ASEAN, China And The US: An Uneasy and Fragile Triangle

ASEAN-US Special Leaders’ Summit – February 2016

Jean-Pierre Lehmann

THERE CAN BE NO DOUBT that, symbolically at least, the recent U.S.-ASEAN Special Leaders’ Summit in California was a historic event.

I was in the ASEAN region 50 years ago when ASEAN per se did not yet exist; it was founded the following year, 1967, by five of its current ten members: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, which were later joined by Brunei, Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia. At the time Southeast Asia was the world’s bloodiest battlefield, with not only the Vietnam War raging but also insurrections and risks of wars between countries. With the establishment at the end of 2015 of the ASEAN Economic Community, the group has had a highly successful journey.

This is all the more remarkable in that no region in the world contains such religious, political and economic diversity (as well as diverse colonial histories) as Southeast Asia. In recent decades, notwithstanding its multiple fault lines, ASEAN has been an island of comparative stability in what has been and is increasingly a turbulent world. The contrast between Southeast Asia and Southwest Asia (the Levant) is particularly striking. In this context it has to be said that the U.S., since its defeat in the Vietnam War 40 years ago, has been, on balance, a benign force, both in respect to security and economic development.

This stability, however, must not be taken for granted. It is fragile: There are various social, environmental, economic, political and ideological threats within countries, and potential areas of conflict between countries. Furthermore, while one cannot say that the U.S.’ role has become hostile in the region, it is ambivalent. The U.S.-ASEAN summit is presumably a component of the “pivot to Asia” strategy, but it is not clear what the “pivot to Asia” means, nor to what it is directed.

The really grave threat would be if ASEAN becomes a proxy battlefield between the superpower U.S. and the rising great power China, somewhat comparable to the position of the Balkans between the great powers on the eve of World War I. Many issues could exacerbate not only tensions between China and the U.S. but also among ASEAN member states. Two especially stand out.

TPP – The Exclusive (no China) Partnership

With the collapse of the multilateral WTO Doha Round, Washington has been pursuing various regional and megaregional trade policy initiatives. The TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) consists of a dozen Pacific countries from Latin America, North America and East Asia, including four ASEAN member states: Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam. It excludes China. Whereas the Washington rhetoric argues that TPP (like its Atlantic counterpart, TTIP) is a building block to a more liberal global trade order, others, notably but not only in Beijing, see it as a stumbling block, divisive and exclusive. The regional trade dynamics could become highly geopoliticized.

The second and potentially most explosive issue is the South China Sea. It is an immensely complex issue not only for the Asia-Pacific region but also the world. Territorial disputes are especially acute between China and four ASEAN states, three of which (Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam) are also members of TPP (the fourth is the Philippines).

From the perspective of the U.S. and the threatened ASEAN countries, China appears in the South China Sea as a rising territory-grabbing imperialist nation impeding freedom of navigation. From the Chinese perspective the South China Sea is as critical to its security as the Caribbean was to the U.S. at a time when it was seeking its place in the global sun. The U.S. transformed the Caribbean into an American lake, as the Chinese wish to transform the South China Sea into a Chinese lake.

With China highly dependent on supplies of vital resources, notably energy, minerals and food, any disruption in the South China Sea, particularly the geopolitically critical Malacca Strait, threatens the lifeline to China’s 1.3 billion people.

Just as there is no unanimous view among ASEAN member states about TPP, there is no unanimous view about the South China Sea. To avoid transforming the region once again into a battlefield, visionary statesmanship will be called upon from all key actors: China, the U.S. and the ten member states of ASEAN.

It is, to put it mildly, a bit worrying.


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