For an East Asian umbrella

ASEAN decides to launch the first-ever East Asia Summit later this year as part of its attempt to create an East Asian Community for economic cooperation and security coordination.

P.S. SURYANARAYANA in Singapore

TWO important decisions were made and publicised during the latest series of annual Foreign Minister-level meetings that the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) organised in the Laotian capital, Vientiane. However, the sessions, held in the final week of July, remained unremarkable for the most part.

At the higher political level, the notable absentees at the 12th session of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), held on July 29, included United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as also India's External Affairs Minister K. Natwar Singh and Japanese Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura. As they were represented by their deputies, there was no significant sense in which the discussions suffered, save for the political touch of class. The two key decisions that hit the headlines were not related to the ARF's deliberations.

First, Myanmar's Foreign Minister U Nyan Win informed the other nine ASEAN Foreign Ministers, at their meeting on July 26, that his country had decided to relinquish its turn, under a rotational principle, to chair the group in 2006. Of wider significance is the parallel reality that Myanmar's military junta will not also preside over the ASEAN's annual meetings with its dialogue partners in 2006.

ASEAN's 10 dialogue-partners include the U.S., India, China, Japan, Russia, Australia and New Zealand. The ARF, on the other hand, consists of 25 "participants" (the official nomenclature for the members). These include not only the ASEAN's dialogue partners but also others, Pakistan (admitted in 2004) being a prominent one among them.

Now, while the Yangon military regime has given up its claim to chair the ASEAN next year, the question of Myanmar's turn to host the ARF session later may still become an issue, if there is no definitive progress towards democratisation in that country by then.

The objections from the democracy lobby within the ARF or, more precisely, within the ranks of ASEAN's dialogue partners, have now stopped the Myanmar junta in its tracks. However, the overall ramifications of Myanmar's decision have not yet been fully addressed by either ASEAN or its dialogue partners. There is more to Myanmar's seemingly simple decision than meets the eye.

The second decision that grabbed international attention was, in many respects, the more important one to emanate from the sessions in Vientiane this time. The ASEAN Foreign Ministers, who held their annual session with the Plus-Three countries (namely, China, Japan and South Korea), on July 27, announced their collective decision to invite India as also Australia and New Zealand to the planned first-ever East Asia Summit (EAS), scheduled for December 14 this year in Kuala Lumpur.

The first EAS, originally proposed by ASEAN+3 as an event that would initiate the process of building an East Asian Community over time, is designed to set the stage for future summits of a similar kind. In one sense, therefore, participation in the proposed EAS process will be, for India, a form of political compensation for its sustained exclusion from ASEAN's scheme of periodic meetings with the other major Asian powers - China and Japan - and with South Korea as a vibrant player on the regional economic scene. However, India will still remain on the periphery of ASEAN's core economic partnership in Asia.

This became evident from a collective announcement by the ASEAN+3 Foreign Ministers, including notably Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing. While disclosing names of the invitees to the first EAS, the Ministers made it clear that the existing ASEAN+3 process of summit-level meetings (and, of course, talks at other related echelons) would not be abandoned at all. The next ASEAN+3 summit will precede the first EAS by two days at the same venue, Kuala Lumpur.

The political implication of this parallel move is that neither India nor indeed Australia and New Zealand will be admitted to the core group of the EAS process. The ASEAN+3 will remain an exclusive group and will seek to pilot the larger multilateral moves to create an East Asian Community for economic cooperation and strategic/security coordination. In the East Asian nucleus-club, the ASEAN will occupy "the driving seat".

At one level, India may feel disappointed at being left out of the core Asian group which is expected to embark on the venture-politics of creating an altogether new community. Australia and New Zealand, the other invitees to the first EAS, are not technically or completely "Asian", given their "Western" cultural orientations and special links with the U.S.

Significantly, there is a specific reason why the ASEAN, always an unlikely but no less a successful prime mover for major economic and political initiatives relating to East Asia, has retained for itself "the driving seat". This has to do with the sensibilities of the U.S., which is not being invited to the first EAS.

The U.S. is already the key player within the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum. No less importantly, the ASEAN itself, as emphasised by the late Michael Leifer, one of the world's leading authorities on South-East Asia, was "conceived as an aspirant security community" at a time when China was seen by this group, an emerging club then, as a potential security threat.

For the ASEAN today, China is, instead, a valued economic partner and also a possible security-related collaborator. The dramatic change has much to do with China's diplomacy in the post-Cold War period since the early 1990s and, of course, the ASEAN's increased "self-confidence". Nonetheless, the ASEAN remains cautious that its moves, like the one relating to the idea of an East Asian Community, should not be misunderstood by the U.S.

In a sense, the ASEAN's perceptions about the U.S. as the prime guarantor or even the sole protector of peace and stability across the Asia Pacific region covers the entire East Asia too. Noteworthy, as a counter-point, is the issue posed by Zhu Majie, a Chinese strategic affairs specialist. Noting that "there is the question of who will be the leading actor on [the East Asian] stage of security cooperation", despite the role that the U.S. has sought, he has said that "China hopes that some kind of security mechanism will be established" on the basis of principles ranging from peaceful co-existence to the `no-first-use' of nuclear weapons. Of relevance to this strategic discourse is the decision by ASEAN+3 to stay as a core group. This only implies that India is still being kept on the sidelines of the security debate, including the debate on economic security, as the ASEAN engages the U.S., at one level, and China at another level.

Noteworthy as a sub-plot in the overall political engagement between the ASEAN and the U.S-led Western bloc is the manner in which the Myanmar junta has managed to have its way at the latest meetings in Vientiane.

The U.S. and other Western countries had flagged the "democracy" issue, ahead of the ASEAN's decision about Myanmar's chairmanship for 2006. The "threat", often stated implicitly, by the Western camp, was that it would not be able to participate in ASEAN's interactions with its dialogue partners if the Yangon regime were to assume the group's chair without setting free Aung San Suu Kyi, the celebrated democracy campaigner, and taking credible steps towards democratisation in Myanmar.

In the event, Myanmar's military rulers decided to give up their chairmanship claim without, of course, losing any of their existing benefits as a full-fledged member of ASEAN. Coming in handy for Yangon was ASEAN's principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of its member-states. While ASEAN had left the chairmanship issue to be decided by Myanmar itself, the West discovered that an intended proxy war with Yangon simply backfired as a strategy. The "ASEAN way" of non-interference was "exploited" by Myanmar's junta.

The ARF's decision to throw its doors open to Bangladesh under a due process of admission and the signing of the ASEAN-Pakistan anti-terror declaration were events that did not evoke much attention. A "vision statement" on alternative ways to ensure environmental protection, reached by a few countries including India on the sidelines of the ASEAN-related meetings, won plaudits from U.S. President George W. Bush. It, however, remains to be seen how the new ideas can be carried forward.