized administrative structure disperses political power in a vertical way, enriching the horizontal separation of powers between legislation, executive and judiciary with a vertical one. The different levels can be bound together through common decision or planning bodies or the common execution of tasks. National diversity can thus be realised in national unity. (Steinich 2000, p. 3, emphasis in original)

A discourse on decentralization would not exist if all agreed on the benefits of power transfers from the center to the periphery. Skeptics point to the limits of representation and participation at the local level and doubt that decentralization inevitably leads to more efficient and effective government. According to H. Wolman, “politics in decentralized units of government may be more closed than national politics and more susceptible to domination by a small and unrepresentative faction” (1990, p. 33). D. Slater adds that, despite all the attractiveness of the concept, decentralization “can also be a less than overt step on the way to increased privatisation, deregulation and a rolling-back of many of the economic and particularly social functions of the state” (1989, p. 520). Caroline Rusten and Joakim Öjendal warn: “Decentralization, when managed badly, has in fact the potential to further increase marginalisation and poverty. This is partly because those with political and economic power may capture the process (this is what we know as ‘elite capture’)” (2003, p. 1). Among the most contested issues of the debate is the question as to whether decentralization reduces or rather increases corruption. Whereas T. Persson, G. Tabellini, and F. Trebbi (2001), in a study on the effects of electoral rules

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on corruption, show that relatively smaller voting districts lead to more corruption, Gulsun Arikan (2004) suggests that the level of corruption may be lower in polities where the extent of fiscal decentralization is high. Table 5.1 summarizes the arguments in support of and against decentralization in Cambodia. Since the first half of the 1990s, most donor organizations have broadened and diversified their approach to development cooperation and have begun to support political aspects of development in addition to economic, ecological, and social dimensions. The political focus is typically directed to the promotion of democracy, human rights, gender equality, and generally peace and stability of political order. While the specific target dimensions of donor organizations differ slightly, the fourfold approach of the German development policy—which comprises social justice, ecological sustainability, economic efficiency (the three dimensions of the “Rio sustainability triangle” as formulated by the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development), and political stability—represents the current mainstream. The latter dimension, political stability, includes gender equality, human rights, peace, and democracy.4 Based on the normative assumption that decentralization of political power is a vital condition for the consolidation of democracy, decentralization has taken center stage as a main priority of development cooperation. However, beyond this broad consensus on the importance of decentralization, donors do not necessarily agree on the specific approaches to the promotion of decentralization, as will be shown in the case of Cambodia.

Structural Framework Conditions for Decentralization and Deconcentration in Cambodia

Reform of the D&D program in Cambodia has been embedded in the overall process of democratization since the founding elections of 1993, and cannot be understood without giving reference to Cambodia’s post–World War II history. After the country had achieved independence from France in 1954, Norodom Sihanouk dominated politics. Sihanouk had been placed on the throne by the French in 1941, but in 1955 he abdicated and entered politics as a prince. In October 1955, the landslide victory of his royalist party, the National United Front for an Independent, Neutral, Peaceful and Cooperative Cambodia (FUNCINPEC) which garnered 80 percent of the vote, spelled the end of party politics. Much of Sihanouk’s authority rested on his support in the countryside: the peasantry constituted four-fifths of the population between 1945 and 1979. Sihanouk perceived politics very much as

Dangers for service delivery: Decentralization of corruption. Untamed spending. Rollbacks of many economic and particularly social functions of the state. Loss of economics of scale and control over scarce financial resources by the central government. Equitable distribution or provision of services becomes more difficult if administrative responsibilities are transferred to local levels without adequate financial resources. Less efficient and effective service delivery due to weak administrative and technical capability at local levels. Local cadre will not be independent and motivated enough to take responsibility for risky undertakings. Local politics is still politics: Local elites are reproduced and relabeled. Distrust between public and private sectors may undermine cooperation at the local level. Poor people may refrain from promoting their interests. Local politicians may not be responsive to the local needs of their defined constituencies. Accountability may be attenuated if local elections are not viewed as important and produce low turnouts.

Better service delivery: More adequate to local needs. More flexible. More innovative. Cheaper. Helps cut complex bureaucratic procedures. Mobilizes the comparative advantages of local enterprises and the local nonprofit sector.

Local democratization: Integration of people’s needs and interests. Greater participation for diverse political, ethnic, religious, and cultural groups in decisionmaking. Broadening of participation in political, economic, and social activities. Provides third-sector organizations and local enterprises the freedom to act and to articulate their views and needs. Provides training ground for a participatory and democratic culture, negotiation capacity, and conflict settlement. Grants some autonomy and political integration to minorities.

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continues

Cons

Pros and Cons of Decentralization

Pros

Table 5.1

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Moves for separation: Institutionalization of factions along ethnic lines. Discriminatory policies of the ruling party are reproduced.

National integration: More equal distribution of national resources. Dispersion of political power vertically. Common decision or planning bodies, or common execution of tasks. National diversity can be realized in national unity.

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Sources: Compiled from Steinich 2000, p. 4; Ahmad and Bird 1998; World Bank 2005.

Cons

Continued

Pros

Table 5.1

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his personal domain: dissenters were silenced and there was no room for parliamentary politics. He founded a broadly based national movement, the Sangkum, to legitimize his rule. The Sangkum came to dominate the activities of the legislature: “In practice Cambodia became a one party state. The open opposition groups fell apart and their possibilities to carry on activities were suppressed. On the other hand, left and right factions were formed within the Sangkum. The power struggle between these two factions characterized the political development of Kampuchea until the rightist military coup led by Prime Minister Lon Nol in 1970” (Kiljunen 1986, p. 3). In March 1970, when Sihanouk was visiting the Soviet Union, his own National Assembly removed him from office and condemned him to death for treason and corruption. The coup was led by Sihanouk’s military commander, General Lon Nol. The United States is thought by some to have been behind the coup, but the main impetus came from Cambodia’s elite and from the army officer corps. The country’s situation deteriorated under Lon Nol, as politics became dominated by the military. Three years before the right-wing coup, a group of leftist guerrillas, known as the Khmer Rouge (KR), had begun an armed insurgency against the Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC). Although the majority of peasants revered Sihanouk as a “God King,” there were pockets of discontent among a section of the rural poor, which the KR was able to exploit. Until 1973, the communist forces inside Cambodia were often trained and largely equipped by the Vietnamese, and by Cambodian cadres sent back into the country after many years of residence in Vietnam. In an effort to prop up the Lon Nol regime, US forces began carpet-bombing Khmer Rouge–controlled areas in early 1973. However, the bombing failed in its aim and was used by the KR to recruit new followers among the survivors. The KR’s cause was bolstered when Sihanouk made an extraordinary about-face and backed the communist insurgency. The bombing also increased the pressure on the Lon Nol regime—already perceived as corrupt and inefficient—as more than 2 million people were uprooted from the countryside and fled to the relative safety of the cities. Public services gradually broke down and Lon Nol’s forces, despite an infusion of US aid, were unable to loosen the grip of KR forces around the capital. In April 1975, the KR took the capital, soon after Lon Nol, a few of his advisers, and the staff of the US embassy had flown out to safety. The KR ruled Cambodia from 1975 to the beginning of 1979, yet during this short period it stamped its mark upon the history of the country in a very profound fashion. The political ideology of Khmer Rouge was significantly different from that of other left-wing communist movements in Southeast Asia, including Vietnam’s Communist Party. Despite Marxist-Leninist rhetoric,

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the revolution attempted by the KR was different from any previous revolution in modern times. Not only were peasants viewed as the main revolutionary class, but also, unlike classical Marxism or even Maoism, even the urban working class, along with other urban groups, were considered class enemies and forced to become poor peasants. Rather than seek to emulate the industrialization of Western capitalism, the KR sought to make a fresh start by clearing the cities and creating a model agrarian society. The leaders of the regime sought to rid Cambodia of imported bourgeois values, returning the country to its origins as a great rice-producing peasant society dedicated to cooperation and self-sacrifice. David Chandler (1991) estimates that about 100,000 people were executed without trial during the KR period, and that at least 800,000 people died as a result of government policies, many of them from malnutrition and being overworked. This amounted to at least 10 percent of the population of the country. Chandler also makes the point that although violence was not new to Cambodian society, the war and the KR regime undermined or removed institutional and psychic restraints on violent behavior by people entitled to bear arms. During 1977 the Khmer Rouge regime began mounting military attacks on Vietnamese territory adjoining the eastern zone of Cambodia, and soon four divisions of KR troops had been mobilized there. Fighting Vietnam suited the purposes of the nationalist revivalist faction, diverting attention away from the internal problems of the country and its revolution. The central regime began demanding that the zones send in supplies of rice to be stockpiled in the event of war with Vietnam. These orders were not universally complied with. Even more than is usual in an Asian nation, power became equated with the possession of (and control over) rice. But the policy of challenging Vietnam militarily was to lead to the downfall of the KR regime following the Vietnamese invasion of December 1978. In the wake of Vietnam’s invasion, Cambodia became a focus for Cold War politics. Soon after Hanoi had installed the Heng Samrin government in Phnom Penh, followed later by Prime Minister Hun Sen, the Soviet Union set up military bases in Vietnam, irritating China and challenging the United States in the South China Sea and the Western Pacific. In an attempt to bring down the Vietnam-backed regime, China, the United States, and ASEAN resuscitated the remnants of the Khmer Rouge, many of whom had fled to refugee camps along the Thai border. Thailand gave the KR safe havens, while Singapore orchestrated the diplomatic campaign in the UN to isolate Vietnam and the Phnom Penh regime. The KR was also recognized as the legitimate government of Cambodia by the UN. By 1982 an uneasy alliance, comprising mainly the Khmer Rouge and FUNCINPEC, was formed, with the aim of opposing the Vietnam-backed regime. This exile

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government operated out of the refugee camps. It was recognized by most states as the legitimate government of Cambodia, and held the country’s UN seat. The practical effect of the alliance was to give the KR respectability, and it did not do much to strengthen the noncommunist factions. As the anti–Phnom Penh insurgency grew, the situation in Cambodia reached civil war. By the mid-1980s, the KR guerrilla war had become a severe drain on Vietnam’s economy. Hanoi also suffered from the international isolation. This convinced the Vietnamese leadership that the best strategy was to end its presence in Cambodia, and in September 1989 it unilaterally withdrew. At the height of its occupation, Vietnamese troops in Cambodia had numbered 180,000. Following Vietnam’s withdrawal from Cambodia in 1989 and 1990, Australia proposed an “international control mechanism” to rule Cambodia temporarily. It was known as the “Red book” and later became the draft plan for the Paris Peace Accords in 1991. Despite Vietnam’s withdrawal, the movement toward peace became feasible only with the end of the Cold War. The disintegration of Soviet Union in the summer of 1991, together with changing strategic relations, made a settlement possible. By 23 October 1991 the Paris agreement on Cambodia had been signed by nineteen countries and all four warring factions. Soon after the agreement, the factions grouped themselves into political parties: the Khmer Rouge became the Party of Democratic Kampuchea (PDK), the Vietnam-backed regime—the state of Cambodia—became the Cambodia People’s Party (CPP), FUNCINPEC kept its name, and the Khmer People’s National Liberation Front split into two parties: the Buddhist Liberal Democratic Party, led by Son Sann, and the Liberal Democratic Party. Under the Paris agreement, the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) was established. It was proposed that the UN body would have broad responsibilities on the ground and become a virtual “governor general” of the country in the absence of a legitimate sovereign government. It was granted enormous powers and had a wide-reaching mandate. UNTAC is an excellent case study of UN peacekeeping, particularly its attempt to transplant democratic institutions into a country, which lacked a strong democratic tradition. It was the most complex and intrusive operation that the UN had undertaken, at a cost over US$2 billion. At its height, the operation involved over 20,000 UN personnel in Cambodia. Under a detailed plan, Cambodia would, over a period of twenty months, prepare for internationally supervised elections and create conditions for a pluralistic and economically viable Cambodian state. Together with ensuring the participation of all parties in the election process, UNTAC’s other central mandate was to create a neutral political environment before the elections were held. It clearly failed. While attacks by the KR in the run-up to the

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election increased, the CPP also embarked on a campaign of violent intimidation against the other political parties. Specifically, dozens of FUNCINPEC party officials were killed, while others were harassed. At the same time, the CPP maintained control of the armed forces, the security apparatus, and much of the central administration (Peou 2002). Most analysts were extremely pessimistic during the buildup to the elections: the KR was expected to disrupt the polls with violent attacks, and UNTAC officials were privately admitting they expected a low turnout. Despite misgivings, the UN decided to go ahead with polls as planned. Although over twenty parties were registered, campaigning was based around three: the CPP, FUNCINPEC, and the Buddhist Liberal Democratic Party. Against all expectations, the elections, held in May 1993, proved to be a great success. Polling proceeded according to plan, there were few disruptions, and 90 percent of those who had registered to take part voted. FUNCINPEC was victorious in the election and Prince Norodom Ranariddh became first prime minister. Although the CPP won only 38 percent of the popular vote, the party used its powerful links with the military and state bureaucracy to force a power-sharing arrangement with FUNCINPEC. Hun Sen became co-prime minister and power was divided between the two parties in every ministry and at the provincial level. Although the elections were certified as free and fair by the UN, and although a parliamentary system had been established and a new coalition government formed, political instability prevailed. The country was still at war with the Khmer Rouge, whose leaders had pulled out of the electoral process weeks before polling day in 1993. Political violence against members of the opposition and media took place frequently. Coalition politics also proved to be unstable, as the new government partners, the CPP and FUNCINPEC, continued to maintain antagonistic relations. The situation deteriorated in the middle to late 1990s, to the point where any hope for peaceful reconciliation was lost. In early July 1997, Hun Sen’s troops defeated Ranariddh’s armed loyalists in a military coup. Following reconciliation, the CPP consolidated its power when it won the elections in 1998 and 2004, although on both occasions it failed to obtain the two-thirds majority required by the constitution for the formation of a new government; it thus had to share power with FUNCINPEC once again. Overall, Cambodia since 1993 can be characterized as volatile and prone to highly factional politics. The structural context for democratization and, related, the D&D reform can be summarized as three decades of civil war and turmoil, a tradition of authoritarian leadership, the perception of politics by most actors as a zerosum game, persistent patron-client networks, a high level of corruption (in

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fact, Cambodia is the most corrupt country in Southeast Asia),5 a high degree of violence, a high degree of poverty, and lack of an educational infrastructure, which had been systematically destroyed under the KR. Among the most decisive factors that have shaped Cambodia’s political and economic transition is its dependence on international aid, which since 1993 has amounted to 50–65 percent of the annual state budget. Table 5.2 shows that in comparison with three other postcrisis states (Angola, Ethiopia, and Guatemala), Cambodia receives by far the highest amounts of development assistance as measured in assistance per capita and assistance as a percentage of state budget. All four states are classified as countries with so-called difficult framework conditions, and rank high on the aid agenda of most donor organizations. They are characterized by significant shortcomings in most of the areas identified as central to democracy and good governance, namely respect for human rights, popular participation in political decisionmaking, rule of law, market-friendly social economic order, and development-oriented state action.

Analyzing the Decentralization and Deconcentration Process

Decentralization is not an alien concept in the Cambodian context. During the civil war, strong and unified provincial administrations had been established. However, in 1993, after the first democratic elections, these administrations were integrated into a centralist state structure under the national parliament and the Royal Government of Cambodia, with all national ministries establishing their departments at the provincial level directly under the ministry. This has left the provincial governors, appointed by the Ministry of Interior, with little more than a weak coordination function beTable 5.2

Angola Cambodia Ethiopia Guatemala

Development Assistance to Four Postcrisis States, 2000

Contribution in US Dollars per Capita

Contribution as Percentage of GDP

Contribution as Percentage of State Budget

21.0 30.3 16.1 19.2

2.8 12.0 17.3 1.1

n/a 63.8 49.7 7.4

Source: Kurtenbach and Weiland 2003, p. 23. Note: n/a = data not available.

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tween the different departments at the provincial level. As a result of these decisions, the public administration at the provincial and district levels became increasingly chaotic; services for the people diminished as bureaucracy and corruption expanded. Poor performance of the provincial and district administrations would become a key obstacle to implementation of the various reforms and policies as decided and designed by the Coalition Government of National Reconciliation, which was formed by the CPP and FUNCINPEC in 1998. As early as 1993, after the first democratic elections, the government made the principal decision to hold local elections at some point in the future, as this was seen as a major contribution to the consolidation of democracy. The Cambodian constitution of 1993 established the general framework for a decentralized polity, but without outlining any precise provisions. Instead, the constitution required the promulgation of an organic law to govern lower tiers. While the general concept of decentralization dates back to the early days of formal democratization, no specific strategy to achieve this goal initially existed. The government’s view on decentralization took further shape in 1995 after Sar Keng, minister of interior and first deputy prime minister (of the CPP) visited Germany, where he came in touch with the country’s elaborated system of local self-governance. On various occasions, Keng later explained that he had been particularly motivated by his trip to Germany to push for decentralization of the Cambodian state and to gradually introduce a similar system of local governance. However, the decisive push toward decentralization, and devolution, was an external one, mainly driven by the international donor community rather than the Cambodian government or other domestic actors. In 1996 the UN Development Programme initiated the so-called Seila program. Seila is a Khmer word meaning “stone” or “foundation.” The program is a framework for aid mobilization and coordination, comprising financial and technical assistance for decentralization and deconcentration reforms, within which context it particularly addresses both nonmaterial and material aspects of poverty. Although the RGC immediately established formal and official ownership of the program, it was initially driven by a multidonor group. While good progress has been made in the creation of national ownership, particularly at the commune level (Rusten 2004, pp. 1–2), the external impact is still very strong. The three main actors are the UNDP, the UK’s Department for International Development, and the Swedish International Development Agency. Initially intended as a pilot project for the establishment of local investment mechanisms in seven provinces, the Seila program quickly expanded into seventeen provinces as an experiment in poverty alleviation through the design, implementation, and continuous

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strengthening of decentralized systems for planning, financing, and implementing local development at the province and commune levels. By April 2003, Seila covered all twenty-four provinces. The UNDP’s Local Governance Project contributes to Seila activities. During the second phase (2001–2005), the focus of the program was to support the D&D reform, mainly through financial assistance—accounting for 95 percent of the total program budget of US$18 million—for a commune/city district fund, which supports the development and administration of the communities; a provincial investment fund, which finances investments and capacity building; and various national ministries to support national sector training programs, policy formulation, and program monitoring. The most common types of smallscale public investments financed through local development funds have been rural roads, schools, water supply schemes, and irrigation. Since 2003 the government has been managing the Seila program through appointed government committees at the national, provincial, and district levels, and through elected members at the commune level. At the same time, an explicit government strategy for the D&D reform is still lacking. In the absence of such a formal policy document, decentralization finds its place within the overall policy context of Cambodia’s second fiveyear (2001–2005) socioeconomic development plan (the “triangle strategy”). Decentralization is seen by the government to have three main policy objectives: (1) promotion of a pluralist participatory government at the local level, (2) promotion of the culture and practice of participatory development (planning, management, resource mobilization) at the local level, and (3) reduction of poverty in rural areas through the improvement of service conditions and other relevant factors. This broad and rather informal approach to the D&D reform (in other words, a lack of focus) has contributed to the transformation of Cambodia into a playground for the decentralization experiments of the international donor community. As one interviewee from the donor community put it, “there is no clear government agenda for the implementation of decentralization, no clear strategy, no long-term vision.”6 Shortly after the launch of Seila, other donors started their own initiatives, which in some cases have not been compatible with the former. Even more decisively, the D&D process commenced without the prior creation of an appropriate legal framework. This was put in place (but only partly) six years after the beginning of the reform. This sequencing is unique in Southeast Asia. For decentralization reforms in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand, the legal framework preceded the actual implementation. In January and February 2001 the Cambodian National Assembly and Senate approved two commune laws, on administration and election. This

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legislation provides the basic legal framework for the establishment and operation of the Cambodian local councils. The laws empower the communes with legislative and executive authority and establish the commune councils as the bodies representing their citizens. The first democratic elections of the commune councils took place on 3 February 2002. Since then, power has been transferred step by step to the decentralized level of the elected commune councils. At the same time, the administration of the srok (towns and rural districts) as well as the provinces (the intermediate level) has remained under the centralized system, and continues to be subordinated under the direct control of the national government. However, it is planned that the provincial and district administrations will increasingly take over powers and services delegated by the central state (deconcentration). In sum, “elected commune councils have limited functions and receive only modest resources. The provincial system is stronger but heavily managed by national line ministries and centrally appointed governors. Only recently has the government undertaken further work on devolution policy” (White and Smoke 2005, p. 7). Figure 5.1 shows the current administrative structure in Cambodia, from the national to the local level of decisionmaking. The 2002 commune council elections resulted in a significant push toward increased participation: 75,655 candidates took part in the elections, 11,261 council members were elected (8.5 percent female, 10.2 percent from ethnic minorities) for five-year terms, and some 30,000 citizens participated in election observation, which was organized by three large, governmentcritical NGOs (Köppinger 2002). Although the commune elections greatly strengthened the power and position of the Cambodian People’s Party within the political system—1,600 of the 1,621 communes (99 percent) have a CPP commune chief—the 2002 elections contributed to the development of democracy and can be considered a great success as far as the “political approach” to decentralization (the dimension of participation) is concerned. However, in terms of the “pragmatic” aspect (the efficiency of service delivery), the D&D reform is not without shortcomings and contradictions. For example, “the Commune functions are defined by the Law, in broad and permissive, rather than mandatory, terms and include both the provision of general administration and local development services. Although Commune Councils may be able to recruit their own administrative staff, currently the local administration is headed by (and in most cases only consists of) a Commune Clerk who is recruited and paid by the Ministry of Interior” (Romeo and Spyckerelle 2004, p. 3). This is problematic because decisions on the use of the local development fund are regularly made in informal consultations between the commune chief and the clerk, excluding the democratically legitimized commune councils.

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154 Figure 5.1

Administrative Structure of the Cambodian State

National Level Head of State King Executive Prime Minister Council of Ministers (cabinet) 24 Ministries

Legislature Two-chamber parliament: National Assembly a a Senate Senate

Intermediate Level (deconcentrated) 20 provinces and 4 municipalities Provincial executive: governors (appointed by prime ministers) and branches of all 24 national ministries

117 districts (within provinces) and 14 sectors (within municipalities) District executive: district governors (appointed by minister of interior)

Local Level (decentralized) 1,510 rural communes and 111 city districts (Sangkats)b

Commune clerk (appointed by minister of interior)

Councils (elected), headed by commune council chief c

About 1,000 villages and city districts (groups) Headed by village chiefs (elected by councils) Notes: For a comparison with other decentralized polities in Asia, see Smoke 2005, p. 27. a. Established 1999; initially senators were appointed; beginning in 2006 senators are elected by members of local councils and members of the National Assembly. b. With an average of 8,000 inhabitants per unit (34 percent of units have more than 5,000 and 20 percent have more than 10,000 inhabitants). c. First commune elections took place in 2002; the Commune Election Law calls for the election of commune councils by proportional representation according to party lists. There are 5–11 representatives on any commune council, depending on the size of the commune’s population. Candidates are required to be Cambodian citizens over the age of 25 who are able to read and write Khmer. The candidate at the top of the party list that gains the most votes becomes commune council chief (mayor), while the candidate at the top of the party list that gains second place (provided the party wins at least one seat) becomes deputy.

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While the commune laws of 2001 provide a suitable legal framework for the participatory dimension of decentralization, the D&D reform still lacks an organic law for provincial and district levels of government as required by the constitution. The drafting and enactment of this legislation is scheduled to take place in 2006, prior to the next commune council elections (Oberndorf 2004, p. 6). Such a law is necessary, among other reasons, to define the rather nebulous relationship between the decentralized local level and the deconcentrated regional level of government. The main shortcoming in implementing the D&D reform is the lack of fiscal decentralization, the most crucial part of any decentralization process. While local governments in Indonesia have access to dozens of different sources of revenue, including various local taxes (some 1,000 tax regulations have been issued by local Indonesian governments since implementation of the local governance legislation), in Cambodia the commune and city district councils currently have only two sources of funds: grants from the national revenue, mainly through the commune/city district fund, and a minimal amount of fees from civil registration. In 2002 the government contributed 1.2 percent of national revenues to the commune/city district fund, and that share grew to 2.5 percent in 2004 (Smoke 2005, p. 43). In 2003 the fund had a volume of 49.3 billion riel (US$12.9 million), of which Seila and the UNDP’s Local Governance Project contributed 7.8 billion riel (US$2 million). On average, each commune received US$8,000 from the fund. The maximum amount was US$9,000. However, local governments have only limited power over the use of the grants, as they can only be spent in accordance with guidelines issued by the Ministry of Interior. It is planned that the communes will be entitled to a third category of funds, namely from their own revenue sources, through the collection of taxes and service charges. Since the commune elections of 2002, however, “there have been few decisions and little progress on the establishment of guidelines and regulations to allow the communes to collect their own sources of revenue” (Netra 2004, p. 6). Several reasons have been given for the delay, including a lack of available data and a lack of information to help identify potential self-revenue sources for local government. The most important factor is probably related to the simple fact that the Royal Government of Cambodia is reluctant to share its revenues. The executive is by far the largest public institution among the three branches of government. It employs about 163,000 regular staff, or 99 percent of all civil servants in the country. In addition, military and public security forces, comprising about 210,000 people, also fall under the government’s control. In financial terms, the RGC uses nearly the entire national budget for its expenditures

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(Tumanut 2002). In comparison, the ratio of subnational self-revenue to total national revenue stood at 42.8 percent in the Philippines and 24.4 percent in Indonesia in 2001 (Guess 2005, p. 218, tab. 1). Furthermore, unlike in Indonesia, the Philippines, and even Vietnam and China, for example, borrowing by local authorities is practically nonexistent in Cambodia (White and Smoke 2005, p. 15).

The Role and Impact of the International Donor Community

In a case study on Cambodia presented at the 2004 Shanghai Poverty Conference, the immense impact of international development assistance on Cambodia was summarized under the heading of “external catalysts.” Rather unsurprisingly, it was concluded that this approach has been beneficial for the country’s society and political system: International finance and development partners have to some extent influenced societal change in Cambodia since the UN operation in 1992–93. In a country such as Cambodia—with its comparatively weak political and administrative structure and lack of self-generated funds— the role of donors and their influence on the scope and approach to development is strong. International development trends have such pervaded Cambodian society. It is fortuitous then that the emerging development trends of the mid-1990s focused on poverty alleviation, decentralization, and local governance. This provided the right compromise between the need to “bring the state back in” on the one hand and the “participation revolution” on the other. (Shanghai Poverty Conference 2004, p. 2)

Beyond the donors’ consensus on the general necessity of poverty alleviation, decentralization, and local governance, agreement on the appropriate strategies to achieve these goals hardly exists. Dissimilar and often conflicting views on the implementation of decentralization are evident both among different national donor organizations and with regard to bilateral versus multilateral development assistance. The perceptions of the best path leading to a decentralized state are as diverse as the numerous strategies employed worldwide. Michael Nelson’s comparison of levels and forms of government in different countries (2000, p. 63–64) shows that, although France, Germany, and the United Kingdom have all pursued decentralization and devolution, the respective policy processes and results differ significantly. While all three polities are divided into regional, provincial, and local forms of government, their main territorial authority is located at different levels. France opted for the provincial level; Ger-

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many and England chose the county level. The region is a local unit in France, and a state (as part of a federation) in Germany. Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, as part of the traditionally centralized UK, have experienced significant increases in subnational authority and power since 1998 as part of an ongoing devolution process. And the devolution in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland begs the question of how those living in England, 85 percent of the UK population, are to be governed in a devolved UK. Hence, within England the establishment of directly elected regional assemblies is currently being studied (for details, see Leeke, Sear, and Gay 2003). To add another major difference if not contradiction in the conduct of decentralization: unlike in the UK and Germany and despite far-reaching decentralization, the central state in France retains the monopoly on designing and implementing change in the status of public subnational institutions. This means that all organic changes are driven by a topdown approach. For example, in France the method of selecting, training, and paying employees of local authorities, whether city managers or street cleaners, is entirely defined by national law (Thoenig 2005, p. 688). In the absence of any explicit government strategy on decentralization in Cambodia, different donor organizations have based their specific approaches to the D&D reform on their own national experiences. In other words, “what was good for France must be good for Cambodia” or “what served Germany well can’t be bad for Cambodia.” Consequently, the French approach has been primarily directed toward deconcentration. France used to be one of the most centralist states in Western Europe, with a long history of hesitant and often unsuccessful efforts at decentralization. A main pillar of the far-reaching reform since 1981 has been territorial government reorganization (deconcentration). At the other end of the spectrum, Germany, a federal state, has one of the most decentralized administrations in the world. Taking this experience as a starting point, the initiatives and projects of German donor organizations have been the most extensive and radical in terms of their impact on the restructuring of the Cambodian state administration. A good example of the German approach is the establishment of “onewindow services” in two provincial Cambodian capitals, Siem Reap and Battambang. The two-year project (2002–2004) was initiated by Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Foundation, mainly funded by the European Commission (as part of the “Asia Urbs” program), and conducted in partnership with the communes of Rhein-Sieg-Kreis district in Germany, and Spoleto in Italy. It followed the rationale that, “in Cambodia, where the processing of administrative services for citizens as well as for the staff of the public sector is non-transparent, costly and not reliable in regard of success, and this especially in the provinces, the sound installation of [one-window services]

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would be a step toward a closer relationship of public administration and the citizens” (Ouan 2002, p. 6). One-window services are meant to simplify and shorten administrative procedures, as citizens and representatives of enterprises do not need to go to other offices of the administration. They obtain forms and all information at one office, and hand over the forms and additional papers at this same office, where decisions, such as concerning an application, are made either immediately or, in more complicated cases, within a fixed period of time (days or weeks). One-window services normally deal with residence registration, issuance of identity cards, passports, and driving licenses, issuance of construction permits, registration of landownership and issuance of land titles, registration of small and medium-sized businesses, and the like. While one-window services have become very common in most European states and North America, the very thought of such a streamlined procedure was revolutionary in Cambodia, where the registration of a small business typically involves twenty-seven administrative steps and six ministries. Despite its very short duration, the project was successful overall, as many goals were achieved and the reform of the two Cambodian city administrations enjoyed the widespread support of both local officials and the public. At the same time, the project and its results have been problematic in two ways. First, the system introduced by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and its partners is at least partly incompatible with procedures established by other donors’ projects in other provinces—for example, as far as registration of landownership and issuance of land titles are concerned. This is an important issue, because a majority of landowners—particularly small landowners—do not possess a formal land title. Second, de facto, the project has created fiscal decentralization, as the one-window offices charge fees for their services. De jure, however, fiscal decentralization, does not exist yet. Eng Netra explains that a core challenge of fiscal decentralization in Cambodia has to do with the capacity and willingness of the national government to address the local government’s own source revenue issue, and options for revenue sharing and reassignment between the province and the commune. This process is to some extent made difficult by [one-window services] as it is now unclear whether the government will allow for a reassignment and sharing of revenues between (i) the province and the district or (ii) between the province and the commune. (2004, p. 7)

The Cambodian subdecree on implementing the pilot project for the administration and management of Battambang and Siem Reap, which es-

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tablished the legal basis for the project, is silent on the issue of the distribution of revenues. It simply states that the one-window office “is a place where customers have to pay administration service fees or various taxes, and receive the requested documents.”7 Cambodian subdecrees are executive orders, signed by the prime ministers, that do not require the involvement of the legislature. Due to the lack of legislation in key areas of the D&D reform, subdecrees form the legal basis for many projects. It is a common procedure for donor organizations to contribute to the drafting—or even to provide the entire draft— of subdecrees tailor-made for the respective proposed project. It is difficult to see how this self-referential process could enhance national ownership of the Cambodian D&D reform. At the same time, the 2002 consultative meeting of Cambodia’s donors identified the urgent need for a long-term vision based on a nationally owned and nationally led decentralization policy framework with an action plan to realize the target that commune councils must be strong and autonomous institutions of local governance, with substantial capacity, resources, and experience. The meeting also addressed the need to put in place, at all levels, mechanisms that promote participatory approaches, to build ownership and legitimacy (Council for the Development of Cambodia 2002). Participatory approaches are hindered or at least influenced by the fact that Cambodia’s society is hierarchically organized, with patron-client relations embedded in the kinship network and political patronage system. Both democracy and decentralization are new for the Cambodian society. Furthermore, due to the legacy of Khmer Rouge rule and particularly Pol Pot’s systematic destruction of the education sector, many of the elected council members do not have an adequate level of formal education to master the tasks and duties assigned to them. Most donor organizations therefore put special emphasis on the training of council members (as well as the training of the trainers), and most training programs focus on the promotion of democracy alongside human rights, poverty alleviation, and rural development. These programs, however, are as diverse as the donor community, with little coordination and harmonization of the respective approaches to training. As a consequence, many council members have attended up to five different training programs, often featuring incompatible or conflicting content. In interviews, even members of the donor community have admitted the limited value of the existing uncoordinated approach to training. Despite prevailing differences among the donor community about the best strategy toward decentralization, a vast majority of organizations puts strong emphasis on the involvement of the civil society in the D&D reform process. As a UNDP document stresses: “In democratic governance

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NGO/civil society are important stakeholders. They provide forums to citizens to come together for achieving specific objectives. Such objectives can range from broad advocacy issues such as human rights, good governance to specific ones such as income generation, drinking water systems to low cost energy and environment protection. . . . In Cambodia . . . NGO[s] play important roles in governance, local development and delivery of services. (UNDP 2003, annex 5, p. 1) In addition, and probably most important, donor organizations cooperate with NGOs and other civil society organizations because they are perceived as being less corrupt than state actors. This is particularly the case in view of endemic and systematic corruption at all levels of governance in Cambodia. The extremely high degree of corruption is also a reason why not all donor organizations believe in the benefit of the Seila program. Seila works on the basis of basket funding, meaning that the donors contribute funds to state budgets without having ultimate control over the spending of these budgets. Part of the funds simply disappear due to corruption. While the prominent involvement of civil society actors—some organizations such as USAID do not cooperate with state actors at all—might indeed offer the best strategy not only to circumvent but also to reduce corruption, the donor community faces a dilemma in Cambodia. Due to various legacies of Cambodia’s history as described previously, the country has one of the weakest civil society sectors in Southeast Asia, consisting of not more than a few hundred NGOs as compared to more than 50,000 each in the Philippines and Thailand, for example. No more than a hundred of these NGOs are regarded as being capable of serving as counterparts for donor organizations. In order to cooperate with the civil society, donor organizations had first to empower existing NGOs or contribute to the establishment of new ones. In a May 2003 roundtable discussion in Phnom Penh, involving four of the leading NGOs—the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (LICADHO), the Khmer Institute of Democracy, SILAKA,8 and Star Kampuchea—some participants commented that a very small number of NGOs with a proven track record had received the bulk of development assistance earmarked for the civil society, resulting in an overfunding of a rather small number of actors.

Conclusion

First and foremost, democracy in Cambodia has to be seen as the project of the international donor community. The reform process is externally driven and not rooted within Cambodian politics and society. The process of democratization is hindered by persistent structures and institutions (e.g., pa-

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tron-client relations, the predominance of the Cambodian People’s Party, etc.) that have survived the country’s authoritarian past. As a result, donor organizations are forced to cooperate with national counterparts, primarily the government, whose willingness to implement crucial reforms are limited—despite great rhetoric. Although many donor organizations would like to shift their focus to the emerging NGO sector, they can hardly ignore the fact that civil society is still very weak and only a few NGOs are in the position to constructively contribute to the consolidation of democracy. Among the main achievements of democracy promotion in Cambodia has been the international donor community’s extensive support for decentralization. The process is a blend of elements taken from the manuals of both decentralization and deconcentration. The commune council elections of February 2002 have been widely hailed as an indication for the successful decentralization of political power and consolidation of democracy. This assessment holds true as far as the widening of political participation, beyond the rather small elites of Phnom Penh, is concerned. At the same time, however, the decentralization process has strengthened the power base of the CPP and might result in creating new opportunities for corruption (on local levels) rather than fighting the problem, which is the most decisive obstacle to democratization. While donors widely agree on the necessity of fostering democracy and good governance, there is no consensus on what exactly should be promoted, nor on how reforms should be best implemented. A harmonization of the various approaches by donors to decentralization and other reform programs has not taken place. Furthermore, projects often lack a proper risk assessment, as donors tend to be overoptimistic about the further course of democratic consolidation and political stability. Although the government as a collective actor is supportive of the decentralization process, significant resistance does persist, especially at the working level of national ministries and in the provincial administration, as officials are afraid of losing a significant share of their “informal income” from corruption and graft to newly established local authorities. The case of Cambodia has been discussed here because it is one of the most significant examples for the growing intertwinedness of global and national dynamics in Southeast Asian politics. No other polity in the region has been directly exposed to a comparable degree of global ideas, in this instance the universal discourse on good governance.

Notes 1. The findings of this chapter are mainly based on interviews that I conducted (some jointly with research team members Sabine Kurtenbach and Gabriele Geier)

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in Cambodia in May 2003 and during a brief return visit in December 2005. Interviewees included forty senior representatives and staff members of the UNDP, the ADB, the EU, and donor organizations from Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Japan; fifteen national, provincial, and local government officials, including one province governor and two district governors, and members of the Cambodian National Assembly and Senate; and fifteen staff members of NGOs that have been involved in implementing the decentralization process. 2. See Cheema and Rondinelli 1983 and Rondinelli 1999, 1999–2000 for comprehensive definitions of decentralization and its various facets. 3. While the causality between decentralization and economic development cannot be discussed here in detail due to space constraints, it should be mentioned that it is difficult to establish empirically whether decentralization is a cause or a consequence of economic development. See Sato and Yamashige 2005 for an overview of the debate and the authors’ own conclusions. 4. German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, http:// www.bmz.de. 5. The Transparency International corruption perception index for 2005 ranks Cambodia as one of the most corrupt countries in the world, at 135th (together with Burundi, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Papua New Guinea, the Republic of Congo, and Venezuela) among 158 nations (Transparency International 2005). 6. Author interview, Phnom Penh, 13 May 2003. 7. Quoted from an unofficial translation of the subdecree’s draft version. 8. The name SILAKA is formed from the word sila, meaning “moral character, moral principles, and moral conduct,” and the word kara, meaning “an act, function, or work.”

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6 Rethinking Regionalism: ASEAN and Beyond

THIS BOOK BEGAN WITH A FEW INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ON ASEAN

to highlight the changing dynamics of Southeast Asian politics. Now the argument comes full circle. During the Cold War, political processes in the Asia Pacific at both national and regional levels were best characterized as static, highly centralized, and one-dimensional. Since the late 1980s as the result of manifold structural changes within the international environment and political transformations at domestic levels, the political process has moved in the direction of a pluralist, less centralistic, and multidimensional model that is characterized by a growing number of political actors, increasing tendencies of disperse decisionmaking, and an intertwinedness of global, regional, and national dynamics never seen before in Asian politics. The economic crisis of 1997–1998, the globalization of trade, investment and research and development, the haze crisis, terrorism, maritime security, and avian influenza are only a few examples of pressing international issue areas that go beyond the traditional policymaking capacities and capabilities of small and insulated governmental elites. How has the region’s preeminent international organization, ASEAN, responded to theses challenges? For a start, it is a common misunderstanding that recent tendencies toward regionalism are the exclusive result of post–Cold War globalization. While some empirical evidence seems to confirm that “the two processes of globalization and regionalization are articulated within the same larger process of global structural change” (Hettne 1999, p. 2), that “national actors may . . . perceive regionalism as a defense mechanism against the competitive pressures arising from the globalization process” (Väyrynen 2003, p. 32) and that “Southeast Asian countries have resorted to ASEAN . . . to deal with the globalization challenge” (Prasert 163

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1996, p. 4), the regionalization of intergovernmental relations reflects far more than structural adjustments to international challenges. As Hasnan Habib put it, “regionalism is the expression of regional consciousness that develops from a sense of identity among states situated in geographical proximity which motivates them to mutually cooperate in one or another mode to attain common goals, satisfy common needs, or to solve political, military, economic, and other practical problems” (1995, p. 305). Regardless of whether regions need to be defined in geographical terms or can also be thought of as socially constructed “imagined or cognitive regions” (Väyrynen 2003, p. 37),1 identity is probably the most important and solid pillar of regionalism, no matter whether this pillar is based on a geographical concept or has a foundation driven by norms and values. Manfred Mols neatly summarized the identity-building process from an Asian perspective as: “we in Asia should try to define our own identity vis-à-vis a larger world we did not invent ourselves” (2004b, p. 60). Amitav Acharya has excellently discussed the processes of identity-based community building in Southeast Asia in his monograph The Quest for Identity: International Relations of Southeast Asia (2000). Southeast Asian regionalism is among the best-covered subject areas in international relations in both quantitative and qualitative terms.2 The Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., holds 489 books on ASEAN. This is a stunning number, particularly in relation to the 807 books that are available on the older, much more complex, and admittedly more important European Union and its earlier manifestation, the European Community (EC).3 A search on the database “Ingenta—Academic Press,” which features access to most leading social science journals, brings up 124 articles with ASEAN in the title that have been published since 1997 alone. ASEAN is also a favorite subject for master’s and doctorate theses at universities all over the world—probably because there is no shortage of secondary sources. Despite the impressive volume of analysis, the discourse on Southeast Asian regionalism has not distinctly progressed. This is not surprising in view of the unchanging nature of the analytical object: ASEAN’s lack of institutional evolution, and most member states’ reluctance to touch upon the sensitive issue of national sovereignty, make it difficult for students of ASEAN to add any new and original findings to the debate. Fashions in the study of international relations have come and gone: functionalism, federalism, transactionism, neorealism, liberal institutionalism, regime theoretical approaches, and most recently social constructivism—but no matter from which theoretical angle scholars have looked at ASEAN, the main findings have been strikingly similar for some three

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decades. In essence, all major studies have arrived at the same conclusions, which were already outlined by the pioneers in the analysis of Southeast Asian regionalism, such as Estrella D. Solidum, Pushpathavi Thambipillai, and Somsakdi Xuto. Solidum observed that cooperation among ASEAN nations was more realistic and successful the more it dealt with “safe” or nonsensitive issues. Matters of high politics, such as the creation of defense alliances or common markets, would not be susceptible to cooperation among heterogeneous polities. Therefore, according to Solidum, initially a cautious approach, amplifying close targets and underplaying the remote ones, was most effective in the case of Southeast Asian regionalism (1974, p. 95). Thambipillai (1980) concluded that within Southeast Asia the desire not to unite politically but to preserve autonomy would prevail. And in an early article published in 1971, Xuto stated, “[The] newly independent countries of Southeast Asia are naturally sensitive about their newly-acquired independence and sovereignty, which tend to be jealously guarded against any real or imaginary infringement. Effective regionalism is likely to lead to weakening individual sovereignty and independence and Southeast Asian countries may be reluctant to commit themselves fully to it” (reprinted in Xuto 1982, p. 49). More than thirty years later, in a randomly selected assessment on ASEAN, Markus Hundt argued in a more sophisticated way, but along the same lines: The central ASEAN regimes and institutions are moulded in the old ASEAN way and are therefore not capable of effectively promoting ASEAN’s new objectives of deeper economic and political integration. . . . ASEAN is not prepared for community-building (in the sense of pooling sovereignty and devising more centralised and rules-based mechanisms and institutions) and that institutions such as the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA), the Investment Area (AIA), the Surveillance Process (ASP), the ASEAN Dispute Settlement mechanism, the envisaged High Council and the Troika can’t be expected to contribute effectively to sustainable regional integration and stability in their present shape. (2002, p. 100)

ASEAN worked well during its first two and a half or even three decades of existence, and membership was beneficial to the Southeast Asian states. As I have argued elsewhere (Dosch 2004, pp. 76–79), ASEAN’s general achievements until the outbreak of the Asian economic crisis can be summarized under five broad headings: • ASEAN as a successful collective actor on the international stage. The strong links that ASEAN members forged among themselves

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enabled them to negotiate and bargain with third-party countries with greater confidence and success. Like no other group of nonWestern countries, ASEAN as a collective actor managed to gain the industrial nations’ attention through its well-established dialogue mechanisms (Parreñas 1989). Noordin Sopiee described ASEAN as a “politico-diplomatic coalition vis-à-vis the outside world” (Sopiee 1991, p. 320). • ASEAN as a regional conflict mediator. As a collective actor, ASEAN demonstrated its will to find regional solutions for regional problems. It contributed to the political solution of the Cambodian conflict as one major player—if not the most important—in the peace negotiation process. At the twenty-fifth ASEAN foreign ministerial meeting in Manila in 1992, ASEAN adopted the “Declaration on the South China Sea,” which was regarded as a first step toward a peaceful settlement of this dispute. At the 1995 ASEAN summit in Bangkok, a treaty was signed that bans the development, acquisition, use, testing, and stationing of nuclear arms in Southeast Asia. ASEAN cannot claim to have resolved any conflict in the region, at least not single-handedly. Rather, the group’s strength and success have been defined in terms of conflict management and conflict avoidance. • ASEAN as a security community. ASEAN developed into a security community in the sense that probably no ASEAN member would seriously consider the use of military force as a means of problem solving in intermember relations. ASEAN successfully managed to keep the residual conflicts between members—especially territorial disputes—at a low-key level. Armed confrontation in the ASEAN region had been avoided since the end of the “konfrontasi”4 (Samad and Mokhtar 1995; Khoo 1994; Acharya 1991; Alagappa 1991), if one discounts occasional skirmishes along the Thai-Burmese border. • ASEAN as an interpersonal network. High-ranking bureaucrats, government officials, scholars, and representatives of the private initiative within the ASEAN framework forged a close network of personal links. In this way, border-crossing communications and activities increased, and interactions became much easier. If one takes into consideration that only about fifty years ago, the various national elites in Southeast Asia were practically not talking to each other, this network building within ASEAN is a major achievement of Southeast regionalism. It has resulted in transparency and confidence building (among many others, see Sing 1997; Rocamora 1994; Anwar 1994; Karim et al. 1990).

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• ASEAN as a framework for economic development. Taking the above four aspects together, ASEAN created for itself a peaceful and stable regional situation. This situation, in turn, contributed to a conducive climate for ASEAN countries to pursue their national economic development. In the words of the late director of the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS), K. S. Sandhu: “The . . . stability and security has allowed market forces to operate and these, together with generally outward-looking and development-oriented policies, have seen the region grow by leaps and bounds” (1992, p. 4). However, in recent years, the economic crisis, transborder problems such as the haze crisis, avian flu, terrorism, changing power relativities in the Asia Pacific, the disputes in the South China Sea, and tensions between member states due to unresolved border and territorial conflicts, to name only a few examples, have demonstrated the limits to ASEAN’s penta-dimensional approach to regional order maintenance. Given the widespread agreement that ASEAN’s traditional model of consensus-oriented informal policy coordination and conflict management among government elites is no longer appropriate or sufficient to respond to challenges posed by the stretching, deepening, and broadening of political processes, why has there been so little institutional change? Or is this the wrong starting point? Is it possible that ASEAN “has attracted a great deal of bad press for its failure to find regional solutions to a growing number of problems,” because “too much has been expected of an organization that was originally set up as a diplomatic community—namely to coordinate approaches on some key foreign policy issues” (Smith 2004, p. 417)? The devil’s advocate is tempted to propose that scholars have blown ASEAN out of proportion for their own self-referential sake of keeping the debate going—something not unknown in academia. But at best, this is only partly true. ASEAN’s main problem is not the presence of far-fetched expectations created by external observers, but the organization’s own claim of being able to effectively and efficiently address regional challenges and to embark on economic and political integration with the given institutional arrangements centered on the “ASEAN way” of informal and nonbinding consultation. This unrealistic claim has created a growing gap between political vision and political reality that now seems impossible to bridge. In short, ASEAN has barked on many occasions knowing that it cannot bite. This chapter first takes a critical look at how visions of integration within Southeast Asia have been promoted by policymakers since the early 1960s. Assuming that ASEAN as a collective actor is too weak to deal with post–Cold War and post–Asian crisis challenges to regional order, the dis-

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cussion then turns to new and broader forms of regional cooperation that might offer a better institutional framework: the quest for exclusive East Asian community building as materialized in the ASEAN Plus Three forum and the East Asian summit. To exemplify some key points about the institutional strength and weaknesses of ASEAN, special emphasis is given to Vietnam’s interests, status, and role in the organization. Vietnam has been chosen because the country’s accession to ASEAN in 1995 was as progressive for the traditionally strict anticommunist organization as it was a milestone achievement for Hanoi’s new foreign policy strategy in the Doi Moi era. Given the centrality of ASEAN in Hanoi’s external relations, any achievements and shortcomings of Southeast Asian regionalism should become particularly visible in the case of Vietnam.

Advocacy of Southeast Asian Regionalism

Even if it is often denied, there is clear proof that many prominent politicians in Southeast Asia were influenced by the early successes of the European integration process and initially used the European Community as a model for their own region. In 1962, Malaysia’s ambassador to the Philippines, Inche Zaiton Ibrahim, declared, “Look at the European Common Market. From its beginnings and its development we can learn a lot” (Straits Times, 22 November 1962). Malaysia’s finance minister, Tan Siew Sin, joined Ibrahim in 1966 when he confessed in an interview: “I look to the ultimate creation of a Southeast Asian Common Market comparable to the European Common Market” (Straits Times, 5 June 1966). And Thanat Khoman, former foreign minister of Thailand and one of ASEAN’s founding fathers, recollected, “It should be put on the record that, for many of us and for me in particular, our model has been and is still the European Community” (Khoman 1992, p. xix). Indonesia especially, in its early days of the “New Order” regime, was active in promoting integration as a model for regional development vis-à-vis extraregional influences. To quote a statement by General Suharto before the Indonesian House of People’s Representatives on 16 August 1966: “If one day an integrated South-East Asia can be established, this part of the world may stand strongly in facing outside influences and intervention from whatever quarter it may come, be it of an economic nature, or a physical-military intervention” (quoted in Leifer 1983, p. 119). It goes without saying that this political philosophy exactly reflected the spirit of the Bandung conference of 1955, which also stressed the necessity of becoming independent from outside influences by internal coherence. The term “integration” was used in

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speeches by Suharto and other senior officials of his administration up to mid-1967. It was obviously understood as the “natural” concept for the operational realization of the above-mentioned philosophy. There exist at least a dozen official statements by leading politicians, like Ferdinand Marcos, Narciso Ramos, José Ingles, Sinnathamby Rajaratnam, and many others, in the 1960s and early 1970s, advocating the establishment of regional economic integration schemes modeled on the EC. These ideas were in line with concepts of the United Nations and its suborganizations, such as the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), that enthusiastically praised regional economic integration as an appropriate action in fighting the problems of underdevelopment in the so-called third world. However, when the European integration process took on more shape in the first half of the 1970s, it was realized in East Asia that the concept of integration meant a partial transfer of sovereignty, a strong institutional framework, and a common and binding decisionmaking process. Hence the term “integration” was constantly avoided and remained a taboo within ASEAN—at least on the higher political levels—until the Manila summit meeting in 1987. Instead, it was stressed that ASEAN never intended to emulate European integration (Rieger 1986, p. 92). It is evident that the actual policies carried out by several ASEAN governments, especially in the field of economic cooperation, indeed showed no evidence of any ambition to follow the European way. When the new post–Cold War order loomed large, politicians in Southeast Asia searched for strategies to strengthen ASEAN’s cohesion and the international position of its members. First, the global tendency toward the regionalization of markets in general, and the formation of NAFTA, the EU Common Market, and the Southern Cone Common Market (Mercosur) in particular, made Southeast Asians think about the necessity and desirability of more integration within ASEAN. Second, the clear structure of bipolarity and East-West confrontation had served ASEAN well. It had kept the United States engaged in the region as a guarantor for a secure geopolitical environment. At the same time, the Cold War had contained the power projection interests of all three major actors, the United States, the Soviet Union, and China. Not surprisingly, uncertainties concerning the new regional political-security architecture arose in the wake of the Cold War and even provided reasons to evaluate the possibility of defense integration within ASEAN. Senior officials and scholars, especially from Singapore and Malaysia, started talking in a seemingly deliberate way about regional economic integration in the early 1990s. A prominent senior official from Singapore put it as follows: “Integration is our final objective. The EC as a model is

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our hope.”5 In 1991, Singapore’s prime minister, Goh Chok Tong, advised the association’s fellow members, “ASEAN economies are in different stages of economic development, but if we take steps now toward freer market linkages within the ASEAN cooperative framework, we too will one day arrive at the level of cooperation and prosperity which the EC enjoys today” (quoted in Rieger 1991, p. 162). Around the same time, Philippine foreign minister Raul Manglapus suggested the negotiation of an ASEAN treaty on economic cooperation modeled after the EC. However, Thailand’s initiative to build an ASEAN free trade area gained more support and was formally approved in 1992. Scholars like Chandran Jeshurun of ISEAS predicted a gradual process of “Brussels-ization” of ASEAN, leading at least to a more professional cluster of interactions at the intergovernmental level.6 Parallel to concepts of intensified economic cooperation, prominent politicians brought ideas of defense integration into the discussion. Among the most remarkable proposals was the one by former Indonesian foreign minister Mochtar Kusumaatmadja to establish a Malacca Strait defense pact (Kusumaatmadja 1990). And General Rafael Ileto, security adviser to then–Philippine president Corazón Aquino, launched the idea of creating a regional security alliance with the participation of the Indochinese states in the case of a US withdrawal from the Philippines (Straits Times, 28 March 1991). Nonetheless, we should not blind ourselves to the fact that large parts of Southeast Asia’s foreign policy elite have constantly refused the concept of integration, both in the economic sector and even more strongly in the defense area. In the early twenty-first century the governments of Southeast Asia are still sensitive with regard to their independence. In spite of much well-sounding political rhetoric, any kind of supranational decisionmaking has been out of the question for ASEAN. There have also been setbacks, or “spillbacks,” to use the terminology of integration theory, in Southeast Asian regionalism. After the outbreak of the Asian crisis in 1997, many observers became rather skeptical and even suggested that ASEAN might dissolve. The organization has been criticized for holding on to what seem to be decades-old, outdated concepts, such as the strict adherence to the principle of noninterference and the necessity of reaching consensus on every single issue no matter how marginal it may be. At least it seemed that, after many unsuccessful and halfhearted attempts at regional trade liberalization, the association finally had committed itself to economic integration when in 1992 the ASEAN-6 heads of government enthusiastically agreed on the gradual implementation of an ASEAN free trade area.7 First and foremost, this decision was a direct response to the pressures of economic globalization. The primary policy motive that drove

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the AFTA initiative was to increase the ASEAN states’ international competitiveness and integration with the world. In comparison, the stimulation of intra-ASEAN trade had always been only secondary (Lay 2004, p. 939). In general, the picture painted of AFTA before the outbreak of the Asian crisis was positive. Seiji Naya and Michael Plummer (1997) predicted that AFTA was well on the way to full implementation by 2001, and that ASEAN would already be a “significantly-integrated market” in 2000. Since the crisis, however, euphoria has cooled down, although many academics and practitioners have seemed to agree, at least until recently, that AFTA had not been harmed by the region’s economic setback and might be even more relevant than before. “AFTA needs to move forward so that ASEAN countries can better face challenges of globalization and competitive regionalism” (Chia 1998, p. 231). However, ever since the signing of the AFTA agreement, which set 2003 as the original deadline for the scheme’s full implementation, the process has suffered many setbacks and delays. Some members seem to have spent more time drawing up long exclusion lists than trying to meet their obligations to gradually reduce tariffs. From the viewpoint of intraregional trade relations, ASEAN’s attempts at implementing AFTA have not had any measurable positive impact. The contrary seems to be the case. From 1994 to 2001, intraregional trade as a proportion of total trade in Southeast Asia fell by 19 percent. By comparison, it rose by 41 percent in the first ten years of the European Union, by 17 percent in the first seven years after the inception of the North American Free Trade Agreement, and by 67 percent in the first nine years of Mercosur’s inception (Schwarz and Villinger 2004, p. 3). AFTA might die its own natural death, like all attempts at regional economic integration before it. Despite the serious shortcomings in the implementation process and instead of fixing AFTA first, ASEAN decided to respond to the mounting problems with an even greater vision for regional integration. The most ambitious project ASEAN has embarked on is the proposed creation of a Southeast Asian community by 2020, comprising three pillars—an ASEAN security community, an ASEAN economic community, and an ASEAN sociocultural community (Ferguson 2004; Stubbs 2004). Yet in institutional terms, ASEAN has not succeeded in facing up to the management tasks stemming from the stretching, deepening, and broadening of political activity. Nongovernmental actors increasingly put their mark on international relations, friend-foe structures have become indistinct, power relativities are no longer clear-cut, new concepts of security question the century-old notion that military threat poses the main challenge to the integrity of the state, and foreign policy strategies can no longer be drafted behind closed doors,

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shielded away from an assertive public and media. The organization has not prepared itself for these structural changes. While ASEAN has never failed to address the most pressing issues in intermember relations and vis-à-vis the external environment on a rhetorical level, such as (to repeat the list) the implications of the Asian economic crisis, the haze crisis, terrorism, or illegal migration, not a single initiative has ever been fully implemented. Avian influenza is the most recent example. On the one hand, there is general agreement among ASEAN members that bird flu can only be tackled through close cross-border cooperation; member states signed a regional action plan that is supposed to define the policy framework to contain the disease; and they set up a regional surveillance and alert network. On the other hand, even in the diplomatic language of the group’s top representative, Secretary-General Ong Keng Yong, serious concerns about the effectiveness of the scheme came to the fore. According to Ong, “it will still take some time to perfect the system” and “there are still pockets of inadequacy, especially in terms of getting bureaucracy in all different departments mobilized.” Although Ong expressed confidence that ASEAN would ultimately be able to overcome these difficulties, he admitted that some member nations of ASEAN lacked transparency in the information they released about bird flu, and that outbreaks in remote areas were not reported fast enough.8 Most crucially, ASEAN lacks funds to compensate farmers whose poultry flocks are killed as a precaution. As a result, many farmers in affected areas are reluctant to report outbreaks and even hide sick chickens, because their livelihood depends on them. Few observers would challenge the view that beyond the political rhetoric and well-sounding declarations and agreements—which all fall into the category of nonbinding soft law—ASEAN lacks substance and, more specifically, both the political will and the institutional setting to transform visions into political reality. But does ASEAN necessarily need a higher degree of institutionalization to play a useful role in the management of regional order? Donald Emmerson (2005) asks: “Is ASEAN a security community?”—and responds, My answer is a limited and provisional yes: ASEAN is a thin security community. The organization does appear to meet Deutsch’s minimal requirement that there be “a real assurance that [members] will not fight each other physically, but will settle their disputes in some other way” (Deutsch et al. 1957, p. 5). But ASEAN is thin. It is thin in that its member states retain full sovereignty. Their [security community] is what Deutsch called pluralistic. Jakarta is not Brussels. The supranational or sovereignty-pooling thickness associated with full-blown European regionalism is political science fiction in Southeast Asia.

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In the presence of violent conflict in many parts of the world, a “thin security community” seems to be an important achievement. One could argue that if ASEAN manages to sustain the status quo in the years to come, it would be a major success. Why should the organization strive for deeper institutionalization or indeed a Brussels-ization of regional cooperation if the diversity of political norms and values, political systems, and stages of economic development in Southeast Asia stands in the way of EU-type integration? Settling for the known and preserving the status quo that served Southeast Asia so well for some three decades is the essence of the mainstream approach to regional cooperation among member states. Most ASEAN members prefer an organization that clings to its traditional principles and strongly objects any initiative that could be interpreted as a move toward supranationality. Vietnam’s interests and strategies vis-à-vis ASEAN exemplify this point in terms of the advantages and risks that holding on to traditional forms of lowly institutionalized intergovernmental cooperation implies.

Vietnam’s Interests and Role in ASEAN

Why Vietnam? Vietnam’s accession to ASEAN in 1995 was crucial, because it represented both a vital success for Vietnam’s new foreign policy outlook in the Doi Moi era, as explained in Chapter 3, and “the final act of regional political reconciliation” (Weatherbee 2005, p. 40) in Southeast Asia. Despite Hanoi’s clear hints in 1990–1992 to be ready for ASEAN membership, the strictly anticommunist association was not prepared to admit Vietnam in the early 1990s. Although Vietnam signed the ASEAN Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (the organization’s code of conduct) and was subsequently granted observer status in 1992, full membership was not on the short-term agenda. Throughout the region, senior government officials and observers alike predicted a long transitional period of five to ten years. However, given Vietnam’s rapid and successful process of redirecting its foreign policy since the late 1980s, on the one hand, and changing perceptions and interests among the old ASEAN members, on the other hand, the country’s full membership became feasible much sooner than expected. Most important was a convergence of key security interests. Both Vietnam and ASEAN perceived the need to engage Beijing while, at the same time, holding on to the strategic option of “preventive containment towards China” (Rüland 1999, pp. 338, 343). Either way, an enlarged ASEAN was expected to be more capable of dealing with the task. And the target was hit instantly. Although officially the Chinese government welcomed

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Vietnam’s admission in 1995 as a contribution to regional stability, it had earlier tried to discourage its neighbor from joining the organization. Prior to the country’s admission, a group of Chinese academics from think tanks and research institutes recommended to the Vietnamese government that the country not proceed with its quest for membership, as a Vietnamese participant of the meeting recalled. Chinese officials and even actors within the Vietnamese government, however, have put this account into perspective and argue that despite some initial nervousness on the Chinese side, Beijing had never put any real pressure on Vietnam with the aim of preventing the state’s ASEAN membership.9 Over the past decades, if not centuries, few countries in the Asia Pacific have been faced with a clear-cut structural constraint on their international position similar to Vietnam’s. The nation’s long-term security dilemma can be reduced to a short but meaningful formula: “Since 207 BC Vietnam’s security problem has been China and the origins of Vietnamese nationalism are embedded in the anti-Chinese struggle for liberation” (Möller 1999, p. 265). Ever since the Han dynasty integrated the territory of present-day northern Vietnam into its empire, the country’s history has been marked by “armed insurrection against foreign domination, a resistance which led after many centuries to the preservation of the Vietnamese people’s identity, the emergence of a national consciousness and the establishment of the independent state of Vietnam” (Nguyen 1999, p. 16), as one of the nation’s most popular textbooks put it. However, the Sino-Vietnamese conflict of the Cold War rapidly transformed into much friendlier bilateral relations in the wake of Vietnam’s unconditional retreat from Indochina and Hanoi’s constructive role in the process of settling the Cambodian conflict. In general terms, Vietnam’s new outlook in the conduct of its foreign affairs paved the way for improved relations with China. In November 1991 the two governments reestablished diplomatic ties. Since then, political mutual trust, the promotion of economic and trade cooperation, and exchanges in cultural and other fields have markedly improved, as Vietnamese president Tran Duc Luong’s visit to China in July 2005 and Chinese president Hu Jintao’s return visit to Vietnam in November of the same year demonstrated. During the visits, both sides agreed to make greater efforts to boost economic and commercial ties, in addition to cooperating more closely over land- and marine-border demarcation. The Gulf of Tonkin demarcation agreement appears to be working well: Vietnam has registered 1,543 boats to operate in the common fishing area, and has provided the list to China; China has registered 856 boats to operate in the area. A further benefit of the state visits was a promise of Chinese support for Vietnam’s entry into the World Trade Organization (Economist Intelligence Unit 2005).

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However, as hinted in Chapter 4, relations are far from being troublefree. “What makes bilateral relations difficult . . . is its political-psychological dimension. Within much of Vietnam’s political elite (and the wider public) there is a continued sense of resentment vis-à-vis China that feeds on the rejection of Chinese superiority and the feeling of historically having been given a raw deal by the northern neighbour” (Haacke 2005, p. 124). In the presence of residual conflicts, mainly the territorial dispute in the South China Sea over the Paracel and Spratley Islands, the Vietnamese government views ASEAN membership as a crucial structural element of its rapprochement strategy toward China. ASEAN seems to provide a suitable organizational framework to deal with China—particularly in terms of additional communication channels with the Chinese government—and to progressively narrow the gap between the two states, at almost no cost. To some extent, Vietnam’s ASEAN membership partly transformed bilateral Sino-Vietnamese disputes into a multilateral agenda involving China and ASEAN as a group. Most important, Vietnam’s accession to ASEAN meant that the association now grouped all of China’s adversaries in the conflict about overlapping territorial claims in the South China Sea. At the same time, Vietnam’s membership in ASEAN has benefited not only Vietnam but also ASEAN itself, whose political weight has increased and whose bargaining position with China has been strengthened. A second important opportunity that has arisen from ASEAN membership lies in the institutionalized setting the organization has provided for a normalization and consolidation of Vietnam’s relations with Thailand, Burma, Laos, and Cambodia. Soon after Vietnam joined ASEAN, Hanoi started lobbying for the admission of the three remaining Southeast Asian states, Burma, Laos, and Cambodia. The motivation was obvious: a further widening of ASEAN would significantly contribute to the consolidation of Vietnam’s post–Cold War position in Indochina by providing Hanoi with the opportunity of exerting subregional leadership within an accepted, institutionalized framework. Ralf Emmers describes this as the exercise of Vietnamese power “through benevolent means” (2005b, p. 658). Additionally, in order to obtain maximum assistance from ASEAN’s old members for building up and modernizing its economy, Vietnam needed the support of more or less like-minded states faced with similar if not bigger economic challenges. When Vietnam hosted the sixth ASEAN summit in 1998, Foreign Minister Nguyen Manh Cam used this opportunity to push for Cambodia’s immediate admission into ASEAN. The heads of government, however, postponed the membership due to the country’s unstable and conflict-ridden domestic situation. Eventually, Cambodia joined ASEAN as its tenth member in April 1999, during a ceremony in Hanoi.

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Burma and Laos had already been admitted in 1997. Since the completion of ASEAN-10, Vietnam has actively aimed at narrowing the development gap between the old and new members (the so-called CLMV countries: Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar [Burma], and Vietnam), with the ultimate goal of committing ASEAN-6 to concrete action. Vietnam’s efforts resulted in the “Hanoi Declaration on Narrowing Development Gap for Closer ASEAN Integration,” which was signed in July 2001 (ASEAN 2001a). Although—as expected—not much progress has been made in implementing the visions enshrined in the declaration, the document nevertheless represents the most important attempt to address the imbalances and economic disparities within ASEAN and particularly between ASEAN-6 and the CLMV. The Vietnamese government has never openly or officially claimed any leadership role in ASEAN, but there can be little doubt that Vietnam, as the largest and economically most powerful of the newer member states, has emerged as first among equals in the CLMV subregion. Due to manifold bilateral and multilateral initiatives, Vietnam’s relations with Cambodia and Laos can today be described as stable. During a visit to Hanoi, Prince Norodom Sirivudh, the secretary-general of FUNCINPEC, affirmed that his party, which has traditionally been wary of Vietnam, would try to strengthen cooperation between the two countries (Economic Intelligence Unit 2005). Although not exactly spectacular at first glance, this statement carried some significant diplomatic weight. The most important step toward normalized relations was marked by the signing of a Vietnamese-Cambodian border treaty in Hanoi in October 2005. Along with its pursuit of strategic and political objectives, Vietnam has viewed ASEAN “as a means to accelerate economic reform, modernization and convergence with this dynamic region” (Gates 2000, p. 7; see also Schmidt 2004). For example, intraregional investment has significantly increased since Vietnam joined the organization. As a member of ASEAN, Vietnam is obliged to join the ASEAN Free Trade Area. Vietnam is committed to its obligations to reduce tariffs under the Common Effective Preferential Tariff (CEPT) scheme (e.g., the reduction of all its import taxes to 0–5 percent except for products in the various “exclusion” and “sensitive” lists), but is not yet ready for equal competition and almost no protection exists for its market sectors.10 Beyond CEPT figures, Hanoi’s interest in AFTA has been much broader. As Foreign Minister Nguyen Dy Nien explained, Vietnam’s participation in AFTA and other schemes of economic cooperation, such as the ASEAN Investment Area (AIA) and the ASEAN Industrial Cooperation (AICO), “paved the way for Viet Nam’s participation in other cooperation mechanisms and organisations such as APEC, WTO” (quoted in Gates 2000, p. 7; see also Schmidt 2004). In fact,

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when joining ASEAN, it was one of Hanoi’s core interests to use the association as a vehicle for fast-track access to other—and one is tempted to add: more relevant—organizations. The strategy has been successful. It is safe to assume that without ASEAN membership, Vietnam would hardly have been able to join APEC in 1998, and might not have succeeded in obtaining observer status in the WTO. This example again demonstrates the importance of ASEAN membership as a cornerstone for Vietnam’s overall strategic foreign policy interest of normalizing and diversifying foreign relations and integrating itself into the regional and global post–Cold War order as quickly as possible. Overall, since 1995 Vietnam has gained regional and international recognition from its participation in the organization. ASEAN has given Hanoi an opportunity to integrate into the international system at high speed and to expand and diversify its external relations. “ASEAN membership has enabled Vietnam to benefit from a greater freedom in the making of its ‘omni-directional’ foreign policy” (Emmers 2005a, pp. 77–78). Ramses Amer rightly concludes that, as one of the most valuable achievements, Vietnam’s membership has provided “for a situation which is conducive to the peaceful management of existing interstates disputes and potential future disputes” (2004, p. 546). Security threats arising from prevailing border and territorial disputes with other ASEAN member states, for example Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines, have not vanished. However, in the mainstream view ASEAN has facilitated a suitable, informally institutionalized framework to keep these conflicts under control and prevent any military escalation. This is what the traditional ASEAN has always stood for: the management of interregional relations by means of informal network building and soft institutionalization of norms and rules—in short, the infamous “ASEAN way.” At the core of the so-called ASEAN way of diplomacy in Southeast Asia stand six norms: sovereign equality, the nonrecourse to use of force and the peaceful settlement of conflict, noninterference and nonintervention, the noninvolvement of ASEAN to address unresolved bilateral conflict between members, quiet diplomacy, and mutual respect and tolerance (Haacke 2003, p. 1). As already outlined, there is widespread agreement among both politicians and analysts that ASEAN as a regional organization has been instrumental in keeping relations between its members peaceful and stable, thanks to the ASEAN way of managing conflicts informally and quietly on the basis of a consensus-oriented approach.11 Emmers makes an interesting proposition by suggesting that, “with its long tradition of confrontation and intransigent diplomatic demands, many [ASEAN] member states were apprehensive that Vietnam would ignore

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the ‘ASEAN Way’ and behave as a disruptive actor. These fears have not materialised” (2005a, p. 76–77). Vietnam has indeed never challenged the ASEAN way but, quite on the contrary, has become one of its strongest supporters. One could even argue that Vietnam’s categorical rejection of any attempts at watering down key norms and principles such as consensus building and noninterference has significantly contributed to keeping the ASEAN way alive. A decade after Vietnam’s admission to ASEAN, Hanoi prefers an organization that, as mentioned, clings to its traditional principles and strongly objects any initiative that could be interpreted as a move toward supranationality. Hanoi perceives ASEAN as an institutionalized framework for intergovernmental cooperation—no more, no less—suitable to, first, furthering Hanoi’s overall strategy of diversifying its international relations; second, bridging the old Cold War gap between Vietnam and the United States, China, and Japan; third, countering the effects of globalization; and fourth, contributing to the nation’s economic development. Thus Vietnam has slowed down some integration measures within ASEAN, such as a more comprehensive mandate for the organization to work on regional conflicts brought to the table by other members of the group. For example, in 1998, when Thailand’s foreign minister, Surin Pitsuwan, proposed replacing the group’s noninterference policy with “flexible engagement”—drawing on Anwar Ibrahim’s call (1997) for a new policy of “constructive intervention”12—Vietnam was among those that opposed the idea. Even when the concept was later renamed “enhanced interaction” and the ASEAN foreign ministers formally approved Thailand’s proposal for an ASEAN troika in 2000,13 Vietnam only reluctantly rendered support. When Vietnam joined ASEAN, it was especially interested in obtaining access to the organization’s effective mechanisms of deescalating conflicts, knowing at the same time that its regional neighbors would refrain from interfering in Vietnam’s domestic affairs. Consequently, Hanoi was very suspicious about any attempts at rethinking noninterference as a key principle of the ASEAN way. Hanoi’s strong support of noninterference became apparent, for instance, when the government decided against participation of Vietnamese personnel in the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET), which was established in October 1999. In contrast, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Singapore contributed to the UN mission. In fact, Vietnam used the opportunity of hosting the 2001 series of ASEAN meetings for watering down the initiatives of the previous chair. The joint communiqué of the thirty-fourth ASEAN ministerial meeting in Hanoi (ASEAN 2001b) did not give a single reference to flexible engagement, enhanced interaction, or the troika.

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At first glance, Vietnam’s cautious approach to cooperation within the ASEAN framework reflects political pragmatism and common sense. If any major reform of the ASEAN way is not feasible and, simultaneously, if the ASEAN way is clearly in line with Vietnam’s national interest, there is neither motive nor reason for rushing into institutional reforms. At the same time, it is difficult to see how ASEAN’s “have the cake and eat it too” approach can continue to work, even in the near future. In other words, there is a growing gap between ASEAN’s far-reaching visions for community building and conflict resolution on the one hand, and the political reality, which is characterized by the lack of institutional evolution that would enable ASEAN to achieve its visions, on the other. The 2003 Declaration of ASEAN Concord II (Bali Concord II), which is meant to ignite a long-term integrative process with the ultimate aim of creating a Southeast Asian community, as already briefly mentioned, is a case in point. The agreement envisions the establishment of an integrated economic, security, and sociocultural community by the year 2020 (ASEAN 2003). As anywhere else in the world, visions are an important contribution to the cohesion and prosperity of a region. Europe would never have achieved its current level of economic and political integration without its great visions, which sounded utopian to many in the 1950s and 1960s. At the end of the day, however, any scenario for the future has to pass a reality check. If visions are simply repeated and do not result in any specific steps toward their implementation, the whole process and the actors behind it will lose credibility. The Bali Concord II seems to be a confirmation of the rule rather than an exception from it. There is a real danger that well-sounding visions have created long-term expectations that the region’s governments will find difficult if not impossible to fulfill. Projects of the magnitude of a Southeast Asian community, the proposed ASEAN-China free trade area, and even the coordinated fight against terrorism and avian flu require some centralized decisionmaking and will sooner or later inevitably touch the issue of supranationality. The latter is out of the question, though, as national governments are not prepared to surrender even the smallest part of national sovereignty, given that independence was achieved only fairly recently and—particularly in the case of Vietnam—after long periods of war, suffering, and sacrifice. However, holding on to the ASEAN way while at the same time trying to sell ASEAN to the world as an organization capable of putting its own house in order is a double-edged sword. In the perception of extraregional actors, such as the United States, the European Union, but also China and Japan, this discrepancy between vision and reality has resulted in a downgrading of ASEAN’s status as a collective actor in international relations.

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A striking example of the observation that ASEAN likes to bark knowing that it cannot bite is the organization’s stance on Burma. Was it a good strategic move for ASEAN to indicate that the group was about to revise its “softly-softly” approach toward Burma and adopt a tougher stance aimed at committing the junta in Rangoon to serious political change, only to abandon this attempt shortly thereafter? Despite mounting international pressure on ASEAN, the summit meeting in Laos in November 2004 ended with a chairman’s statement that made no reference to Burma (ASEAN 2004), despite earlier promises that the members would ask the junta “hard questions” about its stalled plans for democratization. ASEAN’s inability to find an appropriate strategy toward Burma is mainly related to the organization’s strict adherence to the principle of noninterference in the domestic affairs of a member country, which, for the reasons already explained, has remained essentially unchanged despite attempts to reform in recent years. The difference between ASEAN of some twenty years ago and its post–Cold War incarnation is that, while the former tried to achieve modest goals with a modest set of institutions, the latter pretends to be able to realize ambitious aims with basically the same institutional framework. Others, mainly China, have benefited from ASEAN’s declining international status and credibility as an organization. If ASEAN’s approach to regional order management is out-of-date, would a wider scheme of regional cooperation comprising East Asia’s main powers, China and Japan, potentially be more effective and efficient? And equally important: Are China and Japan gradually taking over ASEAN’s traditional role as the architect and driving force of regionalism?

The Emergence of East Asian Regionalism

It would of course be too simplistic a view to reduce the so-called rise of China (Ryosei and Jisi 2004) to ASEAN’s weaknesses. Most important, and unrelated to ASEAN’s performance, “China’s ‘soft power’ has risen substantially in Southeast Asia, which in turn has boosted Beijing’s clout, influence and standing in ASEAN countries” (Teo Chu Cheow 2004, p. 61). At the same time, ASEAN’s struggle to play a prominent international role has both invited and enabled China to take the lead on new diplomatic initiatives. Lower-ranking ASEAN diplomats have begun to turn to Chinese colleagues for guidance during international meetings. A senior diplomat commented after a recent meeting between Chinese and ASEAN senior officials: “I was struck by how naturally, even at the working level, the other Asians looked to China and how naturally China played that role” (quoted

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in Cody 2005, p. A1). Until the late 1990s, Chinese diplomats were viewed as outsiders by their Southeast Asian counterparts. In even more telling ways, Beijing has prominently put its mark on the first East Asian summit, of December 2005, which enhanced China’s role as first among equals. From a neorealist perspective it seems that China has already started to act like a traditional big power, proactively if not aggressively drawing up its own blueprints for regional order and pulling smaller neighbors along in its wake. The ASEAN states have positively responded to this strategy by jumping on the Chinese bandwagon. The East Asian summit in Kuala Lumpur was attended by the ten ASEAN members, China, Japan, South Korea, India, New Zealand, and Australia. Japan’s suggestion that Washington at least be invited as an observer made no headway, mainly as the result of Beijing’s effort to exclude the United States. Behind ASEAN’s closed doors, especially Indonesia and Vietnam were critical of Washington’s exclusion (Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition, 4 August 2005). Officially, the Chinese government has emphasized time and again that it had no intention of challenging the US or Japanese role in the Asia Pacific. Reality tells a different story, though. As the result of Washington’s preoccupation with Iraq and the global war on terror, China has increasingly managed to assert its preeminence particularly vis-à-vis Southeast Asia. According to Abdul Razak Baginda of the Malaysian Strategic Research Center, “there is now this feeling that we have to consult the Chinese. We have to accept some degree of Chinese leadership, particularly in light of the lack of leadership elsewhere” (quoted in Cody 2005, p. A1). The proposed ASEAN-China free trade area is another example of China’s growing leverage in international relations. At the November 2002 ASEAN summit, the leaders of ASEAN and China agreed to enhance economic cooperation and integration, with the goal of establishing a free trade area by 2010 for the old ASEAN members and by 2015 for the new ones—a potential market of 1.7 billion people with an annual output of $US2 trillion (Kruger and Hiebert 2002, p. 24; for a collection of comprehensive analyses, see Saw 2005). While it will be a painful process for both sides to agree on the concrete terms of how to achieve the ambitious goal of an FTA due to the competitive structure of China’s and ASEAN’s external trade structures, as senior officials involved in the negotiations between ASEAN and China admit,14 the general political value of the project is obvious. Following China’s admission into the WTO, the proposed FTA has further contributed to the enhancement of Beijing as a regional power—not only in relation to the United States but also at the expense of Japan. Tokyo reacted with alarm to the plan, and subsequently entered into talks on a Japan-ASEAN free trade area within the framework of the so-called Japan–ASEAN Comprehensive

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Economic Partnership. “The Japanese government has issued pledges to found future East Asian cooperation on a Japan–ASEAN axis, in a direct challenge to China’s own overtures to the region” (Gilson 2004, p. 84; see also Japan Center for International Exchange 2003). The idea of a Japandriven “East Asian community,” using the ASEAN Plus Three dialogue forum as its springboard, has recently emerged as a new cornerstone of Japanese foreign policy and the country’s regional role. According to Japan’s official foreign policy rhetoric: “A significant step forward was an official proclamation of the East Asian Community as a goal to be pursued in the declaration that followed the summit meeting of Japan and the 10 ASEAN members held in Tokyo in December [2003]. It marked the first time that all of the ASEAN leaders met outside the region. The declaration put the Community’s creation on an official agenda for the region” (Foreign Press Center, 19 July 2004). Until the mid-1990s, it was common for Japanese foreign policy makers to accept and support ASEAN’s leadership in regional affairs, because an overt Japanese leadership role in the region did not seem to be appropriate and acceptable to most other actors, due to Japan’s past and the legacy of the “Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.” Probably for the first time since World War II, Japan has embarked on a strategy of explicit regional leadership and is keen to establish a multilateral framework that is more exclusively East Asian than anything else proposed so far. If the “community” were to materialize, it might provide a suitable forum for China and Japan to put aside their differences and return to the course of peace and reconciliation. At the same time, there are major problems and challenges involved in building an East Asian community, because it would, first, overlap with the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation and other regional organizations such as the soft security–oriented ASEAN Regional Forum, for example. There is a certain danger that the “community” would just further contribute to the proliferation of regional informal dialogue mechanisms without adding much value to regional steering capabilities. The APT and the East Asian summit are based on the same model of informal consensus-driven intergovernmental consultation that ASEAN is based on, and efficient decisionmaking is further complicated by an even higher degree of diversity. A second hurdle is the openly articulated US criticism of any attempts to establish an exclusive East Asian bloc without the participation of the US government. At the same time, US perceptions and interpretations that a possible East Asian community would be “much like the European Union” (Washington Post, 15 April 2005), seem to be farfetched and do not match the reality of the informal and nonlegalistic approach to regionalism in East Asia.

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ASEAN Plus Three and the East Asian summit are rooted in former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad’s idea of an East Asian economic group. In December 1990, on the eve of the (temporary) failure of GATT negotiations, Mahathir proposed the establishment of an economic bloc including Southeast and Northeast Asia (with China, Japan, and ASEAN as centers) and excluding external powers such as the United States and Australia. Not only was the idea a reaction to the frustrating events within GATT, but it was also stimulated by Japan’s massive foreign investment within the region. Mahathir, who had since the early 1980s been openly pro-Japanese, was looking for a way to channel an even larger share of Japanese outbound capital and technology know-how to aid ASEAN’s industrial development (Korhonen 1998, p. 178). This proposal of an East Asian economic group was problematic from the very beginning. Not only did the United States, Australia, and Japan strongly object to the proposal, but it also attracted negative reactions from several ASEAN nations (Yamakage 1995, p. 123). Comments from Jakarta were especially harsh, partly because the Indonesian government had not been consulted by Mahathir beforehand. In a newspaper comment, Hadi Soesastro, executive director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta, wrote: “the proposal is too reactive, anti-American, not realistic and even dangerous” (1991). To ease the tension, Malaysian government officials and also academics tried their best to downgrade the concept. Noordin Sopiee, head of Malaysia’s leading foreign policy think tank, the Institute for Strategic and International Studies, who was said to be closely connected to the idea’s evolution, explained: “It is not a bloc, a trading bloc. It is intended to start off as a low-level economic alliance, a pressure group, something like the Cairns group, that can act as a megaphone to magnify our voices in the current Uruguay round, and in future arenas of multilateral economic diplomacy” (quoted in New Straits Times, 19 January 1991, p. 10). The idea of an East Asian economic group was later diluted and continuously deliberated within ASEAN as an East Asian “economic caucus.” One of the problems with the proposal had been the absence of a clear blueprint. The whole issue remained vague and highly politicized, culminating in 1993 when Mahathir refused to attend the APEC summit in Seattle. However, in 1997 the vision materialized—at least partially—shortly after the onset of the Asian economic crisis, when the ASEAN countries and China, Korea, and Japan started to pursue regionalist efforts, namely the launch of the ASEAN Plus Three process.15 With Japan’s participation, the APT was the first major East Asian endeavor to establish regionwide economic integration without the direct participation of the United States.

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The APT takes place annually, involves the member states’ heads of government with frequent meetings of ministers and senior officials in between summits, and addresses economic and security issues of regional importance, such as closer trade and investment relations, transnational crime, and terrorism. The feasibility of the gradual formation of an East Asia free trade area is currently being studied. Some believe that ASEAN Plus Three is a step closer toward a loose East Asian alliance. However, as Matsuo Watanabe has cautioned, “the success of the integration process . . . depends on how the countries solve multiple issues, such as diverse expectations of economic integration among the members, the drifting course of US policies toward East Asia and an emerging contest for regional leadership between Japan and China” (2004, p. 1). Byung-Joon Ahn adds that “nationalism is also rising and constraining East Asian countries from forming a state-driven regional community” (2004, p. 18). It is therefore surprising that monetary cooperation, one of the technically and politically most complex issues in international economic relations, ranks high on the agenda of East Asian regionalism. The most visible step toward financial cooperation has been the emergence of overlapping bilateral currency-swapping agreements in East Asia under the umbrella of the APT. In May 2000, at their meeting in Chiang Mai, Thailand, the APT finance ministers agreed to establish a network of bilateral swapping deals among the five core ASEAN members (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Singapore) and the three Northeast Asian APT members (China, Japan, and South Korea). The Chiang Mai Initiative (CMI) has widely been praised as an important first step toward creating a system of common currency pegs and, in the long run, even an East Asian monetary fund or a common Asian currency. The series of bilateral currency-swapping agreements build on the expanded US$1 billion ASEAN swapping arrangement, involving standby foreign exchange facilities, which was originally established in 1994. The swapping pacts make foreign exchange reserves available at short notice to a country facing short-term international payment problems and whose currency is under speculative attack, in a bid to avert a financial crisis similar to the 1997–1998 meltdown triggered by the sharp devaluation of the Thai baht. However, the disbursement of funds will be tied to IMF-determined conditions, with the exception of emergency situations, in which the first 10 percent of the swapping line is exempt (Dieter and Higgott 2002, p. 26). The role of China and Japan is central to the workability of the regional swapping system, as the two countries are the world’s two biggest holders of external reserves. Furthermore, the launch of an Asian bond fund by eleven regional economies, including Japan, China, and the five strongest

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ASEAN economies, seems to indicate that monetary integration has gone beyond simple political rhetoric. Some believe that the growing network of financial cooperation will eventually evolve into a formal Asian monetary fund, which would help to avoid a repetition of a major financial crisis in the region. The idea to create an Asian monetary fund is not new. It first emerged in the wake of the 1997–1998 crisis, and was most prominently promoted by Japan (Dieter 2001). The initiative, which was strongly supported by ASEAN, eventually crumbled in the face of United States, Chinese, and European opposition in late 1997 (Hook et al. 2002). Furthermore, Washington, favoring a strengthening of the existing system of global monetary multilateralism as represented by the IMF and the World Bank, effectively blocked any debate related to such a fund. The US government was particularly concerned that an Asian monetary fund would provide loans to the region at a softer level of conditionality and thus undermine the IMF’s austerity programs. Washington also viewed the initiative as an attempt to weaken US preeminence in the Asia Pacific while at the same time contributing to the emergence of Japan as a regional leader. The APT was nevertheless able to revive the idea and develop visions for an exclusive East Asian monetary regionalism. Even scenarios for a common currency in the form of an East Asia yen bloc (Madden and Savage 2000) are already being debated. How realistic is the materialization of such a scenario? It is a certain irony that, in East Asia, where in 1997 the de facto pegging to the US dollar came to an end for several countries, pegging to a common currency or basket of currencies is being debated as a means to financial stability and as a preventive measure against future financial crises (Chow and Kim 2003, p. 332). Due to the inherent asymmetry of trade between Japan and other high-performing East Asian economies (South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong), the optimal weight assigned to the yen in a currency basket would be high for these economies. Conversely, for those countries whose trade structure is complementary to that of Japan (China), the weight assigned to the yen would be relatively low (Kwan 2001). In addition, Japan’s latent banking and debt crisis casts a shadow over the suitability of the yen as a vehicle for wider Asian monetary integration. Moreover, Japan’s imperial legacy is still a stumbling block for the formal institutionalization of a yen zone (Hook 2002, pp. 20–21). At the same time, and quite surprisingly, the Chinese renminbi is growing in use as a hard currency outside China, despite not being fully convertible. The renminbi is said to already be in wide circulation in the countries favored by Chinese tourists in Southeast Asia, especially Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand. There is also indication that it has been established as the principal trading currency in

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northern Laos and northern Burma and is being widely used for business in Cambodia and Vietnam. The rise of the renminbi is the result of the rapid growth of China’s economy and increasing intraregional trade volumes, as well as the result of Beijing’s recent attempts to strengthen and deepen economic ties with its East Asian neighbors, most notably in the form of the proposed ASEAN-China free trade area. China’s growing integration into the world economy and particularly WTO membership further point in the direction of a stronger renminbi and its possible future role as a reserve currency. However, whether the renminbi will gradually emerge as a regional currency floating against the dollar, euro, and yen, is highly speculative. Regardless of how popular the discourse on monetary cooperation has become, the stark reality is that any regional integration of financial institutions would come at a high political cost and require demanding preconditions that not even the West European states could satisfy until very recently. Deeper monetary regionalisms would inevitably result in the partial surrender of national sovereignty in a very painful area, as the European experience shows. It cannot be stressed often enough that the vast majority of political leaders in the region, particularly in the ASEAN states and China, have been extremely reluctant to accept any proposal for regional cooperation that may infringe on their national sovereignty and independence (Eichengreen 2003). The idea that economic integration can have different starting points, to the effect that the process in East Asia may be primarily driven by monetary cooperation whereas early European integration was built on the pillars of coal and steel, is not sustained by empirical evidence. In the best-case scenario, monetary integration follows free trade and an integrated regional market, but there has never been a case of economic regionalism progressing along the exact opposite sequence. It is therefore highly unlikely that East Asia will be able to put the carriage in front of the horse.

Interregionalism

This chapter has so far addressed attempts at community building in intraAsian relations, the indigenous forces of regionalism in Southeast Asia and the wider East Asian area. In addition to a broad range of internal dynamics, processes of regional cooperation and more specifically regional identity building are almost always also influenced by the “actions and attitudes of states external to the system” (Gilson and Yeo 2004, p. 28) as well as international structures. In sum, these so-called external federators “are actors or situations which provoke regionalist reactions and/or pursuits of

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cultural or situational identities via assistance, pressure, or simply by their mere existence. The Soviet Union and the USA contributed in a substantial way to the formation of an integrated Europe, and Washington was a principal external federator in nearly all efforts of Latin American integration” (Mols 2004b, p. 61). External stimuli do not have to be of a direct and explicit nature but can also include distant events and developments that at first glance do not seem to bear much importance for other regions. For example, as discussed above, “many [in Asia] believed that the euro as a symbol of EU’s success story of integration would have a stimulating effect on their own regional cooperation” (Xu 2004, p. 119). Interregionalism plays an important role as an external federator because it “explicitly sets one region in a dialogue (or potentially a conflict) with an ‘other.’ . . . As one bounded entity comes into contact with another, a pool of recognition and knowledge comes into being at the level where the interaction occurs, with the result that, for example, ‘Europe’ and ‘Asia’ come to recognize each other as such in particular forms (the EU and the ‘Asian Ten’)” (Gilson and Yeo 2004, pp. 27–28). César Yepes (2004, p. 23) sees interregionalism as key in constructing an East Asian community. The phenomenon of interregionalism, understood here as a process through which patterns of relations between geographical regions are institutionalized (Sanchez Bajo 1999, p. 927), as a core element of the post–Cold War debate on regionalism, has attracted growing interest both within international relations as well as the area studies communities. Interregionalisms are very often marked by certain common characteristics such as “soft” institutional structures and processes, which in turn are marked by informality, consensus orientation, and pragmatism; a second common feature is the somewhat controlled shift of contentious issues from the official level (track one) to the nongovernmental level (track two) in order to discuss them noncontroversially and to avoid a political stalemate among the parties. Taking into consideration all existing interregional arrangements,16 it becomes obvious that they differ with regard to membership, the degree of institutionalization, and the policy areas covered by the arrangement. Interregionalism emerges as a response to specific configurations and the increasing complexity of the international system. Hence, in light of the current erosion process of nation-states’ steering mechanisms in the era of globalization, interregionalism appears to offer state actors new action corridors and a tool to explore and to regain (lost) political steering competencies. According to Hanns Maull, this allows states to pursue the following three objectives: (1) accumulation of wealth through intensified trade and investment relations as well as through deepened forms of transnational division of labor; (2) cooperative management

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of general problems of interdependence (rule-setting, regime creation, crisis prevention) and of specific conflicts of interdependence (tariff- and nontariff barriers, dumping); and (3) strengthening of the major industrialized region’s bargaining power with regard to the definition of the rules of the international economic system (2000, p. 149). Consequently, interregionalism serves as a political vehicle for the deepening of interdependence, the mutual increase of material and nonmaterial resources, and the resolution of conflicts through the use of accompanying measures and additional cooperation between governmental and nongovernmental actors. It performs certain balancing functions, and contributes to multilateral institution and identity building in international relations (Rüland 2001a; Maull and Tanaka 1997; Gilson and Yeo 2004; Doidge 2004). In view of global order structures, the means displayed by the parties are mainly dialogue and consensus building, which, as some argue, can also be seen as sophisticated forms of “checks and balances” (Maull 2000, p. 150). All these objectives can be identified in relations between Southeast Asia and Europe, particularly with regard to transregional relations and more specifically the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), which comprises thirty-eight European and Asian states, including all EU and ASEAN member states plus Japan, China, and South Korea, as well as the European Commission. In the mid-1990s, ASEM was the joint European–East Asian answer to the ongoing process of transpacific cooperation as materialized in APEC and other organizations. ASEM came into existence with the aim of closing or at least narrowing the institutional gap between Europe and Asia by providing the long missing “third link” of the post–Cold War triangular world order. An early Asian position paper,17 which was circulated among senior officials in 1995, clearly outlined this rationale for ASEM. “North America is linked to Europe through the rich network of Trans-Atlantic institutions. East and North America are linked by APEC and other pacific Basin networks. What is palpably absent is a strong high-level EuropeAsia link. This missing link needs to be bridged. Global prosperity is more likely to be assured if the triangular relationship between North America, Europe and East Asia is strong and balanced on all three sides” (quoted in Pareira 2003, p. 7). Although not explicitly stated, for both European and Asian actors the main motivation for ASEM’s formation was a perceived need to balance the preeminent if not hegemonic position and role of the United States in the Asia Pacific region. And related, “ASEM also acts as a corrective against the perceived dominance that ‘the West’ equals the United States in international relations” (Reiterer 2004, p. 14). As elsewhere in the world after the end of the Cold War, public discussion in Europe focused on whether the so-called New World Order would be

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dominated by the United States or would develop into a multipolar system with the United States, East Asia, and the European Union as its principal centers. In 1992, when ASEAN announced the gradual implementation of a Southeast Asian free trade area, and in 1994, when the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation embarked on plans for free trade in the Asia Pacific, AFTA and APEC loomed large as emerging trading blocs and direct competitors of the European Common Market. Although it soon became clear that economic cooperation in the Asia Pacific region will not lead in the foreseeable future to a level of integration comparable to Europe’s, many European governments worried that a “Pacific century” could leave the European Union as the odd man out in the new international order. As a result of this perception, both the EU and individual member states embarked on a process of strengthening their relations with East Asia, with the establishment of ASEM in 1996 as the most visible and important achievement. About 2.3 billion people live in ASEM countries, accounting for 37 percent of the world population. Their aggregate GDP in 2002 was US$14,849 billion, equal to 46 percent of world GDP. Their combined value of trade in goods was US$2,718 billion, or 43 percent of the world trade (Eurostat data). Singapore was ASEM’s main initiator (strongly supported by France), and Thailand the first host. The first meeting was held in Bangkok in March 1996, followed by summits in London (1998), Seoul (2000), Copenhagen (2002), and Hanoi (2004). While the agenda was first dominated by trade issues, the Seoul summit and subsequent meetings within the ASEM framework embarked on cooperation in a wide range of security issues, including aspects of socalled soft (nontraditional) security such as human rights, environmental issues, migration, transnational crime, trafficking of persons, and international terrorism, to mention only a few (Umbach 2004). The ASEM process has also generated increased transnational cooperation among nongovernmental organizations and other societal players in Europe and Asia, most prominently the Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF). Since its foundation in 1997, the Singapore-based ASEF has significantly contributed to a better mutual understanding between Asia and Europe through greater intellectual, cultural, and people-to-people exchanges, at least if one adopts a social constructivist viewpoint. Overall, the lifting of former taboos in European-Asian relations, such as an interregional discourse on human rights and both hard and nontraditional security, is probably ASEM’s most valuable achievement. The Hanoi summit of October 2004 underlined the importance of the security agenda. Delegates discussed the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and urged a new round of talks between the two Koreas, China, Japan,

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Russia, and the United States. Terrorism was also prominently addressed, with the United States the apparent target of a call for remedial efforts to be “conducted in accordance with the principles enshrined in the UN Charter” (ASEM 2004a). However, while Europe claims to have legitimate reasons to become involved in the security of Southeast Asia, the EU’s security interests and strategies toward the region differ significantly from those of the United States as the preeminent external power in the region, for four reasons. First and most important, contrary to the role of the United States as the preeminent military power, balancer, and broker in the Asia Pacific, Europeans have never returned as significant military actors to the region since the end of the colonial empires in the long aftermath of World War II and the British decision to the withdraw its troops east of Suez (1968). Attempts to establish military relations with East Asian states, such as the “five-power defense arrangements” of 1971, grouping Great Britain, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand, have failed as military pacts. However, the defense arrangements continue to provide a framework for joint exercises and consultations on security matters. Additionally, neither the EU nor respective member states (with the partial exception of Great Britain and France, which regularly hold joint maneuvers with some of the region’s armed forces to boost arms sales) have direct security interests in the region other than the general aim to contribute to stability and a peaceful regional order. Second, unlike in the field of economic policies, EU members have not yet surrendered their sovereignty in the area of foreign relations. Although the EU Troika and the European Commission act on behalf of the whole union on the international stage, the respective member states still cling to their autonomy in foreign affairs. Every EU standpoint communicated to the external world reflects a compromise reached in a constant, never-ending process of interest harmonization among twenty-five ministries of foreign affairs, often including other departments and the offices of prime ministers and presidents, too. Third and closely related, given the diversity of national interests within the EU and historical patterns of relations between the respective member states and East Asia, European governments tend to follow their own national agendas first before adopting or sponsoring joint policies. Traditionally, the former colonial powers Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, and to some extent Portugal (on the East Timor issue for many years) have been more active in outlining and shaping EuropeanAsian relations than other EU members, but were joined by a proactive German government in the 1990s. Furthermore, over the past few years

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some EU member states, particularly Denmark, the UK, the Netherlands, and Sweden, have put strong emphasis on human rights in their respective foreign policies, especially in relations with China and Burma, while others have favored a trade-first policy. Fourth, compared with the United States, public opinion and societal interests have a significantly lesser impact on Europe’s relations with East Asia. This is not only because of smaller and less well-organized ethnic Asian communities, but also due to the limited role of the legislature in the foreign policy arena. Historically and different to Anglo-American political thought, in most European nations the primacy of the executive in foreign policy making is taken for granted. In general, constitutions do not provide for an active part of the legislature, nor have many parliaments taken the initiative to exert substantial influence over the shaping of foreign relations. The case of the European Parliament is slightly different though. Although usually more active than national legislative bodies, as frequent resolutions on Europe’s political and economic relations with the region demonstrate, the European Parliament lacks the formal power to play an important role within the framework of the common foreign and security policy. Given these four structural framework conditions and particularly the fact that the EU “is still sorting out a common foreign and security policy, and the Asians are still hesitant about institutionalizing their inter-state cooperation” (Yeo 2003, p. 122), the scope for Europe and Asia to act in concert is very limited. It seems unlikely that ASEM or indeed the overall structure of European-Asian relations was ever designed to balance US preeminence, despite occasional attempts to do so. ASEM’s current antiterrorism agenda is a case in point. China, which has more and more established itself as an informal leader among the Asian participants,18 was keen to organize a European-Asian meeting on terrorism before the ASEM Copenhagen summit, to balance the global opinion-leadership of the United States on the issue of antiterrorism.19 Although the European side rejected the idea of a special meeting and put the discussion off until the summit, the case confirms Jürgen Rüland’s earlier assessment that “Asians, for their part, have sought to balance what they perceived as an increasingly dominant role of the US in Pacific Asia” (2001a, p. 62). However, one has to keep in mind that ASEM’s organizational structure consists of economic, political, and cultural/intellectual pillars, but it has not yet established a security pillar. As in the case of ASEAN, ASEAN Plus Three, the East Asian summit, and indeed the entire structure of multilateralism in the Asia Pacific, soft rules dominate ASEM. The forum subscribes to a nonlegalistic approach to cooperation on the basis of voluntary membership (which means that each

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actor keeps an exit option), nonbinding decisionmaking, conventions and informal networks (rather than formal contracts or treaties), a loose organizational structure, and above all, strict adherence to consensus building, which regularly means agreement dictated by the lowest common denominator. Rather than assuming a balancing function, it seems more accurate to describe ASEM as a framework to break the US monopoly on global governance following the realization that “foreign policy debates, both in Europe and East Asia, continue more often to follow US initiatives rather than lead them, US national security strategies and the publications of US think tanks and universities set the context to which our governments respond” (Wallace and Young 2004, p. 19). At the same time, while the ASEM-centered security dialogue focuses on nontraditional security with a particular emphasis on human rights, democracy, human security, environmental security, and the socioeconomic conditions for development, and thus does not challenge US military security interests in the region, the presence of hard strategic thinking in other policy areas can hardly be denied. A report by the Council for Asia-Europe Cooperation, for example, suggests that “Asia and Europe should cooperate to resist tendencies toward a US-centered system of trade bilateralism that inherently undermines the prospect for a successful Doha Round” (Kaiser 2004, p. 12). If US trade bilateralism were indeed a challenge for Europe, this would be particularly the case in Southeast Asia and the wider Asia Pacific area. Throughout the Cold War and maybe even more so during the heydays of the “East Asian miracle,” Southeast Asia enjoyed the full attention of the United States as one of the most important regions in both geostrategic and geoeconomic terms. The Asian economic crisis, however, shattered Southeast Asia’s image as an economic powerhouse and a prime destination for investment. Subsequently, ASEAN lost its prominent position on the chessboard of Washington’s foreign policy, including foreign economic policy. However, the events of 11 September 2001 and the war on terror have reversed US perceptions of Southeast Asia, and ASEAN has regained its previously lost strategic importance and priority. From a US perspective, Southeast Asia plays a critical role in helping strengthen the US economy. In 2002, two-way trade between the US and ASEAN totaled US$120 billion, with US exports to the ASEAN region reaching US$44 billion. The new emphasis on relations with Southeast Asia has been highlighted by agreement on a US-Singapore free trade area, which is likely to serve as the blueprint for other possible FTAs in Southeast Asia under US president George W. Bush’s Enterprise for ASEAN Initiative (EAI). US exports to ASEAN are more than twice as large as US exports to China. ASEAN is the fifth largest US export market, behind Canada, the

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European Union, Mexico, and Japan. As for overall US trade, Malaysia and Singapore are more important than Brazil or the Netherlands. Together with Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia are among the top twenty-five trading partners of the United States. At the same time, the US trade deficit with the ASEAN countries has grown, from US$22.7 billion in 1996 to US$36.4 billion in 2002, now standing at about half of the US trade deficit with Japan. Trade with Malaysia and Thailand accounted for about 65 percent of Washington’s negative trade balance with Southeast Asia in 2002. In 2003, US direct investment in the five major ASEAN markets reached more than US$50 billion, which is five times US direct investment in China and comparable to US investment in Japan.20 The United States is by far the largest overall investor in Southeast Asia, followed by Japan and the United Kingdom. Undoubtedly, growing economic interests toward Southeast Asia and the region’s strategic importance in the US-led fight against terrorism are two sides of the same coin, as discussed in Chapter 3. US president George W. Bush unveiled the Enterprise for ASEAN Initiative at the APEC summit meeting in Mexico almost immediately after the Bali bomb attack of 12 October 2002. Modeled on the successful Enterprise for America Initiative, which was launched by former president George H. W. Bush in 1990, the EIA is a vision for a web of bilateral FTAs linking the United States to the region. Under the EAI, the United States and individual ASEAN countries will jointly determine if and when they are ready to launch FTA negotiations. The EAI allows ASEAN countries the flexibility to move at their own speed toward an FTA with the United States. A precondition for any negotiations, though, is WTO membership and the conclusion of a trade and investment framework agreement (TIFA) with the United States (US Department of State 2002a). TIFAs have been signed with Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand. Four main reasons seem to explain the sudden US interest in bilateral FTAs with ASEAN countries and the EAI in general: 1. The US administration hopes that the US-Singapore free trade area and the EAI will provide incentives for US investors to increase their presence in Southeast Asia, despite the perceived threat of terrorism. 2. As Vietnam, Laos, and Burma are not (yet) members of the WTO, the United States is reluctant to even consider the possibility of a free trade area with ASEAN. Furthermore, ASEAN’s voluntary nature, coupled with the strict “ASEAN way” of consensus building, informality, and noninterference, would make any negotiations an extremely difficult and open-ended endeavor. Hence,

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bilateral agreements are perceived as the easier and more effective alternative. 3. The EAI promises states such as Indonesia, which still suffers from the effects of the Asian economic crisis, increased access to the lucrative US market in exchange for economic reform. The prospect of an FTA with the United States could speed up domestic reform, particularly in Indonesia, enhance stability, and thereby increase opportunities for US investment. 4. The EAI does not only aim to expand US trade ties with the region, but is also seen as a way to maintain a US presence in Southeast Asia and to enhance US security interests. In sum, the FTA with Singapore has been called a step to anchor the United States in Southeast Asia “in terms of business, economics and security” (US-ASEAN Business Council 2003, emphasis added). European analysts are not completely wrong when they see regional multilateralism as the victim of bilateral FTAs. The first half of the 1990s were the golden days of the “Pacific dream,” when the terms “future,” “prosperity,” and “Asia Pacific” became almost synonymous. No actor, certainly not the United States, wanted to lose out on the “coming Pacific century.” The sheer volume of Asia Pacific commerce animated US dreams of a Pacific community. Consequently the United States supported APEC as a cornerstone of the Clinton administration’s policy goal to sustain economic dynamism in the region (Dosch 2002). Back then, the Office of the US Trade Representative identified APEC as the regional centerpiece to US efforts to open markets and expand trade (Barshefsky 1995). This enthusiasm has long since disappeared. Although APEC is still alive and useful for many members, especially smaller economies, it has proven to be too huge and diverse an organization to effectively work toward the goal of regional free trade, particularly from a US perspective. The concept of a network of bilateral FTAs has emerged as the more promising and rewarding strategy, and seems to have passed the point of no return. At first glance, the EU and ASEM have responded to this alteration of international trade structures in the Asia Pacific. In 2003 the European Commission proposed a transregional EUASEAN trade initiative as a new enterprise for economic cooperation on a region-to-region basis involving dialogue and joint activities in areas of mutual economic interest (European Union 2003). The goal is to establish a foundation supporting dialogue and regulatory cooperation on various trade facilitation, market access, and investment issues between the two regions in order to expand trade and investment flows. The initiative’s frame-

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work could lead to an ASEAN-EU preferential trading agreement in the future. The “Hanoi Declaration on Closer Asia-Europe Partnership” (ASEM 2004b), which was signed at the ASEM summit in Hanoi in 2004, can be seen as a first step toward the achievement of this goal, as it sets out directions and measures for strengthening ASEM economic cooperation. An interregional free trade area, however, is not on the agenda. ASEM leaders did not take up the recommendations of an expert group to set 2025 as the target for a Europe-Asia FTA (Stokhof and van der Velde 2001). While not only the United States but also Japan, China, India, Australia, and New Zealand, among others, have embarked on negotiating free trade agreements with East and Southeast Asian states and ASEAN as a group, the EU is now the only major player that has not jumped on the FTA bandwagon. At first glance, the high volume of trade among ASEM members seems to underpin the potential of free trade initiatives. EU trade with East and Southeast Asian countries (meaning, trade with Asian ASEM countries) has grown significantly since 1980. EU imports from the region increased from 27 billion euros in 1980 to 245 billion euros in 2003, while exports to the region grew from 14 billion euros to 134 billion euros over the same period. In 1980, imports from East and Southeast Asia accounted for 9.7 percent of total EU imports; in 2003, the figure was 24.7 percent. EU exports to the region as a percentage of total EU exports increased from 6.8 percent in 1980 to 13.8 percent in 2003. On balance, trade between the EU and ASEAN roughly equals trade between the United States and ASEAN. At the same time, the EU’s trade deficit with the Asian ASEM countries has also grown massively, from 13 billion euros in 1980 to 110 billion euros in 2003.21 Hence, at least in the short term, Asia would benefit more from an FTA than would Europe. This partly explains the EU’s cautious approach toward economic integration in relations with Asia. However, even if trade were more balanced, ASEM does not seem to provide a suitable framework for free trade negotiations, due to the forum’s extremely diverse membership structure. For example, Singapore’s GDP per capita (US$24,000) is sixteen times higher than Cambodia’s (US$1,500). In comparison, within the old EU-15 the GDP per capita of the richest member was only 2.4 times higher than that of the poorest. Since the European Union’s enlargement to twenty-five member states, the factor has only increased to 4.6.22 In addition to the significant economic development gap, the presence of different political regimes, ranging from Western-style and consolidating democracies to semiauthoritarian regimes and military dictatorships (in the case of Burma) on the Asian side, is a stumbling block to interest harmonization and policy coordination within ASEM.

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The issue of Burma’s membership in ASEM has been the highest hurdle for the deepening of European-Asian relations. The entire ASEM process had been under threat for several months prior to the fifth ASEM summit in 2004, when a compromise on the participation of Burma seemed to be out of reach. In the past, the summit had been attended by the EU’s fifteen original members, ASEAN’s six old members, as well as China, Japan, and South Korea. While the European side wanted the ten new EU member states to join ASEM, ASEAN insisted on including its three newest members, Burma, Cambodia, and Laos. However, the EU demanded that Burma be left out, because of the current Burmese government’s antidemocratic record and continued house arrest of prodemocracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. The EU has imposed a travel ban on the country’s military and frozen its financial assets in Europe. ASEAN made it clear that it was prepared to veto the accession of the new EU member states to ASEM if Burma’s participation were rejected by the EU. In August 2004 both sides finally agreed on a compromise. Burma was allowed to join ASEM along with Cambodia, Laos, and the ten new EU member states. However, to be admitted into the forum, the EU set the condition “that the participation of the Burmese government at the ASEM Summit will be lower than at Head of State/Government level” (European Union 2004). Eventually, Tim Win, a minister to the Burmese prime minister’s office, attended the meeting. The compromise was a clear victory for ASEAN and particularly Burma. An editorial in the Bangkok Post suggested, “undeservedly, Burma is probably the biggest winner. Without lifting a finger—while other Asians and Europeans fretted over its record and eligibility—it has been inducted into another respectable club, seven years after joining the Association of Southeast Asian Nations” (12 October 2004). Burma is not the only obstacle for closer cooperation between Europe and Asia. The main challenge lies in the informality of the forum. All ASEM agreements are soft law, or nontreaty, agreements—for example, they are not legally binding on the parties involved but rather outline areas of common interest or specify the general approach to cooperation and the issues involved. These multilateral nontreaty agreements can be considered an important contribution to the strengthening of European-Asian relations, but they have no legal implications. ASEM faces a dilemma. While this informal approach to cooperation suits many of its members well, as it provides a framework for open discussion without committing the participating governments, without a higher degree of institutionalization the forum’s ambitious goals as outlined in Hanoi do not seem to be achievable. These aims include strengthening relations in the areas of trade, invest-

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ment and financial relations, information technology, transport, energy, tourism, and small and medium-size enterprises. If ASEM is to make “cooperation more practical, and to narrow the development gap between the two regions” (Asia Pulse, 11 October 2004), as demanded by Vietnamese prime minister Phan Van Khai, Asian-European relations are in need of well-planned, long-term, comprehensive programs with concrete deliverables and timetables, and good monitoring, evaluation, and reporting procedures (Stokhof 2002).

Conclusion

While ASEAN has been at the center of many successful diplomatic activities that have undoubtedly contributed to peace and stability in the Asia Pacific by facilitating channels of communication among former adversaries and increasing trust and transparency, one should be realistic about the achievements and value of the recent summit meetings and international agreements. Understandably, Megawati Sukarnoputri, the host of the 2003 Bali summit, was full of praise: “We have just witnessed a watershed in the history of ASEAN. This is the document that will establish an ASEAN community. That will make it possible for our children and their children to live in a state of enduring peace, stability and shared prosperity” (quoted in The Nation, 3 October 2003). Whether this time the dream can be fulfilled remains to be seen. The fact of the matter is that ASEAN’s history is not short on summits and treaties that all seemed to have farreaching international implications and that all were applauded as being historical watersheds. For example: • Zone of Peace, Freedom, and Neutrality Declaration (1971). Envisioned the creation of a Southeast Asia “free from any form or manner of interference by outside Powers”; the treaty has never gained any political significance, and the meaning of “neutrality” in the ASEAN context is still subject to interpretation. • Declaration of ASEAN Concord (1976). Had already formulated the vision of creating a “strong ASEAN community.” • Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia/TAC (1976). Established a regional mechanism for regional conflict resolution. However, the “High Council,” as the courtlike institution is called, has never been deployed, and ASEAN members have preferred to resort to international institutions such as the International Court of Justice in The Hague to deal with disputes.

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• Treaty on the Southeast Asia Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone (1995). A very detailed document without any political value, because none of the ASEAN members possess nuclear weapons and the United States and other nuclear powers have never officially recognized the treaty. • ASEAN Vision 2020 (1997). Had already outlined many of the ideas for an integrated Southeast Asia that can be found in the recent Bali Concord II, including paragraphs such as “we envision the entire Southeast Asia to be, by 2020, an ASEAN community.” However, since 1997 ASEAN has failed to name any concrete steps on how to reach this ambitious goal. • Declaration of the Conduct of the Parties in the South China Sea (2002). Although the agreement may pave the way for a peaceful solution to the dispute over conflicting territorial claims in the South China Sea (the area of the Spratly Islands in particular), it lacks any specific provisions on how to resolve the conflict.23 Although summit meetings and other high-level gatherings in Southeast Asia have generated a lot of international publicity for the region, there is a real danger that well-sounding visions have created long-term expectations that the region’s governments will find it difficult if not impossible to fulfill, due both to the high degree of political, economic, and cultural diversity that still characterizes Southeast Asia and to a lack of institutionalization in intraregional affairs. The pattern of intergovernmental relations in Southeast Asia has not seen much institutional evolution. If we apply John Ruggie’s typology (1998, p. 55) of three levels of institutionalization—the cognitive level (where epistemic communities lie), the level of mutual expectation (as embodied in rules and norms), and the level of formal international organizations—even toward the end of its fourth decade ASEAN has not yet reached the third stage of institutionalization characterized by a hard and binding institutional setting. Cooperation is voluntary, nonhierarchical, and based on soft rather than hard institutions. At the same time, ASEAN has moved closer to “complex interdependence”: (1) the existence of multiple formal and informal channels and networks connecting governments and elites as well as nongovernmental actors and transnational organizations, (2) the existence of adequate, multilevel coordination of holistic policy agendas characterized by fluid boundaries between domestic and foreign issues, and (3) the absence of military force within a region. However, the region has also seen serious conflicts about overlapping territorial claims and illegal migration, due to a deep, long-standing, and historically and psychologically rooted mistrust

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in relations between individual member states, for example Thailand and Burma, Cambodia and Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia, and Singapore and Malaysia. Southeast Asian governments have benefited from the existence of a multilateral cooperation scheme in the region that has enabled individual states to deal more effectively than others with the whole spectrum of global challenges. Unlike most other regions outside Europe, Southeast Asia has successfully managed to often speak with one voice in international affairs as the result of successful regional cooperation centered on ASEAN. In the 1990s, many Southeast Asian governments and individual politicians had great hopes that a network of emerging multilateral forums and organizations in the Asia Pacific modeled on the Southeast Asian experience and, equally important, with ASEAN in the driver’s seat, would gradually replace the often unilateral structure of international relations during the Cold War days. However, despite some significant achievements of multilateral cooperation, the efforts of ASEAN and other organizations have fallen short of expectations and generally put more emphasis on formulating new grand visions of community building instead of seriously working toward the implementation of existing projects. While ASEAN Plus Three, the East Asian summit, and interregional cooperation may offer more effective frameworks to deal with the challenges of stretched, broadened, and deepened political activity than ASEAN, because unlike the latter their membership is extended to China and Japan as the new architects of building regional order, they face the same core problem. The pure existence of multilateral cooperation is, a priori, of no particular value; what matters is the degree of institutionalization. There does not seem to exist a single case of a lowly institutionalized “soft” multilateral arrangement that has effectively put its mark on the management of international relations or regional order. Still, political and public expectations vis-à-vis the steering capabilities of such multilateral organizations are often unrealistically high. The APT and ASEM are cases in point. There is nothing wrong with lowly institutionalized multilateral cooperation, as it provides a valuable framework for communication in international relations, which increases transparency and contributes to the building of trust—no more, no less. The rather problematic aspect is the expectation-achievement gap. Neither ASEAN’s nor the APT’s nor ASEM’s institutional design allows for conflict resolution and the negotiation of binding international treaties. At the end of the day, the problem comes down to the “you cannot have the cake and eat it, too” metaphor. A forum that is characterized by inclusiveness, as far as possible, and egalitarianism of the actors involved, but only based on a vaguely defined set

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of broad norms and values, such as “stability” and “peace,” in the absence of any legally or morally binding rules and procedures, is unlikely to achieve much more than being a “talking shop.”

Notes 1. For this debate, see, for example, Mols 2000, pp. 11–15; Mansfield and Milner 1999; Paasi 1986; Buzan 1998. 2. Some recent stimulating work includes, but is not limited to, Haacke 2003, Low 2004, Narine 2002, Collins 2003, and Caballero-Anthony 2005. 3. All books with “ASEAN,” “European Union,” or “European Community” in the title. Search performed in November 2005. 4. The konfrontasi, or “confrontation,” was Indonesian president Sukarno’s response to the formation of the Federation of Malaysia, comprising Malaya, Sabah, Sarawak, and Singapore. During the confrontation period (1963–1966), coercive diplomacy was employed using military measures, but stopping short of an all-out war (Leifer 2001, p. 95). 5. Author interview, Singapore, July 1993. 6. Author interview, Singapore, March 1993. 7. ASEAN-6 comprises Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. 8. Address to an Asia Society luncheon, Hong Kong, 1 November 2005, quoted in “ASEAN Sees Close Cooperation on Bird Flu, Disaster Relief, Crime,” Voice of America, 1 November 2005. 9. Author interviews, Hanoi, July 2001 and December 2005. 10. Among ASEAN countries, Vietnam has the highest number of items in the “exclusion” and “sensitive” lists. “Given the rather weak competitiveness of the economy and the huge deficit of trade balance with ASEAN, Vietnam is very much concerned about the competitive pressure from CEPT” (Vo 2005, p. 81). 11. For a recent comprehensive analysis, see Caballero-Anthony 2005. 12. Anwar was then deputy prime minister of Malaysia. 13. The troika was to enable the sitting chair to formally consult with his immediate predecessor and successor to tackle specific problems with regional implications. 14. Author interviews, 2003 and 2004. 15. A year earlier, in 1996, when the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) constituted itself, the Asian side was entirely composed of those states that were supposed to form the East Asian economic group. 16. Three broad types of interregionalism can be identified. First, “bilateral” interregionalism (Rüland 2001b), or “relations between regional groupings” (Hänggi 2000, p. 3): relations between international organizations or integrated entities, such as the EU, ASEAN, NAFTA, and Mercosur. Second, “transregionalism” (Rüland 2001b), or “transregional arrangements” (Hänggi 2000, p. 3): “a structural attempt to combine a range of states within a coherent unified framework” (Gilson 2002, p. 3). Cases include the ASEM, APEC, the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership

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(EMP), the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), and the European–Latin American summit of 1999. The main difference between the first and second types is the pattern of membership. While the actors of the first type are regional groupings, the second type in a much broader sense refers to relations between different regions represented by some or all of the nation-states that form the respective regions. The third type of interregionalism is a hybrid form (Hänggi 2000) that describes relations between regional groupings and single states, such as EU cooperation programs with the United States and various other third states. Hybrid interregionalism follows the logic that formal and legally binding treaties and agreements in interregional relations are easier to achieve with individual key states in a given region, as the spectrum of policy interests, agendas, and strategies is less diverse and less heterogeneous than in the case of regional groupings. 17. “The Asia-Europe Meeting: An Asian Discussion Paper.” 18. See Bersick 2004 for a more detailed assessment of China’s role in ASEM and ASEM as a framework for the development of Sino-European relations. 19. Author interviews with two European senior officials who were involved in the preparation of the ASEM summit in 2004. 20. Calculations based on data from the US Census Bureau, http://www.census .gov/foreign-trade/balance/index.html and http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/ statistics/historical/grands.txt. 21. Calculations based on data from the European Commission, http://www. europa.eu.int/comm/trade/issues/bilateral/data.htm, and the European Union, http:// europa.eu.int/comm/external_relations/asia/doc/com03_399_de.pdf. 22. Calculations based on data from Eurostat, http://epp.eurostat.cec.eu.int, and ASEAN Statistics, http://www.aseansec.org/13100.htm. 23. These and other declarations and agreements can be found at the official ASEAN website, http://www.aseansec.org.

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7 Conclusion: The Deepening and Broadening of Political Activity

WHY DID PHILIPPINE PRESIDENT GLORIA MACAPACAL ARROYO DECIDE

to withdraw the country’s troops from Iraq in exchange for Filipino hostage Angelo de la Cruz in 2004, despite immense pressure from the United States and its allies not to give in to the demands of Iraqi militants? Why, on the other hand, did the killing of two Thai soldiers in Karbala in December 2003—the first Thai troops to lose their lives on an overseas battlefield since the Vietnam War—initially not change the overly positive attitude within the country toward the military mission in Iraq? And why have subsequent democratically legitimized governments in Jakarta struggled to revive the golden days of Indonesian diplomacy under President Suharto’s autocratic rule, when the country enjoyed the role and status of a regional leader? The answers to all three questions lie in the domestic sources of foreign policy making. The greater openness and complexity of foreign policy making is due to electoral competition, a prominent role played by parliaments and nonstate actors such as NGOs, greater transparency, and not least, broad access to independent sources of information. In the early 1980s, for example, none of the three governments would have lost much sleep over the interests of domestic actors. Southeast Asia’s small political elite operated within autocratic, or at best semidemocratic, environments and hence were able to follow and implement narrowly defined national interests, which were largely unconstrained and unchallenged by competing political actors, civil society groups, or a critical media. Foreign policy tended to be separated from domestic politics and, within the field of foreign relations and security—understood as hard security or the management of threat to the integrity of the nation—ranked highest on the political agenda. It 203

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would of course be too far-fetched to suggest the existence of domestic and foreign affairs as entirely discrete and completely isolated policy areas. Such a proposition would not only lack any convincing empirical basis but also contradict James Rosenau’s classic findings (1969) on the convergence of national and international systems. Rosenau’s “linkage politics”—the reciprocal relationship between external and internal variables in policymaking—is as old as the international system itself. However, in the case of Southeast Asia, until very recently, these linkages were one-dimensional: external factors had strongly impacted the shaping of national policies, but domestic dynamics did not play any significant role in the making of foreign policy. At the national level, domestic constituencies did not pressure governments to adopt policies they favored, and consequently, governmental actors did not have to seek power by building coalitions among constituencies. A wide-ranging impact on the conduct of foreign affairs stemming from domestic pressure was almost unknown. The presence of two-level games (Putnam 1988), in short the embeddedness of a state’s international behavior in the domestic and transnational social context (Moravcsik 1997), is a relative recent development that is mainly but not exclusively the result of democratization. While a growing impact of domestic actors and structures on foreign affairs is most visible in the democratizing polities of the Philippines (since 1986), Thailand (since 1992), and Indonesia (since 1999), the remaining nondemocratic states of Southeast Asia, namely Vietnam, Laos, and even Burma, are also confronted with two-level-game situations in the conduct of their external relations, although to a much lesser extent. To varying degrees, all Southeast Asian states have been experiencing an ongoing shift from a statist to a pluralist approach to foreign policy making. According to David Skidmore and Valerie Hudson (1993), in the extreme case of a statist model, foreign policy is guided by a narrowly defined and over time very consistent national interest. Given their almost absolute insulated position within the state and its political system, foreign policy decisionmakers can safely ignore societal interests and even opposition. As a result, the conduct of foreign policy is almost free of domestic constraints. In the antipodal pluralist model, the case of a quasi-unlimited, open, and responsive democratic system, foreign policy choices are inevitably linked to their perceived effect on the decisionmaker’s political standing in his or her constituency. In such an environment the vast majority of foreign policy options go along with societal division and political mobilization, either because the material interests of various groups are affected differently—producing both winners and losers—or because foreign policy choices provoke ideological conflict over values and purposes.

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By that, any given policy choice on important international issues will stimulate a range of support and opposition. Chapter 2 has shown that the liberalized policymaking structures in the Philippines, Thailand, and Indonesia have opened up the foreign policy arena and given access to a larger number of actors compared to the days of authoritarian rule, mainly to the benefit of ministries, other government officials, a civilian diplomatic service, and legislatures. The Indonesian legislature is a case in point, to revisit just one core argument. The House of People’s Representatives challenged the first president of the democratic era, Abdurrahman Wahid (1999–2001). For example, Wahid’s inability to give formal recognition to Israel and improve relations with Australia was the result of opposition from the parliament, which in turn was influenced by demonstrations and the interests of civil society organizations. Since 1999, the House of People’s Representatives has established a strong interest in foreign policy issues and put its mark on Indonesia’s relations with the United States, Australia, China, Israel, Palestine, Malaysia, Singapore, Burma, and the newly independent state East Timor. While there has not been any indication yet for a decisive, active foreign policy role for the Thai legislature (the bicameral National Assembly), individual lawmakers, mainly and most prominently Senator Kraisak Choonhavan, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, have been able to develop alternative or even parallel foreign policy approaches in Thailand’s external relations, for example vis-à-vis Burma. Compared with its Indonesian and Thai counterparts, the Philippine legislature is the most powerful of the three in foreign policy making. Modeled on the US example of an intermixture of powers, the 1987 Philippine constitution grants Congress and especially the Senate a substantial share of authority over the foreign policy architecture. As noted in Chapter 2, one of the most decisive involvements of the legislature in foreign affairs took place in September 1991, when the Philippine Senate blocked the renewal of the Military Bases Agreement with the United States, which would have extended the US military presence in the country for another ten years. Members of the Philippine Congress also took the lead in voicing concern over the possibility of the 1999 Visiting Forces Agreement and 2002 Military Logistics and Support Agreement becoming stepping-stones for the eventual establishment of a larger and more permanent US military presence in the Philippines. The domestic impact on foreign policy making was chosen as this book’s starting point because it is one of the most visible empirical examples underpinning the core argument. The move from static to pluralist approaches in the drafting and conduct of external relations gives evidence

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for the observation that political processes in Southeast Asia increasingly resemble “complex interdependence” (Keohane and Nye 1977). Complex interdependence, as discussed in Chapter 6, consists of three elements: (1) the existence of multiple formal and informal channels and networks connecting governments and elites as well as nongovernmental actors and transnational organizations, (2) an adequate, multilevel coordination of holistic policy agendas characterized by fluid boundaries between domestic and foreign issues, and (3) the absence of military force within a region. Throughout the Cold War and in some instances well into the last decade of the twentieth century, the political processes at both national and regional levels in Southeast Asia did not fully fit these criteria and could rather be typified as static, highly centralized, and one-dimensional. In this context, “static” means the largely constant nature of the policy agenda over time; “highly centralized” describes the fact that policymaking was the domain of a small number of elite actors; and “one-dimensional” implies the absence of major linkages between policy areas. Due to the manifold structural changes on the international stage of the post–Cold War era, as well as at domestic levels, the political process has moved in the direction of a pluralist, less centralistic (but not necessarily decentralized), and multidimensional model that is characterized by a growing number of political agents, including nonstate actors, increasing tendencies of disperse decisionmaking, and an intertwinedness of global, regional, and national dynamics hardly ever seen before in Southeast Asian politics. Anthony McGrew’s description (1992) of the post–Cold War structural transformation as a stretching, deepening, and broadening of political activity is best suited to capture the changing dynamics of Southeast Asian politics. “Stretching” refers to the fact that decisions and actions in one part of the world can come to have worldwide ramifications; “deepening” means that developments at even the most local level can have global ramifications, and vice versa; and “broadening” describes the growing array of issues that surface on the political agenda, combined with the enormously diverse range of agencies or groups involved in political decisionmaking processes at all levels, from the local to the global. As explained in Chapter 1, this three-dimensional process “transcends the traditional distinction between the international and the domestic study of politics, as well as the statist and institutionalist biases in traditional conceptions of the political” (McGrew 1992, p. 3). Globalization was identified as the broadest and most decisive structure that is related to the vanishing of boundaries between domestic and foreign arenas in Southeast Asia. It is almost common sense that political processes in Southeast Asia are today influenced by

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“the extended reach of the global capitalist economy . . . ; a global political order no longer distinguished by the communist-liberal divide but by variants of democracy, increasing regionalism and multilateral interventions, and not forgetting the US in all these as the sole global superpower; and the emergence of a global culture” (Loh Kok Wah and Öjendal 2005, p. 8). At the same time, the relationship between globalization and Southeast Asian politics is not a simple, one-dimensional process of cause and response. To repeat the main argument: structural changes at the international and domestic levels in Southeast Asia are bound in a reciprocal and mutually reinforcing relationship that has increasingly taken the shape of complex interdependence—that is, the multiplication of ties between state actors as well as between state and nonstate actors and the intertwined, nonhierarchical nature of policy areas. The political process in Southeast Asia has moved from a static, highly centralized, and one-dimensional setting to a pluralist, less centralistic, and multidimensional framework due to a stretching, deepening, and broadening of this process. However, this change does not constitute an absolute shift from one ideal model to the next. The progression between the static and pluralist endpoints on a hypothetical policy process scale has been gradual and reached different positions in the case of each individual Southeast Asian polity. The perceived emergence of terrorist networks in Southeast Asia as the result of the socially constructed globalization of nonstate violence—or what I have called here the “Al-Qaidaization” of international relations— is a case in point for the reciprocal link between domestic and international factors. While it seems at first glance that global terrorism has reshaped Southeast Asian security and above all left a big footprint on political activity in the region, a closer look reveals the domestic roots of violence, which have their beginnings in the region’s colonial past and are not the immediate result of the long aftermath of the events of 11 September 2001. While the dynamics of the conflicts in southern Thailand, Mindanao, and Aceh—discussed in detail in Chapter 3—have changed due to international influences, and while the local, national, and global boundaries have become indistinct, the origins and main agendas of separatism and insurgency still tend to be of a local and national rather than international nature. Consequently, I have argued that the comparison of religiously or ethnically driven violence in Southeast Asia, while not ignoring the international post–11 September dynamics, seems to be more accurate if the local and national variables are taken into the analytical focus. In methodological terms: whereas the local-national nexus has been identified as the independent variable and violence as the dependent one, international struc-

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tures and actions of external agents, such as colonialism and today global terrorist networks, form intervening variables. A typology of violence in southern Thailand, Mindanao, and Aceh has shown that all three conflicts share some similar crucial structural framework conditions. They date back to colonial or even precolonial times and have been affected by the legacy of colonialism; they involve ethnic and religious minorities; they are legitimated and inspired in religious terms; they are confined to the poorest regions within the respective nations; and they have been fueled by a long history of neglect from the respective national governments and marginalized in the nation-building process or even worsened due to failed policy approaches. For example, Mindanao, Aceh, and southern Thailand are characterized by higher than average levels of unemployment, poverty, and illiteracy. In 2002, the per capita income in the National Capital Region, centered in Manila, was nearly ten times that in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao, the poorest region in the Philippines. In the same year, the Human Development Index score for Sulu, one of the Muslim provinces, stood at only half of the national average and just over one-third of the HDI for the NCR. Despite the fact that ARMM consists of the five poorest provinces in the entire country, in 2003 the national Philippine government appropriated only 0.6 percent of its annual state budget (980 billion pesos [US$8.4 billion]) to this region. The example of Aceh is even more striking, as it is one of the most resource-rich regions in Indonesia while the population remains among the poorest by national standards. In view of Aceh’s abundant wealth in oil, gas, and several other commodities, the province should have been able to raise the living standards of its people. However, of the twenty-six provinces for which Human Poverty Index trends between 1990 and 1998 are available (the most recent data), Aceh is among only five Indonesian provinces that were not able to improve their Human Development Index score during this period. The situation in southern Thailand bears striking similarities with the situations in Mindanao and Aceh. Although not a resource-rich region when compared to Aceh, it should nevertheless be assumed that the south benefited from the long period of sustained economic growth in Thailand between 1960 and 1997. Quite to the contrary, however, existing regional imbalances deepened during this period. Although absolute growth rates in Thailand have been increasing, the region remains underdeveloped relative to other parts of Thailand, with a per capita income that is significantly below the average in neighboring provinces. Governmental strategies directed to the reduction of poverty and improvement of the overall economic situation in the three deprived regions are caught in a vicious circle. While the

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decades-long economic neglect of the minority provinces by succeeding central administrations contributed to the growth of resistance movements, the resulting violence has in turn created an environment of insecurity that hinders the efficient implementation of development projects. Most national and international approaches to conflict management and resolution have not been successful in terms of reducing or even eradicating violence. The only potential breakthrough may be achievable in Aceh. After decades of hostilities in which more than 15,000 people lost their lives, a peace accord signed in Helsinki in August 2005 between the Indonesian government and the Free Aceh Movement is hoped to provide the basis for lasting peace in Aceh. The agreement paves the way for the new Law on the Governing of Aceh, which will grant Aceh limited autonomy in political, economic, cultural, and judicial areas. Among the most important provisions is Aceh’s entitlement to retain 70 percent of oil and gas revenues and other natural resources in its territory and surrounding waters. The deal also promises former rebels full amnesty and provides for money and land to help them return to society. While it remains to be seen whether the Aceh peace agreement will be sustainable in the long term, the general conclusion is that policy strategies directed toward the decentralization and devolution of political power, by aiming at the integration of local actors into mainstream politics, have mostly failed in the three cases. The same applies to the ever-popular temptation to apply military solutions, in other words, to fight fire with fire. The more that domestic and external actors started to associate the actions of separatist and insurgent groups—particularly in Mindanao and southern Thailand—with the global war on terror, the easier it became to justify military operations aimed at the crackdown on violence. Since January 2002, US troops have been involved in the fight against the Abu Sayyaf and Moro Islamic Liberation Front movements in Mindanao; in the case southern Thailand, the United States has offered direct military assistance. At the same time, Thailand and the Philippines were granted “major non-NATO ally” status, which entitles the two governments to special access to US intelligence, among other rights. But even antiterrorism specialists in the United States have become increasingly skeptical of a strategy directed to the eradication of nonstate violence by military means. A high-ranking officer in the US Pacific Command put it this way: “terrorism is a tactic—you can’t fight a tactic. The war on terror is a fallacy.”1 Although ASEAN and the United States signed, in 2002, a joint declaration to cooperate in combating international terrorism, most ASEAN member states have been critical of any US involvement in Southeast Asia’s internal security affairs. According to a senior Malaysian official involved

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in antiterrorism activities, any deeper cooperation with the United States is strongly rejected: “There is no intelligence sharing with the United States. It is more likely that the sharing of information would be to our [ASEAN’s] disadvantage rather than to our advantage. Some information we provided in the past was ultimately turned against us.”2 Instead, ASEAN has embarked on various regional initiatives to respond to nontraditional security challenges, including terrorism. While there is no shortage of a declaratory commitment to conflict resolution, ASEAN’s contribution to the management of new security challenges has been very limited. As an organization, ASEAN has not played any role in the peacebuilding processes in Aceh, Mindanao, and southern Thailand. Although new regional initiatives, such as the Southeast Asia Center for Counterterrorism (SEARCCT), look good on paper, as they seem to indicate ASEAN’s ability to coordinate national approaches in the struggle against nontraditional security challenges, the real impact on the management of regional affairs is low. A senior officer at the SEARCCT admits that “this is a center for training not intelligence sharing. The latter would be difficult to achieve because the national intelligence agencies of the ASEAN states sometimes refuse to share information.”3 There can be no doubt as to ASEAN’s and its member governments’ awareness of the nexus of global, regional, and national/local developments and structures that are particularly relevant to security. At the same time, due to the organization’s strict adherence to the informal consultation, nonbinding decisionmaking, and noninterference into members’ internal affairs, ASEAN’s capacities and capabilities of responding to regional challenges are very limited. For example, as noted in Chapter 3, the 2001 “ASEAN Declaration on Joint Action to Counter Terrorism” commits the member states “to counter, prevent and suppress all forms of terrorist acts in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and other international law, especially taking into account the importance of all relevant UN resolutions,” without prescribing a specific institutionalized pattern for dealing with the problem. Although ASEAN has established a regional framework for fighting transnational crime and adopted an action plan outlining a regional strategy to prevent, control, and neutralize transnational crime, the organization’s overall response to the threat and realities of terrorism clearly mirrors its traditional policy of not committing its members to any specific responsibilities. The action plan is based on the principle of voluntary contribution. Despite ASEAN’s institutional weaknesses, membership in the organization has been beneficial to the Southeast Asian nation-states. As discussed in Chapter 6, ASEAN membership contributed to Vietnam’s post1988 foreign policy goal of diversifying and multilateralizing its foreign

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relations as an essential element of the renovation process. Vietnam’s admission into ASEAN has enhanced its bargaining position with other states, particularly China. As a member of the regional organization, Vietnam became strategically more important, specifically to its former Cold War adversaries China and the United States. Although it is not possible to provide hard empirical evidence that ASEAN membership was the only or main cause for the rapid improvements in Hanoi’s relations with Beijing and Washington (because it is impossible to know what would have happened in a scenario in which ASEAN did not exist), a significant impact of the “ASEAN factor” is nevertheless very likely. In both relationships, the speed of rapprochement has been impressive. The same is evident in the case of Hanoi’s relations with Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand. ASEAN membership not only provided Vietnam with the opportunity of regular contacts with the leading global and regional powers, but also gave instant access to a wide range of treaties and organizations, for example the ASEAN-Japan Forum and the EU-ASEAN Cooperation Agreement. In sum, it is safe to conclude that ASEAN membership has positively affected Vietnam’s efforts to normalize, diversify, and improve its foreign relations, thereby contributing to a more stable and secure regional environment. At the same time, ASEAN as an organization has lost international clout due to its unrealistic expectation of being able to achieve far-reaching visions for regional integration, such as a Southeast Asian community with the soft institutional setting prescribed by the “ASEAN way.” The more that individual ASEAN members, including Vietnam, resist institutional evolution, the more likely this strategy will ultimately backfire. The constant search for consensus among the ten politically and economically highly diverse members based on the lowest common denominator limits the conduct of national foreign policies. Furthermore, ASEAN’s weakness has provided a fertile ground for a more proactive regional diplomacy on the parts of China and, to a lesser degree, Japan, as can be seen in the ASEAN Plus Three process and the East Asian summit. While this is not necessarily a worrying development, which in a more positive light shows that the strategy of engaging China has worked, ASEAN can no longer claim to be in the driver’s seat when it comes to the management of multilateralism in the Asia Pacific. As a result of the international downgrading of ASEAN and the increasing difficulties of reaching consensus in intraregional relations, some members, especially Singapore and Thailand, have quietly embarked on the implementation of foreign policy and foreign economic policy strategies that are not necessarily always in line with ASEAN’s official goals and aims, at least as far as political rhetoric is concerned. In contrast, Vietnam has avoided any impression of pursuing for-

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eign policy strategies outside the agreed ASEAN framework. At the same time, the government has increasingly put political weight behind subregional and multilateral initiatives, as they seem to offer better opportunities and more immediate diplomatic gains in response to the stretching, deepening, and broadening of political activity, for example with regard to the management of disputes in the South China Sea and generally Vietnam’s relations with China. The most successful example is the Greater Mekong Subregion. As discussed in Chapter 4, the GMS shows how the structural changes of the post–Cold War era have resulted in new views on the definition and nature of security. Beginning in the early 1990s, economic development and security became intertwined in a way never before seen. Cooperation within the GMS follows this perceptional logic and the dynamics of complex interdependence. The wide range of cooperative efforts in the fields of environmental security and energy security have had an impact on fostering subregional peace and stability, particularly in Sino-Vietnamese relations, which are still shaped by the legacies of history. Developments in the Mekong valley are indicative of a growing convergence between national and international policy agendas in Southeast Asia. Due to enormous infrastructure projects, formal borders between local, national, and international spheres have become more diffuse. However, the GMS has not yet reached the point of providing a sustainable basis for efficient joint resource management and ultimately peace and stability in the subregion. Beyond the obvious opportunities and benefits of intensified subregional cooperation, unresolved disputes among GMS countries remain. Most important, the uncoordinated construction of power plants and irrigation systems by the upper-Mekong countries, particularly China, which plans to build more than a dozen power plants, poses a serious challenge to intraregional cooperation, since it could result in a potentially explosive competition between the upper- and the lower-Mekong states, like Vietnam, for water resources. In a forthcoming PhD thesis on the interplay of Chinese and Vietnamese strategic interests in the GMS, Oliver Hensengerth shows that “the fundamental problem of the GMS is that it is beset by an asymmetric distribution of power in China’s favour, resulting in the exclusion of issues that China does not want to negotiate.”4 As the main sponsor of GMS projects, the Asian Development Bank has become the subregion’s external federator, the driving actor without which intergovernmental cooperation would not have emerged in its current form. The ADB’s concrete impact, however, has been limited to technical assistance, particularly with regard to large-scale infrastructure projects. Like ASEAN, the ADB adheres to the principle of strict non-

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interference into the political processes of its member states. In this regard, Southeast Asia features a striking dissimilarity when compared to Europe or Latin America: the absence of external agents of change. But interference into domestic affairs has a negative connotation in most international relations contexts. For instance, the transition from authoritarian to democratic political rule in Spain, Portugal, and Greece in the 1970s and in Eastern Europe since the late 1980s greatly profited from constructive engagement of the European Community/Union. In a similar vein, the Organization of American States rendered support to the processes of democratization in Latin America. Neither ASEAN nor any other regional organization has been playing a comparable role with regard to political change in Southeast Asia. In the absence of any involvement of regional actors, extraregional agents have taken the lead in shaping the political face of national polities. The most evident case is Cambodia. In Chapter 5, the globalization of democracy, defined as the promotion of democracy as mainly driven by the OECD world, was identified as a powerful materialization of the stretching, deepening, and broadening of political activity and one of the most striking examples for the nexus between global and local political dynamics. Nowhere in Southeast Asia is the process of exerting external influence over domestic political structures more obvious and far-reaching than in Cambodia. The country’s political system has become a playground for external actors, and more specifically the international donor community, in their attempt to strengthen good governance and democracy through decentralization, or “the shift in decision-making and spending power from central to regional and local governments” (Campbell and Fuhr 2004, p. 11). This initiative has not been without success. Most important, the commune elections of February 2002 widened political participation beyond the small elites of Phnom Penh, thereby contributing to the decentralization of political power and ultimately the strengthening of democratic procedures. At the same time, however, the decentralization and deconcentration reform in Cambodia has not been primarily driven by the interests and strategies of the national government or civil society actors. First and foremost, decentralization has emerged as an international development project drafted and managed by multilateral and bilateral donors, which in most cases have failed to harmonize their individual approaches to decentralization with one another. The way the global post–Cold War discourse on democracy and good governance has reached even the smallest villages in Cambodia shows in great empirical clarity the nexus between global and local ideas, events, and actions, or in other words, the stretching, deepening, and broadening of political activity.

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Notes 1. Author interview, Honolulu, Hawaii, 7 September 2005. 2. Author interview, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 25 October 2005. 3. Author interview, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 25 October 2005. 4. Oliver Hensengerth, PhD thesis, Department of East Asian Studies, University of Leeds, United Kingdom.

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Acronyms

ACAMM ADB AFTA AIA AICO APEC APT ARF ARMM ASA ASEAN ASEAN-MBDC ASEF ASEM BNPP BRN CEPT CLMV CMI CPP CSCE CSIS D&D Deplu DPP DPR

ASEAN Chiefs of Army Multilateral Meeting Asian Development Bank ASEAN Free Trade Area ASEAN Investment Area ASEAN Industrial Cooperation Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation ASEAN Plus Three ASEAN Regional Forum Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao Association of Southeast Asia Association of Southeast Asian Nations ASEAN Mekong Basin Development Cooperation Asia-Europe Foundation Asia-Europe Meeting Pattani National Liberation Front (Thailand) National Revolution Front (Thailand) Common Effective Preferential Tariff (of ASEAN) Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar (Burma), Vietnam Chiang Mai Initiative Cambodia People’s Party Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe Center for Strategic and International Studies decentralization and deconcentration Department of Foreign Affairs (Indonesia) Dewan Pembebasan Pattani (Thailand) House of People’s Representatives (Indonesia) 215

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EAI EC ECAFE EMP EU FDI FTA FUNCINPEC G8 GAM Gampar GATT GDP GMIP GMS HDI HPI IMF ISEAS ISIS KR LICADHO Mercosur MILF MNLF MRC NAFTA NCR NGO OAS OECD PDI-P PDK PULA PULO RGC RGC

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Enterprise for ASEAN Initiative European Community Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (United Nations) Euro-Mediterranean Partnership European Union foreign direct investment free trade agreement National United Front for an Independent, Neutral, Peaceful, and Cooperative Cambodia Group of Eight Free Aceh Movement (Indonesia) League of Malay for a Great Pattani (Thailand) General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade gross domestic product Pattani Islamic Mujahidin Movement (Thailand) Greater Mekong Subregion Human Development Index Human Poverty Index International Monetary Fund Institute of Southeast Asian Studies Institute(s) for Strategic and International Studies Khmer Rouge Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights Southern Cone Common Market Moro Islamic Liberation Front (Mindanao) Moro National Liberation Front (Mindanao) Mekong River Commission North American Free Trade Agreement National Capital Region (Philippines) nongovernmental organization Organization of American States Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Democratic Party of Struggle (Indonesia) Party of Democratic Kampuchea Pattani United Liberation Army (Thailand) Pattani United Liberation Organization (Thailand) Royal Government of Cambodia Royal Government of Cambodia

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Acronyms

SBY SEARCCT SLORC TIFA TNI UNDP UNTAC UNCTAD UNTAET USAID WTO

Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono South East Asian Center for Counter Terrorism State Law and Order Restoration Council (Burma) trade and investment framework agreement Tentara Nasional Indonesia (Armed Forces of Indonesia) UN Development Programme UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia UN Conference on Trade and Development UN Transitional Administration in East Timor US Agency for International Development World Trade Organization

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Abu Sayyaf group, 56, 80, 91, 209 Academic consultation: role in foreign policy decisionmaking, 28–29 Accountability: ability to restrain actors, 22; different impacts in authoritarian and democratic regimes, 67 Aceh, Indonesia: Al-Qaidaization of, 80–81; colonial roots of domestic conflict, 88; decentralization and autonomy as conflict resolution strategy, 100–104; ethnic and religious roots of conflict, 84–85, 207–208; income and development inequality, 97; international approach to conflict management, 209 Administrative sector: Cambodia’s administrative structure, 154 (fig.); commune laws, 152–155, 213; decentralization of policy processes, 156–158 After Bali (Ramakrishna and Tan), 81 “Agreement on the Cooperation for the Sustainable Development of the Mekong River Basin,” 131–132 Agriculture: avian flu, 172 Al-Qaida, 75, 80–81, 107 Al-Qaidaization of Southeast Asia, 112, 207 Americanization, 3–4 Anglo-Siamese treaties, 86 Angola: postcrisis development aid, 150(table)

Aquino, Corazóón, 44, 55, 90 Argentina, 48 Arroyo, Gloria Macapagal: enthusiasm for war on terrorism, 80; MILF peace process, 91–92, 108; Philippines’ withdrawal from Iraq, 203; prioritization of foreign affairs in the Philippines under, 46; role in the Iraq hostage crisis, 62 ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), 1–6; antiterrorism efforts, 209–210; China’s ‘soft power,’ 180–181; classifying achievements of, 165–167; decline in international importance, 211–212; decrease in FDI from the US and the EU, 49; diplomatic activities, 197–200; EUAsia trade bilateralism avoiding UScentered system, 191–193; Mekong Basin Development Cooperation, 119; member countries, 200(n7); noninterference principles, 16; obstacles to EU-Asia cooperation, 195–197; regional approach to conflict resolution, 109–111; regional economic integration, 168–173; response to EU rejection of Burma’s ASEM membership, 196; rigidity of the international political structure under, 3; scholarly study and analysis, 164–165; security dimensions of subregional cooperation, 126–127;

253

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254 separation of domestic and foreign politics under, 2; Thailand’s efforts to admit Burma to, 44; Thailand’s unofficial leadership of, 42; Vietnam’s interests and role in, 173–180, 210–211 ASEAN Chiefs of Army Multilateral Meeting (ACAMM), 110 ASEAN-China free trade area, 179 ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA), 47, 170–171, 176–177, 189 ASEAN Industrial Cooperation (AICO), 176–177 ASEAN Investment Area (AIA), 176–177 ASEAN Plus Three (APT), 182–184, 199–200, 211 ASEAN Regional Forum, 73 ASEAN summit, 54 ASEAN Vision 2020 (1997), 198 ASEAN way of diplomacy, 110, 166, 177–180, 211 Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF), 189 Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), 188–192, 195–197, 199–200, 200(n15) Asian Development Bank (ADB): building security communities through infrastructure initiatives, 126–127; expected GMS funding, 118–120; as external federator for GMS, 212–213; global-local political nexus, 136–137; integrated approach to energy development, 133; obstacles to GMS community building, 135 Asian economic crisis. See Economic crisis Asian monetary fund, 185 Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC): Mahathir’s refusal to attend Seattle summit, 183; prevention of formation by low public opinion, 64; transpacific cooperation, 188–190; US support for, 194; Vietnam’s ASEAN membership and, 176–177 Assimilation programs, 86–87 Association of Southeast Asia (ASA), 1 Atef, Mohammed, 80 Aung San Suu Kyi, 41, 56, 196 Australia: Al-Qaidaization of South East Asia, 79; Indonesia’s relations with,

Index 58; objections to East Asian economic bloc, 183 Authoritarian elites: control of Thailand, 40 Authoritarian regimes: Cambodia under Sihanouk, 146–148; hindering Cambodia’s decentralization process, 160–161; institutionalization as a reaction to the fall of, 34; lack of institutionalization with the fall of, 34; limitations on autonomy of the state under, 25–26 Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), 88–92, 97, 102, 208 Autonomy of the state, 25–30, 100–104 Avian influenza, 172 Ayeyawady-Chao Phraya-Mekong Economic Cooperation Strategy (ACMECS), 137(n6) Ba’asyir, Abu Bakar, 114(n14) Bagan Declaration (2003), 130, 137(n6) Bali: terrorist attacks, 74–75 Bali Concord II, 179 Bali summit, 197 Bandung conference, 168–169 Bangkok Declaration, 1 Barisan Revolusi Nasional Coordinate (BRN Coordinate), 88 Basket funding, 160 Battambang province, Cambodia, 157–159 Bebas dan aktif (free and active foreign policy), 33, 59 Beureuh, Tengku M. Daud, 92–93 Bilateral interregionalism, 200–201(n16) Bird flu, 172 Boonyanun, Sumpan, 105 Broadening of political activity, 206–207 Brunei: Al-Qaidaization of, 79; economic cooperation through growth triangles, 124–125 (table); territorial disputes over the Spratlys, 75–76; US trade and investment framework agreements, 193–194 Brussels-ization of ASEAN, 170, 173 Buddhist Liberal Democratic Party, 148–149 Burma: ASEAN’s softly-softly approach to, 180; ASEM membership,

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Index 196–197; commercial navigation agreement, 127; domestic interests guiding foreign policy, 204; economic cooperation through growth triangles, 124–125 (table); military rule of, 43; resistance to globalization; Thailand’s stance indicating legislative weakness, 52–53; Thai relations with ethnic insurgence in, 43; US bilateral free trade agreements, 193–194; Vietnam’s ASEAN membership, 175–176 Bush, George W., 106–108, 192–193 Buzan, Barry, 113(n1) Cambodia, 15; administrative structure, 154 (fig.); cross-border transport agreement, 127–128; devolution of government, 141; energy security, 133–134; hydropower construction as threat to subregional cooperation, 137–138(n7); importance of external federators, 156–160, 213; Mekong Committee goals, 118; political history from authoritarianism to democratization, 143–150; postcrisis development aid, 150(table); pros and cons of decentralization, 144–145(table); subregional cooperation over environmental security, 131–132; Vietnam’s ASEAN membership, 175–176 Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (LICADHO), 160 Cambodia People’s Party (CPP), 148–149, 153 Canada: as an example of informal mechanisms, 26 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 91 Centralization of ASEAN in the post–Cold War era, 3 Centralization of government. See Decentralization, government Cessation of Hostilities Framework, 94 Chavalit Yongchaiyudh: resignation facilitating economic reform, 47; use of Burma for economic gain, 43–44 Checks and balances, interregionalism as means for, 188 Chiang Mai Initiative, 184

255 China: ASEAN’s multilateral cooperation in China and Japan, 199; ASEM’s antiterrorism agenda, 191–192; ASEM’s security agenda, 189–190; commercial navigation agreement, 127; currency-swapping agreements, 184–186; economic cooperation through growth triangles, 124–125 (table); energy security, 132–134; environmental security in the Greater Mekong Subregion, 131–132; formal relations with ASEAN, 2; GMS participation, 129, 137(n2); hydropower construction as threat to subregional cooperation, 135, 137–138(n7), 212; relations with Thailand, 41; response to Vietnam’s ASEAN membership, 173–175; rise of ‘soft power,’ 180–181; territorial disputes as security threat, 75–76 Choonhavan, Chatichai, 87, 205 Choonhavan, Kraisak, 52–54 Christian groups: Muslim rebellion in Mindanao, 89 Chuan Leekpai, 40–42, 87, 109 Chulalongkorn, King, 85–86 Civil society: participation in Cambodia’s decentralization process, 159–160; relationship with Parliament, 28 Clark, Michael, 52 Clinton administration, 194 Coalition government, Cambodia’s, 149, 151 Cold War: control of Vietnam, 147–148; impact on the formation of ASEAN, 3; realist school in Thailand during, 35; security threats to state sovereignty, 72; Sino-Vietnamese conflict, 174; territorial disputes as security threat, 75–76. See also Post–Cold War politics Colonialism: framework and conditions for violent conflict, 82–83, 85; roots of conflict in Aceh, 92–96, 207–208; roots of conflict in Muslim Mindanao, 88–92, 207–208; roots of conflict in southern Thailand, 85–88, 207–208 Commerce and trade: commercial navigation agreement, 127; emergence of subregional political cooperation,

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256 121; EU-Asia relations, 190–192; GMS development of Sino-Thai trade, 127–128; regional economic integration, 168–173; terrorism affecting economic interests, 75. See also Free trade agreements Common Effective Preferential Tariff (CEPT) scheme, 176, 200(n10) Commune council, 153–155, 213 Commune laws, 152–155, 213 Communist forces: Cambodia, 146–149 Complex interdependence, 2–3, 198–199 Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), 201(n16) Conflict: Cambodia’s coup and counterinsurgency, 147; colonial roots of domestic conflict, 82–83, 85–96, 207–208; environmental damage as legacy of war, 131; local-national nexus driving violent conflict, 207–208; religious and ethnic roots of Thailand’s, 83–85; roots of Aceh’s, 92–96; terrorism altering the perception of, 111 Conflict management and resolution: ASEAN way of diplomacy, 166, 177–180; decentralization and autonomy strategy, 100–104; framework and conditions for, 83; Greater Mekong Subregion project, 126–127; inadequacy of national and international approaches, 209; the military approach, 104–106; regional approaches, 109–111; Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia, 197 Constitutional provisions for decentralization, 101–102 Constructive intervention policy, 178 Consumerism, 3–4 Cooperation, political and economic: institutionalization and transparency of subregional relations, 128–134; Mekong River project, 117–120; subregional cooperation concept and initiatives, 120–126. See also Greater Mekong Subregion; Regionalism Corruption: Aceh’s post-tsunami economy, 100; Cambodia’s TI index, 162(n5); effect of decentralization on, 142–143; hindering Cambodia’s

Index decentralization, 160; persistence of Cambodia’s, 149–150 Coups d’éétat, 45, 146–149 Cross-border crime, 78, 82 Cultural diffusion of globalization, 8 Currency-swapping agreements, 184–186 Dam construction, 132–135, 137–138(n7) Darul Islam movement, 92–93, 96 Decentralization, government: Cambodia’s administrative structure, 154 (fig.); characteristics of, 140–143; as conflict resolution strategy, 100–104; deconcentration and, 150–156; framework conditions for Cambodia’s, 143–150; international community’s role and impact on Cambodia’s, 156–160; post-Suharto Indonesia, 94; pros and cons, 144–145(table) Declaration of ASEAN Concord (1976), 197 Declaration of ASEAN Concord II, 179 Declaration of the Conduct of the Parties in the South China Sea (2002), 198 Declaration on Joint Action to Counter Terrorism, 210 Declaration on the South China Sea (1992), 76, 166 Deconcentration of government, 141, 157 Deepening of political activity, 81, 136, 206–207 Deforestation, 130–131 De la Cruz, Angelo, 203 Demidemocracy. See Semidemocracy Democracy and democratization: concerns over human security, 74; defined, 19–20; globalization and, 9–11, 139–140; ideal democracy, 28; impact on structure, actors and foreign policy making, 66; influencing conflict resolution policy, 112; rate of expansion of, 8; UN peacekeeping in Cambodia, 148. See also Decentralization Department for International Development (United Kingdom), 151–152

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Index Development, economic: ASEAN as framework for, 167; concerns over human security, 74; decentralization fostering, 141–143; economic return on hydroelectric dams, 133–134; Mekong Valley project, 118–119, 127, 131–132; postcrisis states’ development assistance, 150(table); poverty and social exclusion leading to development gaps, 96–100 Devolution of government, 141, 156–157 Dewan Pembebasan Pattani (DPP), 88 Diplomacy, ASEAN way of, 110, 166, 177–180, 211 Domestic economic deregulation, 6 Domestic investment, 99 Domestic political processes: GMS driving China’s domestic policy outlook, 129; increasing role in foreign policy, 20, 203–206; international intervention in, 106–111; regional approaches to domestic conflict resolution, 109–111; security implications of Vietnam’s economic reform, 77 Donors. See International community Drug trafficking, 74, 129 Dwi fungsi (dual function) doctrine, 36, 105 Early flood warning strategy, 131–132 Earthquakes, 95 East Asian summit, 181, 211 East Timor, 38, 58, 94, 178 East-West Corridor project, 127 Economic concerns: currency-swapping agreements as step toward regional cooperation, 184–186; domestic deregulation, 6; economic return on hydroelectric dams, 133–134; establishing an East Asian economic bloc, 181–183; growth triangle concept, 121–123; as pillar of integrated Southeast Asia, 171–172; regional economic integration, 168–173; security-economic nexus, 77; static concerns in the Philippines from the 1990’s to 2004, 48; threats posed by terrorism, 75; Vietnam’s ASEAN membership as means of fostering economic reforms, 176–180

257 Economic crisis: accelerating the movement toward liberalism in Thailand, 47; ASEAN’s loss of prominence after, 192; as blow to regional integration, 170; ending uniform support for globalization, 6; shifting concerns to human security, 73; triggering the downfall of President Suharto, 9 Economic development. See Development, economic Economic growth areas, 124–125 (table) Economy-based view of subregional economic cooperation, 123 Education: hindering Cambodia’s decentralization process, 159; Thailand’s compulsory national education, 86 Elections, Cambodia’s, 148–149, 151–155, 161, 213 Elite capture, 142 Energy security, 132–134 Engelhart, Neil, 9–10 Enhanced interaction concept, 178 Enterprise for ASEAN Initiative (EAI), 107, 192–194 Environmental concerns, 74, 130–134 Estrada administration (Philippines), 91 Ethiopia: postcrisis development aid, 150(table) Ethnicity: defining local, national and international processes, 82; globalization of nonstate violence, 207–208; GMS cooperation driving China’s domestic policy, 129; roots of domestic conflict, 111; structural framework for national violence, 82–83; Thailand’s regional language differences, 113–114(n7); typology of national conflict, 83–85 Ethnonationalism, 90–91 European Commission, 157, 190, 194–195 European Community as model for Asian integration, 168–170 European Union Common Market, 169 European Union (EU), 171; ASEM’s antiterrorism agenda, 191–192; failure to establish military force, 190–191; formal relations with ASEAN, 2; as strongest example of successful

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258 regional framework, 1; transpacific cooperation, 188–190; transregional trade initiative, 194–195 Exclusive economic zones, 75–76 Executive power, formality of, 26–30 Extended metropolises, 137(n3) External federators, 186–187, 212–213 Extremist groups, 96. See also Terrorism ExxonMobil Oil, 97–98 Federalism, 140 Fiery Cross Reef, 76 Fires, haze crises and, 73 Fiscal decentralization, 141–143, 158–159 Fishing, 134, 174 Flexible engagement policy, 178 Flooding, 130–132 Food supply, 123, 132 Foreign affairs ministries: military dominance of in Indonesia, 36; opposition to the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs in Thailand, 53; rise in Thailand with decreased military influence, 42 Foreign direct investment (FDI), 99 Foreign policy: agreement with public opinion, 62; EU maintaining sovereignty in foreign affairs, 190–191; formal institutionalization influencing, 26–30; as forum for personal rivalry, 53–54; globalization and democratization, 13, 139–140; GMS influencing Vietnam’s, 128–129; increasing openness and complexity of policymaking, 203–206; increasing openness in Thailand, 62–63; limits of accountability in, 22; media impact on, 26–27; political standing influencing, 23–24; regional economic and security integration, 170; restraint of actors during, 20–21; Singapore’s vulnerability driving foreign policy, 123. See also Policymaking Formal institutionalization, 13, 26–27 France: decentralization policy processes, 156–158 Free Aceh Movement (GAM), 80, 93–95, 209

Index Freedom Eagle–Philippines, 108 Free trade agreements (FTAs): ASEAN’s negotiations of, 113(n4); ChinaASEAN agreement, 181–186; security threats as driver for, 77; Southeast Asia’s regional economic cooperation, 169–171; US Enterprise for ASEAN Initiative, 193–194 Gas, natural, 97–98. See also Oil resources; Resource access and management General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), 47, 183 Geometric polygons, 137(n3) German development policy, 143 Germany: decentralization policy processes, 156–158; as model for Cambodia’s self-government, 151–152; shaping EU-Asian relations, 190–191 Globalization: ASEAN free trade agreements as response to, 170–171; changes and diversity in opinions toward, 6–7; cultural diffusion of, 8; democratization and, 9–11, 139–140; economic crisis as a result of, 6; global-local political nexus, 136–137; history of, 4; interregionalism, 187–188; localization of political processes, 72; of nonstate violence, 207; regionalism and, 163; shaping ASEAN, 3; state sovereignty and, 5; as structure for broadening political activity, 206–207 Global village, 5 Goh Chok Tong, 170 Golden Quadrangle, 124–125 (table), 137(n4) Greater Mekong Subregion: China’s participation in, 137(n2); cooperative initiatives, 134–137; energy security, 132–134, 137–138(n7); environmental security, 130–131; as example of regional cooperation, 212; goals of cooperative riparian development initiatives, 118–120; institutionalization of subregional relations, 128–134; security dimension of subregional cooperation, 126–128

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Index Growth quadrangles, 137(n3) Growth triangles, 121–125 (table), 137(n3) Grugel, Jean, 9–10 Guatemala: postcrisis development aid, 150(table) Guerrillas: Cambodia, 146–148; southern Thailand, 87 Gulf of Tonkin, 76, 174 Gus Dur. See Wahid, Abdurrahman Hadi Soesastro, 183 Hadiwinata, Bob, 36 Hagan, Joe, 21–22 Hambali, 79 Hanoi Declaration on Closer AsiaEurope Partnership, 195 Hard security conflicts, 75–76 Hatta, Mohammad, 33, 59 Haze crisis, 73 Hegemonic ambitions and behavior, 129–130 Helsinki Agreement, 102 Heng Samrin government, 147 Horizontal conflict, 113 Howard, John, 59 Hu Jintao, 174 Human Development Index (HDI), 97, 208 Humanitarian aid, 11, 63. See also International community Human Poverty Index (HPI), 98, 208 Human rights: abuses in Aceh, 105; ASEAN initiatives addressing, 78; concerns over human security, 74; foreign policy emphasizing trade over human rights, 191 Human security, 72–74, 113(n1) Human trafficking, 74 Hungarian Democratic Forum, 27–28 Hun Sen, 137–138(n7), 147, 149 Hydropower, 132–135, 137–138(n7) Hyper-nationalism, 105 Ibrahim, Inche Zaiton, 168 Ideal democracy, 28 Identity: China as historical threat to Vietnam, 174–175; interregionalism as mechanism for identity building, 188; regionalism affecting, 164;

259 typifying Thailand’s internal conflict, 83–85 Ideology: Khmer Rouge, 146–147; Pancasila, 59; Thailand’s Vajiravudh, 84 Ileto, Rafael, 170 Imperialism, European, 4. See also Colonialism Income inequity, 96–100, 208–209 Indonesia: advocating regionalism, 168; Al-Qaidaization of, 79–80; anticolonialism, 33; balance of power in, 57; brokering Mindanao’s peace agreement, 90; constitutional provisions, 30–33; currency-swapping agreements, 184–186; decentralization and autonomy as conflict resolution strategy, 101–104; domestic interests guiding foreign policy, 204–205; economic cooperation through growth triangles, 121–125 (table); ethnic and religious roots of domestic conflict, 85, 92–96; haze crisis threatening human security, 73; income and development inequality, 97–98; institutionalization of a strong president, 30–31; konfrontasi, 166, 200(n4); legislative relations with the executive, 60(table); maritime piracy, 74; military action as conflict resolution strategy, 104–106; national resilience doctrine, 77–78; objections to East Asian economic bloc, 183; powers of Parliament in, 33; public opinion and foreign policy, 62, 66; realist-liberal shift in perspective, 46; regional approach to conflict resolution, 109–111; security threats between Vietnam and, 177; struggle of the legislature to maximize power in, 56–57; summary of control of congress, 57; terrorism affecting economic interests, 75; terrorist attacks, 74–75; Thailand’s level of institutionalization and, 59; US Enterprise for ASEAN Initiative, 194; US trade and investment framework agreements, 193–194; vertical conflict, 114(n15) Indonesian Mujahidin Council, 96 Informal institutionalization, 13, 26–30

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260 Information access, 6–7, 25 Infrastructure: energy development on the Mekong River, 132–134; GMS as successful example of regional cooperation, 212; security in subregional initiatives, 126–127 Ingenta–Academic Press, 164 Institution building: ASEAN, 1–2, 198; degree of formality, 26–27; interregionalism as mechanism for, 188; limited impact on the Senate in Thailand of, 54 Insurgency: Al-Qaidaization of South East Asia, 79–81; Cambodia, 146–148; human security concerns, 74; military force transforming resistance into, 105–106 Integration, 167–168; Bali Concord II, 179; China’s push for, 181–182; importance of economic integration to globalization, 6; regional economic integration, 168–173; Vietnam’s slowing of ASEAN integration, 178 Intelligence gathering, 210 International community: ADB as external federator for GMS, 212–213; ASEAN as a collective actor, 165–166; Cambodia’s aid dependence, 150; Cambodia’s decentralization, 140, 156–161; Cambodia’s Seila program for mobilization and coordination, 151–152; as external federators, 186–187, 213; global perception of the impact of terrorism on national and local violence, 112; hazards of investment in the Philippines and Aceh, 99–100; military intervention in conflicts, 106–111 International Development Agency, 151–152 Internationalization as euphemism for globalization, 7 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 185 International political processes, 3, 71, 82 International Red Cross, 105 Interregionalism: bilateral and transregional, 200–201(n16); Burma as obstacle to EU-Asia cooperation, 195–196; as external federator,

Index 186–187; importance of external federators, 212–213; post–Cold War emergence of ASEM, 188–190; structural framework for EU-Asia cooperation, 190–191 Iraq, military action in, 106, 203 Iraq hostage crisis, 62 Irian Jaya, Al-Qaidaization of, 79 Isamuddin, Riduan, 79 Islamist groups, 79–81. See also Terrorism Israel, Indonesia’s failure to recognize, 57 Japan: ASEAN’s multilateral cooperation in China and Japan, 199; ASEM security agenda, 189–190; currencyswapping agreements, 184–186; formal relations with the ASEAN, 2; response to China-ASEAN free trade agreement, 181–183 Japan-ASEAN Comprehensive Economic Partnership, 181–182 Japan Sea Economic Zone, 125 (table) Javanization of Indonesia’s economy, 93 Jemaah Islamiya, 75, 79–80, 96–97, 107, 112, 114(n14) Johnson, Lyndon B., 119–120 Kalla, Jusuf, 100 Kartosuwiryo, S.M., 92 Kelly, James, 108 Keng, Sar, 151 Keohane, Robert, 2–3 Khmer Institute of Democracy, 160 Khmer People’s National Liberation Front, 148 Khmer Rouge, 146–149 Khoman Thanat, 1, 168 Kim, Kyu-Roon, 25–26 Kim Dae Jung, 10 Kissinger, Henry, 24 Ko, Dae-Won, 25–26 Konfrontasi, 166, 200(n4) Konrad Adenauer Foundation, 157–158 Korea: ASEM security agenda, 189–190; economic cooperation through growth triangles, 124–125 (table) Kusumaatmadja, Mochtar, 170 Lancang Cascade, 133–134

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Index Land ownership, administrative procedures associated with, 158 Language, 84, 113–114(n7) Laos: commercial navigation agreement, 127; cross-border transport agreement, 127–128; domestic interests guiding foreign policy, 204; East-West Corridor project, 127; energy security, 132–134; Mekong Committee goals, 118; minimalization of globalization, 8; subregional cooperation over environmental security, 131–132; US bilateral free trade agreements, 193–194; Vietnam’s ASEAN membership, 175–176 Laskar Jihad (Holy War Warriors), 96 Law on the Governing of Aceh, 102, 209 League of Malay, 86 Lee Kuan Yew, 75 Legislature: foreign policy decisionmaking, 13; sharp division from the executive in the Philippines, 56; Thailand’s weak legislature, 52–53 Liberal Democratic Party (Cambodia), 148 Library of Congress, 164 Libya brokering Mindanao’s peace agreement, 90 Linkage politics, 20, 204 Lippmann, Walter, 24 Local Governance Project (UNDP), 152, 155 Local Government Code (Philippines), 102 Local political processes, 82; Cambodia’s commune laws, 153, 155; decentralization policy processes, 156–157; importance of popular participation in government, 142; local-national nexus driving violent conflict, 207–208; pros and cons of decentralization, 144–145(table) Locke, John, 23 Lokanuwat, 7 Lon Nol, 146 Machiavelli, Niccolo, 23 Mahathir Mohamad, 6, 10, 68(n12), 183 Malaysia: advocating regionalism, 168; Al-Qaidaization of, 79; economic

261 cooperation through growth triangles, 121–125 (table); Indonesia’s haze crisis, 73; Indonesia’s konfrontasi as response to formation of Malaysian Federation, 166, 200(n4); regional approach to conflict resolution, 109–111; relations with Burma, 56; security threats between Vietnam and, 177; territorial disputes over the Spratlys, 75–76; US trade and investment framework agreements, 193–194 Manglapus, Raul, 170 Mantiqis (terrorist organizational groups), 79 Manwan Dam, 132, 134 Marcos, Ferdinand, 34, 89–90 Marginalization, economic, 96–100 Maritime Intelligence Group, 75 Maritime navigation, 135 Maritime piracy, 74 Martial law: Cambodia, 146–149; Indonesia under Megawati, 94; Philippines, 34; southern Thailand, 87 McCluhan, Marshall, 5 McGrew, Anthony, 3 Media affecting foreign policy decisionmaking, 26–27 Mediation. See Conflict management and resolution Megawati Sukarnoputri: influence of the DPR under, 57; martial law under, 37, 94; military solution to conflict, 105; praise for Bali summit, 197 Meinecke, Friedrich, 23 Mekong Basin Development Cooperation (MBDC), 119 Mekong Committee, 118 Mekong Enterprise Fund, 128 Mekong River Basin. See Greater Mekong Subregion Mekong River Commission, 119–120 Mercosur (Southern Cone Common Market), 169, 171 Merkel, Wolfgang, 19–21 Migration: concerns over human security, 74 Militant Islam in Southeast Asia: Crucible of Terror, 81 Military action: absence of military force as element of complex

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262 interdependence, 206; civilian control of Filipino military, 44; as conflict management strategy, 104–106, 209; decreasing importance of, 35, 66; humiliation in Indonesia with loss of East Timor, 58; international intervention in Asian conflicts, 106–111; international use of personal and economic ties to strengthen, 42; interregional military arrangements, 190; limited involvement in foreign policy decisionmaking in the Philippines, 45; military obsolescence in pluralist communities, 2; potential for subregional cooperation in the Mekong Basin, 119–120; regaining control in Indonesia under Megawati, 37; transition of officers into politics in the Philippines, 45–46. See also Conflict Mindanao, Philippines: Al-Qaidaization of, 79; colonial roots of conflict in, 88–92; decentralization and autonomy as conflict resolution strategy, 100–104; ethnic and religious roots of conflict, 84, 207–208; income and development inequality, 97–99; military approach to conflict management, 209; Muslim Mindanao, 114(n10) Misuari, Nur, 91 Modernization: as motivating force of globalization, 4; weakening the power of state actors in Thailand, 40 Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, 80 Monetary multilateralism, 184–186 Morgenthau, Hans, 23 Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), 80, 89–92, 104, 108, 209 Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), 89–92, 104 Moro population, 84–85, 88–92 Multilateral cooperation: ASEAN’s complex interdependence concept, 199; as victim of bilateral FTAs, 194. See also Cooperation, political and economic Multi-Trust Donor Fund for Mindanao, 109 Muslim Mindanao. See Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao

Index Muslim minorities, 83–85 Myanmar. See Burma NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), 169, 171 Narco-trafficking, 74, 129 Nationalism: Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge, 147; China as historical threat to Vietnam, 174–175; military solution to Indonesia’s conflict, 105; opposing globalization, 5; typifying Thailand’s internal conflict, 83–85 National political processes, 71, 82, 207–208. See also Decentralization, government; Greater Mekong Subregion National resilience doctrine, 77–78 National Revolution Front (BRN; Thailand), 88, 114(n9) National security, Singapore, 76–77 National United Front for an Independent, Neutral, Peaceful and Cooperative Cambodia (FUNCINPEC), 143, 147–149 Natural disasters, 95, 130–132 Natural economic territories, 137(n3) Natural resources. See Resource access and management Network-building: ASEAN’s role in, 166; as element of complex interdependence, 198–199, 206–207 New democracies. See Transition governments New People’s Army (Philippines), 114(n12) New Pulo, 114(n9) New World Order, 188–189 Nguyen Dy Nien, 176 Nguyen Manh Cam, 175 “9 Plus 2” initiative, 125 (table) Nixon, Richard, 24 Nongovernmental organizations: civil society participation in Cambodia’s decentralization process, 160; pursuing specific agendas, 28; varying roles in foreign policy decisionmaking, 26–30 Noninterference and nonintervention policy, 177–179 Nontraditional security complexes, 73–75, 113, 189

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Index Noordin Sopiee, 183 Norodom Ranariddh, 149 Norodom Sirivudh, 176 Nye, Joseph, 2–3, 28–29 Obuchi, Keizo, 73 Oil resources: Aceh’s rich resources, 97–98, 102; Indonesia’s post-tsunami peace talks, 95; terrorism affecting economic interests, 75 One-window services, 157–158 Ong Keng Yong, 172 Operation Enduring Freedom, 108 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 10 Organization of the Islamic Conference, 91 Pancasila, 59, 93 Pan-Pearl River Delta, 125 (table) Paracel Islands, 75–76, 175 Parallel foreign policy, 53 Paris Peace Accords, 2, 148 Park, Tong Whan, 25–26 Parliamentary government, 26–30 Party of Democratic Kampuchea (PDK), 148 Patronage systems, 159 Pattani Islamic Mujahidin Movement (GMIP; Thailand), 114(n9) Pattani National Liberation Front (BNPP), 86 Pattani United Liberation Army (PULA), 86 Pattani United Liberation Organization (PULO), 86, 88 Peacekeeping forces, 148 Peace negotiations and initiatives: ASEAN’s summits and treaties, 197–200; establishment of Muslim Mindanao, 89–90; Indonesia, 94–95; LBJ’s peace initiative, 119–120; national and international approaches, 209; US intervention jeopardizing, 107–108 Pembela Islam (Islamic Defender Front), 96 Phan Van Khai, 7, 197 Phibun regime, 86 Philippines: advocating regional economic integration, 170;

263 Al-Qaidaization of, 79–80; antiAmericanism in, 55; balance of power, 34, 54–56, 66; civilian control of the military, 44–45; colonial roots of conflict in, 88–92; constitutional provisions, 31–32(table); decentralization and autonomy as conflict resolution strategy, 100–104; domestic interests guiding foreign policy, 204–205; economic corruption in, 49; ethnic and religious roots of conflict in, 84; income inequality, 97; military action as conflict resolution strategy, 104–106; military authority in decisionmaking, 45–46; power of the legislature in, 66; realist-liberal shift in perspective, 46; relations with Burma, 56; security threats between Vietnam and, 177; separation between the legislature and the executive, 56; shift in priorities from internal police to external defense, 45; strong institutionalization of the legislature, 54–56; territorial disputes as security threat, 75–76; terrorism affecting economic interests, 75; US military intervention in, 107–108; US trade and investment framework agreements, 193–194; violence curbing foreign and domestic investment, 99; withdrawal from Iraq, 203 Piracy, 74 Pluralism: ASEAN’s post–Cold War pluralization, 3; as demonstrated by the developments of Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia, 67; domestic interests guiding foreign policy, 204–207; GMS as a pluralistic security community, 120, 134–135; growth of extremist groups under, 96; impact of political standing on foreign policy decisionmaking under, 23–24; post–Cold War move toward, 163; shift in Indonesia toward, 39; as understood by the two-level game metaphor, 22 Policymaking: elite control of GMS policymaking, 135–136; GMS influence on Vietnam’s foreign policy, 128–129; goals of the Mekong Committee, 118; separatism and

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264 conflict resolution, 111–112; Singapore’s vulnerability driving foreign policy, 123. See also Foreign policy Political approach to development and decentralization, 141–142, 153 Political participation, 87, 153–155, 159–160 Political parties’ varying roles in foreign policy decisionmaking, 27–30 Political regionalism, 120 Political stability: Cambodia’s instability, 149; cooperative initiatives fostering subregional peace and stability, 134–137; decentralization of political power and, 143 Pollard, Vincent, 28 Pol Pot, 137–138(n7) Popular participation in government, 142 Post–Cold War politics: adjustment of Thai military to, 42; importance of Asian regional cooperation and integration, 188–189; pluralization of ASEAN during, 3; regional economic integration, 169. See also Cold War Poverty: income inequity, 96–100, 208–209; poverty and social exclusion leading to development gaps, 96–100; poverty reduction programs, 99, 152; roots of conflict, 208 Power. See Decentralization Pragmatic approach to development and decentralization, 141–142, 153 Provincial political processes: Cambodia’s commune laws, 153, 155; decentralization policy processes, 156–157; Thailand’s need for decentralization, 101 Public opinion: effect of the media on, 26–27; influence on the legislature, 62; inhibiting potential political benefit in Indonesia, 64; Iraq hostage crisis, 62; paralyzing Ramos’s antiterrorism law, 62 Quadripartite Economic Cooperation, 137(n4) Radical groups, 96 Rama V: efforts toward westernization in Thailand, 4

Index Ramos, Fidel: development of external defense in the Philippines, 45; peace agreement with MNLF, 90; public opinion against, 62 RAND terrorism chronology, 78 Ranke, Leopold von, 23 Razak Baginda, Abdul, 181 Realist school, 23–24 Red book, 148 Reform: colonialism in Thailand, 85; economic reform in Thailand, 41–44; economic reform in the Philippines, 45–47; Indonesia under Megawati, 49; Indonesia under Wahid, 49; Megawati’s inability to complete military reforms, 37; political reform to weaken the military in Thailand, 40–41; Surin’s efforts to reform ASEAN, 44; Vietnam’s ASEAN membership as means of fostering economic reform, 176–180. See also Decentralization Refugees, 43 Regionalism, 71; ASEAN’s achievements toward, 165–167; ASEAN’s antiterrorism efforts, 210; Bali Concord II, 179; currency swapping agreements, 184–186; decentralization policy processes, 156–157; defining and analyzing, 164–165; emergence of East Asia’s, 180–186; globalization and, 163; GMS as successful example of, 212; Indonesia’s national resilience doctrine, 77–78; in organizational structure of ASEAN, 1; regional approaches to conflict management and resolution, 109–111; regional economic integration, 168–173; statist to pluralist shift, 16. See also Greater Mekong Subregion; Interregionalism; Subregional political cooperation Religion: globalization of nonstate violence, 207–208; Islam’s effect on public opinion in Indonesia, 65; roots of conflict in Aceh, 92–96; roots of conflict in Muslim Mindanao, 88–92; roots of domestic conflict, 111; structural framework for national violence, 82–83; Thailand’s evolution

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Index to a secular state, 85–86; typology of national conflict, 83–85 Renminbi zone, 185–186 Resilience doctrine, 77–78 Resistance movements: Indonesia, 96; southern Thailand, 86 Resource access and management: Aceh, 209; concerns over human security, 74; environmental security and subregional cooperation, 130–132; equating power with rice, 147; GMS struggle for water control, 212; income and development inequality, 97–98; Indonesia’s post-tsunami peace talks, 95; interregionalism as mechanism for increasing, 188; Javanization of Indonesia’s economy, 93; Mekong Basin cooperation, 126–127; vertical conflict, 114(n15) Revenue distribution in Cambodia, 156 Richards, Peter G., 20 Riggs, Fred, 52 Rio sustainability triangle, 143 Riparian development. See Greater Mekong Subregion Road building, 126–127 Rosenau, James N., 20 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 23 Russia: ASEM security agenda, 189–190 Salamat, Hashim, 90–91 Salmon, Larry, 107 Sangkum movement, 146 Saon Sann, 148 Scarborough Reef, 76 Secessionist movements, 92. See also Separatist movements Seclusion lists, ASEAN’s, 200(n10) Security: ASEAN as a security community, 166, 172–173; ASEM addressing, 189–190; Bagan Declaration, 130; characteristics of, 71–74; energy security, 132–134; environmental security, 130–132; global and regional initiatives, 78; Mekong Basin development strengthening security cooperation, 119–120; national security doctrines, 76–77; nonstate violence, 79–82; policy solutions for, 111; post–Cold War changes in, 14; potential for US

265 military intervention in Thailand, 106–108; regional alliances, 170; security-based view of subregional economic cooperation, 123; security community as pillar of integrated Southeast Asia, 171–172; security threats between Vietnam and other ASEAN states, 177; subregional cooperation in the Greater Mekong Subregion, 126–128; Vietnam’s membership in ASEAN, 173–174 Seila program, 151–152, 155 Semidemocracy in Thailand, 40 Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, 44, 53 Separatist movements: Al-Qaidaization of South East Asia, 79–81; Free Aceh Movement, 92–96; human security concerns, 74; Muslim Mindanao, 89–92; political response to violence, 111–112; southern Thailand, 86–88; Thailand’s decentralization improving conflict resolution strategies, 103–104; typifying Thailand’s internal conflict, 83–85 Siem Reap provision, 157–159 Sihanouk, Norodom, 143, 146–148 SILAKA, 160, 162(n8) Singapore: advocating regional economic integration, 169–170; AlQaidaization of, 79; ASEM support, 189; economic cooperation through growth triangles, 121–125 (table); Indonesia’s haze crisis, 73; national security culture, 76–77; US desire for bilateral free trade agreements, 193–194 Skidmore, David, 22 Social exclusion, 96–100 Sociocultural community as pillar of integrated Southeast Asia, 171–172 Socioeconomic development, 152 “Soft power,” China’s, 180–181 Soft security, 189 Solidum, Estrella D., 165 South Africa’s difficulties with open foreign policy, 29 South China Sea, 75–76, 135, 198 Southeast Asia Regional Center for Counterterrorism (SEARCCT), 78, 210

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266 Southern China Growth Triangle, 124–125 (table) Southern Cone Common Market (Mercosur), 169, 171 Sovereignty: ASEAN way of diplomacy, 177–179; regionalism threatening, 186; security in terms of, 72 Soviet Union’s control of Vietnam, 147–148 Spanish colonialism in Mindanao, 89 Special Autonomy Law (Indonesia), 102 Special economic zones, 121–122 Spillbacks in integration processes, 170 Spratly Islands, 75–76, 113, 175 Star Kampuchea, 160 State autonomy. See Autonomy of the state State Law and Order Restoration Council, 43 Statist model: domestic interests guiding foreign policy, 204–207; support for, 24–25; trend of movement away from in Southeast Asia, 12; as understood by the two-level game metaphor, 22 Stretching of political activity, 81, 136, 206–207, 213 Subdecrees, 158–159 Subic Naval Base, 55 Subregional political cooperation, 14–15; Bagan Declaration, 137(n6); concept and emergence of, 120–126; energy security in the Greater Mekong Subregion, 132–134; growth triangle concept, 121–125 (table), 137(n3); institutionalization and transparency of, 128–134; security within the Greater Mekong Subregion, 126–128; through the Mekong project, 118–120. See also Greater Mekong Subregion; Growth triangle concept Suharto: adherence to the statist model, 33; downfall facilitating democratic reform, 9; as example of democracy without democratic ideals, 10; on integration, 168–169; revitalization of a diplomatic corps under, 38; targeting Islamic groups, 93–94 Sukarno administration, 92–93 Sulu archipelago, 89, 208 Supranationality, 179

Index Surin Pitsuwan: appointment as foreign minister, 87; efforts to reform ASEAN, 44; pointing blame for failure of conflict resolution, 104; response to Vietnam’s ASEAN membership, 178; role as spokesman, 114(n8); strengthening of the Thai Ministry of foreign affairs, 42 Sustainable development, 131–132 Sutarto, Endriatrono, 94 Taiwan’s territorial disputes over the Spratlys, 75–76 Tak Bai massacre, 106–107, 109, 114(n19) Tanjung Priok, 93 Tan Siew Sin, 168 Technology: advances integral to globalization, 6; jihad terrorists’ weapons technology, 81–82 Tentara Nasional Indonesia (Armed Forces of Indonesia), 96, 104–105 Territorial conflict: ASEAN’s complex interdependence concept, 198–199; government reorganization, 157; Paracel Islands, 75–76, 175; security threats connected to, 71–72; SinoVietnamese conflict despite subregional cooperation, 135, 174–175; Spratly Islands, 75–76 Terrorism: Al-Qaidaization of South East Asia, 79–80; ASEAN’s ineffectiveness in addressing, 110; ASEM security agenda, 190–192; domestic and regional root causes, 71–72; globalization of nonstate violence, 207; global terrorism and local violence, 111; Indonesia’s response to, 64, 114(14); MILF response to military action, 104; potential for US military intervention in Thailand, 106–108; responses in Southeast Asia, 14; roots in resistance movements, 96. See also “War on Terror” Thai-Burmese Joint Commission, 44 Thailand: advocating regional economic integration, 168, 170; Al-Qaidaization of, 79–81; ASEM support, 189; Burmese-Thai relations, 42–43, 52–54; colonial roots of conflict,

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Index 85–88; commercial navigation agreement, 127; cross-border transport agreement, 127–128; decentralization and autonomy as conflict resolution strategy, 100–104; decline of military control, 40–44; domestic interests guiding foreign policy, 204–205; East-West Corridor project, 127; economic cooperation through growth triangles, 124–125 (table); energy security, 133–134; ethnic and religious roots of conflict, 207–208; evidence of divisions in foreign affairs, 44; failure of democratization to influence institutionalization, 66; global perception of national and local violence, 111–113; impact of public opinion on the foreign policy decisionmaking, 62; income and development inequality, 98; increasing openness of foreign policy decisionmaking in, 63; Mekong Committee goals, 118; military approach to conflict management, 209; military mission in Iraq, 203; military role in government, 40–43; nationalism as motivation for the acquisition of Subic Naval Base, 55; realist-liberal shift in perspective, 46; regional approach to conflict resolution, 109–111; regional language differences, 113–114(n7); relationship with Laotian military, 42; religious and ethnic roots of violence, 83–85; role of the National Assembly in, 52; security-economic nexus, 77; security threats between Vietnam and, 177; separation of legislation and public opinion, 62–63; separatist groups, 114(n9); subregional cooperation over environmental security, 131–132; supporting Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge, 147; Tak Bai massacre, 106–107, 109, 114(n19); terrorism affecting economic interests, 75; use of parallel foreign policy, 53; US intervention in, 106–108; US trade and investment framework agreements, 193–194; Vietnam’s ASEAN membership, 175;

267 Vietnam’s opposition to ASEAN regional integration, 178 Thaksin Shinawatra: appeasement policy toward Burma, 53; efforts to move to an open political economy, 47; enthusiasm for war on terrorism, 80, 106; martial law, 104; terrorist acts against, 87–88 Thanajaro, Chettha, 79 Theoretical framework as basis for development of ASEAN, 1 Theun Hinboun Hydropower Project, 132–133 Think tanks’ importance in foreign policy formation, 65 Thin security community, ASEAN as, 172–173 Tiro, Hasan di, 93–94 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 23 Trade. See Commerce and trade Trade and investment framework agreements (TIFAs), 193–194 Trade deficit, 195 Trading blocs, 121 Tran Duc Luong, 174 Transition governments, 26–27, 148 Transnational crime, 78 Transpacific cooperation, 188–190 Transparency, 128–134 Transparency International corruption index, 162(n5) Transportation: subregional cooperation through the Mekong project, 118 Transregional interregionalism, 200–201(n16) Treaties, ASEAN’s summits and, 197–200 Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia/TAC (1976), 197 Treaty on the Southeast Asia Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone (1995), 198 Triangle development strategy, 152 Tripoli Agreement, 89–90 Troika, ASEAN, 178, 200(n13) Tsunami, 95, 100 Tumen River Area Development Program, 124–125 (table) Two-level game metaphor: application to autocracy and democracy, 22; creating problems of public opinion, 63; described, 21; incorporation of

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268 academic consultation into, 28–29; showing shift from statist to pluralist models, 29–30; statist to pluralist shift in foreign policy, 204; use in explaining the challenge to plurality to the executive, 67 UN Conference on Environment and Development, 143 UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), 169 UN Development Programme (UNDP): Cambodia’s decentralization, 140; Cambodia’s Seila program, 151–152; civil society participation in Cambodia’s decentralization process, 159–160; human security, 72–74; importance of fiscal decentralization in economic development, 141 Unification under ASEAN, 1–2 United Kingdom: colonialism and current domestic conflict in the Philippines, 85; colonial roots of Thailand’s civil conflict, 85–88; decentralization policy processes, 156–158 United States: antiterrorism efforts conflict with Southeast Asia’s internal security, 209–210; ASEM as response to US trade dominance, 191–193; ASEM security agenda, 189–190; Cambodia’s coup d’éétat, 146–148; colonialism and current domestic conflict in the Philippines, 85; colonialism in Mindanao, 89; criticism of East Asian trade bloc, 182; establishment of formal relations with ASEAN, 2; exclusion from APT, 183; military assistance in Thailand and Mindanao, 106–109, 209; as model for Filipino legislation, 205; Muslims’ bitterness and hostility toward, 81; security role in South East Asia, 77 Unstructured security threats, 76 UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET), 178 UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), 148 “US–ASEAN Joint Declaration for Cooperation to Combat International Terrorism,” 110–111

Index Venture capital funds, 128 Vertical conflict, 114(n15) Vietnam: ASEAN involvement in the withdrawal from Cambodia, 2; changing attitudes toward globalization, 7; concerns over USASEAN antiterrorism accord, 110–111; conflict sparking Mekong Basin development, 119–120; controversy over ASEAN membership, 173–180, 200(n7), 210–211; cross-border transport agreement, 127–128; domestic interests guiding foreign policy, 204; East-West Corridor project, 127; energy security, 133–134; GMS driving foreign policy outlook, 128–129; increase in international relationships, 8; Khmer Rouge’s attack on, 147–148; Mekong Committee goals, 118; as obstacle to EU-Asia cooperation, 196–197; security implications of Vietnam’s economic reform, 77; subregional cooperation over environmental security, 131–132; territorial disputes as security threat, 75–76; US bilateral free trade agreements, 193–194 Vietnamese Communist Party, 77 Violence: framework and conditions for, 82–83; local-national nexus driving violent conflict, 207–208; nonstate violence, 79–82; religious and ethnic roots of national violence, 111. See also Conflict; Terrorism Visiting Forces Agreement (1998), 108 Wahhabi Islam, 79 Wahid, Abdurrahman: battles with the legislature of Indonesia, 57; challenges to authoritarian rule of, 205; impact of impeachment on actions of the legislature of Indonesia, 57; response to separatist violence, 94; selection indicating a shift toward civilian control of politics in Indonesia, 36; Special Autonomy Law, 102 “War on Terror,” 80; fallacy of, 209; as justification for US military intervention, 106; nontraditional

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Index threats to security, 74–75; participation as indicator of reduced military control in Indonesia, 39 Washington-Beijing rapprochement as an example supporting the statist model, 24 Water resources in the Greater Mekong Subregion, 126–127, 137–138(n7), 212 Weapons of mass destruction (WMD), 75 Weapons technology, 81–82 Wesley, Michael, 73 Westernization, 3–4, 10, 39 West Java, 92 Wimol Wongvanich, 41 Win, Tim, 196

269 Wirahadikusumah, Agus, 37 World Bank, 185 World Trade Organization (WTO), 47, 176–177, 193 World War I as example of the failure of statist model, 24 Yasril Ananta, 58 Yellow Sea Economic Zone, 125 (table) Yen zone, 185–186 Yudhoyono, Susilo Bambang, 38 Yunnan Province, China, 133–134, 137(n2) al-Zawahiri, Ayman, 80 Zone of Peace, Freedom, and Neutrality Declaration (1971), 197

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About the Book

FOCUSING ON THE NEXUS OF GLOBAL, REGIONAL, AND NATIONAL

dynamics in Southeast Asia, Jörn Dosch explores the profound political changes that have occurred in recent years, both within the region and within its international relations. Dosch first examines the realm of foreign policy, with an emphasis on the link between democratization and the conduct of foreign affairs. Subsequent chapters consider the origins of insurgencies and terrorism, responses to national and international security threats, and the increasing importance of subregional cooperation. The efforts of the international donor community to promote good governance are highlighted, as is ASEAN’s inability to respond to new international challenges. The book concludes with an assessment of the region’s current geostrategic position and the new contours of its relations with the United States and the countries of Europe and East Asia. Jörn Dosch is reader in Asia-Pacific Studies at the University of Leeds. He is coauthor of The New Global Politics of the Asia-Pacific.

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