However, a desire for a stronger interregional partnership was not realised because besides the positive factors mentioned, there were other major issues, which fed into – and, consequently, averted – their interaction. Chapter 6 will explore in more detail these factors. Yet, it is worth briefly mentioning two of them here. First, with the collapse of the bipolar rivalry, the common threat, i.e. communism, which had bonded them together during the Cold War years, no longer existed. Consequently, the basic convergences in views and approaches in the politico-strategic sphere they had forged and enjoyed during the Cold War period began to waive (Bridges 1999: 150) and their inherent normative differences and other related problems emerged (Forster 1999: 750). This also means the initial success of their relations in the political arena was confined to the context of the Cold War and the earlier convergence of their strategic interests over the Cambodian and Afghanistan issues did not lay the foundation for a greater politico-cultural alignment in the post-Cold War era. Second, with the end of the Cold War, in both regional organisations, new questions of ‘who are we’ were raised and this debate even compounded their normative divergences. On the European side, the EU’s transformation from the EC gave it a new identity and a new agenda, whose one of the cornerstones was to defend and spread its ‘European values’, e.g. human rights and democracy (European Council 1991a; 1991b; Europa Press Releases 1993). With this new mission, it introduced and applied a human rights clause into its cooperation agreements with third parties, be they states or regional organisations. On the ASEAN side, thanks to their economic growth in the 1970s and 1980s, ASEAN and its member states were more confident in their way of conducting their regional affairs, and even more willing to oppose European value-based policies. As will be shown in Chapter 5, against this background, the so-called ‘Asian values’ emerged. Given these factors, the EU and ASEAN clashed with each other and their disputes even posed the greatest threat to their relationship (Tay and Goh 1999: 39). Overall, if the political dialogue
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between the two regional organisations was the strongest part of their Cold War ties, it became the weakest element in their link in the post-Cold War period. In fact, due to their normative differences, a number of contentious issues emerged in their interaction, and because of them, the EU and ASEAN entered what was termed a ‘value-system friction’ (Dent 1999: 51), which was seen as the ‘dark side’ of their relationship (Dosch 2001: 64).
The first signs of their disagreements appeared at the eighth AEMM in February 1990 in Kuching, Malaysia. The main reason for their disputes was not anything related to their cooperation, but the Tiananmen Square massacre in June 1989, when the Chinese military attacked the students’ pro-democracy movement. As this event came at a time when it paid attention to the human rights issue in general and was already critical of China’s human rights record, the EC strongly condemned the attacks and called for a tough stance against Beijing (European Council 1989; Bridges 1999: 106-7; Tay and Goh 1999: 45; Kreutz 2005: 26). However, at this meeting as well as during its ASEAN Post Ministerial Conference (PMC) in July 1990 in Jakarta, ASEAN rejected the EC’s proposal to impose economic sanctions on Beijing (Palmujoki 1997: 273; Forster 1999: 751; Pattugalan 1999: 55). ASEAN countries rejected this move because, besides their effort to (re-)normalise and engage with China in those years (Lee 2001: 62), they opposed external interference into other countries’ domestic politics.
Following the tense exchange at the eighth AEMM, it was hoped that the next meeting in Luxembourg in May 1991 would be more cordial. Officials on both sides realised that their relationship was “entering an important new phase and efforts must now be made to ensure that it will be positive” (Merritt 1991: 31). However, the political climate at the ninth AEMM was not as friendly as expected. Actually, it was even worse because the disagreements between the two organisations over human rights became even more evident. In his opening speech, Jacques Poos said that the EC was saddened by the oppression in China (Poos 1991). Moreover, as the quotation the beginning of this session illustrates, he stated that the EC sought to include respect for human rights and democracy in the EC’s relations with third countries. In response, Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas argued that since developing countries, e.g. ASEAN ones, “are still struggling to overcome the blights imposed by past colonialism and new exploitation”, they were more concerned about basic needs (quoted in Cerna 1995: 203). Consequently, ASEAN countries disliked the way European officials insisted on human rights, accusing them of “a tendentious application of Western norms
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and values in inter-state relations” and of “creating standards and criteria by which to judge people and condemn countries” (quoted in Vatikiotis 1991: 35). Overall, by the early 1990s, the EU and ASEAN emerged as two different normative powers. While the former focused on the promotion of its liberal norms, the latter emphasised its core principles of non-interference. These normative differences were the main reason behind their disputes over the two major issues, namely East Timor and Myanmar.