Habibah Hermanadi,

Research assistant of ASEAN Studies Center UGM

 

Donald Trump has been elected as the 45th President of the United States. As predicted, the result triggered massive reaction from all over the world including Southeast Asia. Previously, the scenarion of “Trump’s Triumph” has been unimaginable among academics and political commentators, for he was seen merely as an anecdotal figure with bleak chance of winning. Even media has forecasted the failure of his campaign, which is now proven to be wrong.

This is clearly a global situation. However, it is not unpredictable. I argue that “Trump’s Triumph” reflects the rising trend of ‘strongman leader’ in world politics, which is reflected upon the current leadership trends in many parts of the world, including in Southeast Asia.

Strongman Leaders

Financial Times described the condition as the rise of “Strongman Leaders”. Their argument is simple: the world is witnessing the rise of tough leaders, paired with assertive approach, strong rhetoric, and, most importantly,put great emphasis on the strength of greatness based on national unity. A classic study from Anthony Birch nationalism has been the most successful political doctrine to promote a political agenda, particularly in electoral campaign. The concept of national unity itself is contrasted from Rousseau’s vision of nationalism, which highlights how a community living based on shared customs and a single way of life, could be expected to feel affection from their own societies. Moreover, national unity also poses constant exposure to conflicts and internal fragmentation that could drive society to elect a ‘strongman leaders’.

It is against this backdrop we could understand how Trump won in the recent US General Election.

This is also the case in Southeast Asia. Rodrigo Duterte, the current president of Philippines, shows how a “strongman leader” arouses from the practice of democratic politics. Even though he was democratically elected, he also confront international society by embracing a tough war on drug dealers, which became an international human rights concern.

On the regional level, the recent 36th ASEANPOL Conference last July was marked by powerful remarks from leaders, such as from Malaysian current Prime Minister Najib Razak, who deemed that national security is a paramount issue in which he will not be apologetic. The trend also includes Thailand, whose currently undergoing the military government has been showing potentials of shifting its constitutions.

In the recent referendum, Prayuth Chan-o-cha, the Prime Minister of Thailand, even has legitimacy to exercise some sorts of ‘martial law’, for he is given a permanent super-crisis powers and  maximum power to the army to resolve political crises in the countiry.

Indonesia, on the other hand showed a different demands in terms of what the society demands in a leader. During the 2014 election, he beat , Prabowo Subianto a former charismatic general who promised a turn for ‘developmentalist politics’ characterised by strong leadership. Known for his straightforward, down-to-earth, and populist politics his popularity declined in 2015 as he was seen as an indecisive leader unable to take decisive actions. Even though he could survive Indonesian politics (with his unexpected maneouvre in some political occassions), there has been some criticisms from Indonesian for his inability to challenge strongmen and oligarch in the .

A Cold War Legacy

“Strongman leaders” is in fact a Cold War legacy. It is a trend where transparency endless and democratic politics are not a common practice in world politics. At the end of the War, endless political revolutions and internal reformations has been resulted by this trend. It was a time where popular demands rise and challenge the politics of oligarchy in many states, including Indonesia.

Strongman leaders relies upon popular demand from their followers/voters. They tend to neglect a more technocratic view in doing diplomacy and foreign policy.

Take Phillippines as an example. The Cold War has brought Phillippines under the shadow of US Foreign Policy, placing the nation as the pivot of the power politics against the Communists. But it also witnessed the popular protest, when, for example, President Marcos has been toppled down by people’s protests in 1986. It since then witnessed the emergence of strong leaders from different political factions.

More interestingly, when Duterte strongly call for the end of the country’s special relationship with the United States, he insisted that Phillippines do not fear foredooming wars. The Diplomat observed this condition as ‘Duterte effect’, in which other ASEAN member states could replicate Duterte’s tones in doing diplomacy in the region.

Implication for Regional Politics

What does this “strongman leaders” imply for Southeast Asian politics? I suggest that this trend could lead to a US-China re-balance in Southeast Asia. Even though we shall also need to wait for upcoming events, particularly following Trump’s administration, we could assume that this trend could lead to the re-emergence of ‘national interest’ in Southeast Asian politics, followed by the rhetorics of strong leaders in each ASEAN member states.

Therefore, ‘strongman leaders’ could start a new trend of putting ASEAN aside and putting national interest first, for it constitutes the way e strongman leaders deliver their messages to be acknowledged in world politics.

If it is true, then the rise of strongman leaders could revoke the strong state’s vision in ASEAN. It could probably strengthen ASEAN, but not in the ‘people-oriented’ way. It could, to some extent, revive ASEAN’s ideal of planned unity, backed by strong national ego. It could also means a revival for ‘non-interference’ doctrine in the region.

We could nonethelessly learn from Donald Trump’s strategy that takes him to the White House. Trump’s triumph is not a surprising event. In the current tumultous world, it is likely that society demands the type of leaders who could speak louder than the others. Strongman leaders, therefore, is a very product of the world that we currently live in.

Ahmad Rizky M. Umar

In his recent article in The Jakarta Post (18/5), Rizal Sukma (now Indonesian Ambassador to the United Kingdom) embraced an interesting argument: it is time to invoke a post-ASEAN regional order in East Asia. The polarisation in ASEAN, marginalisation of ASEAN’s role of ‘manager of order’, and the growing Sino-US rivalry in recent years, he argued, has demonstrated ASEAN’s inability to deal with emerging geopolitical issues in the region.

Moreover, he argues, any regional order in Southeast Asia will require a stable balance of power among major powers, which is important to be addressed in the future.

However, Even though Sukma convincingly demonstrates ASEAN’s failure in managing order and balance of power in the region, and therefore suggests a post-ASEAN regional order, his argument misses one important point: the internal dynamics of ASEAN that leads to such failures (if we agree with Sukma’s argument).

On the other words, to argue that ASEAN has failed to maintain regional order, we need to also acknowledge that ASEAN’s failure has also been determined by its member states, due to ASEAN’s state-centric nature. In this context, we could recall a famous word from Alexander Wendt, that ASEAN is, in fact, what its member states make of it.

In this article, I propose two inter-related arguments to respond to Sukma’s idea of “Post-ASEAN” regional order in Southeast Asia. First, shifting regional focus to broader East Asian context can only work if Indonesia could maintain its hegemonic position. Second, it is important to revitalise Indonesia’s leadership in ASEAN through ASEAN-centered foreign policies

ASEAN and Regional Order

Since its establishment in 1967, ASEAN has been preserved as a diplomatic forum by its member states. State has been the only acknowledged actor until the 2nd ASEAN Summit in 2003, where its member states have agreed to expand the institutionalisation under one community.

State-centrism in ASEAN has also maintained through its long-standing principles, non-interventionism, which put state’s strong position in the regional institution. ASEAN’s institutional design has also put strong state’s presence in maintaining day-to-day activities, albeit with some space for non-state actors (such as CSOs or Business Actors) to engage in decision-making processes.

Putting the state as inseparable actor in ASEAN is important to understand why ASEAN failed to address major issues in ASEAN, most recently the South China Sea Crisis. The latest ASEAN Ministerial Meeting, held recently in Vientiane, Laos, demonstrate this problem: ASEAN’s failure to reach a consensus to deal with South China Sea has been caused by the absence of ‘common ground’ among states to propose a roadmap to overcome the crisis.

Therefore, it can be argued that ASEAN relies on its member states. Sukma’s argument therefore illustrated the absence of a strong institutional rule that bind all its member states in dealing with major geopolitical issues in world politics.  Institutionalists might argue that this failure could be caused by the absence of institutional backdrop in ASEAN, due to state-centric nature of the regional organisation.

However, I found that this is not the case. Even the European Union, which has a stronger institutional power than ASEAN, has to face some internal crisis and democratic drift in its internal member-states, as we most recently witness with ‘Brexit’ and refugee crisis.

The Need for Leadership

I shall argue that what is at stake is ASEAN is not its failure to deal with main geopolitical issues as Sukma has demonstrated. Rather, I argue that it is the absence of a leadership to maintain ‘hegemonic order’ that leads to ASEAN’s ineffective role in East Asia and, more broadly, world politics.

The latest 49th ASEAN Ministerial Meeting in Laos could be a good point of departure. While ASEAN has produced a remarkable concern over growing crisis in the South China Sea, it has yet to design a common platform to overcome the crisis. Instead, the joint communiqué has recommended establishing the MFA-to-MFA hotline to manage maritime emergencies, which clearly brings the solution to bilateral forum.

What is at stake here, in my humble view, is not that it fails to produce a clear statement to overcome the crisis, which is a difficult thing to do, but that it abandons ASEAN centrality as an approach to peacefully settle the ongoing dispute and instead bring it as a state-to-state business.

It is true that ASEAN does not have a strong institutional binding to deal with such issues, and that ASEAN-based regional order has been limited. Nevertheless, it does not necessarily mean that ASEAN has been less important for Indonesia, since ASEAN constitute an important geopolitical basis for Indonesia’s regional outlook, even with the recent emphasis on ‘Global Maritime Fulcrum’ that has been endorsed by Jokowi.

Due to ASEAN’s state-centric nature, I argue that this case demonstrate that ASEAN needs a leadership from a particular member state to maintain, to use neorealist argument, hegemonic stability and cooperation in the region. It is the area that Indonesia has declined to play in the region.

As Political Scientist Donald Weatherbee argues (2013), Indonesia has missed important opportunity to be a regional leader during Hassan Wirayudha era, in which Indonesia has committed to ASEAN-centred foreign policy. Despites some achievement in institutionalising Human Rights and Democracy in the regional body, many Indonesia’s proposal has been rejected by ASEAN fellow members.

Sukma might be partly true to say that Indonesia needs to broaden its vision to regional order by encompassing realist, normative, and institution-based order, which implies to an enlargement to East Asian regional order. However, it does not necessarily mean that Indonesia has to shift its focus from ASEAN, which I believe has been ongoing since early Jokowi’s presidency.

Rather, especially with emergent crisis in South China Sea, I suggest that Indonesia needs to re-strengthen its focus to ASEAN by maintaining hegemonic leadership. Indonesia could do so by, for example, utilising ASEAN’s institutional rules and procedures to resolve the emerging regional problems.

A Comeback to ASEAN?

I therefore suggest that rather than abandoning ASEAN-based regional order in Southeast Asia, Indonesia needs to re-strengthen its leadership in ASEAN. It means that Indonesia needs to integrate the so-called ‘national interest’, which is executed through bilateralism, with the use of multilateral foras in order to secure peace and stability in the region.

It implies the use of institutional decision-making process in ASEAN to deal with emerging regional problems, such as South China Sea crisis or several humanitarian issues.

Reviving a collective decision-making process through ASEAN’s institutional norms is therefore important. The recent ASEAN Summit and Ministerial Meeting has evidently shown that ASEAN member states have, to some extent, abandoned ASEAN-centrality to resolve regional problems, in particular the South China Sea crisis.

Indonesia could resolve it by functioning ASEAN institutional foras to facilitate dialogue in such crisis. The spirit of ASEAN centrality, in order to create peace and stability in the region, should be held rather than the old-fashioned ‘non-interventionism. Although it is not an easy task, I believe that Indonesia could maintain ASEAN-centrality as a basis to move to a bigger regional foras, such as East Asian Summit.

To do so, it therefore implies a clear direction on Indonesia’s foreign policy towards ASEAN. Indonesia might be, as Sukma suggested, shift its focus to East Asia due to its strategic position in building diplomatic order. However, without Indonesia’s leadership in ASEAN, such attempts might not be congruent with Indonesian national interest as envisioned in Foreign Policy Direction.

I believe that in a rapidly changing international order, Indonesia should play a greater role as emerging power in world politics. It is the task that needs to be emboldened in our foreign policy.

*) Ahmad Rizky M. Umar studies Politics with Research Methods at the University of Sheffield, UK and a Research Associate with the ASEAN Studies Centre, Universitas Gadjah Mada.

 

Dio Herdiawan Tobing, Research Intern at ASEAN Studies Center UGM

In the past few days, Indonesia’s first Right of Reply in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has attracted nation-wide Indonesia medias. Not because Indonesia’s statement was outstanding, but merely because of its firmness and the beauty of Indonesia’s representative. However, we found out that to some extent Indonesia’s statement focused heavily on sovereignty and territorial integrity, as well as, the institutionalization of human rights commitment by the numbers of ratified conventions. This does not show any advantages. It opens a loophole that Indonesia was unable to show evidence of the progress made in Papua related to the human rights violation.

Meanwhile, the second Right of Reply embraced by Solomon Islands, shows intelligence, diplomatic, and well-researched information. Solomon Islands, though, only a very small archipelagic country showed its concern on human rights issue in West Papua by reminding Indonesia that although Indonesia has ratified the Convention against Torture (CAT), progress has not yet been made in Papua. In fact, Indonesia has not yet submitted its Periodic Review since 2008. The Solomon claimed that they received information on the lack of human rights protection of the Melanesian people in West Papua from the Respected UN members and head of civil societies.

Furthermore, it is also regretful to hear that in another right of reply utilized by Indonesia to respond against Solomon Islands, the Republic again justified that Solomon Islands’ concern has breached Indonesia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and claiming that Solomon Islands is trapped in trash information of the separatist group in West Papua. Again, without elaborating on what progress has been made and what form for commitment has been implemented by the Indonesian government towards promotion and protection of human rights in West Papua.

In fact, this occasion reminded us of Southeast Asian countries conducting their diplomatic activities. The ASEAN’s method of diplomacy, has been seen upholding the norm of sensitivity, politeness, non-confrontation and agreeability, and the principle of quiet. ASEAN members in their decision- and policy-making process have always refrained from criticizing others, claiming that criticizing other respective members of ASEAN will fall into the violation of non-interference principle and respect of sovereignty and territorial integrity. It is similar, on what the delegation of Indonesia delivered in her right of reply, that the concern of Solomon Islands’ towards human rights situation in West Papua will only disrespect Indonesia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

However, in other occasion, ASEAN has a method famously known as ‘constructive-engagement’. ASEAN and particularly, Indonesia, have been progressively utilizing this tool to put concern on the human rights situation in Myanmar. In 2009 Indonesia had bilateral talk with Myanmar in regards to the Rohingya massacre. This occasion became a cornerstone because during the talk, it was the first time that Prime Minister Thein Sein finally acknowledged that he paid great attention to this issue. Myanmar finally accepted that Rohingya was also their concern. Wasn’t the talk breach Myanmar’s sovereignty and territorial integrity? Actually, it was too, yet the difference is the operation of ASEAN’s constructive engagement remains invisible. Because the diplomatic-negotiation has never been done in public spaces, claiming that it is the feature of ASEAN’s diplomacy, backdoor diplomacy, or for some, how ASEAN conducts its intra- or inter-ASEAN relations have become a model named as “Asian Diplomacy”

Therefore, reflecting on the case of Solomon Islands-Indonesia in the UNGA and Indonesia-Myanmar in ASEAN, the conduct of ASEAN Diplomacy shows only an excuse for ASEAN in particular, Indonesia, upon their inability to demonstrate a proper diplomatic behavior in public spaces.

This article was published on 7 September 2016 in Jakarta Post

Dedi Dinarto – Research Assistant at ASEAN Studies Center UGM

Given the rising concerns over transnational organized crime in Southeast Asia, the 28th ASEAN Summit in Vientiane this week will face an uphill challenge. This holds true as the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reported a rise in production of illicit drugs and an expansion of the synthetic drug market in the region after the implementation of the ASEAN Community last year.

It is inevitable that Laos should hold up the discussion to address the issue of transnational crime for several reasons.

Vientiane’s ASEAN chairmanship this year was viewed with pessimism when it came to the issue of the South China Sea. Some of the reasons originated from Laos’ landlocked geographical conditions, which allows it to disregard the security of the sea as crucial and coherent for economic interests, and the lavish influence of China over Laos through the latest cooperation scheme, namely the Mohan-Boten Economic Cooperation Zone.

However, the importance of associating Laos’ leadership with the transnational crime issue is mainly due to the fact that the country is part of the Golden Triangle, which serves as one of the producers of narcotics and a drug transit point for shipments to North America, Europe and other regions in Asia.

Laos directly contributes to the increasing production and expansion of such transnational crime networks. At the same time, the number of arrests related to drugs has tripled in Laos over the last half decade.

On the other hand, Laos has completely ratified the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime with the protocol that cancels out the potential benefits it could gain from the narcotics industries.

Moreover, on a broader level, Kuala Lumpur’s leadership last year intensified the fight against transnational organized crime. This development is not supposed to decline under Laos’ chairmanship.

Consequently, the upcoming ASEAN Summit is to manifest the points that have been set forth and agreed within the ASEAN Regional Forum Statement on Strengthening Cooperation in the Management of Cross-Border Movement of Criminals and the formulation of a fresh ASEAN plan of action agreed at the previous ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Transnational Crime (AMMTC).

However, in that agenda, the ASEAN member states are supposed to overlook the inter-governmental decision-making process, which is inadequate to combat transnational crime. The failure, according to professor of international affairs Ralf Emmers, was not only caused by domestic circumstances but also by its inbuilt resistance to action and institutional reforms and its inability to criminalize transnational crime.

Besides, they only focused on non-binding and unspecific measures without addressing the question of funding, setting target dates, or establishing monitoring mechanisms to assess progress.

For example, the 10th AMMTC noted the importance of growing of transnational crime as a threat against regional security.

Thus, the response was to broaden their working coverage area by adding the illicit trafficking in wildlife, timber and people smuggling to the provision involving drug trafficking, economic crimes, human trafficking, piracy, money laundering, terrorism, weapon smuggling and cybercrime. Unfortunately, this initiative demonstrated the statist yet similar approach that has been taken by ASEAN member states since 1997.

The effort to securitize transnational organized crime has been successful, but leaves behind the regional practice to combat such an issue.

Rather than having an intensive approach toward the regional threat, ASEAN member states prefer to adopt a regional agreement if it will work significantly at the national level. Therefore, there is a need for shifting the paradigm toward “shared sovereignty”.

If regional security was primarily measured based on the absence of a threat to each nation’s security, then it is now time to see ASEAN as a whole community. The term of “community” adopted at the end of 2015 duly signifies that ASEAN should move from its state-centric security into a human-centric security.

Is it possible to hear a similar voice to that which came out of Thailand’s then foreign minister Surin Pitsuwan in June 1998, who proposed to amend the basic principle of non-intervention?

What may happen in the days following the ASEAN Summit and its “dianoetic” slogan of “Turning vision into reality for a dynamic ASEAN Community” will provide the answers.