Introduction

The region's recovery from the destabilizing effects of the 1997/98 Asian economic/ financial crisis had been patchy, and although by 2002 most gross domestic product (GDP) levels had edged back to pre-crisis levels, per capita incomes had not and unemployment was on the rise. The 3.5 per cent growth in Indonesia was achieved over a low baseline. Its path towards economic restructuring, sustained economic recovery, and political stability remained tortuous.

On the road to economic recovery two developments set back confidence and fuelled uncertainties. The Al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on the United States on 11 September 2001 (commonly referred to as “9/11”) opened a new phase of international insecurity. How the United States would pursue the war against global terrorism and with what impacts on the Muslim world fuelled uncertainty. The more open regional economies focussed on the consequences for global travel, business confidence, and the international economy. In retrospect neither the United States nor the most open regional economy, Singapore, was too seriously affected. Within a year both economies had rebounded with Singapore in the third quarter of 2002 seemingly headed for a 4 per cent growth. In 2002 the Malaysian economy grew by 4.2 per cent while the fastest regional growth rate of 7 per cent was recorded by Vietnam. However, the terrorist bombings in Bali on 12 October 2002, which killed 202 people, many of them foreign tourists including 88 Australians, dampened expectations of a rebound as Southeast Asia initially acquired an undifferentiated image in the minds of foreign investors and in travel advisories as an insecure region.

American concerns that parts of maritime Southeast Asia with their local history of Muslim militancy and rebellion against central authority were vulnerable to penetration by the Al-Qaeda network in search of a “second front” resurfaced following the Afghanistan campaign which commenced in October 2001 and resulted subsequently in the destruction of the Taliban regime and disruption of the Al- Qaeda network. The year 2002 began with regional anticipation of the political fallout of the war against international terrorism and ended with nervous tension over the imminence of war in Iraq.

Nearly two decades after the Cold War, what type of security order is emerging in the Asia-Pacific remains unclear. Hegemony, power balancing, the politics of concert, and community building have all been designated as possible models for a future regional order, but all of these approaches contain risks for misperception and conflict escalation. Uncertainties are further intensified by the nature of emerging, broader security tests now confronting the region. These “non-traditional” or “transnational” challenges originate largely from “non-state-centric” sources and permeate national boundaries in unprecedented fashion. Climate change, international crime, maritime threats, energy shortages, and various issues of civil society and human security emanating from problems of governance all vie for attention of Asia-Pacific policymakers in an increasingly complex world.

What remains constant, however, is the human tendency to seek ways of organizing collectively to overcome the major security challenges of the day. The bipolarity that was shaped by superpower competition between the United States and the Soviet Union and dominated “strategic Asia” for the second half of the previous century is clearly transforming into new geometries that are not yet clearly understood. In the absence of a more certain and transparent world, actors who have either previously formed habits of interacting with each other in a regional context, or who share a common heritage of language, political culture, and geopolitical affinity, often find it easier to communicate and cooperate with each other than to negotiate hard bargains with potential adversaries. ASEAN-Australian relations exemplify the first pattern; Australian-Indian relations potentially reflect the second. The ASEAN-Indian relationship appears to have largely remained outside such orbits to date. Yet both Southeast Asian and Indian analysts have noted that a greater “security convergence” is now materializing within that dyad as well. Visible strategic consensus now clearly exists, for example, in the areas of counter-terrorism, maritime security, and democratization.

An obvious question flowing from such developments is to what extent these three actors might constructively pursue an implicit form of trilateralism in their security interactions. “Trilateralism” is applied to mean that the three actors under review in this particular volume would forge a series of arrangements or even policy-specific regimes, underwritten by a commonality of interests, derived from increasingly shared democratic values, economic concerns, and geopolitical relativities.

Defining “regional architecture”

The term “regional architecture” is often used loosely or with scant prior clarification — presuming we all know what it refers too. A useful working definition is provided by Brendan Taylor and Bill Tow in their paper “Asia Pacific Security Architecture” prepared for an International Alliance of Research Universities Conference on Security held in November 2006. They used “architecture” in a collective sense to refer to the institutions, including other structures, which together comprise it. Attention is drawn to the “number, style and arrangement of those individual institutions and activities” that “combine and form an overall architecture”. Although the main focus of their paper is on security in the Asia-Pacific, the definition is relevant to our discussion here which looks essentially at the “East Asian” region in a broad political rather than narrow geographic sense. Of particular relevance to the East Asian endeavour is their observation that the “architecture” referred to is essentially a work in progress — “not static and meticulously planned, but as something that is organic, constantly growing and developing”. Citing Hanns Maull, they see it very much as “the work of several competing architects, rather than one master builder”. Such a composite definition which they worked out essentially in a “security” context (hence the use of “security” to qualify “architecture”) remains pertinent to our discussion here that relates to a loosely defined East Asian region. Although we focus here on regional rather than security architecture, an underlying assumption is the interconnectedness between security and other concerns in the realms of trade, economic cooperation, and energy security, as well as the environment, among others which may have their own functional frameworks and structures to facilitate cooperation, but which nevertheless can be related back to or subsumed within the broad regional architecture.

This section of the book seeks to address the question of how ASEAN, India, and Australia see their respective roles and interests within the East Asia Summit (EAS) process that is shaping a certain regional architecture, and how they would like to see it develop with reference to other big players outside it — particularly the United States, the European Union, and Russia. The specific task of this chapter is to focus on the ASEAN leg of the ASEAN-India-Australia triad.

Dr Chin's commenced his lecture by questioning ASEAN's position in East Asia as there has been much mentioned about the centrality of ASEAN. He doubted that ASEAN has yet to self reflect and consequently make amendments to stay competitive with the rise of East Asia.

Dr Chin started by recalling the background to the East Asia Summit (EAS). A combination of factors has shaped the EAS and it has been indeed a very long process. The 1970s and 1980s saw the Koreans and Japanese trying to underpin the economic connectivity of the wider Asia region. However, the Cold War brought its own set of problems and it was only after the 1990s that someone like Malaysia's ex-premier, Dr Mahatir Mohammad, was able to openly and expansively discuss the East Asia grouping which was subsequently reincarnated into the East Asia Economic Caucus (EAEC). By 1992, despite some of the open reservations expressed by this type of community building, Singapore Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong, stated that the concept of the EAEC needed to be embraced. It was also suggested that among other things, there needed to be an East Asian response to other mega-regional enterprises that were being conceived around the same time such as North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the European Union (EU). In 1994, the Asia Europe Meeting (ASEM) enforced a concerted process where the Asian side (of ASEM) was driven to think more cooperatively and engage in the ASEM Dialogue. By 1997, the ASEAN plus three (APT) had begun to meet on annually. The other major watershed was the 1997/98 East Asian economic crisis that triggered earnest East Asian responses to address the negative spillover effects of the existing economic connectivity. From 1998 to 2001, a series of measures were discussed which eventually culminated in the idea of the East Asia Summit (EAS) meeting. The exit of Dr Mahatir Mohammad as Malaysia's Prime Minister opened the doors for New Zealand and Australia (and India) to participate in the EAS.

INTRODUCTION

Before the 1990s, there was no official relationship between ASEAN as a grouping and China, although China had official bilateral relations with certain individual ASEAN member states. From the late 1980s, China intensified its efforts to establish diplomatic relations with all the remaining ASEAN states leading eventually to official relationship with the ASEAN grouping.

In his visit to Thailand in November 1988, Chinese Premier Li Peng announced four principles in establishing, restoring and developing relations with all the ASEAN states. After establishing diplomatic relations with Singapore on 3 October 1990, China pushed for official ties with the ASEAN grouping. On 19 July 1991, Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen attended the opening session of the Twenty-Fourth ASEAN Ministerial Meeting (AMM) in Kuala Lumpur as a guest of the Malaysian Government, where he expressed China's interest in cooperating with ASEAN. The latter responded positively. In September 1993, ASEAN Secretary General Dato’ Ajit Singh visited Beijing and agreed to establish two joint committees, one on cooperation in science and technology, and the other on economic and trade cooperation. An exchange of letters between the ASEAN secretary general and the Chinese foreign minister on 23 July 1994 in Bangkok formalized the establishment of the two committees. At the same time, ASEAN and China agreed to engage in consultations on political and security issues at senior official level. In July 1996, ASEAN accorded China full Dialogue Partner status at the Twentyninth AMM in Jakarta, moving China from a Consultative Partner, which it had been since 1991.

By early 1997, there were already five parallel frameworks for dialogue between ASEAN and China: (1) the China-ASEAN political consultation at senior official level; (2) the China-ASEAN Joint Committee on Economic and Trade Cooperation; (3) the ASEAN-China Joint Cooperation Committee (ACJCC); (4) China-ASEAN Joint Committee on Scientific and Technological Cooperation; and (5) the ASEAN Beijing Committee. China participated in a series of consultative meetings with ASEAN, which include the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the Post Ministerial Conferences (PMC) 9+1 and 9+10, the Joint Cooperation Committee (JCC) Meeting, the ASEAN-China Senior Officials Meeting (SOM) and the ASEANChina Business Council Meeting.

The year 2004 was a relatively good one for Southeast Asia on both economic and political fronts. The region experienced robust growth of 6.3 per cent, driven by economic rebounds in the United States, Japan, and the European Union and the rapid economic expansion of China. It was also a year in which elections and political transitions took place in a number of countries. They were on the whole positive for the region and in most cases generated hopes for a better future.

Nevertheless, the region continued to have security concerns. Its external security environment was marked by greater uncertainty, in view of concerns that Iraq might become an expanding base for jihad with implications for other regions; as well as concerns relating to the Korean peninsula, the Taiwan Straits and the downturn in Sino-Japanese relations. Within Southeast Asia some countries faced threats from terrorism associated with radical Islamic groups, especially Indonesia and the Philippines. These two countries also had to deal with separatist rebellions and, in the case of the Philippines, a continuing communist insurgency. A troubling new development was the outbreak of violence in the Muslim provinces of South Thailand.

The region was drawing increased attention from the major powers, with signs of keener competition for influence between the United States and China. America's security relations with allies and friends intensified but Southeast Asians felt that America's attention was too narrowly focused on the war on terrorism and that its “soft power” had declined. There were signs towards the end of the year of the United States adopting a broader-based and politically more nuanced policy to the region, in part to meet the competition from China which, through sophisticated diplomacy (some would call, a charm offensive predicated on its message of “peaceful rise of China”) and economic leverage (e.g. signing of important agreements on trade and dispute settlement with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) at the November 2004 summit and targeting an ASEAN-China FTA by 2010), had sought to address Southeast Asian governments' reservations about its emerging role as a major power.

Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) were among the earliest of ASEAN's external partners. But their interests in the Southeast Asian region ante-dated the formation of the regional association. What is noteworthy about those interests was that they were defined largely in the context of ANZ's old Commonwealth links with Britain on the one hand and their post-World War II alliance relationships with the United States (ANZUS and SEATO) on the other. The result of these derived relationships was firstly the absence of a coherent regional anchorage for ANZ foreign policy interests and secondly preponderant emphasis on the military dimensions in their relationship towards Southeast Asia.

Before World War II, Australia and even less so in the case of New Zealand (which had little historical context to its relationship with other Southeast Asian countries), thought little about the region per se but looked primarily towards Britain as the major point of reference vis-à-vis the British-ruled territories of Malaya and Singapore as a theatre of operation. ANZ troops served alongside Britain's in the defence of the Malayan region during World War II. The Japanese invasion and occupation of Southeast Asia and Britain's failure to defend Malaya, Singapore and the then Dutch East Indies, heightened Australia's awareness of its proximity to the region and “the threat from the North” — a security syndrome which haunted policy planners in Canberra in ensuing years when new conflicts caught up with the emergence of newly independent states in the post-colonial period. West rian, the Vietnam War, Konfrontasi, and East Timor were some of the more vexing challenges that complicated particularly Australia's relations with regional states “to the North“.

With the advent of the Cold War the legacy of ANZ's Commonwealth links to Britain in the Malayan area was translated into participation in the war against Communist insurgency. Malayan independence in 1957 further transformed the status and nature of such defence linkages and ANZ became associated with the Anglo-Malayan Defence Agreement (AMDA), which was Britain's continued guarantee to the external defence of Malaya and later Malaysia as well as Singapore.

For Southeast Asia, 2003 was a roller coaster year. The early expectations of a gradual economic recovery were badly jolted when the outbreak of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in the first quarter of the year dented several economies and saw a plummeting of confidence and growth rates. But SARS was brought under control within a few months and then petered out. Growth rates and confidence started to recover, helped also by signs of a pickup in the American economy. For the year, most regional economies expanded by an average of 4.5 per cent. Singapore's real GDP growth of 1.1 per cent was an exception and reflected the devastating impact of SARS on the most open and globalized economy in the region. By the end of the year the American economy seemed to be entering a period of cyclical recovery while Japan's economic performance also improved, generating prospects for a much better year ahead for the region. But concerns about decline in foreign direct investments, in part because of competition from China, continued to be a worrying reality for countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore.

The external security environment of the region remained relatively benign, given reasonably good relations between the major powers in Asia, especially U.S.-China relations. However, the American-led war in Iraq, which broke out in March and the deterioration of the situation in that country following the initially easy American invasion and occupation, posed some troubling uncertainties for the region. Iraq was becoming a magnet for radicals and terrorists. If the situation is not stabilized it could give a boost to international terrorism. It has already resulted in an increase in anti-Americanism in Muslim countries, including in Southeast Asia where efforts to come up with a more coherent and co-ordinated response proved to be quite challenging.

Despite regional vicissitudes and sluggish economic performance in the first half of 2003, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) derived some good dividends from the generally benign atmosphere among the major external powers.