Asian Security, vol. 8, no. 3, 2012, pp. 251–270
Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN 1479-9855 print/1555-2764 online
DOI: 10.1080/14799855.2012.723920
Regional Order by Other Means? Examining the Rise
of Defense Diplomacy in Southeast Asia
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EVAN A. LAKSMANA
Abstract: This article seeks to address why and how defense diplomacy in Southeast Asia has
risen in the past decade. By examining multilateral defense diplomacy under the auspices of
the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF),
as well as Indonesia’s bilateral defense diplomacy, this article makes three arguments. First,
bilateral and multilateral defense diplomacy in Southeast Asia complement one another. Second,
the focus of multilateral defense diplomacy has evolved and now reflects the blurring distinction
between nontraditional and traditional security issues. Third, the rise of ARF’s multilateral
defense diplomacy can be attributed to the concern over China’s rise, while ASEAN, considers
it as among the key mechanisms to recover from the fallout of the 1996 Asian financial crisis
and the recent regional arms development.
Defense diplomacy is on the rise in Southeast Asia. Observers have noted the growing defense relations between China, the United States, India, Russia, and Japan with
many key states in Southeast Asia and the region as a whole.1 Within the region, even
smaller Southeast Asian states such as Cambodia and Brunei are expanding their defense
diplomacy.2 Bilateral defense relations among Southeast Asian states – such as officer exchanges, joint exercises, and coordinated patrols – have also been increasing in
recent years, despite the occasional political spats.3 Multilaterally, the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) have held
annually an average of 15 formal and informal meetings between 2000 and 2009 involving defense and security officials at various levels to specifically discuss a wide range
of security issues.4 The advent of the ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting (ADMM) in
2006 and the ADMM+8 in 2010 involving the 10 ASEAN states along with Australia,
China, India, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Russia, and the United States further
exemplifies this growing trend.
These activities are significant and puzzling when we consider that for the first
four decades of ASEAN’s existence, security issues were considered “off limits”
This article was initially presented at a workshop on defense diplomacy in Southeast Asia organized by the S.
Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore on November 30,
2010. I would like to thank the workshop participants, Bhubhindar Singh, Ralf Emmers, Tan See Seng, I’dil
Syawfi, and the journal’s anonymous reviewer for their valuable comments and assistance. All interpretation is
my responsibility and reflects my personal views and should not be attributed to the Fulbright Program or any
other government agencies.
Address correspondence to: Evan A. Laksmana, Department of Political Science, Maxwell School of
Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, 100 Eggers Hall, Syracuse, NY 13244, USA. E-mail:
[email protected]
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among regional countries, and the prospect of open armed conflict, despite increasingly
remote, was never completely off the table. Indeed, the majority of intraregional cooperation in that period was focused more on political and economic activities. Regional
policymakers often explain away this lack of security and defense cooperation by arguing that ASEAN is neither a military alliance nor a regional security organization.
If this argument holds true today, what then explains the rise of defense diplomacy
in Southeast Asia in the past decade? A second related puzzle deals with the timing:
Why has defense diplomacy risen in the past decade, and not before? This is puzzling because for the past decade, fault lines of major conflicts in Southeast Asia have
been less visible than they were before. Today, the region is comparatively more peaceful than it was during the Cold War, when ideological rivalries and regional tensions
could still flare up from time to time. If anything, therefore, defense diplomacy should
have been more active during the Cold War when the prospect of regional conflict was
still considerable, especially as regional armaments grew between the 1960s and the
1980s.
To address these puzzles, this article seeks to examine the focus of and recent
trends in Southeast Asia’s multilateral defense diplomacy under the auspices of ASEAN
and the ARF. For reasons of space, I will only focus on formal multilateral defense
diplomacy.5 These two institutions are chosen because they represent the majority
of the recorded regional defense diplomacy. Admittedly, there are other multilateral
defense diplomatic activities, such as those initiated or led by the United States and
China.6 However, this extraregionally initiated defense diplomacy does not always
reflect the strategic thinking of Southeast Asian states, nor have they fundamentally
overhauled the basic contours of Southeast Asian security architecture.7 To complement the discussion, this article will also examine the case of Indonesia’s bilateral
defense diplomacy to highlight how such defense relations remain a crucial part of
regional order.
By assessing both forms of defense diplomacy, this article seeks to unpack the
broader complexity of defense diplomacy as one of the major pathways to regional
order in Southeast Asia. Defense diplomacy in this sense is not the only pathway
because the previous and current political and economic cooperation in ASEAN has
arguably been successful in preventing the outbreak of a major regional war while providing the normative foundations of a security community.8 My analysis of defense
diplomacy in Southeast Asia thus seeks to call attention to an understudied, if not
ignored, subject in the literature on Southeast Asian international relations. In addition, I also hope to better expand the existing scattered commentaries made by pundits
with regards to defense cooperation in Southeast Asia.
This article makes three broad interrelated arguments. First, the various bilateral
defense diplomacy and multilateral defense diplomacy in Southeast Asia complement
one another and are two sides of the same coin serving two different goals. Bilateral
defense diplomacy is geared to achieve specific functional goals (such as technical assistance), it is discriminate in nature (targeted toward states of concern), and it supports
overall regional confidence-building measures (CBMs). Multilateral defense diplomacy
meanwhile focuses on “soft institutional balancing” vis-à-vis extraregional powers,
while “enmeshing” them into regional norms and rules.
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253
Second, the focus of multilateral defense diplomacy in Southeast Asia has evolved
from initially being concerned with largely transnational security issues to those
that are increasingly blurring the distinction between nontraditional and traditional
security issues, such as humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, peacekeeping, and maritime security. This blurring distinction notwithstanding, the growing prominence of
nontraditional security in regional discourse has provided the initial “building block”
necessary for Southeast Asian states to gradually move into addressing traditional
defense issues, both within the region and in their relations with extraregional powers.
The changing nature of Southeast Asia’s strategic environment, the creeping democratization among key Southeast Asian states, and the preexisting ASEAN-related
cooperative activities dealing with transnational security further explain this evolution
in Southeast Asia’s multilateral defense diplomacy.
Third, the growing number of multilateral defense diplomatic activities under the
auspices of the ARF between ASEAN and its regional partners concerning a wide
range of security issues can be attributed to the concern with China’s rise and the
ensuing potential return of great-power politics in the Asia-Pacific. Nontraditional
and transnational security issues also provided a “conceptual umbrella” under which
ASEAN through the ARF could multilaterally engage key regional players within
an overarching framework of confidence building. Meanwhile, the devastating impact
of the 1996 Asian financial crisis, the 1997 Southeast Asian haze, the 1998 political
transition in Indonesia, and the 1999 East Timor fiasco, all uncomfortably pressured
regional policymakers to come to terms with the region’s growing need for a more
intensive and elevated security dialogue. Thus, in terms of timing, multilateral defense
diplomacy under ASEAN initially rose in the 2000s as a way to recover from the
regional anxiety caused by the 1996 Asian financial crisis. But recently, the worrying trend in regional arms development provided further impetus for policymakers to
step up and expand such security cooperation, especially through the establishment of
the 2003 ASEAN Political-Security Community (APSC) framework. The following
sections will elaborate and expand these three primary arguments.
Defense Diplomacy and Southeast Asian Security
Generally speaking, defense diplomacy is hardly a new phenomenon. Since the age of
organized warfare, the use or threatened use of military force to achieve foreign-policy
objectives has been a staple feature of the international system. In the Asia-Pacific, the
so-called “gunboat diplomacy,” for example, redefined the region’s history when in
1853, Commodore Perry sailed four vessels into Japan and convinced the Tokugawa
Shogunate that the country should be opened to trade with the United States. The
recent events in the South China Sea also reminded us of the relevance of military
force in foreign policy.9 Such coercively oriented use of military assets to achieve
foreign-policy objectives, however, is beginning to appear more like an anomaly in the
post–Cold War era. Since then, a new form of defense diplomacy is becoming increasingly more common as militaries and their defense ministries undertake a growing
range of external peacetime cooperative tasks.10 These activities include, inter alia: the
various bilateral and multilateral contacts between senior military and civilian defense
officials, the training of foreign military and civilian defense personnel, the contacts and
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exchanges between military personnel and units, numerous port calls and ship visits, the
provision of military equipment and other material aid, the growing number of bilateral
or multilateral military exercises, and others.11
In this new form, not only does defense diplomacy involve nonsecurity state officials and nongovernmental organizations, but it also uses various informal and formal
channels and resources. This view of defense diplomacy is broader than the traditional military diplomacy that focuses only on “the use of the military to advance
diplomacy and its engagement in various security arrangements.”12 Nonetheless, one
of the primary goals of this new defense diplomacy is to provide a low-cost, lowrisk “continuation of dialogue by other means” and further reduce the likelihood of
conflict between former and potential enemies.13 Specifically, defense diplomacy as a
conflict-prevention mechanism could work in a number of ways, as shown in Table 1.
Yet, despite these potential benefits, defense diplomacy has never been significantly
featured in regional discourse and policy in Southeast Asia, nor has it been officially
adopted by specific regional governments, until recently. Indeed, for much of ASEAN’s
history, the management of regional order has been in practice a political-driven
business-like affair undertaken by the region’s top leaders, such as Indonesian President
Soeharto, Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, or Malaysian Prime Minister
Mahathir Mohamad. Furthermore, the region’s diverse political regimes, economic
development, and security interests, as well as ASEAN’s seemingly limited role in traditional security issues, have led scholars to hesitate in giving enough credit to Southeast
Asian security initiatives. That there is no single regional hegemon in Southeast Asia
that can successfully drive the region uncontested14 and that extraregional powers such
as China and the United States have had more influence in shaping regional dynamics seem to vindicate the perception that Southeast Asian security policies are more
dependently reactive than independently proactive.15
This approach, however, does not take us very far in understanding the rise of
defense diplomacy in Southeast Asia during the past decade. Therefore, this article
departs from the traditional analysis of Southeast Asian security that generally considers the region to be merely a “playing field” of the great powers and assumes that
Southeast Asian states have their own strategic preferences and have actively sought to
influence the shaping of a regional order.16 Although the specific meaning of “regional
order” in Southeast Asia is contested,17 regional policymakers still strive to have some
TABLE 1
DEFENSE DIPLOMACY AS CONFLICT PREVENTION
Military cooperation can act as a symbol of willingness to pursue broader cooperation, mutual
trust, and commitment to work to overcome or manage differences.
Military cooperation can be a means of introducing transparency into defense relations,
especially with regard to states’ intentions and capabilities.
Defense diplomacy can be a means of building or reinforcing perceptions of common interests.
Military cooperation might also change over time the mind sets of partner states’ militaries.
Defense assistance may be used as an incentive to encourage cooperation in other areas.
Source: Adopted from Andrew Cottey and Anthony Forster, Reshaping Defense Diplomacy:
New Roles for Military Cooperation and Assistance, Adelphi Paper No. 365 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press for International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2004).
Regional Order by Other Means?
255
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sort of order that: (1) maintains ASEAN’s centrality in regional relations, (2) minimizes
and reduces the likelihood of open warfare among Southeast Asian states, (3) maintains
mutually beneficial relations with extraregional powers, and (4) supports domestic economic development. Although this is a common argument in the literature on Southeast
Asian security, a closer examination of the recent developments in regional defense
diplomacy suggests a more complicated picture with regard to the pathways by which
such order can be achieved.
Multilateral Defense Diplomacy in Southeast Asia: Issues and Trends
Seven years ago, one prominent scholar of Southeast Asian security affairs proclaimed, “in fact, there are no multilateral defense arrangements among Southeast
Asian states.”18 Although this may be correct when one defines multilateral defense
arrangements by NATO-like standards – such as the presence of a joint operational
command or institutional links – the reality is more complex. First, although ASEAN
was established with a political–security–economic cooperation in mind, it was never
explicitly conceived of as a NATO-like multilateral defense venue in the first place, nor
was it designed to replace traditional bilateral security arrangements. Second, despite
ASEAN’s spotty record in tackling critical regional security challenges,19 its ability
to provide “strategic space” and compensate for the domestic political and economic
weaknesses of its members – by deepening engagement with one another and simultaneously balancing extraregional powers – provides a valuable sociopolitical capital, not
just in the event of a regional crisis erupting, but also for a future engagement in other
more sensitive issues such as national defense.20 Finally, ASEAN’s multilateral cooperation in transnational and nontraditional security issues has helped provide the initial
“building block” for multilateral defense diplomacy in recent years.
This section will examine the key trends and issues in Southeast Asia’s multilateral
defense diplomacy under both ASEAN and the ARF. Out of the recorded 177 multilateral defense diplomatic events in Southeast Asia since 1994 until 2009, ARF-related
events consist of the majority (72 percent) with ASEAN-related events coming in second (20.5 percent).21 As Figure 1 also shows, the rise of these multilateral defense
diplomatic activities coincided with the aftermath of the 1996 Asian financial crisis, which we will further discuss later in the article. But before further examining
ASEAN’s and ARF’s defense diplomacy, the next subsection will first describe the
focus of Southeast Asia’s multilateral defense diplomacy.
The Focus of Multilateral Defense Diplomacy
A good indicator of the strategic orientation of Southeast Asia’s multilateral defense
diplomacy is the policy focus or goals of ASEAN’s official public documents. A recent
study by the University of Indonesia shows that from 1967 to 2009, ASEAN and its
related institutions produced 270 documents, mainly in the forms of declarations, joint
communiqués, chairman statements, plans of action, annual reports, and others.22 The
majority of these documents are chairman statements and declarations (totaling 119),
which are not legally binding. The same study also notes that the majority of the documents produced were targeted to address nontraditional security issues (51 percent),
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FIGURE 1
SOUTHEAST ASIAN MULTILATERAL DEFENSE DIPLOMACY (COLOR FIGURE AVAILABLE ONLINE).
25
20
21
20
18
16
15
10
8
0
16
14
10
5
19
5
8
6
8
6
1
1
1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
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Source: Author’s data set is based on various Indonesian foreign ministry and ASEAN-related documents.
followed by traditional security (38 percent) and institutional development (11 percent). What the study classifies as traditional security-oriented documents are those
dealing with issues such as the South China Sea, the Southeast Asian Nuclear WeaponsFree Zone, the strengthening of the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, and others.
Meanwhile, from the nontraditional security documents, three issues were featured
more than others: economic development, conflict resolution, and human security.
However, a closer examination of the documents and of Southeast Asia’s strategic environment suggests that any clear conceptual distinction between nontraditional
and traditional security issues is increasingly untenable. In the maritime domain, for
example, piracy, illegal fishing, and sea-lines-of-communication vulnerabilities have
coalesced with the growing demand for marine resources and energy – at a time when
historical animosities among regional countries have yet to fully evaporate and where
maritime boundaries are highly contested.23 Under these circumstances, incidents at
sea in the waters of Northeast and Southeast Asia, especially in the South China Sea,
have been increasing. Consequently, regional countries have responded by increasingly focusing on littoral security through the acquisition of maritime patrol aircraft
and offshore patrol vessels.24 Climate change and the changing dynamic of greatpower relations could also exacerbate these fault lines of conflict. Studies have shown
that climate change in this regard could drive Southeast Asia’s future vulnerability to
transnational threats, such as organized crime, illicit trafficking, piracy, infectious diseases, and illegal migration flows.25 This complexity partially explains why regional
security discourse has been increasingly taking on a nontraditional security tone.
Another part of the explanation behind the growing prominence of nontraditional
security in Southeast Asia is the creeping democratization process within key regional
states since the 1990s. According to one study, this process has broadened the
institutional settings of international relations in Southeast Asia, has raised the
accountability of regimes, and has allowed the direct participation of a growing number
of nongovernmental actors in foreign policymaking.26 Although some consider the
democratic trends in Southeast Asia to be “discouraging,”27 one study notes that the
majority of the population in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia,
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Regional Order by Other Means?
257
and Singapore actually expressed support for a democratic political system.28 Under
these conditions, nontraditional security issues are increasingly becoming a prominent foreign-policy agenda for these states because their respective domestic population
(through civil society groups) is pushing the government to pay more attention to the
day-to-day issues that they consider more relevant and important.
Civil society groups in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, for example, have been
pressuring ASEAN and their governments to pay more attention to environmental
issues in the wake of the 1997 regional haze debacle.29 In 2010, more than 20 civil
society groups gathered in Singapore to discuss the recurring haze problem and called
on the respective governments and ASEAN to act.30 When it comes to human security issues, civil society groups in Southeast Asia are also increasingly providing input
to ASEAN (through the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights)
and their respective governments regarding the need for a comprehensive adoption of
the “Responsibility to Protect” principle in regional relations and domestic policy.31
Finally, while the changing strategic environment and the creeping democratization
provide the “push and pull” factor behind the rise of nontraditional security issues,
the fact that these issues are transnational in nature (making them more amenable to
multilateral cooperative approaches)32 and the fact that ASEAN had a preexisting network and activities designed to tackle them provide the opportunity and platform for
those issues to be institutionalized. This is important because it provides a conceptual
umbrella under which ASEAN could engage regional powers through the ARF. This
dense network of structures at the ministerial level downward includes, inter alia, the
ASEAN Ministerial Meeting on Transnational Crime, the ASEAN Chiefs of National
Police, the ASEAN Senior Officials on Drugs Matters, and the ASEAN Ministers of
Home Affairs/Interior.33 They also provide a platform where regional security officials
could increase their “comfort level” with one another – allowing for the possibility
that they could engage in traditional defense issues in the future. These “social capital”
and modalities, based on mutual expectation, trust, and social networks,34 when juxtaposed with the ARF’s focus on regional confidence building, help explain the eventual
birth of ADMM and ADMM+8. These two latest additions to ASEAN’s multilateral
defense diplomacy epitomize the growing nexus of traditional and nontraditional security issues. We will discuss this further in the section on ASEAN’s multilateral defense
diplomacy.
Trends in Multilateral Defense Diplomacy: The ASEAN Regional Forum
The creation of the ARF in 1994 started a new web of multilateral security interactions between ASEAN and its partners. The ARF itself can be seen as a consultation
mechanism on a wide range of security issues among Southeast Asian states, as well
as with their regional partners. In terms of regional order, three significant results are
noteworthy.35 First, the ARF is predicated on the norms of behavior stemming from
the “ASEAN Way” that emphasizes consensus building, noninterference, and peaceful
resolution of disputes. Consequently, the ARF has become an important vehicle for the
spread of regional norms. Second, the ARF is the only regional institution in the world
that includes the United States, the European Union, India, Japan, North Korea, South
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Korea, Russia, Pakistan, China, and others (totaling 27 states as of 2007). This has contributed to the notion of “ASEAN centrality” in managing regional relations beyond
its immediate boundaries. Third, although the ARF is ASEAN-driven, other member
states have been allowed to make significant contributions.
Although one can contest the merits of these arguments, the ARF remains one
of ASEAN’s primary tools of strategic engagement and confidence building, both
within Southeast Asia and with its regional partners. This has included a series of
crowded programs of intersessional meetings on CBMs, search and rescue coordination, peacekeeping operations, and disaster relief. These programs have further
developed into practical and cooperative measures, including, among others: (1) the
publication of annual defense policy statements and defense white papers to reinforce
transparency and openness in a region where such abstractions are not the general tradition; (2) increasing military exchanges, including staff college training; and (3) the
growing involvement and participation of defense officials in various ARF activities.36
Indeed, through its annual Senior Officials Meetings, intersessional activities, and the
numerous Track I and Track II meetings, the ARF has created a series of networks leading to the provision of a “social capital” and a stock of ease and comfort among regional
states.
As mentioned earlier, the ARF has dominated Southeast Asia’s multilateral
defense diplomacy, which includes the ARF Ministerial Meeting, the ARF Senior
Officials’ Meeting, the ARF Intersessional Group on CBMs, the ARF Security Policy
Conference (ASPC), the ARF Heads of Defense Universities/Colleges/Institutions,
and the ARF Defense Officials’ Dialogue (DOD). The regularly held DOD, in particular, has been increasingly considered a significant event since its first meeting in
2002 as it provides an opportunity for defense officials to exchange views on regional
security and discuss defense issues of mutual concern.37 It is also worth mentioning that
the Beijing-initiated ASPC involving senior defense and security officials is beginning
to receive wider attention with regards to regional security development, despite some
concerns about China’s dominance of the proceedings.
Nonetheless, the plethora of ARF-related meetings in the last 18 years has allowed
regional states to make some headway in dealing with an increasingly complex nexus
between traditional and nontraditional security issues. In 2002, the ARF established an
Intersessional Meeting on Counterterrorism and Transnational Crime, which developed a multifaceted and far-reaching work plan that spawned numerous practical
proposals.38 In 2005, following the Tsunami, the ARF reinstated the Intersessional
Meeting on Disaster Relief, approved the ARF Statement on Disaster Management
and Emergency Response, adopted the ARF General Guidelines on Disaster Relief
Cooperation, and is currently drafting the ARF Disaster Relief Standard Operating
Procedures. In 2009, the ARF approved two new working groups, the Intersessional
Meeting on Maritime Security and the Intersessional Meeting on Nonproliferation and
Disarmament.39
The increasing growth of these meetings and the expansion of the security issues
covered between ASEAN and its regional partners can be attributed to the concern
with China’s rise – and the ensuing potential return of great-power politics in the AsiaPacific. Of course, that China has been more willing to engage its Southeast Asian
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Regional Order by Other Means?
259
neighbors facilitated this process. But initially, after the Cold War, policymakers were
concerned with the possibility of Southeast Asia falling into the dominant orbit of
China. Indeed, in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, one study notes that many
regional policymakers in Southeast Asia were increasingly concerned over Beijing’s
future foreign policies in East Asia, with particular emphasis on the possible use of
force.40 This was particularly related to the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea. Most
recently, one study notes that despite the improvement in overall China–Southeast
Asia relations in the early 2000s, Beijing’s claims in the South China Sea as well as
its increasingly assertive military posture and refusal to clarify its claims “play into
Southeast Asian questions about Chinese intentions and especially the states’ underlying fears” about China’s stalling strategy.41 A longer view of the problem suggests,
however, that since the 1990s, Southeast Asian policymakers have always considered
the South China Sea the ultimate “litmus test” in regional relations with Beijing, especially after the Mischief Reef occupation in 1995.42 According to former Indonesian
Defense Minister Juwono Sudarsono, “barring the possibility that China can gain access
to resources other than the South China Sea area, then ASEAN countries will have to
face the possibility of imminent military confrontation with China.”43
Thus, the ARF was initially conceived by ASEAN as a way to manage great-power
relations after the end of the Cold War.44 Specifically, it was initially seen primarily
as a means of “engaging China in multilateral security dialogue without expectation of solving disputes or building a comprehensive regional security structure.”45
Such concerns stem from both the post–Cold War regional uncertainty and from the
enduring perception among Southeast Asian policymakers that their region remains
a valuable geopolitical prize. Indeed, while some argue that Asia and America have
drifted apart between the 1996 Asian financial and the 2008 global financial crises,46
Washington still values the reality that Southeast Asia sits astride the major waterways
linking the Western Pacific, Indian Ocean, and the Persian Gulf. This means that the
operational capability of the US military in the Southwest Asian or Northeast Asian
theaters depends on these waterways.47 However, as the United States tries to step
up its Asian engagement under Obama, the rise of China, India, Japan, and Russia
– and their renewed interest in Southeast Asia – suggests the prospect of a potentially divisive power play among these states, especially given the ambivalent nature
of ASEAN–China relations.48
Amidst all these complexities, Southeast Asian policymakers believed that their
best bet was to further raise the profile and activities of its multilateral defense diplomacy through ASEAN and the ARF. According to Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty
Natalegawa, Indonesia as chair of ASEAN in 2011 has been “identifying [the] basic
principles on how the countries of East Asia will conduct themselves, like non-use of
force, transparency measures, confidence-building measures,” with the expectation that
the region would move forward to create a security community, and where the relations
between China and the United States, China and India, Japan and China are critical, as
these are “the major axes in the region’s dynamics.” Through ASEAN, Indonesia hopes
to project the norms by which “these big countries should conduct themselves in a more
peaceful and benign manner.”49 Indeed, within the context of ASEAN–China relations,
cooperation in the field of nontraditional security such as piracy, smuggling, human
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trafficking, drug trade, illegal immigration, or terrorism has allowed shared norms to
govern an institutionalized process of regularized consultation leading flexibly to various formal agreements while creating a political partnership – and when viewed in
tandem with ASEAN China Free Trade Area (ACFTA), such cooperation process may
be seen as part of the most advanced and comprehensive working model of regionalism
in East Asia.50
Thus, the ARF’s growing defense diplomacy to minimize the potential harmful
implications of great-power politics is a continuation of the logic of ASEAN’s “soft
institutional balancing” vis-à-vis the region’s major powers. It is “soft” because it
falls short of military alliances, and it is “institutional” in that it utilizes multilateral mechanisms to countervail external threats.51 This supports the argument that
Southeast Asian states have been using an “omni-enmeshment” strategy of major power
engagement to draw them deep into regional norms.52
Trends in Multilateral Defense Diplomacy: ASEAN
Among the first security dialogues at the ASEAN level began in 1996 with the annual
ASEAN Special Senior Officials’ Meeting, which brought ASEAN defense and foreign
affairs officials together.53 In 2000, the ASEAN army chiefs began meeting informally.
Senior intelligence officials from Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei, Singapore, Thailand,
and Indonesia also met multilaterally for the first time in May 2000 in Bangkok to
exchange information on regional security.54 Eventually, the list grew and ASEAN’s
multilateral defense diplomacy now includes: the ASEAN Special Senior Officials’
Meeting, ASEAN Chiefs of Army Multilateral Meeting, ASEAN Navy Interaction,
ASEAN Air Force Chiefs Conference, and ASEAN Military Intelligence Meeting.55
After the goal of creating an APSC was established in 2003, the ASEAN Chiefs of
Defense Forces Informal Meeting came into being.
The APSC also led to the ASEAN Security Community Plan of Action that called
for more cooperation in the following areas: political development (peaceful settlement of intraregional differences, promotion of human rights), shaping and sharing
norms (code of conduct in the South China Sea), conflict prevention (greater transparency though CBMs, more military-to-military interaction, regional arms register),
and postconflict peace building (humanitarian crisis center, educational exchanges).56
This action plan also led to the establishment of the ADMM. The stated goal of the
ADMM is to provide a platform for constructive dialogue on strategic issues at the
ministerial level and strengthen defense cooperation by: (1) promoting operational
cooperation among ASEAN militaries through a rolling two-year work plan drawn up
by the ASEAN Chiefs of Defense Forces, (2) deepening ASEAN’s engagement with
its partners in nontraditional and transboundary issues, and (3) reinforcing ASEAN’s
centrality in regional security architecture building.57
Overall, there were close to 50 ASEAN-initiated meetings between 2000 and
2010 that addressed defense-related issues and specifically involved the armed forces
of each member state.58 As we can see from Figure 1, this rise in multilateral defense
diplomacy seems to coincide with the 1996 Asian financial crisis. The devastating economic impact of this crisis, the 1997 regional haze, Indonesia’s turbulent 1998 political
transition, and the 1999 East Timor fiasco all showed that Southeast Asia remains
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Regional Order by Other Means?
261
vulnerable to regional shocks. The financial crisis in particular suggests that the growing regional integration – and in that sense, closer economic interdependence – up
to that point has actually had the unintended consequences of the “loss of national
autonomy,”59 where one ASEAN member state will suffer from the negative consequences of the economic upheavals of the other. Singapore, for example, while among
the most resilient in the crisis, has had to bear the brunt of the immediate economic
contagion of the crisis, perhaps more than other ASEAN states.60 Meanwhile, the East
Timor intervention by the Australian-led UN mission after ASEAN’s failure to provide its own regional “peacekeeping force” also suggests that not only is nontraditional
security tied to economic development, but there is also an increasing need to have a
more developed regional defense architecture.
Under these conditions, ASEAN policymakers realized the benefits of building on
the success of the ARF’s various security dialogues and emulating them in ASEAN.61
Such thinking was manifested more clearly when Indonesia became ASEAN’s chair
in 2003 and in the APSC’s adoption. Thus, within the ASEAN context, multilateral
defense diplomacy initially rose as a way to recover from the regional anxiety caused
by the 1996 Asian financial crisis. Incidentally, the crisis also came on the heels of the
emerging regional security discourse in the late 1990s and early 2000s that favored traditional, rather than critical, security approaches.62 Consequently, ASEAN not only
wanted to utilize its preexisting modality of multilateral security network and emulate
the ARF’s best practices, but it also wanted to elevate the pace and scope of its own
defense diplomacy, including further exploring issues such as peacekeeping, maritime
security, and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.
This gradual move to a focus on defense-related matters is also related to the increasingly worrying trend in regional arms development. Although the Asian financial crisis
had briefly halted plans among regional countries to arm themselves,63 new regional
security requirements, the economic recovery of key Asian states, changes in military
doctrines, lingering regional suspicions, and the growing supply side of the international arms trade as well as China’s growing assertiveness all reinforced the rearmament
of Southeast Asia.64 Between 2000 and 2008, Malaysia’s military budget more than doubled, Indonesia’s spending went from US$2.2 billion to US$3.8 billion, while Thailand
went from US$2.1 billion to US$3 billion.65 Northeast Asian defense budgets recovered
more rapidly, with overall spending in East Asia increasing by more than 18 percent
since 2001.66 The concern here is that the money is being spent on externally oriented
weapons platforms – though there is a debate about which type of military hardware is
order-enhancing or order-upsetting.67
First, there was an extraordinary build-up of fighter aircraft.68 Recently, Southeast
Asia saw the arrival of advanced fourth-generation aircrafts such as the F-15
(Singapore), SU-27 (Vietnam), SU-30 (Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam), and Gripen
(Thailand). Second, regional navies are acquiring major naval combatant vessels and
building new submarine fleets.69 Finally, there have been enhancements in the missile
capabilities of each of these weapons systems. The potential danger lies in the plausible
scenario that if a state’s decision to modernize its military is poorly matched to its security environment, then the ensuing arms dynamics that it provokes could reduce the
state’s security and potentially make war unnecessarily likely.70 This “arms dynamic” is
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exacerbated by Southeast Asia’s strategic environment that is historically characterized
by mutual suspicion. This does not suggest that there is an immediate danger of open
war. But it does reflect the potential fault lines of regional conflicts in the future. This
realization arguably led ASEAN countries to reassess their position on intraregional
defense cooperation and to gradually accept the notion that elevating the profile and
scope of defense diplomacy is becoming a strategic imperative. Thus, the degree and
scope of military modernization remains an important factor in explaining the rise of
ASEAN’s multilateral defense diplomacy in the past decade.
Southeast Asian Bilateral Defense Diplomacy: The Case of Indonesia
Despite the discussion in the previous section about the significance of multilateral
defense diplomacy in Southeast Asia, regional policymakers have rarely, if ever, entertained the idea of downgrading or abolishing bilateral defense cooperation – which
they consider to be more focused and specific, and in most cases, more functional and
practical.71 One scholar dubbed this policy preference as ASEAN’s “spider web of
defense bilateralism,” which consists of intelligence sharing, joint exercises, training
activities, and others.72 For reasons of space, this article cannot discuss all the existing
dyadic bilateral defense relations among ASEAN member states – each of which has its
own contexts and scope (see See Seng Tan’s article in this special issue). In this section, I
will only focus on Indonesia’s bilateral defense diplomacy as the largest country in the
region to illustrate the enduring relevance and significance of such relations, and how it
complements the region’s multilateral defense diplomacy.
For Indonesia, bilateral defense diplomacy could be categorized based on its
three key functions: (1) defense diplomacy for CBMs, (2) defense diplomacy for
defense capabilities enhancement, and (3) defense diplomacy for domestic defense
industrial development.73 The CBMs include state visits, dialogues and consultations,
information sharing, strategic partnerships, officer exchanges, and joint-military exercises. Defense diplomacy to enhance defense capabilities includes military assistance,
weapons procurements, and acquisitions line of credit, while defense diplomacy to
improve domestic industrial development includes the transfers of technology, research
and development cooperation, and investments in joint ventures. In the Indonesian
context, the term “defense diplomacy” also implies that the leading agency involved
in the events or activities is either the Indonesian Defense Forces (TNI) or the Ministry
of Defense (MoD). The role of military officers in foreign policy is certainly not a
new phenomenon. Indeed, during much of the New Order period (1966–98), the TNI
dominated foreign policymaking, including policymaking toward China in the 1970s,
for example.74 But today, military officers no longer dominate foreign-policy decision
making, and instead, they merely act as “ad-hoc diplomats” within Indonesia’s bilateral
and multilateral defense diplomacy.
That said, Indonesia conducted 88 defense diplomatic activities between 2003 and
2008, the majority of which were designed for CBMs (58 activities), followed by
defense capability enhancement (17 activities) and defense industrial development
(13 activities).75 In these activities, Indonesia engaged 32 countries, the top 10 being
the country’s most crucial security partners and potential rivals (see Figure 2). The
Regional Order by Other Means?
263
FIGURE 2
INDONESIA’S TOP 10 TARGETS FOR DEFENSE DIPLOMACY, 2003–08 (NUMBER OF EVENTS OR ACTIVITIES).
13
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
9
5
Th
e..
Si
ng
ap
or
e
Fr
an
ce
Ch
in
a
ia
Ru
ss
al
ay
sia
M
us
tra
lia
A
St
at
es
3
3
Ko
re
a
5
In
di
a
5
3
ni
te
d
U
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6
So
ut
h
6
Source: Figures adapted from Idil Syawfi, “Aktifitas Diplomasi Pertahanan Indonesia Dalam Pemenuhan Tujuan-Tujuan
Pertahanan Indonesia (2003–08) [Indonesia’s Defense Diplomatic Activities in Support of National Defense Goals]
(master’s thesis, University of Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia, 2009).
dominant focus of increasing CBMs makes strategic sense when we consider that for
more than a decade following Soeharto’s downfall, the central government has yet to
fully fulfill the budgetary requirements requested by the TNI, especially in light of the
country’s worsening geopolitical vulnerability and increasing operational demands.76
In the words of one retired general and former MoD official, defense diplomacy is
therefore becoming the “first line of defense” in managing Indonesia’s regional strategic environment. A closer examination of the top 10 countries Indonesia targeted in its
defense diplomacy also suggests the growing need to reduce its security dependence
and diversify its strategic partners, especially with regards to the provision of military
hardware.
The United States, China, and Australia represent the major powers that Indonesia
is most concerned with. The first two had previously been seen to undermine the country’s domestic stability and territorial integrity. Indonesia froze diplomatic relations
with China from 1967 until 1990 and has remained ambivalent ever since in overall
bilateral relations.77 The American military embargo in the 1990s over human rights
abuses continues to remind defense policymakers of the acrimonious bilateral relations – and of the dangers associated with an overdependence on one country for
military hardware. Australia meanwhile is still seen as the country that led the East
Timor intervention, and is seen by some as a supporter of separatist movements within
Indonesia. These countries, however, along with Russia, France, South Korea, and
The Netherlands, are also Indonesia’s most important suppliers of military hardware.
By 2007, Indonesia had a record of 173 weapons systems from 17 different countries,
many of which are from these countries. Indonesia has also signed strategic partnership
agreements with most of them.
Meanwhile, Singapore and Malaysia are Indonesia’s closest neighbors and potential rivals – partly because of the historical legacy of the infamous “Confrontation” of
the 1960s and partly because of simmering acrimonious relations with the two over
various issues.78 Recently, Indonesia–Malaysia relations have deteriorated over maritime boundary disputes and other issues such as the treatment of Indonesian domestic
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workers. Contentious issues with Singapore include the city-state’s import of sand (and
its use in its land reclamation projects, which Jakarta sees could erode its maritime
boundaries), and the absence of an extradition treaty, though this seems to result from
the Indonesian Parliament’s reluctance to ratify the treaty signed as a package deal with
the Defense Cooperation Agreement (DCA) in 2007.79 These issues notwithstanding,
Indonesia has conducted bilateral defense diplomacy with all its ASEAN partners, with
Malaysia and Singapore topping the list.
To sum up, Indonesia’s bilateral defense diplomacy can thus be seen as a foreignpolicy mechanism that: (1) primarily focuses on increasing regional order through
CBMs, and (2) targets a select few of the most important regional neighbors and potential rivals as well as the region’s biggest powerhouses and potential weapons suppliers.
More specifically, Indonesia considers defense diplomacy a means to safeguard the
country’s territorial integrity, enhance regional order, and improve domestic defense
development.
Conclusion: Implications and Future Research
In summary, our preceding discussion has suggested the following. First, bilateral and
multilateral defense diplomacy in Southeast Asia is part and parcel of ASEAN’s “soft
institutional balancing” strategy vis-à-vis regional powers (mainly through the ARF)
and is geared to support overall regional confidence building. In addition to the overarching goal of deepening regional stability, Indonesia’s bilateral defense diplomacy has
also been designed to achieve specific functional goals. Second, the focus of multilateral defense diplomacy in Southeast Asia has evolved from initially being concerned
with largely transnational security issues to those that are increasingly blurring the
distinction between nontraditional and traditional security issues, such as humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, and maritime security. These issues provide the initial
sociopolitical capital necessary for ASEAN to gradually address traditional defense
issues. Furthermore, although Southeast Asia’s changing strategic environment and
creeping democratization among key states provide the push-and-pull factors behind
the rising profile of nontraditional security issues in regional security discourse, the preexisting ASEAN and ARF network dealing with transnational security issues provides
a better conceptual and institutional umbrella. Third, the growing number of multilateral defense diplomatic activities can be attributed to the concern with China’s rise
and the potential return of great-power politics. Meanwhile, the devastating impact of
the 1996 Asian financial crisis provided the initial catalyst under which regional policymakers decided to expand and intensify defense diplomacy as a way to recover from
the regional anxiety, especially given the recent regional arms dynamic.
These conclusions have several implications for our understanding of international
relations and regional security in Southeast Asia. First, while scholars have noted that
the “most difficult and sensitive” issues in Southeast Asia tend to relate to the traditional concerns of national security,80 the rise of defense diplomacy in the past decade
indicates that regional policymakers are in fact aware of the potential pitfalls of always
avoiding the tough questions. But given the entrenchment of historical legacies, domestic political dynamics, and the existing norms of the “ASEAN Way,” some of these
activities are not immediately visible nor have they produced legally binding documents
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Regional Order by Other Means?
265
pertaining to specific defense issues. Nevertheless, scholars examining Southeast Asia’s
regional security architecture building should now at least account for or incorporate
the significance of these multilateral and bilateral defense diplomatic activities.
Second, this article confirms and supports much of the existing literature about
Southeast Asian regional security architecture. Specifically, multilateral defense diplomacy, as part of the broader trends in Southeast Asian regionalism, is among the crucial
tools to manage regional relations, and it provides a useful framework to reduce intraregional tensions that may undermine economic growth and domestic political stability.81
However, by unpacking the focus of and trends in Southeast Asian defense diplomacy, this article provides a more complicated picture of defense regionalism that
complements the existing processes of political and economic regionalism, despite the
criticism that the competing forces of economic integration and identity politics have
exposed ASEAN’s constituting ambivalences that leave it ill-equipped to serve as the
template for a post–Cold War regional order.82 Nevertheless, much of the literature
of Southeast Asian international relations tends to focus on these other two forms
of regionalism while neglecting defense regionalism that was previously considered
insignificant or irrelevant.83 This article also fills a niche area between the traditional
political-security analyses of regional security development, most of which relies on a
norms-based constructivist worldview, and the discussion over the growing importance
of nontraditional and human security issues in Southeast Asia.84
Despite these contributions, however, this article could not address several shortcomings that would be best tackled by future research projects. First, the article has
provided a broad regional overview of the trends, issues, and mechanisms of Southeast
Asia’s defense diplomacy and unpacked their complexity. But the article could not provide detailed policy pronouncements of each individual ASEAN state with regards to
their respective views on defense diplomacy, whether within a multilateral, bilateral,
or trilateral context. Future research might do well to explore the plausible different
policy rationales among individual Southeast Asian states and whether and how their
thinking evolved over the years, or whether they are concerned with some defense
issues and not others. Laos and Cambodia, for example, are presumably less concerned about China’s posturing in the South China Sea than are Vietnam and the
Philippines and thus might approach the great-power politics question differently.
Understanding the different dyadic security relationships among key Southeast Asian
states (e.g., Singapore–Malaysia, Indonesia–Singapore, etc.) and examining whether and
how defense diplomacy influences those relations are also important future research
projects.
Second, as the article has sought to examine the issues and trends in Southeast Asian
defense diplomacy and unpack their complexities, it does not provide a monocausal
explanation, theoretical or empirical. Instead, it has sought to highlight the constellation of issues and factors to understand the rise of defense diplomacy during the
past decade. In other words, there is no theoretical argument made in this article to
explain the specific causal mechanisms behind the different processes of Southeast
Asian defense diplomacy. A future research project might do well to draw from the
larger theoretical literature on collective defense and regional security to formulate a
theoretical argument to explain defense regionalism in Southeast Asia. An extension of
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266
Asian Security
such a project should also compare the different regional defense diplomacies in other
parts of the world. As noted before, this “new” defense diplomacy is now increasingly
ubiquitous, and a comparative and theoretically informed analysis might help us better
understand why and how defense diplomacy come into being, when and under what
conditions it would create regional peace, whether and how military institutions could
shape defense diplomacy, and what the implications are.
Third, when we consider the growing economic interdependence in Southeast Asia,
the creeping democratization in Southeast Asian states (including Myanmar more
recently), and the deeper institutionalization of ASEAN (that now incorporates previously sensitive issues of traditional security), it would be interesting to examine in
the future if these three trends could eventually “triangulate” and create a long peace
in the region – as predicted by some democratic peace theorists.85 Critics of ASEAN’s
regionalism often point out the inability of the organization or its member states to
tackle key regional security challenges. But as our discussion suggests, domestic politics
(democratization), organizational evolution (of ASEAN), and economic development
all play a role in shaping the foreign policy of regional states as well as the focus of multilateral defense and security cooperation that as of today supports a peaceful regional
order. It is worth asking, therefore, under what specific conditions such development
would sustain and expand regional peace.
Finally, while the article has allowed a more nuanced understanding of regional security, some of the key arguments made have also raised further important questions. Are
the conditions of ASEAN’s expanding institutional role, Southeast Asia’s growing economic interdependence of the region, and the creeping democratization of its members
both necessary and sufficient to sustain and expand regional peace, or are they simply
necessary but not sufficient? If these three variables are necessary for regional peace,
should we then advocate a broader democratization agenda in regional discourse? Or
are there other variables, such as the role of China and the United States, that must be
taken into account? Can ASEAN’s soft institutional balancing sustain the expansion
of the regional security architecture in the future? Which vision of a future regional
architecture would win in the face of these developments, and for that matter, how
should we then define and measure “regional security”? What role do domestic politics and extraregional economic ties play in the shaping of regional order, and how?
Addressing these questions could provide further building blocks in our understanding
of Southeast Asian international relations.
NOTES
1. See, for example, Stephen Blank, “Defense Diplomacy, Chinese Style,” Asia Times Online, November 11,
2003. Available at http://www.atimes.com; Pankaj Kumar Jha, “India’s Defense Diplomacy in Southeast
Asia,” Journal of Defence Studies Vol. 5, No. 1 (2011), pp. 47–63; Mihoko Kato, “Russia’s Multilateral
Diplomacy in the Process of Asia Pacific Regional Integration: The Significance of ASEAN for Russia,”
in Akihiro Iwashita, ed., Eager Eyes Fixed on Slavic Eurasia Vol. 2 (Hokkaido, Japan: Slavic Research Center,
Hokkaido University, 2007), pp. 125–151.
2. See, for example, Lewis M. Stern, “U.S.–Cambodia Defense Relations: Defining New Possibilities,” National
Defense University Strategic Forum No. 251 (December 2009), pp. 1–6; J. Berkshire Miller, “Brunei for
Defence Diplomacy,” The Diplomat, April 12, 2011. Available at http://the-diplomat.com
3. A discussion of Southeast Asia’s dyadic bilateral disputes is in Narayanan Ganesan, “Bilateral Tensions in
ASEAN,” in Sumit Ganguly, Andrew Scobell, and Joseph Chinyong Liow, eds., The Routledge Handbook of
Asian Security Studies (London: Routledge, 2010), pp. 217–229.
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Regional Order by Other Means?
267
4. See Evan A. Laksmana, “Indonesia’s Rising Regional and Global Profile: Does Size Really Matter?”
Contemporary Southeast Asia Vol. 33, No. 2 (2011), pp. 175–176.
5. “Formal” here is not defined as legally binding activities, but as Track 1 government-to-government activities
or events. The result or output of these events could be either legally binding or not.
6. See more details on these two types of security cooperation in Carlyle A. Thayer, Southeast Asia: Patterns
of Security Cooperation (Canberra: Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 2010). One could also think of the
role of Track II institutions such as the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific or the ASEAN
Institutes of Strategic and International Studies. But their immediate impact is often difficult to precisely
measure and account for.
7. This is not to suggest that extraregional powers such as the United States and China have no influence
whatsoever over regional security. Indeed, for much of Southeast Asia’s history, especially during the Cold
War, extraregional powers have tended to “overlay” regional dynamics. See, for example, Barry Buzan, “The
Southeast Asian Security Complex,” Contemporary Southeast Asia Vol. 10, No. 1 (1988), pp. 1–16. What I am
arguing here is that within the context of defense diplomacy in the past decade, it was the ASEAN member
states that were behind the development of defense regionalism, as the article seeks to show. Whether or not
the current US “pivot” to Asia will ultimately “transform the region” is beyond the scope of this article.
8. On the normative construction, see Amitav Acharya, Constructing a Security Community in Southeast Asia
(London: Routledge, 2001).
9. For a recent review of gunboat diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific, especially in the South China Sea, see Christian
Le Mière, “The Return of Gunboat Diplomacy,” Survival Vol. 53, No. 5 (2011), pp. 53–68.
10. Andrew Cottey and Anthony Forster, Reshaping Defense Diplomacy: New Roles for Military Cooperation
and Assistance, Adelphi Paper No. 365 (Oxford: Oxford University Press for International Institute for
Strategic Studies, 2004), p. 6.
11. For more details on the various activities under the new defense diplomacy, see Cottey and Forster, Reshaping
Defense Diplomacy, pp. 6–12.
12. Military diplomacy here is defined by B. S. Sachar, “Military Diplomacy through Arms Transfers: A Case
Study of China,” Strategic Analysis Vol. 28, No. 2 (2004), p. 290.
13. See Garren Mulloy, “Japan’s Defense Diplomacy and ‘Cold Peace’ in Asia,” Asia Journal of Global Studies
Vol. 1, No. 1 (2007), p. 3; Cottey and Forster, Reshaping Defense Diplomacy, Ch. 1. Aside from the conflict
reduction role, Cottey and Forster also suggest two other roles: promoting democratic civil–military relations
and supporting other states in developing peacekeeping capabilities.
14. Although, Vietnam and Indonesia have been described as aspiring hegemons in Southeast Asia. See Ralf
Emmers, “Regional Hegemonies and the Exercise of Power in Southeast Asia: A Study of Indonesia and
Vietnam,” Asian Survey Vol. 45, No. 4 (2005), pp. 645–665.
15. See Sheldon W. Simon, “Southeast Asia’s Defense Needs: Change or Continuity?” in Ashley J. Tellis and
Michael Wills, eds., Strategic Asia 2005–6: Military Modernization in an Era of Uncertainty (Seattle: National
Bureau of Asian Research, 2005), p. 271.
16. Evelyn Goh, “Great Powers and Hierarchical Order in Southeast Asia. Analyzing Regional Security
Strategies,” International Security Vol. 32, No. 3 (Winter 2007/8), p. 119.
17. According to one scholar, the concept of “regional order” in Southeast Asia, as it was proposed by
Michael Leifer, is theoretically underdeveloped and methodologically imprecise. See Yuen Foong Khong,
“The Elusiveness of Regional Order: Leifer, the English School and Southeast Asia,” The Pacific Review
Vol. 18 No. 1 (2005), pp. 23–41.
18. Simon, “Southeast Asia’s Defense Needs,” p. 299.
19. For a fuller discussion, see Sheldon Simon, “The Limits of Defense and Security Cooperation in Southeast
Asia,” Journal of Asian and African Studies Vol. 33, No. 1 (1998), pp. 62–75; Sheldon Simon, “Southeast
Asian International Relations: Is There Institutional Traction?” in Narayanan Ganesan and Ramses Amer,
eds., International Relations in Southeast Asia: Between Bilateralism and Multilateralism (Singapore: Institute
of Southeast Asian Studies, 2010), pp. 38–39.
20. The notion of ASEAN as a provider of “strategic space” is from Juwono Sudarsono, “Indonesia, the Region,
and the World,” paper presented to the US Department of Defense Capstone Exercise, Jakarta, August 11,
2010.
21. See Laksmana, “Indonesia’s Rising Regional and Global Profile,” pp. 175–176.
22. See Andi Widjajanto, Edy Prasetyono, and I’dil Syawfi, Penguatan Komunitas Keamanan ASEAN untuk
Menopang Integrasi Nasional Indonesia [Strengthening ASEAN Security Community to Sustain Indonesia’s
National Integration] (Jakarta: University of Indonesia, 2009).
23. One study notes that only 39 percent of maritime boundaries in Southeast Asia have been resolved. See
Clive Schofield and Ian Storey, “Energy Security and Southeast Asia: The Impact on Maritime Boundary and
Territorial Disputes,” Harvard Asia Quarterly (Fall 2005). Available at http://www.asiaquarterly.com
24. For more details, see Andrew Tan, Force Modernization Trends in Southeast Asia, Institute of Defence and
Strategic Studies (IDSS) Working Paper No. 59 (Singapore: IDSS, 2004).
25. This will occur as extreme weather events, rising sea level, warming temperature, and others will overlay
a litany of preexisting domestic challenges in regional countries – from unemployment, poverty, socioethnic fault lines, resource scarcity, corruption, and urbanization. See Paul J. Smith, “Climate Change, Weak
268
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
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32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
Asian Security
States and the ‘War on Terrorism’ in South and Southeast Asia,” Contemporary Southeast Asia Vol. 29, No. 2
(2007), pp. 264–285; Christopher Jasparro and Jonathan Taylor, “Climate Change and Regional Vulnerability
to Transnational Security Threats in Southeast Asia,” Geopolitics Vol. 13 (2008), pp. 232–246.
Jorn Dosch, “Sovereignty Rules: Human Security, Civil Society, and the Limits of Liberal Reform,” in Donald
K. Emmerson, ed., Hard Choices: Security, Democracy, and Regionalism in Southeast Asia (Stanford, CA:
Walter Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, 2008), p. 69.
Donald K. Emmerson, “Critical Terms: Security, Democracy, and Regionalism in Southeast Asia,” in
Emmerson, ed., Hard Choices: Security, Democracy, and Regionalism in Southeast Asia, p. 11.
Matthew Carlson and Mark Turner, “Public Support for Democratic Governance in Southeast Asia,” Asian
Journal of Political Science Vol. 16, No. 3 (2008), p. 226.
For a discussion, see James Cotton, ASEAN and the Southeast Asian ‘Haze’: Challenging the Prevailing
Modes of Regional Government, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies Working Paper No. 3
(Canberra: Australian National University, 1999).
See “Think Tanks and Civil Society Groups’ Statement on the Haze,” Singapore Institute of International
Affairs Online. Available at http://www.siiaonline.org
See Herman Kraft, “RtoP by Increments: The AICHR and Localizing the Responsibility to Protect in
Southeast Asia,” The Pacific Review Vol. 25, No. 1 (2012), pp. 27–49; Lina Alexandra, “Indonesia and the
Responsibility to Protect,” The Pacific Review Vol. 25, No. 1 (2012), pp. 51–74.
Thayer, Southeast Asia: Patterns of Security Cooperation, p. 10.
Thayer, Southeast Asia: Patterns of Security Cooperation, p. 22. In some cases, however, as some issues become
more prominent than others (e.g., disaster relief or terrorism), ASEAN and the ARF added new institutional
activities to this network. Thus, some activities existed before some issues became prominent, while others
were added to accommodate new realities.
Following Putnam, I use social capital here to mean “features of social life – networks, norms, and trust –
that enable participants to act together more effectively to pursue shared interests.” See Robert D. Putnam,
“Tuning In, Tuning Out: The Strange Disappearance of Social Capital in America,” PS: Political Science and
Politics Vol. 28, No. 4 (1995), pp. 664–665. For a longer review, see Robert W. Jackman and Ross A. Miller,
“Social Capital and Politics,” Annual Review of Political Science Vol. 1 (1998), pp. 47–73.
Alex J. Bellamy, “Security,” in Mark Beeson, ed., Contemporary Southeast Asia, 2nd ed. (London: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2009), pp. 189–190.
See Mely Caballero-Anthony, “Partnership for Peace in Asia: ASEAN, the ARF, and the United Nations,”
Contemporary Southeast Asia Vol. 24, No. 3 (2002), p. 536.
David Capie and Brendan Taylor, “The Shangri-La Dialogue and the Institutionalization of Defense
Diplomacy in Asia,” The Pacific Review Vol. 23, No. 3 (2010), p. 372.
Thayer, Southeast Asia: Patterns of Security Cooperation, p. 28.
See “2nd ARF Inter-Sessional Meeting on Maritime Security Held in Auckland,” Indonesian Foreign Ministry
Web site. Available at http://www.deplu.go.id
See Allen S. Whiting, “ASEAN Eyes China: The Security Dimension,” Asian Survey Vol. 37, No. 4 (1997),
pp. 299–322.
Alice D. Ba, “Staking Claims and Making Waves in the South China Sea: How Troubled Are the Waters?”
Contemporary Southeast Asia Vol. 33, No. 3 (2011), p. 278.
The litmus-test argument is explored in Evan A. Laksmana, “Is China Failing SE Asia’s Litmus Test?” The
Jakarta Post, June 10, 2010. The Mischief Reef incident and its implications for Southeast Asia–China relations
are elaborated in Ian James Storey, “Creeping Assertiveness: China, the Philippines and the South China Sea
Dispute,” Contemporary Southeast Asia Vol. 21, No. 1 (1999), pp. 95–118.
Cited from Rizal Sukma, “Indonesia–China Relations: The Politics of Re-engagement,” Asian Survey Vol. 49,
No. 4 (2009), p. 600.
On ARF’s formation and its concern with the regional balance of power, see Ralf Emmers, Cooperative
Security and the Balance of Power in ASEAN and the ARF (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), Ch. 5.
Whiting, “ASEAN Eyes China,” p. 300.
Simon S. C. Tay, Asia Alone: The Dangerous Post–Crisis Divide from America (New York: John Wiley &
Sons, 2010).
This is partly why by 2005, the US military had access rights as well as facility use and repair and bunkering arrangements with the five original members of ASEAN. See Simon, “Southeast Asia’s Defense Needs,”
p. 271; Joey Long, “Great Power Politics and Southeast Asian Security,” in Sumit Ganguly, Andrew Scobell,
and Joseph Chinyong Liow, eds., The Routledge Handbook of Asian Security Studies (London: Routledge,
2010), p. 230.
This ambivalence stems from the potential economic benefits coming from China’s booming economy, on the
one hand, and a simmering distrust attributed to geographical proximity, historical enmity, previous interference into Southeast Asian domestic politics, unresolved territorial disputes, and rising economic competition,
on the other. See Evelyn Goh, “Southeast Asian Perspectives on the China Challenge,” Journal of Strategic
Studies Vol. 30, No. 4 (2007), pp. 809–832; Martin Stuart-Fox, “Southeast Asia and China: The Role of History
and Culture in Shaping Future Relations,” Contemporary Southeast Asia Vol. 26, No. 1 (2004), pp. 116–139.
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49. This statement was given in an interview with the Council on Foreign Relations on September 27, 2011,
in New York. See “A Conversation with Marty Natalegawa,” Council on Foreign Relations. Available at
http://www.cfr.org
50. For more details, see David Arase, “Nontraditional Security in China–ASEAN Cooperation: The
Institutionalization of Regional Security Cooperation and the Evolution of East Asian Regionalism,” Asian
Survey Vol. 50, No. 4 (2010), pp. 808–833.
51. I borrow and combine these two concepts from Kai He and Yuen Foong Khong. See Kai He, “Does ASEAN
Matter? International Relations Theories, Institutional Realism, and ASEAN,” Asian Security Vol. 2, No. 3
(2006), pp. 189–214; and Yuen Foong Khong, “Coping with Strategic Uncertainty: The Role of Institutions
and Soft Balancing in Southeast Asia’s Post–Cold War Strategy,” in J. J. Suh, Peter J. Katzenstein, and Allan
Carlson, eds., Rethinking Security in East Asia: Identity, Power, and Efficiency (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 2004), pp. 172–208.
52. Goh, “Great Powers and Hierarchical Order in Southeast Asia: Analyzing Regional Security Strategies,”
pp. 131–133.
53. Thayer, Southeast Asia: Patterns of Security Cooperation, p. 24
54. Robert Karniol, “Meeting Sets Up Wider Exchange of Intelligence,” Jane’s Defence Weekly, May 24, 2000.
55. Officially, because these meetings are considered informal, they are classified as “outside the ASEAN framework.” But the nature of the meetings, procedures, and the list of participants still include ASEAN defense
establishments within a multilateral nuance and were acknowledged as part of the process leading to the creation of ADMM. See, for example, “Concept Paper for the Establishment of an ASEAN Defence Ministers’
Meeting,” ASEAN Secretariat Web site. Available at http://www.asean.org
56. For more details, see “ASEAN Security Community Plan of Action,” ASEAN Secretariat Web site. Available
at http://www.aseansec.org
57. Thayer, Southeast Asia: Patterns of Security Cooperation, p. 25.
58. This figure is based on the author’s ongoing research data set constructed from various Indonesian Foreign
Ministry and ASEAN-related documents.
59. The logic and theoretical basis of the argument that growing economic interdependence does not eliminate distrust and in fact decreases national autonomy and in turn exacerbates perceptions of vulnerability
is in Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981),
pp. 219–223.
60. Details on the Asian financial crisis’s immediate impact to the Singaporean economy are in Kee-jin Ngiam,
“Coping with the Asian Financial Crisis: The Singapore Experience,” in Tzong-shian Yu and Dianqing
Zu, eds, From Crisis to Recovery: East Asia Rising Again? (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 2001),
pp. 146–153. This is perhaps why some believe that Singapore was and still is the champion behind the
ASEAN Economic Community plan.
61. Though, of course the respective political elite within ASEAN member states were initially more concerned
about maintaining domestic stability and restoring their economic growths. For a discussion on the immediate
political impact of the crisis, see Etel Solingen, “Southeast Asia in a New Era: Domestic Coalitions from Crisis
to Recovery,” Asian Survey Vol. 44, No. 2 (2004), pp. 189–212.
62. For more details, see Yongwok Ryu, The Asian Financial Crisis and ASEAN’s Concept of Security, S.
Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) Working Paper No. 148 (Singapore: RSIS, 2008); Graeme
Cheeseman, “Asian-Pacific Security Discourse in the Wake of the Asian Economic Crisis,” The Pacific Review
Vol. 12, No. 3 (1999), pp. 333–356.
63. Overall, Southeast Asia spent one third less on defense in 1998 than it did the year before. For more details, see
Sheldon Simon, “Asian Armed Forces: Internal and External Tasks and Capabilities,” in Sheldon W. Simon,
ed., The Many Faces of Asian Security (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001), p. 49.
64. For more details, see Richard Bitzinger, “The China Syndrome: Chinese Military Modernization and the
Rearming of Southeast Asia,” RSIS Working Paper No. 126 (Singapore: RSIS, 2007).
65. Richard Bitzinger, “A New Arms Race? Explaining Recent Southeast Asian Military Acquisitions,”
Contemporary Southeast Asia Vol. 32, No. 1 (2010), p. 51.
66. Robert Hartfiel and Brian L. Job, “Raising the Risks of War: Defence Spending Trends and Competitive Arms
Processes in East Asia,” The Pacific Review Vol. 20, No. 1 (2007), pp. 3–4.
67. Paul Bracken, “Technology and the Military Face of Asian Security,” in Simon, The Many Faces of Asian
Security, p. 78.
68. More than 900 supersonic combat aircraft were acquired in Asia between1997 and 2004 alone. See Richard
Grimmett, Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 1997–2004 (Washington, DC: Congressional
Research Service, 2005).
69. For more details, see Eric Heginbotham, “The Fall and Rise of Navies in East Asia: Military Organizations,
Domestic Politics, and Grand Strategy,” International Security Vol. 27, No. 2 (2002), pp. 86–125; Evan
A. Laksmana, “Indonesia’s Changing Strategic Landscape: Recent Trends and Future Challenges,” The
Indonesian Quarterly Vol. 37, No. 4 (2009), pp. 534–541.
70. This has been dubbed as a “suboptimal race.” See Charles Glaser, “When Are Arms Races Dangerous?
Rational versus Suboptimal Arming,” International Security Vol. 28, No. 4 (2004), pp. 44–84.
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71. Capie and Taylor, “The Shangri-La Dialogue,” p. 360; Simon, “Southeast Asian International Relations,”
p. 55.
72. See Amitav Acharya, “Regional Institutions and Asian Security Order: Norms, Power, and Prospects for
Peaceful Change,” in Muthiah Alagappa, ed., Asian Security Order: Instrumental and Normative Features
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), p. 221.
73. See Idil Syawfi, “Aktifitas Diplomasi Pertahanan Indonesia Dalam Pemenuhan Tujuan-Tujuan Pertahanan
Indonesia (2003–08)” [Indonesia’s Defense Diplomatic Activities in Support of National Defense Goals]
(master’s thesis, University of Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia, 2009).
74. For more details on the TNI’s foreign-policy role vis-à-vis China, see Rizal Sukma, Indonesia and China:
The Politics of a Troubled Relationship (London: Routledge, 1999), Ch. 4.
75. Figures are taken from Syawfi, “Aktifitas Diplomasi Pertahanan Indonesia.”
76. See Laksmana,” Indonesia’s Rising Regional and Global Profile,” p. 168, for details on the “defense gap”
between the requested and appropriated defense budget for the TNI. On Indonesia’s geopolitical vulnerability
and increasing operational demand, especially in the maritime domain, see Evan A. Laksmana, “The Enduring
Strategic Trinity: Explaining Indonesia’s Geopolitical Architecture,” Journal of the Indian Ocean Region
Vol. 7, No. 1 (2011), pp. 101–105.
77. For more details, see Evan A. Laksmana, “Variations on a Theme: Dimensions of Ambivalence in Indonesia–
China Relations,” Harvard Asia Quarterly Vol. 13, No. 1 (2011), pp. 24–31.
78. For details on Indonesia’s “Confrontation” with Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei, see J. A. C. Mackie,
Konfrontasi: The Indonesia–Malaysia Dispute, 1963–1966 (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1974);
Matthew Jones, Conflict and Confrontation in Southeast Asia: Britain, the United States, Indonesia and the
Creation of Malaysia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
79. Indonesian parliamentarians recently argued that the DCA could potentially infringe on Indonesia’s territory
and endanger its security as it might allow Singaporeans to train with a third-party force on Indonesian
soil – and because allegedly almost half of the training area “turned out to be protected forests.” See Markus
Sihaloho, “No Extradition Treaty with S’pore Due to ‘Unacceptable Clause’: Lawmaker,” The Jakarta Globe,
June 7, 2011.
80. Donald E. Weatherbee, International Relations in Southeast Asia: The Struggle for Autonomy, 2nd ed.
(Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2010), p. 129.
81. Amitav Acharya, “The Strong in the World of the Weak: Southeast Asia in Asia’s Regional Architecture,” in
Michael J. Green and Bates Gill, eds., Asia’s New Multilateralism: Cooperation, Competition, and the Search
for Community (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), p. 177.
82. This critique of ASEAN’s regionalism – dubbed as “regional delusions” – is most explicitly and fiercely,
even somewhat emotionally, articulated in David Martin Jones and M. L. R. Smith, ASEAN and East Asian
International Relations: Regional Delusion (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2006). For a more balanced discussion on ASEAN regionalism, see Jurgen Ruland, “Southeast Asian Regionalism and Global Governance:
‘Multilateral Utility’ or ‘Hedging Utility’?” Contemporary Southeast Asia Vol. 33, No. 1 (2011), pp. 83–112.
83. For a historical and longer discussion on Southeast Asia’s political and economic regionalism, see, for example, Denis Wei-yen Hew, ed., Brick by Brick: The Building of an ASEAN Economic Community (Singapore:
Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2007); Nicholas Tarling, Regionalism in Southeast Asia: To Foster the
Political Will (London: Routledge, 2006).
84. There have been numerous published materials that fall under these two camps within the last 10 to
15 years. For recent works representing these two camps, see Hiro Katsumata, ASEAN’s Cooperative Security
Enterprise: Norms and Interests in the ASEAN Regional Forum (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009);
Yukiko Nishikawa, Human Security in Southeast Asia (London: Routledge, 2010). A good review of the
literature on regional security in Southeast Asia is Joseph Chinyong Liow and Ralf Emmers, eds., Order and
Security in Southeast Asia: Essays in Memory of Michael Leifer (London: Routledge, 2006).
85. See Bruce Russett and John R. O’Neal, Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International
Organizations (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001).
Evan A. Laksmana is a Fulbright Presidential Ph.D. Scholar in Political Science at the Maxwell School
of Citizenship and Public Affairs of Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY. He is also a researcher with the
Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta and has published for Defence Studies, Journal
of Strategic Studies, Contemporary Southeast Asia, Harvard Asia Quarterly, Journal of the Indian Ocean
Region, and others. He is currently working on the global diffusion of military innovation.