1 - The ASEAN Political-Security Community and the Financial Crisis

Summary

Introduction

This paper looks at how the global financial crisis impacts on the ASEAN aspiration to build an ASEAN Community. In particular, it looks at the crisis' effect on the establishment of an ASEAN Political-Security Community (APSC). It argues three points. First, the most important contribution of the APSC is in the normative foundations it outlines for ASEAN. These foundations are first and foremost directed at ensuring domestic stability and harmony, it has its principal objective in strengthening ASEAN's position in East Asian regionalism and in maintaining security in Southeast Asia and the broader context of the Asia-Pacific region. The normative commitments outlined in the APSC, however, also imply the need for a certain degree of institutionalization — an outcome that ASEAN does not seem to be as committed to. This brings out the second point — ASEAN, despite its rhetorical commitment to a particular set of normative structures, will continue to be bogged down in setting up the institutional mechanisms needed to realize these normative structures. Third, the intra-ASEAN dynamics at the centre of this issue will be further complicated by the effects of the global financial crisis. In general, ASEAN will continue to be burdened by the inherent contradiction between the normative aspirations expressed in the APSC Blueprint and its desire to maintain existing institutional structural arrangements.

The ASEAN Political-Security Community

On 3 June 2003, Rizal Sukma of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta presented a paper conceptualizing an ASEAN security community at a seminar, “ASEAN Cooperation: Challenges and Prospects in the Current lnternational Situation”. Sukma pointed to the need for the establishment of an ASEAN security community that would pursue a comprehensive framework of security that gives equal importance to both traditional and non-military security issues and responses (Sukma 2003, p. 3). The paper was conceived in reaction to the proposal of the Singaporean Government to establish an ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) that went beyond the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA). Sukma argued that “ASEAN can no longer pretend that peace, stability, and prosperity can only be achieved through economic cooperation” (Sukma 2003, p. 2). This paper eventually became the departure point for the Indonesian Government's initiative on the establishment of the ASEAN Security Community.