Hiro Katsumata

ASEAN and human rights: resisting Western pressure or emulating the West?

Abstract Observers of Southeast Asian affairs commonly assume that the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are reluctant to pursue liberal agendas, and that their main concern is to resist pressure from Western powers to improve their human rights practice. This article, however, argues that such a conventional view is too simplistic. The Southeast Asian countries have voluntarily been pursuing liberal agendas, and their main concern here is to be identified as ‘Western’ countries – advanced countries with legitimate international status. They have ‘mimetically’ been adopting the norm of human rights which is championed by the advanced industrialized democracies, with the intention of securing ASEANs identity as a legitimate institution in the community of modern states. Ultimately, they have been pursuing liberal agendas, for the same reason as cash-strapped developing countries have luxurious national airlines and newly-independent countries institute national flags. Yet it should be noted that the progress of ASEANs liberal reform has been modest. A conventional strategy for facilitating this reform would be to put more pressure on the members of ASEAN; however, the usefulness of such a strategy is diminishing. The development of an East Asian community, the core component of which is the ASEAN–China concord, makes it difficult for the Western powers to exercise influence over the Southeast Asian countries. Hence, as an alternative strategy, this article proposes that ASEANs external partners should ‘globalize’ the issue of its liberal reform, by openly assessing its human rights record in global settings, with the aim of boosting the concern of its members for ASEANs international standing.

The role of ASEAN institutes of strategic and international studies in developing security cooperation in the Asia‐pacific region

As the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) governments are facing new challenges, the need to re‐evaluate the significance of the track‐two activities has been recognised. As there has been insufficient research on the ASEAN Institutes of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS), this article analyses their role in the development of security cooperation. It shows that ASEAN‐ISIS has contributed to the establishment of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) by analysing the common/cooperative security thinking, the establishment of an inter‐governmental forum for a security dialogue, and the extension of ASEANs diplomatic style over a larger geographical area. As ASEAN‐ISIS has contributed to inter‐governmental cooperation by promoting ideas, this article concludes that the significance of their activities in contemporary Asian politics should be understood in terms of the introduction and promotion of such innovative ideas.

The Significance of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF)

To state the main propositions of the present study, the key to encapsulating the significance of the Association of Southeast Asian Nation’s (ASEAN’s) cooperative security enterprise is the positive interaction between normative appropriateness and self-interest over time — or between two possible motives for the implementation of cooperative policies, namely, the pursuit of normative appropriateness and the calculation of self-interest. These two forces have been interacting positively and together driving the policies of the ASEAN countries. In this respect, for these countries, cooperative security is important because it is in line with what they perceive as an appropriate approach to security; moreover, it is important as its promotion has been increasingly beneficial to their strategic interests defined in egoistic terms. In other words, the promotion of cooperative security has been a matter not only of normative appropriateness but also of their self-interest, and the latter aspect is becoming increasingly significant. To begin with, multilateral cooperation is an appropriate way for the ASEAN countries to approach security. It is appropriate to their cooperative security norm: a set of ideas centred on the notion that security should be pursued cooperatively and non-militarily, by enhancing a sense of mutual understanding and trust through dialogue and consultation.

The Conventional Explanation for the Establishment of the ARF

To gain an in-depth knowledge of ASEAN’s cooperative security enterprise, the first task in this study is to focus on the establishment of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), and to explore the driving force behind ASEAN’s initiative for cooperation in the early 1990s. What were the motives of the ASEAN countries? The present chapter deals with what can be regarded as a conventional explanation for the establishment of the ARF, and the following chapter seeks to offer a more plausible explanation, by focusing on the role of ideational factors.

ASEAN in the ARF

The previous two chapters have focused on the establishment of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) by the ASEAN countries, and found that these countries were motivated by a set of ideas associated with security cooperation. In other words, their willingness to pursue an appropriate approach to security, in the light of these cooperative ideas, constituted a crucial component of their motives. The conventional scholarly wisdom concerning the establishment of the ARF — that it was ASEAN’s attempt to maintain US military engagement in Asia — has serious limitations.

An Idea-focused Explanation for the Establishment of the ARF

In an attempt to improve on the conventional explanation in the previous chapter, the present chapter focuses on the role of ideational factors in the establishment of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) on the part of the ASEAN countries. The study traces the process of the development of security cooperation — the process by which these countries developed cooperative security agendas and established the ARF, covering the period from the late 1980s to the early 1990s. To be specific, it identifies the ideas which the Southeast Asians had held, and focuses on the ways in which they had practised these ideas. In a process-oriented study, the agency of actors should be taken into consideration. Thus, the study is premised on the view that actors are not passive entities to be unilaterally influenced by ideational structures. They have the ability to actively put forward their own agendas, and to foster a set of ideas shared by the members of the community to which they belong.1

East Asia and the Asia-Pacific

For the ASEAN countries, cooperative security is one of the pathways to regional security — in particular, in terms of their relations with external powers. For them, cooperative security is important because it is in line with what they perceive as an appropriate approach to security; moreover it is important as its promotion has been increasingly beneficial to their strategic interests defined in egoistic terms. The key to capturing the significance of ASEAN’s cooperative security enterprise is the positive interaction between normative appropriateness and self-interest over time. These two forces have been interacting positively and together driving the policies of the ASEAN countries. Their initiative in the early 1990s was motivated by a set of ideas associated with security cooperation. Triggered by their pursuit of normative appropriateness, their cooperative security relations with other ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) participant countries have been institutionalized, as the latter have been influenced by ASEAN’s norm. To be specific, three non-ASEAN countries — namely, China, the United States, and Australia — have been influenced by the prevailing ideational structure in the ARF, and their policies have been converging on ASEAN-led cooperative security. As a result of the successful development of their norm-oriented exercise, three elements of the ASEAN countries’ self-interest, associated with cooperation, have been increasingly clear: the achievement of their ‘national interests’ or ‘national security’ through the enhancement of ASEAN’s relations with China, its autonomy vis-a-vis the United States, and its centrality to Asia-Pacific regionalism in the security field.