Since the past two weeks, Southeast Asia has been putting a serious concern to its security and stability caused by the state of crisis in Marawi and Mindanao. Isnilon Hapilon, appeared to be a famous criminal who has committed itself in a global crime featured in the list of targeted person by FBI, becomes the reason why Armed Forces of Philippines started its fire in Marawi. Currently, the AFP has been fighting against 400 militants of Islamist fighters in Marawi, including foreign fighters, causing almost 200,000 civilians flee away from the city. By placing the entire Mindanao under martial law, President Rodrigo Duterte perceived that this approach would end the crisis soon.

Even this issue was considered as a topic for discussion during the annual regional security forum, The Shangri-La Dialogue. This topic was brought by the Singapore’s Defense Minister Ng Eng Hen, who is afraid if the situation in Marawi and Mindanao is not immediately resolved under the framework of cooperation between ASEAN member countries, Southeast Asia would have to bear the responsibility for a greater spill-over effect to the region.

Amidst a belief that President Rodrigo Duterte would have been successful to ‘solve’ his national security crisis alone, the transnational nature of Islamists insurgency and radicalism needs a significant role of ASEAN, not only to have a prompt response against potential security threat, but also to prevent the growth of radicalism and transnational crime.

Practically, ASEAN member states have stepped up cooperation as the threat from Islamic State increases. They planned to utilize spy planes and drones to stalk the movement of militants. The existing trilateral joint maritime patrol between Indonesia, Malaysia, and Philippines will be intensified. Even the United States through U.S.-ASEAN meeting seeks an entry point to ‘help’ ASEAN whether it is intelligence, information, or else. Let alone Duterte has been offered a help by Russia to fight drugs and terrorism, and he himself demands for military assistance from Russia.

In this sense, ASEAN needs to learn from the case when Southeast Asia was regarded as ‘second front’ of the US Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). George Bush pushed to implement a regional counterterrorism consensus considering all terrorism-related activities into one bucket. On the other hand, the nature of Marawi’s crisis is more multifaceted with crosscutting issues involving separatism, Islamic radical movements, and global crime network. In this sense, if Russia and the United States intervene more in this regional issue let alone putting a similar doctrine like GWOT, it is plausible that the Philippines will become the ‘Syria of Southeast Asia’. ASEAN member states should keep in mind that the ASEAN Convention on Counter Terrorism remains prime as a guideline to counter, prevent, and suppress terrorism in all forms. In this sense, the involvement of external parties should be considered carefully.

This does not dwell on defeating the militants per se, but also to close the gap for separatism. ASEAN needs to learn from the case of Indonesia, back to the end of 1990s where Indonesia lost East Timor. The indirect interventions from Australian government to support the insurgency of FRETILIN led by Francisco Xavier do Amaral had successfully foiled the two-decade Lotus Operation launched by Indonesian Armed Forces.

In fact, it is arguably that Duterte should realize that the case should be addressed to ASEAN as a regional body instead of ensnaring greater involvement from great powers. The larger involvement of great power in ASEAN’s regional security problem will only pave a way to a more complex political-security environment in ASEAN. In this sense, it provides a criticism that the ASEAN’s principle of non-intervention must be further question to reflect the current security and stability crisis in the region, especially the Article III and IV of ASEAN Convention on Counter Terrorism concerning the principle of non-interference and preservation of sovereignty.

ASEAN needs to be more fluid to encounter the transnational nature of threat. Having said that the nature of this threat is transnational, ASEAN member states need to realize that sovereignty is the primary cost to be paid. If ASEAN does not begin to put concern about ‘shared sovereignty’, not only is ASEAN’s increasingly lost relevance in dealing with traditional and non-traditional security issues, the fall of the country to the hands of radical groups is not inconceivable.

Therefore, we may see the future challenge for ASEAN‘s security issues is not only in the way to manage and solve the primary security crisis in the South China Sea, but also to maintain security and stability in Marawi under the existing ASEAN Convention on Counter Terrorism. By not pulling in external parties to solve this issue, ASEAN will not lose its relevance to ensure the regional security and stability.

 

Dedi Dinarto is a researcher at ASEAN Studies Center, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Universitas Gadjah Mada.

China officially launched the Belt and Road Initiatives on May 2017. Attended by 29 partner countries (with the absence of some prominent neighbours such as India), the launching of the initiative has marked a new direction in China’s foreign policy, with scholars has signalled this initiative as a new shift in international politics.

The so-called “Belt and Road Initiatives” (BRI), however, is not Beijing’s new foreign policy project. It has been formulated since 2014, which was coincided with the establishment of Chinese-led initiative, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Unlike AIIB, however, Beijing’s direct involvement is more prominent in the BRI, in which the initiative was directed and strongly controlled by Beijing, whilst the AIIB tended to be multilateral and based on expertise.

 

The ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Politics of Regionalism

The rise of BRI has raised some questions over the future of regionalism in many parts of the world. In 1995, Andrew Hurrell theorised the resurgence of ‘new regionalism’, which witnessed the political order into a new form of interstate cooperation based on geographical and spatial proximities. New Regionalism, he argued, emerged because of world reordering after the Cold War, which witnessed the fall of the Soviet Union and some new patterns of cooperation, which is different with the past.

However, some new developments in the 2000s have also showed stagnation and, more recently, signals towards reversal. Prior to the launching of BRI, the world has witnessed the crisis in the European Union (EU) with the United Kingdom called for exiting the EU through a referendum in 2016. On the other part of the world, ASEAN has also showed stagnation in the negotiation over South China Sea (although the diplomatic fora still continues until present) and the talks over the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.

This is not to mention the shift in United States’ foreign policy under President Donald Trump, who seems not to be interested in maintaining the liberal world order, which is arguably central in the US foreign policy in the last decade.

The rise of Chinese-led AIIB and BRI therefore should be understood in this historical and political trajectory. At least three keys explanations pave the way of ‘the rise of China’ and its infrastructure project.

First, we need to understand ‘the rise of China’ as an effect of the 2008 global financial crisis that put the Anglo-American power, which has arguably been established since the Second Bretton Wood, at stake. The global financial crisis in the US and Europe has hit the most fundamental foundation of Anglo-American ‘structural power’, namely the financial architecture. As a result, many states are forced to adjust their key financial policy into the macro prudential reform that gives more power to the state to regulate national financial environment.

Yet, the recovery from the 2008-2009 crisis is not as smooth as analyst and scholars predicted. It contributes to the unrest in Greece, the rise of right-wing populism in many European states, as well as to the recent Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom. China, in contrast, has showed not only resilience to the crisis, but also its power to navigate the world political economic order through state-led industrial and developmental policies. With the decline of Anglo-American ‘neoliberal’ order, China has slowly gained prominence in world politics.

Second, the rise of China has also enabled by what Andrew Baker said as ‘ideational shift’ in the construction of world political and economic order. Since 1980s, the so-called Washington Consensus” has been taken seriously as the only alternative to manage the world economy. However, with the decline of neoliberal order amid the global financial crisis, the idea of free-market social liberalism that constitutes the foundation of liberal political-economic order has also been declined.

Interestingly, in early 2010s, the World Bank released a new document that redefines the framework for economic development, namely “New Structural Economics”. Authored by the Bank’s then Chief Economist, Justin Yifu Lin, the document has challenged the prominence of free-market mechanism and called for the return of the state in supporting industrial projects through constructing infrastructural cooperation. The framework may be debated among Economist, but it has undoubtedly re-framed political economic order into a new state-led direction, with many scholars referred as the return of ‘Keynesianism’ in world political economy.

Third, the rise of China could also be interpreted as the transformation of ‘territorial logic’ of regionalism to a new ‘infrastructural logic’ brought by the AIIB and BRI. I argue that this transformation has been enabled by the changing countours of world political economy with the decline of the neoliberal order and the rise of ‘new structuralism’ in world politics. The AIIB and BRI utilised this transformation to create a new basis for Chinese ‘structural power’ in world politics.

 

The Changing Logic of Territoriality

Theorists of new regionalism and the liberal institutionalists tended to argue that regionalism is crafted by a process of integration, which occurs in a set of geographical and territorial boundaries and unites the states within the boundaries to cooperate each other to maintain stability and avoid conflicts. It is the case with the ASEAN, in which the result to respondthe Cold War conflict and establish cooperation in a set of territorial boundaries, namely ‘Southeast Asia’.

However, missing from their argument is the historical origins of the ‘territorial logic’ that underpins this regional integration. Yet, in the 1990s, several Indochinese countries have agreed to join ASEAN, which marked the extension of territorial boundaries of the regionalism project. It shows that the ‘territorial logic’ that underpins regionalism, particularly in Southeast Asia, is constructed historically and socially. It was socially constructed by the changes in international political order and historically constructed by the similar political background with other ASEAN member states.

The Chinese-led Belt and Road Initiatives, I shall argue, challenges this old ‘territorial logic’ and offers a new framework of regionalism based on the infrastructural and, furthermore, industrial cooperation. This form of cooperation is not new; ASEAN has attempted to establish such cooperation in the 1980s. However, the so-called ‘ASEAN Industrial Project’ was soon replaced by ASEAN Free Trade Area, which was based upon the ‘neoliberal’ logic of cooperation.

With the decline of neoliberal order and the rise of this mode of infrastructural cooperation, it will not be surprising to see the return of more complex form of regional infrastructural and industrial cooperation in the future. The infrastructural cooperation will arguably leads into a deeper connection of regional project, regardless the geographical locus of cooperation, with China leads the way to finance the cooperation.

Consider, for example, China’s involvement in Africa. With growing multilateral projects on African infrastructural development, China has showed that regional cooperation could also involve external partners, particularly when it comes to development project. As Justin Yifu Lin and Andrea Goldstein has recently argued, the rise of infrastructural cooperation could lead into ‘African Industrial revolution’, which obviously re-frame African economic cooperation in the region.

Moreover, the rise of Belt and Road Initiatives necessitates a new understanding of regionalism in world politics. It is clear that logic of regionalism is on the way for being challenged by the rise of new pattern of cooperation brought by China. However, regionalism is still far from crisis. It is the task for scholars who study regionalism in Southeast Asia to lay out future research programmes to respond this new politics of regionalism in the future.

 

Ahmad Rizky Mardhatillah Umar is a Researcher at ASEAN Studies Center, Universitas Gadjah Mada

‘Brexit’ has created shockwaves through the European Union and called into question whether regional integration is sustainable, and ASEAN is watching developments closely. A key issue that ASEAN must learn from ‘Brexit’ is to address the ‘Communication Deficit’ by engaging in social integration.

The ‘Communication Deficit’ refers to the difficulty European institutions and actors have in disseminating information to the citizens of Europe. A lack of information often creates suspicion and skepticism, and undermines the trust society has in its institutions. Indeed, common criticisms of the European Union point to its elitist, highly bureaucratised and complex structures. Furthermore, communication administered by the European Union is of an academic nature consisting of technical jargon, reducing accessibility for the nonprofessional. From the British perspective, the elitist nature of the European Union has been popularised by leading Eurosceptic Nigel Farage, who in 2010 questioned the leadership credentials of the President of the European Council Herman Van Rumpy and the democratic structures of the European Union:  

“You have the charisma of a damp rag, and the appearance of a low grade bank clerk. And the question that I want to ask, that we’re all going to ask, is who are you? I’ve never heard of you, nobody in Europe has heard of you. I would like to ask you Mr. President, who voted for you?… And what mechanism do the peoples of Europe have to remove you? Is this European democracy?”

The notion of a ‘Communication Deficit’ in the European Union has been acknowledged for some time. In Bernd Spanier’s 2012 chapter entitled ‘Europe, anyone?’, he tracks the use of popular voting in individual member-states to decide on European wide issues in the period between the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 until the Global Financial Crisis in 2008. Poignantly, he argues that such voting systems are ‘problematic when member states which usually adhere to a representative model of democracy, suddenly resort to direct, plebiscitary models whenever fundamental decisions about Europe are to be taken.’

A key issue that Spanier highlights is that the lack of clarity of information regarding the inner workings of the European Union significantly raises the political transaction costs in seeking policy ratification at home. From a European perspective, this often leads to unfavourable outcomes, where political processes often distort the realities of European governance. Indeed, political game theorist highlights where ministers in council agree to unpopular measures, and then blame these unpopular measures on Brussels on their return home to retain their own political capital. Finally, the lack of pan-European media outlets to report on the European Union mean that national media outlets disseminate information to the public, creating space for a nationalist version of events.

The European Union has attempted to address this problem, though with little success. The Commission’s 2005 White Paper on Communication Policy proposed to move from ‘institution-centered’ to ‘citizen-centered’ communication. Furthermore, the European Parliament’s 2006 Herrero Report called for improving general knowledge regarding the European Union amongst its citizens. However, Britain’s referendum outcome in favour of ‘leave’, and in particular the character of the debates leading up to the referendum, show that the European Union has failed in addressing the ‘Communication Deficit’.

A key theme of the debates in the run up to the referendum was that traditional arguments based on economic reasoning did not have the desired persuasive effect of encouraging undecided voters to vote for ‘remain’. Indeed, one could argue that Chancellor George Osborne’s hyperbolic claim that households would be £4,300 worse off as a result of ‘Brexit’ served to alienate and create further distance between the voters and pro-European political classes.

Instead, arguments that created greater resonance amongst the electorate were those that focused on ‘values’ rather than economic reasoning, with Michael Gove’s now (in)famous quote “The British people have had enough of experts.” Political rhetoric instead focused on immigration, sovereign democratic values and competing visions of Britain’s sense of nationhood, and the ability of Britain to ‘take back control’ to model a future of its own making.

Why did the debates escalate into the less tangible issue of ‘values’, rather than focusing on the material issues at hand? One could argue that the ‘Communication Deficit’ means that European Citizens are largely unaware of how the European Union affects their daily lives. Indeed, surveys have frequently shown a significant proportion of the electorate were not entirely sure of what the EU is, does, or how it functions. What appears to be counter intuitive was that some of the regions that voted most heavily in favour of Britain leaving the European Union were those in receipt of the most EU development funding per person. Thus, the battleground became one of competing visions of what Britain’s underlying ‘values’ were, and whether or not they were compatible with the values of the European Union.

These constructivist elements of ‘values’ and the ‘Communication Deficit’ are especially pertinent in the British context. The rhetoric behind the founding of the European Union often highlights the efforts between France and Germany to establishing long lasting peace, which it has certainly been successful in this goal. These primary values that underlie the supranational institution of the EU, create value commitment for the French and German’s to the EU. However, this has not been the case for Britain. Indeed, rhetoric often focused on how Britain was an awkward participant of the EU, joining later only in 1973, retaining the pound in currency and not participating in the Schengen area. In light of this, British electorate felt they had less of a stake in the EU project. Thus in retrospect, Britain was especially susceptible to the negative effects of the ‘Communication Deficit’ and the failure of the European Union to communicate with the British electorate at the grassroots level has contributed to feelings of alienation and disenfranchisement.

This focus of the debate on ‘value’ rather than economic reasoning is often decried by those who campaigned to ‘remain’. However, in the complex processes of institution building, the importance of values should not be discounted. Institutionalists such as Douglas North argue that formal institutional design is the constitutive expression of the underlying values of a society, no matter how immaterial or intangible they are. One could argue that the ‘Communication Deficit’ of the European Union has led to a failure in constructing shared values, in that the British people had a stake in a union with Europe, thus contributing in favour of a ‘leave’ vote.

Lessons from ‘Brexit’ and the ‘Communication Deficit’ for ASEAN

One could argue that Brexit has legitimised ASEAN’s institutional form. Critics of ASEAN often decry ASEAN’s lack of supranational structure, whilst also criticising the norms of decision making by consensus, meaning that ASEAN can only move as fast as its slowest member. However, leading figures in ASEAN, such as former General Secretary Surin Pitsuwan, point to the high levels of diversity in ASEAN in terms of political forms, income levels and cultural differences that impede the pace of regionalism. Thus, ‘Brexit’ plays a part in legitimising the notion that there needs to be higher levels of common ground between member states when seeking closer cooperation. In light of this, ASEAN should take advantage of the slow top down regionalism process, and engage with the bottom up regionalisation process to construct common values and the idea of a South East Asian community in pursuit of regional integration.

Brexit has shown that integration based on economic and elite level political factors alone whilst ignoring social implications creates feelings of skepticism and disenfranchisement amongst the population. Similar to the European Union, ASEAN also carries an image of being an elitist political project, designed to expand market opportunities for big business whilst preventing information regarding decision-making processes being disseminated to the wider public. If ASEAN does seek closer cooperation with popular support, then it must address the ‘Communication Deficit’ in regards to regional integration. This issue is especially pertinent with democracies such as Indonesia. However, it is also highly relevant for the hybrid regimes in other ASEAN member states who derive legitimacy from economic wellbeing.

In light of this, the concepts of ‘Social Integration’, as proposed in the ASEAN Studies Center’s  monograph, ‘ASEAN in 2017: Regional Integration in an Age of Uncertainty’, is especially timely. ASEAN must create the idea and primary values of a Southeast Asian community with common goals in pursuing integration. Furthermore, this should not only be targeted at the elites in society, nor solely through universities and business associations. Communication must be extended to the grassroots level. This should be conducted through a more people-centered institutional form.

The European Union has acknowledged that it should move from ‘institution-centered’ to ‘citizen-centered’ communication. However, the failure of the European Union to do this effectively has led to catastrophic repercussions, with the disenfranchisement felt by large sections of British society resulting in a vote for leaving the European Union. As argued by Umar, ‘Brexit’ revealed the gap between the EU and the British people. Thus, if ASEAN is to avoid the fate of regional disintegration it too must learn from ‘Brexit’, and in seeking closer regional cooperation and integration it must address the ‘Communication Deficit’ and focus on a more people-centered and people-oriented institutional form.

Suraj Shah is a Visiting Fellow at ASEAN Studies Center, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Universitas Gadjah Mada, and a Graduate Student at King’s College University of London.

Political stability and food security are inter-related both at national and regional level. The distortion of political instability would eventually affect food availability and distribution. On the one hand, food scarcity, which will increase food price and shortage, could provoke political instability. During the establishment of ASEAN Economic Community, ASEAN have been projected its institution as the global food granary. In fact, the ASEAN countries today are still facing issues on land and water grabbing. To solve this issue, ASEAN must help member countries to address the problem of land and water grabs by developing regional regulation to support investment on agriculture.

In the context of regional integration, ASEAN has defined itself to focus on agricultural partnership. ASEAN had its existing platforms on ASEAN Integrated Food Security Framework (AIFS), which is supposed to be the springboard in providing solution for food supply, and agricultural land. The goals of AIFS Framework are ensuring long-term food security in ASEAN, and improving the livelihood of farmers in ASEAN.

The ASEAN Summit 2009 pledged to embrace food security as a permanent policy priority. It is extended on the 2015-2025 Strategic Plan. The Summit adopted AIFS Framework to systematize its approach to food security. Its vision is to integrate programs of stabilizing national and regional food prices and supply, and to help member countries to cope with food emergency.

In this sense, the background of developing AIFS rests on ASEAN’s ability addressing famine effectively, especially in Indonesia, Lao PDR, Philippines, and Vietnam.

The report of United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization in 2013 indicated that Southeast Asia region has shown decreased number of undernourished people from 140 million in 1990 to 64.5 million in 2011. However, 64.5 million is still a huge number of people, in which it needs to be reduced and resolved.

The phenomena of water grabbing in Mekong Basin has showed how resources should be managed by regional institution. Mekong river is a water stream that flowing through several nations, including: Cambodia, Thailand, Lao PDR, and Vietnam. It means when a country conducting a project in the Mekong River, the other would get its externalities. For instance, the dispute on Thailand’s hydropower development happens to constrain Vietnam, Lao PDR, and others livelihood, especially in agriculture. The other phenomena also happen in Indonesia on the dispute of land grabbing Semen vs Samin.

To address this situation, I believe that to enhance ASEAN integrated food security framework, the institution should establish ground rule and consent on facing land and water grabbing issues as well.

Substantively, one of the strategic thrust of AIFS frameworks stated, “identify policies, institutional, and governance mechanism for nutrition-enhancing agriculture development in ASEAN member states.” It aims to increase the awareness and recognition on the importance of nutrition on food, agriculture, and forestry by the national stakeholders.

Subsequently, it would implicate the national policy mechanism. In contrary, the ASEAN countries still have no clear regulated acquisition on monitoring and maintaining farmland and water resources. Some evidences, such as displaced farmlands and community forests into commercial industry purposes as in mining, or food crops plantation in the region.

As a consequences, the action to achieve ASEAN as the world’s food granary is still going to be a long run. We can see on how ASEAN is still relying on food security preventive action in ASEAN Plus Three Emergency Rice Reserve (APTERR).

APTERR is a regional cooperation between ASEAN and China, Japan, and Korea. This cooperation is focusing on agriculture and forestry to secure food availability within its member, through the main function of assistance for food aid, and building nation’s confidence during food crisis. Unfortunately, APTERR only regulates the subject of earmarked rice reserve. I believe that to ensure food security in the cooperation of ASEAN+3 the regulation should also establish monitoring on agricultural land and other resources. The agreement should cover the issue of land and water grabbing.

To achieve the-so-called ASEAN’s food granary, AIFS Frameworks need to focus on multi-sectoral and multi-stakeholder engagements.

AIFS should be able to engage with the sub-regional organization, academia, local governments, private-public partnership, social enterprise, civil society organization and non-governmental organization, etc. The objective of its engagement is to enhance commitment, participation, and social responsibility of ASEAN peoples to benefit the community.

The notion would not be only about resolving hunger in the region, but more importantly about how to maintain and enhance food security in the region.

In conclusion, the ASEAN institution and community should take land-grabbing issues as serious problem to food security. The projection on AEC blueprint 2025 indicates food security agenda as priority to ASEAN institutional enhancement.

Ruth Tarullyna Simanjuntak is a research intern at ASEAN Studies Center, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Universitas Gadjah Mada, and an undergraduate student at Department of Politics and Government, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Universitas Gadjah Mada.