COMMUNITY BUILDING IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
BRINGING ASEAN CLOSER TO THE PEOPLE 

Jose T. Almonte 

ASEAN Lecture at the 39^th Founding Anniversary of the Association of 
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Philippines' chairmanship
of the ASEAN Standing Committee (ASC) 

The Foreign Service Institute, Bulwagang Blas Ople, 
DFA Building, Roxas Boulevard, Pasay City
17 August 20O6

1. ASEAN MOVES TOWARD COMMUNITY 

Both Security and Economic Issues are driving the ASEAN states toward closer union. 

Of these security issues, the first is that of increasing internal instability in Southeast Asia. 

We are seeing a distinct worsening of ethnic, cultural, and religious tensions—most dangerously in Southern Thailand and in Eastern Indonesia (though they may be easing in the Southern Philippines). And these conflicts are liable to spill over—across national boundaries—into the region. Already increasing militancy in our Muslim communities—most worryingly in Indonesia—seems to have given rise to a cross-border terrorist movement. 

Yet another security problem is Southeast Asia's rise as a strategic playing field in the long-term political competition between the United States and China—in the context of Beijing's apparent effort to regain its centrality in East Asia, and Washington's efforts, in turn, to "contain" its rising Asia-Pacific rival. 

Economic problems, economic opportunities 

The sharp increase in East Asian trade—and East Asia's emergence as an autonomous region of vigorous growth—pose both a problem and an opportunity for the ASEAN states. 

This increase in East Asian interdependence—taken together with the failure of multilateral efforts (most recently in the Doha Round of the World Trade Organization) to open global markets equitably—is stimulating a movement toward an East Asian Economic Grouping (EAEG) of the ASEAN-10 plus China, Japan, and Korea. 

All over the world, neighbor-states depend increasingly on regional and bilateral groupings to gain economies of scale and to enlarge their home-markets. 

An EAEG is likely to be in place soon after 2010, when the "ASEAN plus China" free trade area already in place will be fully established. And the EAEG's completion will confirm the northward shift of East Asia's center of economic gravity—away from ASEAN and toward the larger and more sophisticated economies of Northeast Asia. (South Korea's economy by itself is bigger than that of the whole of ASEAN.)

This economic trend, too, compels ASEAN to seek community. ASEAN -must unify—if it is to bolster its bargaining power relative to its vigorous northern neighbors. 

The economic stakes in ASEAN's venture toward community are high. Globally, ASEAN faces increasingly tough competition for trade and investment; in East Asia, it must reckon with the rise of China as an economic and political power. Indeed a 2003 study done for the ASEAN economic ministers by McKinsey & Company warns that "[t]he region is falling behind its riyals. Turning it into a true single market [will] boost its competitiveness and help restore its economic luster." 

In this sense, community-building—for ASEAN—is equivalent to regional survival. 

2. A COMMUNITY OF THREE DISTINCT PARTS 

The Bali Concord 2 of October 2003 envisions the establishment of an ASEAN Community by 2020. 

It defines this Community as a concert of Southeast Asian nations: outward-looking, resilient, living in peace, stability and prosperity; bonded together in a partnership in dynamic development; and in a community of caring and sharing societies 

Under the Vientiane Action Program—which is to run from 2004-2010—the ASEAN leaders agreed to accelerate the processes of ASEAN integration and to narrow the development gap within ASEAN. During the Leaders Summit in Kuala Lumpur last year, ASEAN appointed 10 wise men (one from every state) to chart the nature and directions of an ASEAN Charter. 

And already this "Eminent Persons Group" (EPG) has endorsed a Philippine proposal that political union—through a "United States of Southeast Asia"—become ASEAN's clear and final objective. 

The EPG has agreed with the Philippine Representative— former President Fidel V. Ramos—that only political union will prevent future conflict. Only political union will generate the security, stability, and prosperity necessary to secure freedom, justice, and dignity for the peoples of Southeast Asia. Only political union can assure the effective development of an ASEAN community. 

Security goal is to achieve comprehensive stability 

The ASEAN Community is to be built on three "pillars": a Security Community, an Economic Community and a Socio-Cultural Community. 

The basic concept of the ASEAN Security Community is comprehensive security—which acknowledges the strong interdependence of the political, economic and social life of Southeast Asia. 

To say that inter-state conflict in Southeast Asia has become virtually unthinkable (as inter-state conflict has become in Western Europe) would still overstate Southeast Asian reality. But those of us old enough to remember how things were, 40 years ago, can testify to how decisive an influence ASEAN's sheer presence has already been for Southeast Asian stability. 

Recently Indonesia set a security landmark for ASEAN to reach on its journey toward community—with its proposal for an ASEAN Peacekeeping Center by 2010 and a regional peacekeeping force by 2012. 

Without minimizing the difficulties of multilateral security cooperation, I believe a regional Peacekeeping Center to be within ASEAN's capabilities. Our countries have changed a great deal over these last 39 years—gradually but also basically, which is the best kind of change there is. 

Integrating the priority sectors of the Southeast Asian economies 

Turning now to the ASEAN Economic Community, its key concept is the integration of priority sectors of the Southeast Asian economy—to make ASEAN a single market and production platform characterized by the free flow of capital, goods, services, investments, and skilled labor. 

Under its Vientiane Action Program, ASEAN is also focusing on the effort to narrow gaps between its more-developed and less-developed member-states. 

In the 1960s, the Southeast Asian states had been among the first to open their markets to the growing global economy. The presence of authoritarian developmental states in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia enhanced Southeast Asia's natural attractions for investors. But, since then, "globalization" has begun to offer international investors a much wider variety of choices. 

The East Asian financial crisis of July 1997 exposed Southeast Asia's economic weaknesses, compared with the countries coming up—China, India, and Brazil being the most prominent among them. Comparisons with these emerging economies dramatize Southeast Asia's higher labor costs, its policy uncertainties, and— despite the promise of AFTA, the free trade area that ASEAN inaugurated in 1993—its still-fragmented national markets. 

AFTA still just a collection of disparate markets, 

Thirteen years since ASEAN started it off, AFTA is still just a collection of disparate markets. From 1994 until 2001, intraregional trade as a proportion of total trade actually fell by 19%—a reflection of Southeast Asia's continuing market fragmentation. 

Companies in ASEAN are still unable to make and sell goods for the whole of the Southeast Asian consumer market. They still cannot operate on a scale that is both economically efficient and globally competitive. 

Yet ASEAN's heyday as a region of cheap industrial labor has come and gone. No longer can the larger Southeast Asian economies—with the exception of Vietnam's—compete on labor costs alone. In 2002, civil engineers and software developers in Thailand earned more than twice their counterparts in China and India. 

3. COMMUNITY MUST ENGAGE ORDINARY PEOPLE 

One Socio-Cultural Southeast Asian Community is at once the easiest and the most difficult for the ASEAN leaders to organize. 

The lessons of the European Union teach us that elite arrangements—made over the heads of ordinary people—have limited effectiveness. 

There is no way an ASEAN community can be built without its would-be architects engaging the interest of ordinary ASEAN people. Hence it is fitting that ASEAN should be organizing a collective effort among its member-states to bring its vision and its mission to ordinary Southeast Asians. 

If the Southeast Asian peoples are to embrace ASEAN, they must see it as a beneficial influence on their daily lives. They must feel that the ASEAN vision is their own. 

ASEAN's role in securing their countries they will soon take for granted—-just as the West Europeans do the European Union's success in ending the cycle of European civil wars. 

This temptation ASEAN must resist. ASEAN may fall short of what it claims to do. But for as long as this present generation of ASEAN leaders is able to damp down regional conflict, it will have done enough. 

Kashmir and Palestine show us how long communal legacies of hatred and vengeance can last. For as long as the succeeding ASEAN generation is spared these bitter legacies, it will have the opportunity to make its own contributions to community-building. 

Southeast Asia's economic growth they will experience in their own lives only if it reduces the poverty of their homes and of their communities; only if it brings better and greater public health and basic education services and better jobs, as well as higher wages and salaries, to their families. 

Thus a great deal of ASEAN's work in building community must focus on encouraging, assisting, and—if need be—pressuring member-states to promote good governance, strengthen the rule of law, and build democracy. 

Political will come from political strength 

Whenever ASEAN fails to decide quickly enough on a Southeast Asian problem, people commonly dismiss the association as lacking in "political will." But the reason isn't always that simple. After all, political will comes from political strength—and ASEAN still must generate the political strength that comes from solidarity and mutual trust. 

Those who say ASEAN lacks political will forget that—at the time the five original members of ASEAN agreed to come together— Indonesia was in a state of war with both Singapore and Malaysia as a result of konfrontasi; while Manila and Kuala Lumpur were estranged over Manila's claims to portions of North Borneo. 

In fact, Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur did not even have formal diplomatic relations when they signed the ASEAN Agreement in August 1967. 

For its founding fathers, ASEAN was an arranged marriage in the best Asian tradition. 

ASEAN states are no longer so sensitive about intrusions into each other's domestic affairs 

In our time, things are changing even on the most delicate issue—that of national sovereignty. ASEAN states are no longer so sensitive about neighbors "intruding" into their "domestic affairs." 

Consider how Kuala Lumpur is actually hosting Manila's peace negotiations with its Islamic separatists in Mindanao; and how quickly Bangkok had received a high-level Malaysian delegation anxious to talk about the troubles in Thailand's Muslim South. 

The most dramatic change of all is how far ASEAN nowadays seems prepared to go in its efforts to persuade the Burmese generals to lighten up their rule in Myanmar—to free the Opposition icon, Aung San Suu Kyi and to allow some significant political participation by her National League for Democracy. 

Its ASEAN critics have actually forced Yangon to forgo its turn to chair the association this July. 

4. PRACTICAL METHODS TO ACHIEVE AN ASEAN SECURITY COMMUNITY 

The Plural Communities of Southeast Asia may lack the overarching civilization, which facilitated the unification of Western Europe. But these past four decades prove that the very act of sitting down together—inspired by social values derived from a shared culture that promotes consultation and consensus—can begin to build solidarity. 

And so can the common fear of intrusive outside powers. Every Southeast Asian culture has a variation of the Malay saying, "When the elephants fight, the mouse deer gets trampled." 

In political cooperation, we might start off on our landmark goal of eventual political union by transforming the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Organization (AIPO) into a full-fledged ASEAN Parliament—on the model of European, Latin American, and African parliaments already well-established. 

And the ASEAN Charter should declare its vision of the ASEAN future as a Southeast Asia without dividing lines. 

Right now, our countries compete as nation-states—although they do offer each other trading advantages they deny to outsiders. Our sense of community must develop beyond this superficial level. We must learn, at every instance, to provide for the larger interests of the region as a whole.

Let me now turn to the issue of integrating the Southeast Asian economies. 

5. INTEGRATING THE SOUTHEAST ASIAN ECONOMIES 

Integrating the National Economies will restore Southeast Asia's attractions for investors. 

These attractions consist of a market made up nowadays of almost 600 million people; rich natural resources that include 40% of all the oil-gas resources in the Asia-Pacific region; and a strong industrial base concentrated in global high-growth products such as consumer electronics, personal computers, and semiconductors. 

To make up for their higher labor costs, the asean economies must raise workers' productivity and cut costs across the production-value chain. And to achieve these goals, asean needs both national reforms and regional integration. 

The most urgent national reforms 

What national economic reforms are urgently necessary? 

Basically, member-states must dismantle home-grown barriers that raise costs, reduce competition, and deter new investments. But governments still protect favored national corporations from competition. And they continue to keep small, unproductive firms afloat by tolerating their evasion of taxes, labor rules, and product regulations. 

Increased economies of scale and scope, heightened competition, higher productivity at the company level—all these reforms will stimulate higher investment, generate more intraregional: trade, and encourage the emergence of robust and globally competitive Southeast Asian enterprises. 

Eventually, economic integration should result in one currency as well as in one market and one production platform. 

6. BUILDING ONE SOCIO-CULTURAL COMMUNITY 

Building One Socio-Cultural Community will take the longest time and effort. 

But the ASEAN leaders are wise to begin undertaking it now. The debacle suffered by the European Union—when it offered its draft Constitution for ratification to the French and Dutch electorates—tells us that the political, diplomatic, and military arrangements that governments make without recourse to their electorates—would never engage the lasting support of ordinary people. 

Even now—a full generation since ASEAN's founding—I think it fair to say that our peoples feel no personal intimacy—no moral commitment—no historical continuity—with each other. 

If we are to build a true community, it must be a community not only of the Southeast Asian elite but of every Southeast Asians as well. 

Community-building is a task for civil society 

Community-building in practice is a task more suited to civil society than to government—because community-feeling cannot be enforced by law or commanded by force. 

Governments have never been good at social and communal tasks—although governments everywhere have often tried to undertake them. 

Community-building belongs properly to the dynamic side of citizenship—to public participation in voluntary associations, the mass media, professional associations, trade unions, and similar groupings. 

A 'human agenda for ASEAN 

How do we begin to realize this vision of ASEAN as a community of caring societies? 

We must rediscover the cultural values our peoples share— which were shaped—long before the dawn of history—by our archipelagic and monsoon environment. Southeast Asia's basic A source of solidarity is the family. We must guard our traditional family values against disruptive foreign influences. 

The true community should have a moral purpose. And I think we can readily agree that—for ASEAN—the primary purpose of development should be to wipe out Southeast Asian poverty. 

Economic growth should not merely enrich the already well-off. It should lift up the common life. 

Economic growth—equitably shared—could itself become a binder of community. 

The concept of human security 

Beyond assuring our peoples the material decencies of life, ASEAN must establish social justice and individual dignity within every Southeast Asian grouping—as the internal requisite of the caring societies we envision for our peoples. 

ASEAN should work to create more equal and more tolerant societies; and it should acknowledge the legitimate concerns of ordinary people who seek security in their daily lives—against the threat of disease, hunger, joblessness, crime, social conflict, political repression, and environmental degradation.

The new concept of national security encompasses all of these concerns. This concept of "human security" improves on the idea of comprehensive security, and reorients it to promote the well-being of citizens—and the political and economic rights that enable ordinary people to live with self-respect and dignity. 

The concept of human security also acknowledges that no wisdom is higher than a decision made—in an atmosphere of freedom—by the majority in a political society. 

Socializing our young people through the school system 

The main object of ASEAN's effort to inculcate its vision must be our young peoples—whose moral characters and world-views are still being formed by the family, the school, and the community. 

Our young people we must socialize in the concept of a sharing and caring Southeast Asian community, And this we can accomplish—most easily and most naturally—through the curriculum and instructional methods of our national, school systems. 

In our time, the school system is every national society's finest vehicle for teaching young people how to behave in ways acceptable to their culture. In my view, ASEAN Civics should be taught at elementary and high school level in every ASEAN member-state—as part of the regular curriculum of every national education system. 

As part of this effort, basic education classes should include subjects on the history, culture, geography, economics and life-ways of all the ASEAN states—emphasizing the ties of blood, language, and livelihood that characterize the Southeast Asian peoples. 

Every student should be encouraged to learn an ASEAN language other than his own. At the university level, I think it time to carry out the program of an ASEAN University with a central campus, where future leaders of ASEAN can study together. 

The Southeast Asian media make up just as potent a conduit for socializing the ASEAN peoples.  

They will also make a good vehicle for promoting ASEAN solidarity and teamwork in diversity. 

Now to sum up and conclude. 

7. ASEAN NEEDS INSTITUTIONS THAT WILL REPRESENT THE INTERESTS OF THE WHOLE 

Ultimately, ASEAN—if it is to achieve regional integration that will endure, must create strong regional institutions. Right now, it has no regional institutions strong enough to expedite decision-making and—even more important—to impose group decisions. 

The ASEAN Secretariat in Jakarta has neither the power nor the resources to formulate and propose policies, coordinate their implementation, monitor compliance, and settle disputes. 

ASEAN needs institutions that will represent not just the interests of the individual member-states but the interests of the group as a whole. 

Without these regional institutions—as the McKinsey Study concludes—"ASEAN in effect grants a veto to any country that, for its own reasons, resists regional integration." 

None of the ASEAN states need fear the effects of regional integration. Southeast Asia's economies are varied enough for the comparative advantages of one country to complement those of another. 

And the experience of other regional trading communities suggests that ASEAN's least-developed economies will have the most to gain from Southeast Asian integration. 

Southeast Asia's diversity we must make a source of strength 

The immense diversity of our region we must transform from a source of weakness into a source of strength. 

Our object must be to achieve unity in diversity—for from this synergy comes national and regional resilience. 

Lastly—Even as we begin our journey toward community, we must realize that this is a pilgrimage that will never end. 

The building of Southeast Asian community will always be a work in progress. 

The ideal community will always lie ahead of humankind—like a horizon that recedes as the traveler approaches. But (as Robert Louis Stevenson had noted) to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labor and to strive. END 

/jay

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